# best time to have been alive



## science (Oct 14, 2010)

I'm really glad to have the internet, and there are other advantages, but I would trade it in a heartbeat to have been born in New York City in about 1920. I think that would've been the perfect life. 

As a kid, you enjoy the Roaring 20s. You hear some great jazz on the radio, maybe you get to see Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig play baseball, or see the original Show Boat. Then, as a teenager you endure the depression. You get good life lessons out of that, and it teaches you a big part of what anyone needs to know about politics and economics. Meanwhile you swing dance with your girl, maybe see Porgy and Bess or Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. You read your Fitzgerald and Hemingway (maybe even Mann or Kafka), see Chaplin films, maybe see Joe Louis fight. You hear Son House and Robert Johnson and some singing cowboys on the radio. Maybe you freak out to The War of the Worlds, and know what The Shadow knows. 

Then you fight WWII. It's terrible, but you win and you're a hero for the rest of your life. It'd be better to fight in Europe than in the Pacific, meeting the Italian and French girls, a little cabaret and a little opera. Maybe you see a Bob Hope show. (Edit: The girls in the Pacific are pretty too of course - but the war on that front was so much more brutal.)

You come back to the golden age of film noir and Capra, then Hitchcock, and then Marilyn; also Bergman and Kurosawa. Come back to Sinatra, Nat King Cole, Charle Parker, Hank Williams, Muddy Waters, and Howlin Wolf. If you're really cool you might appreciate the early rock & roll. You watch Jackie Robinson re-integrate baseball. Through your kids, you witness the golden age of comic books. You get your first tv and you love Lucy, and the Twilight Zone, Bonanza, and Andy Griffith. On the evening news you watch the army take down McCarthy, the Little Rock Nine go to school, the Cuban Missile Crisis, JFK's assassination, "Bull" Connors order out the dogs and fire hoses, and the moon landing. 

You could hear Bernstein and Gould and Rostropovich and Richter and Heifetz, but your kids make you listen to the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. Pretty soon they're off to college, burning their bras, loving freely at Woodstock. 

Ok, nevermind. It'd have been best to be born about 1960, to run around naked at Woodstock, to enjoy the period after the invention of the pill and before the discovery of AIDS. 

Except for that, probably being born in the 1920s would be the best. You'd live just long enough to see the Berlin Wall come down and the USSR dissolve. Your life would be a series of triumphs in every field--politics, human rights, medicine, music, film. 

Man, I thought this would be a fun little nostalgia trip but now I'm bummed! What the heck? What I get is hip hop and alternative rock? Video games? The rise of China, the end of democracy, the end of fossil fuels, the collapse of the industrial world, and nuclear holocaust?

Another good time would've been to be British in the 19th century, if you got to be one of the rich guys, traveling around India and Africa and Southeast Asia. Enjoy Paris in la belle epoque. Hopefully you'd have the sense to stop in Vienna for a few concerts. The generation that discovered evolution and radiation. You'd want to die before you saw it all crash in the Great War; you'd want to lack a conscience about colonialism--wouldn't be a problem for most of us. But still, you'd never know a hot shower, and most of your life would come before flushing toilets. Don't even think about dentistry. 

Earlier than that and it's hard to work out. If you timed it right, you'd get to be in Vienna from Haydn to Schubert, but then you probably wouldn't get to travel much.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

Went out for milk for my can of Campbell's soup (New England clam chowda) and thought about it like this: maybe right now is the best time to be alive, because I can hear or see most of that stuff for free on youtube, and I actually have some idea how good it is.

But if I'd've been there at the time, I probably would've just been grumbling about how Rogers and Hammerstein were no Offenbach, and so on.


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## Aramis (Mar 1, 2009)

and what's the best time for being dead?


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## Webernite (Sep 4, 2010)

Aramis said:


> and what's the best time for being dead?


The 1980s.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

Aramis said:


> and what's the best time for being dead?


Afterwards.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

Thankee, Meaghan.

Gotta say, another good reason to be alive now is the nonfiction. I'd hate to have been born to early to read Dawkins, Pinker, McNeill and so on. Lots of good books coming out every year - impossible to keep up with.

Maybe an earlier era would've been better. I'd have still enjoyed the experience of learning, without the horror of falling ever further behind in spite of my best efforts.


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## Vaneyes (May 11, 2010)

Apart from family and friends...

'50's were mostly innocuous. Surgical CIA hits controlled "diplomacy" well. 1960's for a good variety of music, sex, if you could get your head around assassinations and Vietnam. 1970's, disco, soul, sex. 1980's for CDs, VHS, and increased wealth (Raygunomics), as you struggled to get your head around AIDS and other STDs.

