whould you like go back to 18 or 19 century and good days?

Answer 1

This was a time in history when things were different. But I believe problems existed then, as they do now.

Answer 2

Thank you for asking. I have to answer in two parts, as if two separate questions have been asked. Without first reading any other answers I say "Yes" to the first part.

I've been here a long time, since the mid 20th Century actually, and have always felt a comfort in the 19th Century.

I was born and raised on a farm, and that lifestyle has always suited me. I've always been an explorer, and very much enjoy that; connected with a strong pioneering spirit. I'm pretty much self sufficient now, and can be anywhere. Certainly I'm using a comp for this purpose but wouldn't miss what didn't exist.

Actually one of the most exciting time periods of OUR history was during the industrial revolution, when so much "technology" albeit LOW TECH was being formulated and crafted. Again,,, I realize that inventions, discoveries and technology today are moving at an almost exponential pace, but I'd prefer soup cans and string to make communication my new exploration.

Now to the second part.

I do understand what "GOOD" is, as it relates to me personally, and it is subjective and interprative.

Were there GOOD times in those centuries? I have to believe so, for many people. Were their hardships, and struggles? Of course.

I would have had to walk anywhere, or use a horse, or wagon. I may in that case, not have traveled more than a few miles from where I was born, and when I wanted to "GO" I would have to feed my horse, grease any wagon wheels, and likely endure some discomfort over what were not paved interstate highways. Today of course, I have to spend $3 plus for a gallon of gas, and still may be limited in how far I can travel.

I would very likely have to use kerosene, or oils for lantern fuel, as opposed to flicking a switch to achieve light. The same goes for heat; in that I'd spend a good portion of my day cutting and collecting firewood, to heat what would likely be a drafty, dark, wood cabin. Today I merely have to create enough income to afford my electric bill. We clear cut forests in the name of progress, expansion, and the need to fill the land with more housing, using more resources than we have, with less concern over what will be.

If I got sick I might have to tough it out, or die. I would likely have an herb garden, and learn self medication. Would that be GOOD as opposed to modern day medical practices or substances? Today millions suffer illness, and death caused by them, often with little or no medical care, and still we press on in our desire to over populate the planet.

It was a smaller planet 100 plus years ago. People had to actually "talk" to each other to communicate ideas, dreams, news. People got to know others, and knew them often, for a lifetime. People got by, and thrived, and were happy in moments. Today we can find happiness, when it isn't intruded on by a war 10,000 miles away, or rampant urban crime, or the reports of killer bees or various pandemics, the rising cost of existance, versus the lowering of personal incomes,,,etc. etc etc.

Yet we too find moments of happiness and enjoy GOOD times.

It's all relative, but I appreciate the Q. Thanks.

Rev. Steven

Answer 3

I love the clothes they wore back then. (especially in the nights/dragon days) If I had a choice between there or here that would be the only thing I would miss from the 18-19 century.

Apart from that people killed who they liked back then (had no respect for human life) whereas we have laws these days to protect us from that and pillaging and rape also.

Here we have modern day conveniences, medicine, decent fresh food. I would definitely have to say I prefer now to then.

Cheers

Answer 4

In some ways yes. Back then people had more family values. Families were much closer than they are now. Ansd lets face it, if you drive to work every day it would be cheaper to feed your horse than your car!!!! Kids were not obsessed with mindless video games and sunday was a day for family. Granted they did not have the medicines we have, but life was much simpler.

Answer 5

There is a large part of me that does believe I was born on the wrong continent, and in the wrong era. If I were to chose any, it would be the Victorian era. Art, Beauty and culture. It's a romantic notion.

That is, of course, only if I could stand the smell....

Answer 6

No, every time had there own specific problems and (coming from the future) we think we would be able to live peacefully but we would not know their cultures dynamics so it would be h*ll.

Answer 7

No way... you think we have problems as a society now... live back then! No real medicine or medical knowledge, you could be stoned as a witch... nah... send me into the future!!!

