What Life Would You Choose If....
 

......you could only choose your gender and the location and year of your birth, and you could not choose your existing life?

I expect no one will choose to be female, which is a separate discussion of its own.

Tahiti in the 1920s might be a good option.

America during or shortly before WW2 would mean I would be too young to get killed in the war, but then enjoy the prosperity explosion afterwards. Surfing in Malibu, for example. I imagine some here will report that was indeed a special time to be a young person.

Homestead Act and land rushes of the late 19th century. Wild West. Hard work but also freedom, clean air and water.

Elk hunting. ;)

I would choose a period in our history where the internet did not exist so one could have this conversation with a real person in some kind of human community...and not the fake community that exists 'online'.

I grew up in the 50s and 60s, so been there, done that. No way would I want to go back further and live without antibiotics, and vaccines for polio or smallpox, and just as important, central air conditioning and heating. Clean running water and indoor toilets.

I think we are at a pinnacle of living standards. I worked hard my entire life, and have no debt, and have saving and income to keep me comfortable.

Building a homestead on the frontier from sod and living with no electricity or indoor plumbing, or plumbing at all and having to burn buffalo dung for heat has no appeal to me. Being a mountain man, or a gold miner is even less appealing.

I worry about the future of America and the vanishing freedoms.

Coming right up if we ignore the writing on the wall.

This is something I have posted about before and have probably thought about more than I should. Hoping time travel is a thing in the next 100 years though sooner than later.

To turn 13-14 in 1960 in southern California would be an amazing life given my white male DNA. To be a part of real car culture and weekend racing in 60s SoCal would be the best life I could imagine.

Maybe 15 years ago I happened upon Howard's Burgers in LA. It's not so much they were good burgers, it was for maybe 30 minutes stepping back in time. It was magic.

If I didn't have the car addiction I would find cheap flights to LA now and again and go for burger crawls just for a weekend.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1706378414.jpg

And yet you are here.

I was born a white male in the middle of the 20th Century. I hit the trifecta that moment I took my first breath. Since I can't have the exact life again, make it born 1948 - or 1952. Either would be good.

I could not agree more.

I turned 13 in 1970 in Idaho. Missed the perfect time and place by only a little, but enough that it was a whole different life.

I turned 11 in Boise in 1970. I think that's a sweet spot. I have brothers and sisters ranging from 5 years younger to 7 years older; we all did OK.

And I'd do it all over again especially if I were aware of some future truths that could have instructed my actions and channeled my energy and focus a little better.

Good for you! I think you are right, but I also think you are a glass-half-full guy. At one time I wondered if perhaps I was the Luckiest Organism in the History of the Universe. White male, 20th century, American, good family of origin, grew up in north Idaho with mountains and a river nearby, etc. Enough prosperity to be successful and safe, but not so much that I got to sidestep the ordinary problems of life. Which, I think, are blessings. Plus....tall. muscular, athletic, dangerously handsome, frighteningly intelligent, etc.

Exactly how and where I grew up. When Grady Clay visited SoCal I escorted him for 3 days. One night we went to Bob's Big Boy in Burbank where they still cruise. It was a step back in time and he soaked it up right down to the sunset behind the palm trees.

He got that one off his bucket list.

I would pick a time in the future. In the next millennia advances in medicine and technology will make our era look like the stone age.

I wouldn't change a thing . I am very happy what I am and my life in general .

100 years ago males had twice the testosterone, air was clean outside the coal burning cities, and every food available was 'additive free'.
I can't imagine what a good steak tasted like back then.

OTOH oranges were a luxury item, no dental anesthetic, and the average life expectancy was 45yo.

I think I'd prefer (if I had to choose a time in the past) to be born at the right time to volunteer for the Lewis & Clark expidition.

If I could be born in the Star Trek Federation era, certainly. It is sad that the vast majority of Science Fiction of today is the dystopian bleak future.

I hope mankind can get to the Star Trek future of no hunger, no need for money, and working at jobs only to have something to do.

"Yes, I am a pirate, born 200 years too late..." -Jimmy Buffett

That sounds awesome Zeke.

Grady came up to FC a long time ago and we hung out in the garage with a group of folks from PP and talked Porsches. That was a great afternoon.

I rather go back in time and be able to come back to my air conditioned house, with heat in winter (we don't really need it here in socal) and I like modern medical technology. Growing up in the 80s socal was a lot of fun. Not sure if I really want to go back.

The nonfiction book Undaunted Courage changed my mind about that.

That can be your reality today, you just have to do it. Log off, put away the phone and go talk to people. I'm actively trying to do more of this myself and I will say, for me at least, it's a nice refresher. I'm thinking of the internet as more of a tool these days - use when needed to gather info etc., but don't use as a place to just kill time. Try to forget it's there. I'll come here to briefly browse, but usually in 30 minutes I'm done, and I may not be back for days.

Good for you, Paul!

I’ve not heard anyone mention this before but it appears, to me, that there may be the beginnings of yet another bifurcation of humanity. Those whose lives are enmeshed in the virtual world and those whose lives are not.

Thanks,I might give it a read, which might change my mind too. I would have loved to be able to explore new lands during that time.