1990's, DVD, as you struggled to get your head around '91 Desert Storm and what the future held from that, '93 WTC bombing. 00's was more of the same Middle East nonsense, 9/11, invasions...and everything suffering because of it. 10's, OBL whacked. Tea Parties, Barack & Michelle dates, etc., etc.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

I didn't realize anyone struggled to get their heads around Desert Storm.


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## Vaneyes (May 11, 2010)

science said:


> I didn't realize anyone struggled to get their heads around Desert Storm.


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## mamascarlatti (Sep 23, 2009)

No thanks. As a female there is no way I would want to have lived any earlier than this, for reasons mainly to do with education, work opportunities, economic independence, domestic duties, and health.


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## Vaneyes (May 11, 2010)

mamascarlatti said:


> No thanks. As a female there is no way I would want to have lived any earlier than this, for reasons mainly to do with education, work opportunities, economic independence, domestic duties, and health.


Right on, mamascarlatti. The pendulum has swung.


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## Huilunsoittaja (Apr 6, 2010)

As much as we can think about the "Good Old Days" really the present is right now the best time in history. I'm neither an optimist to say the future will certainly be brighter than now, nor a pessimist to say the future looks worse. People don't change. Just our surroundings.


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## Polednice (Sep 13, 2009)

Despite the perpetual, vocal concern that a lot of people have about the moral degradation of society, I think it's a fair assessment to say that the world essentially keeps getting better and better for the majority of people. Of course, there is a hell of a lot of way to go, and millions of people who couldn't have it any worse - just fewer millions than before. We just have to keep striving for us to one day reach our human potential, and for the democratic process to remain as uncorrupted as possible, and, more than anything else, hope that our insane technological prowess isn't abused by those who would usher in an early apocalypse.


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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

The best time to be alive is twenty years from now. Seriously - if the world can get out of this financial quagmire it's going to get amazing.


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## Krummhorn (Feb 18, 2007)

The best time for me was in the 50's and 60's. We didn't have the internet, no mobile phones (except the very rich who had 'car phones'), no electronic games. Life happened one day at a time and there was more time for family get-togethers and just hangin' out with friends. 

Although I have come to embrace modern technology and have become somewhat dependent on email, it isn't the end of the world if the electricity goes out or the internet crashes for me. I got along just fine in the 'olden days' of yore without them - we took trips all across the nation, went camping and enjoyed nature and the good ol' outdoors. These days people bring their entire home with them to the campground with radios blaring and all the creature comforts they are so accustomed to. 

I am not concerned with what will or might happen in the future ... it's, imho, quite out of our hands what is to transpire 15 or 20 years from now, let alone tomorrow. The next weekday will come and go, and I am able to accept that as it is. 

Kh


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

For me, without question - now. Science (my field) is more interesting (and more powerful) now than ever. Recent breakthroughs in cosmology and genomics are answering deep questions about evolution, living things, and the nature of our universe. Theoretical particle physics has been on the brink of a radical change in our view of reality (could reality have 11 dimensions?).

Computers and the internet allows all of us (with an education and money) to learn vastly more about our world than ever before.

Perhaps the most important change has been in freedom for various groups. Women have made incredible strides since getting the vote (in the US) in 1920. Blacks are viewed legally the same as others (and likely racism is continuing to decrease). Gay people are actually flirting with the legal right to marry (again in the US). People across the globe are increasing their standard of living. The average lifetime continues to increase.

There may have been certain times in history that are interesting for certain people or may have even been more enjoyable for some, but for humans as a whole I think we continue to move towards greater freedom, greater knowledge, and greater control over our lives.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

mmsbls said:


> Science... is more... powerful now than ever.












(Edited your post for self-flattery.)


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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

mmsbls said:


> Science (my field) is more interesting (and more powerful) now than ever.


I hope so, but I look around and wonder sometimes, with revisionist history and pseudo-science gobbledy-**** trying to work their way into public schools. 

But yes, if we can survive all that and keep the funding flowing I think it's going to be an awesome time to live.


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## regressivetransphobe (May 16, 2011)

Everyone has moments of feeling like they were born in the wrong time, but if your answer is seriously any time other than right now, I think it's mostly just romanticism. If you go back in time and get some weird-*** disease you're not supposed to get nowadays, like syphilis or the Indian projectile mumps, good luck.


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## kv466 (May 18, 2011)

60's, man!


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## Chi_townPhilly (Apr 21, 2007)

I guess the parameters turned out a little bit broader- 
but similar material was considered here.