Answer 8

yes,but not for long,i would miss the basic medical care we all have in our time, and the little things such as fresh food and air conditioning.

Answer 9

No. They didn't have all the modern conveniences that we have now.

Answer 10

Oh, the "good old days" - when women were valued and treated with decency, when people lived closer to Nature, when the environment was unsullied and foods and water were healthful, when everyone showed proper respect, went to church and participated in community life, and families were strong because they had to rely on each other, and kids grew up in a good environment free of sexuality, immorality, drugs, gangs, and the other corrupting influnces that assault them endlessly today.

Are THOSE the "good old days" you mean?

Let's take a look at what the "good old days" were REALLY like. by the way, anyone who thinks like this should read a very entertaining "what if" book addressing the very subject by Harry Turtledove and Judith Tarr, named "The Household Gods."

First - the 18th century:

This period, from 1701 to 1800, was FASCINATING. However, as the English social philsopher Thomas Hobbes wrote in "Leviathian" (published 1690), life around the whole world at this time was mainly "nasty, poor, brutish and short." More on this later.

In Asia, both China and Japan maintained largely closed societies. Only a few decades earlier, Dutch, Portuguese, Spanish and English explorers and traders had been banned from their nations. In Japan's case, that persisted until Commodore Perry's arrival in 1853 with the "Black Fleet." However, persistent traders ultimately forced China to create a restricted port area at Canton for the Europeans. Southeast Asia, and especially what we know today as Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand, were variably under the colonial heel worn by the Dutch and Poruguese, and in Cambodia and Vietnam, the Chinese, while India was suffering disruption and warfare caused by the ambitions of the French, Dutch, English and Portuguese. Their societies were largely static, and the intrusions of Westerners very disruptive. Their cultures were rich and productive.

In Europe, there was violent conflict underway the entire century. Some of it was the product of state policies - essentially, nations competing for acendancy on the Continent, in their colonies, and in trade. Some of it was the product of religious differences, and some the result of extremely upsetting new ideas circulating as "The Age of Reason" transitioned to the "Age of the Enlightenment." In England, one of the more interesting conflicts was over "Manners" - an attempt to reform ordinary society into people of good manners who would be modest, sober, respectful and polite. It failed.

The 18th Century was characterized by sexual license, displacement of farmers by landlords for political and economic reasons, commonplace violence in every social level, naked self-interest and ambition on the part of the merchant and arustocratic classes, ruthless exploitation of the working classes and poor, and a very extreme contrast between the public piety of the fervently-religious with most of the population that was openly irreligious.

Depending on social status, economic class, and country, the lifespan of the average person was between 25 and 40. An "old woman" of 25 in the working classes was often lined, grey, stooped, constantly tired, and lucky to still have a few teeth.

Throughout this era, Europeans - both in the Old World and New - quite often lived double lives. Their public positions and posutres sought to show modesty, and virtue, but their private lives were quite the opposite. In North America, some communities such as the inheritors of the Puritans around Massachussetts, were still small enough and structured around religious convention enough to enforce church attendance and proper behavior. But they were also slipping away - when Jonathan Edwards preached "Sinners at the hands of an angry God" at the Boston Old North Church, he was lambasting his backsliding parishoners.

In Europe and the Americas, rural people were rough, crude, overburdened, and just as sly at giving the church and constable a trick as the city people.

Children and women were property in these years. The idea of childhood as we know and cherish it simply did not exist in ANY household, great or mean.

Beer, and for those who could pay the scot, wine, was the common beverage and for excellent reason. That "clean environment" included water loaded with bacteria, viruses and parasites. (By the way - archaeologists a few years ago examined the mummified remains of Peruvian seaside natives who died many thousands of years ago - none lived past 25, and most died as a result of intenstinal parasites from the water. So much for the idea of the pure and perfect native peoples living in harmony with Nature.)

In England hundreds of thousands of men were dragged from their jobs, their homes, their families - not all by force, but many - to many the ships ceaselessly sailing the seas for war and commerce, and to fill the armies. Not until the very end of the century when at last understanding of diet began to improve the health of sailors did more than about half or less of those so drafted survive to come home - usually hurt, sick, and broke. In the meantime, the wives and children were left destitute for the state did not support them or send their mens' pay for their sustenance.