That last winter the L&C team suffered, where the Columbia River meets the Pacific Ocean, was NOT fun. Like Jeff reports, they would have starved if they had to depend on local game animals. Instead they ate fish. They hated fish. Lived in a cabin about the size of a phone booth. It is surprising they did not kill each other.

The men ate 9# of meat per day, Each.

From William Clark’s journal: “It requires 4 deer, or an elk and a deer, or one buffalo to supply us for 24 hours.” Additionally, 193 pounds of “portable soup” were ordered as an emergency ration when stores ran out and game was scarce or unavailable.

I read that they traded the Indians goods for dogs and they ate them.

What if you chose a date and place and fulfilled the wish.
Then many years later, you are given the same question.
Do you end up back here?

Me too, no desire to go backwards in time. When I want to relive segregation and lack of civil rights, I can just talk to my parents and hear all about. My father grew up in Birmingham Alabama and my mother in Cape Charles Virginia.... NOPE, I don't look back to any period of our country with rose colored glasses.....

Well, you ask what life I would choose so I'd be the Lord of Downton Abbey.

I really don’t think I would notice a difference in the world if I was born in a different time frame unless it was during a time of great hardships.

Now if I could go back or forwards in time with the knowledge I have now, that would be huge.

I assume you only get to say gender, date, location, but whether you’re born rich or poor is random?

That makes a lot of historical places risky - draw the short birth stick in, say, Victorian England or Renaissance Italy and you’re doomed to a life of grinding poverty, even if you’re several cuts above the average person in smarts. I’d like to choose Venice in the 1600s, but it would be risky. I could be the kid hauling buckets of feces from palazzos he can’t ever hope to live in.

Something like male, born early 1940s, California would be good. You’d come of age during the surfer and hot rod era, the swinging sixties, etc, but too old for the Vietnam draft, and there was a lot of upward mobility, good public education, etc. There’s antibiotics and X-rays, no Black Death, no AIDS (hey your sexual orientation would also be random), big-block Fords and E-types, color TV and transistor radio.

If you also get to choose economic status and personal attributes (like, I’m me but rich, tall, good-looking, and possessed of endless charm and indefatigable bedroom prowess) then lots of places and eras open up.

I'd go back and join Jaques Cousteau on the Calypso exploring the undersea world as an aquanaut :cool:

It's where my imagination was most of the time while I spent my childhood snorkeling after school and weekends

Turn of the century America. Get involved in the infancy of automobiles and aviation. Looking for Glenn Curtiss

In the plot I think he is plagued with a sense of failure. His eldest daughter was written into the story as the preserver of the estate.

Now the fun fantasy would have been to be Carson.

My father was pretty young during the Depression and was a child of fairly well off middle class Mid Westerners. He saw the development of TV to computers to landing on the moon. He witnessed (at a distance) the social revolution of the 60's. He lived into the 90's and saw quite a bit of the time after the 60's but from the 40's to the 60's things really changed. It had to be hard to accept. And in many ways he didn't. He just rode off into the sunset with a martini or 3.

People call his time the Great Generation. I think it was. He lived large, that's for sure.

this is a good question ... my first instinct would be a boomer, born in 1956 probably. man, life would be EASY.

but then, thinking about it, anytime in the past would be more painful even than today, because of the lack of rights and social progress so many people would have.

so its tough, economically, being a boomer dude would mean i'd be doing 100x times better, but everyone i cared about would be doing WAY worse. unlike today, where everyone i know is doing a lot better, but we all are doing way worse economically.


and projecting forward, with the death of the American empire, and climate change, those trends are only going to accelerate. everything will get more expensive, the middle class will die in the next generation, and while social justice will advance, the price is that everyone is slowly becoming a serf. gay serfs will be fine socially, but they will still be serfs. the future isnt looking any better frankly.

unless you are born rich. i mean being born rich is a cheat code for any generation.

I'm a bit before the boomers, born in late '43, high school class of '61. Our generation is the one that forced strides in Civil Rights once we gained the clout to do so. Most of us took King's I have a dream speech to heart, and began living it. Michael knows how this evolved far better than me, so I'm done on that topic, other than to say I believe in equality...but not "equity", which is socialism.

Another era? Hindsight is crystal clear, the crystal ball of the future is cloudy. Therefore, I'll stick with the cards dealt.

I really like living in our current age.
Even with everything going on right now (wars etc) things are better now than they've ever been before.

It's nowhere near perfect but I'm optimistic. We could do better and we will.

I would choose now.

Recently lost my bride - I'd do it the same 1000 times over

including all the bad and the good if only to relive

Same here. That's just the sort of thing I would love to do. Then again, they did have some pretty miserable conditions. The extremely wet winter in Oregon sounds awful. All the Indian tribes they met insisted that they sleep with the prettiest young ladies. Sounds nice, I guess, until you get your first symptoms of syphilis, which they all had.

Therefore, I'd just pick when and where I was born. California in 1958.

I would be 28 forever. Old enough to be taken seriously, young enough to score the good ones. Strong, fast, smart...

I was dangerously stoopid at 28. I might still be, but not dangerous. Oh, I had some great times, or so I thought. How I escaped no one will ever figure out.