To keep this conversation relevant to "tweaks" in our era rather than wholesale changes, I fall in that birth-year category that I've seen classified as "back-of-the-boom." My birth year is about half-a-decade [give-or-take] displaced from the peak year for U.S. live births. We're definitely not 60s generation kids, but folks my age are even further away from "Generation X" and its successors.

During our schooling, we learned an awful lot that's either immaterial or downright useless these days. The savviest among us learned how to calculate using slide-rules (woo-woo). Take a computer-programming course? Programs were inputted via a brick-like stack of key-punch cards. And of course (relevant to music), we had a front-row seat to the changes in media- we started with vinyl LPs, then 8-tracks were supposed to make our music vehicle-portable [that didn't work out], cassettes came along with the idea of making your chosen sounds personally portable. [This proved to be better than 8-tracks, but still had considerable drawbacks.] Just when it seemed like we had the hang of it all, along came CDs. By the time MP3 players and such came along, I and many others around my age said "devil take it... I'm not changing _again!_"

It might be a case of "grass being greener," but I've sometimes thought how different it would be if I were more towards the front of the boom, which would then mean that I'd be that much closer to retirement with fewer worries about the changing tech scene, or if I'd been closer to Generation X and thus more to the manner born with the modern digital stuff.

That said, it is kind of cool that "back-of-the-boomers" can cohesively discuss shared experiences such as those I mentioned...


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## Lenfer (Aug 15, 2011)

The best time to be alive would be now other wise you either have yet to be born or are dead. However I know what you mean I was just being facetious sorry. 

I really don't think you can ask this question and get a good answer though. Unless you are asking someone with a good memory who is 90 years old +. No one younger will know what it's like to go though a sea change like those at the great turning points in history. After all it is only after they have happend that any great significance is given to them.

*Science* I have noticed I really enjoy your posts you put a lot of deep thought into them. So please don't see my comment as in any way negative that was not my intention it's only my opinion. :tiphat:


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## Kopachris (May 31, 2010)

Now is a pretty good time to be a music-lover because of free digital media on the Internet, but I do feel like I belong in c18-19th. I am an anachronism.


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## TresPicos (Mar 21, 2009)

The best time would probably be around stardate 50000.










Other than that, I would say the 60s, for reasons mentioned by the OP.


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

I was born with Cloacal Exstrophy which is a condition in which you are born with all your organs below the diaphragm pop out of your body like a huge organ destroying bomb went off in your stomach in the womb. So....I'm pretty glad to have been born in this time when doctors had the technology to, ya know, fix me.

Actually, I was pretty lucky to be born *where* I was born too because back in 1991 not a lot of other hospitals besides ones in Seattle and some other places knew how to fix the problem either. My mom's doctor in Tacoma told her I would die, but then when they got me to seattle (basically one city away) they said it was no problem. Go figure.


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## Ravellian (Aug 17, 2009)

I think the Baby Boomers had (have) it best, since now we, the younger generation, have to pay for their retirement... and since the whole SS/Medicare thing is going down the toilet real fast, it's likely we'll be the last generation to have to do that.

On the other hand, I'm not sure if I could do without the internet, high-speed computers, and so forth..


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## Kopachris (May 31, 2010)

TresPicos said:


> The best time would probably be around stardate 50000.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


IIRC, they're actually in the 1990s in that episode. And _Voyager_ the ship was launched on Stardate 48038.5, and therefore has technology from the 47000s instead of the 50000s. Just nit-picking. 



violadude said:


> I was born with Cloacal Exstrophy which is a condition in which you are born with all your organs below the diaphragm pop out of your body like a huge organ destroying bomb went off in your stomach in the womb. So....I'm pretty glad to have been born in this time when doctors had the technology to, ya know, fix me.
> 
> Actually, I was pretty lucky to be born *where* I was born too because back in 1991 not a lot of other hospitals besides ones in Seattle and some other places knew how to fix the problem either. My mom's doctor in Tacoma told her I would die, but then when they got me to seattle (basically one city away) they said it was no problem. Go figure.


Wow.


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## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

I don't believe in all of this golden age crap. The best time to be alive is when you're not dead.


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## Kopachris (May 31, 2010)

starthrower said:


> I don't believe in all of this golden age crap. The best time to be alive is when you're not dead.


I dunno. Why are we so prejudiced against death? Can't death be just as important as life? When you die has just as much of an effect on the world as when you live. It might be better to say: the best time to be alive is just before the best time to die.


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## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

I've got nothing against death. It's a good thing. But wishing you were born at another time is foolish. As Frank Zappa said, You Are What You Is.


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## Kopachris (May 31, 2010)

We're not necessarily _wishing_ to be born at another time; we're just contemplating what it would've been like.


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