The 18th century was a miserable time to live. The environment was no better than today, the understanding of Nature was barely beyond primitive, illness was usually a death sentence, and life was not much of a joy. Religion strove in the face of such constant misery to offer an alternative view of at least a better life beyond the grave - but so much of religion at the time was a bleak, harsh concept serving to support the established order that it failed.

You think THOSE were "the good old days?"

Now for the 19th century:

This era arrived on the heels of two vital developments - the "spinning Jenny," and the perfection of practical steam engines by James Watt in 1795. The century ended with people speaking by telegraph and telephone across oceans, sending facsimiles the same way (YES! it was invented and first used in the 1800's), taking fast steamship across the Atlantic in a matter of days, riding on trains to distant parts of the world, reading in newspapers of events from just the day before many thousands of miles distant, taking in the spectacle of moving pictures and listening to phonograph recordings, brightening the night with electric lights, soaring into the skies in balloons and new sorts of lighter than air airships, and many, many more wonders of invention and industry.

Now even the lowest person might have more than one suit of clothing - and perhaps even furniture in the home. Food had become abundant and many people no longer were forced to spend all day every day in the constant struggle for immediate survival. A grandfather born at the end of the 18th century - and some did survive past the turn of the 20th - had more in common with every human who ever lived before him than his grandchildren did with him.

The vast differences between the start of the 19th and the end of the 19th century speak volumes but hardly describe the issues of life that you addressed.

In fact, in the cities, life was even more crowded, hungry and desperate; crime was commonplace and murder almost not worth reporting in the papers. Tuberculosis was the foremost killer disease. While middle-class life was appraoching the idealized image some have of "the good old days," it was by and large not the fact of life for most working peop0le. And while wealth for some had indeed become great wealth of nearly mythic proportions, it did nothing to alter the nasty realizities of license, illness, arrogance, greed and brutality.

Throughout most of the 1800's in Europe and America the cities were crowded with desperate women for whom there were not protective laws. In mid century, a steamship bound for New Orleans from New York was lost in a hurricane, taking with it the two most prominent madams of both cities as well as 100 girls aged 15-22 voyaging toward new jobs as prostitutes. In England, there was such a serious shortage of men of any class that getting husbands was a vicious occupation - and the slightest tarnish on a woman's name doomed her. That's why upright, prim victorian England was crowded with homeless women, and prostitutes in London as thick as rats in a sewer.

In city or country, men ruled and ruled with brutality in America and the Old World. Children were valued for how much they could earn or produce. Women were subject to beatings and abuse - and more likely that both women and children suffered such in religious rather than profane households.

The environment, of course was abused and polluted even more.

As for health, although more abudant and cheaper food benefitted almost everyone, oppression of the poor and working classes meant they had less to eat. Nonetheless, such improved nutrition meant that many recruits for war were bigger, stronger, and able to carry heavier packs and munitions into battle - whcih they did so that they could kill more and be killed faster.

At the same time medicine was hardly beyond the witch doctor stage. A prosperous person would take to bed for a month after developing a blister on the heel - infection was too great a risk. Even the rich fell prey to simple diseases - the father of archaeology, Heinrich Schliemann, died in Berlin after developing an ear infection. And societies of all kinds abandoned the unfortunate to their fates without a care.

Religion did indeed grow apace during this epoch, but so did the vices. Cynicism was even more rampant, go to church Sunday, take a harlot Monday. Read the bible after dinner Tuesday, beat the children every day. If anything, religion in this period divided people more, limited people more, and caused more harm than good. In Scotland, the fundamentalist zealots attacked women for using ether to ease the pains of childbirth - only after Queen Victoria accepted ether was it possible. But at least the comforts of church helped many a poor lad who went off to die in a foreign land for the empire.

The good old days, frankly, are a fiction. And no one in his or her right mind would ever want to return to them.