Writer's Block: Pick an era, any era

[duckygirl]

In some ways I wouldn't want to leave these times, with all of the medical advances and women's rights and whatnot.  However, being a total history nerd, I've always fantasized about living in other times, especially the Victorian/Progressive era.  I love the spirit of the times, and the dresses and architecture.  I also wish I could have been

Comments

[jdquintette]

I sometimes have students ask me what the sixties were like. I think I disappoint them when I say they were pretty much like now. Our present age is also a time of enormous social change and catastrophic events (we just lived through one down here in New Orleans). Trust me, 40 years from now you'll be sitting around with a bunch of kids asking you what it was like back in the 'oughts,' provided there's anything left to sit on.

Hippies and activists were then, as now, a very small cohort in the general population. Most young people were pretty much like their parents, only with slightly longer sideburns and a marginally more tolerant attitude towards pre-marital sex and recreational drug use which, unfortunately, disappeared with age. Remeber, George W. Bush scored a lot of votes with baby boomers in the last two elections.

As for living in the Victorian age, I'd add one caveat. You'd need to be rich. My own family were impoverished Irish peasants in those days and I have no wish to revisit their experience. Also, one word needs to be kept in mind when imagining life in a grander, more civilized age, and that word is...dentistry.

[duckygirl]

Oh, don't worry... I'm a history student, I'm aware of the whole "things aren't like we think they were" and "you'd only want to live then if you were rich" deals. Note my "don't know that I'd want to go back in the first place" caveat.

I find it really interesting to hear people's takes on the 60s in particular. What I think separates the 60s from now, and makes it more attractive to me, was the greater participation in activism. With a draft, people were less likely to be complacent, or at least that's what I've read and been told by older folks. Do you see that as a difference between now and then?

I'm also fascinated by the counterculture- the genuine counterculture, like in the early days before it swept the nation and became more cliche. I'd like to have experienced that, even though I don't actually know if I'd like it. It really doesn't bother me that it was a small part of the population, b/c what interests me about many time periods is something that wasn't widespread, something that perhaps has been played up in the years since. For example, most girls in the 20s weren't flappers, but that doesn't mean I wouldn't like to go back then and be one, or at least see it all.

I think what also attracts a lot of people my age to the "mythical" 60s is the music. I was just talking to some of my friends and we wished we could have been there when bands like the Doors and the Grateful Dead and Jimi Hendrix were becoming popular and putting out new music, to have been a part of the crowds that greeted them at concerts... to someone who never had the chance, it sounds amazing.

It's interesting what you said about the 60s being like now. I've actually thought about that too, especially after talking to some of my older professors and hearing a couple of them say they'd never want to relive the 60s. That says a lot. I probably wouldn't ever want to relive the Bush years (unless McCain gets elected and things get so bad that these days look wonderful by comparison...), and I don't see these days in any sort of romanticized way, so I think I see what they're saying. I'm interested in how the "oughts" will be portrayed in future pop-culture- what will the zeitgeist of these years be reduced/blown up to? Will it resemble the 60s at all, or will it be all about technology, or the war, or what?