[onlooker]

Just curious, don't know how germane this topic is to anything discussed on this website but just am curious if you could chose a time and place to live on this planet what and when would it be? It can be past, present or future. I think i would chose to live in North America sometime between 5 thousand to 1 thousand years ago. I just think the American Indian way of life would suit me in so much as their was harmony within the tribe and they were spiritual and had reverence towards the Earth. I know it was without the conveniences of modern life but I think those are overrated. Just the sense of living in contact with nature and in harmony with it and your fellow man is appealing to me. Physical work is not a problem in fact it is a way to stay in shape. Also, I think for the most part they avoided some of the worst parts of the Old World history like Roman brutality and the Christian-Vatican heyday etc. Also, consumerism had not taken hold there and then. So I think those people had peace of mind.

[Pops]

OK:
right here, right now, white, male, slightly above average grey matter and damn good lookin!

Oh yeah, that's me! LOL

I really do think this is a great time, it is the peak after all. When I was a kid I thought about the older times a lot but this era truly is the "leisure Society" Popular Mechanics was talking about back in the day — unfortunately I think most Americans just missed the turn off to Leisureton and kept right on going down the never ending road to Wishfor (as in "everything I could ever...").

I'd probably have meshed a little better in one of the more socialist countries from a political standpoint, I just don't get much of anything conservatives say, although I am quite well suited to the so-called libertarian American ideal of screw everyone else, I'm taking mine. So that part is kind of a toss up.

But from the brain stimulation standpoint there just has never been a time to match this. Wikipedia is really a wonder of the world and just so damn bitching I can't stand it. I don't normally pay up for voluntary stuff but I do donate to public news, musicians and wiki. I worked a little hard as a kids but at the point where I no longer had to come up with rent/mortgage I've pretty well got by on not too much - look at my post count, LOL

[onlooker]

Thanks for the insight Pops. I just am kind of disenchanted with the "modern" world. As for brain stimulation yes but it just sometimes feels like knowing a lot does not amount too much given that we are so powerless as individuals before the forces shaping this world. Also consumerism per say has never been so appealing to me. Maybe I am getting older but to me the real treasure lies in peace of mind hence my choice.

[Pops]

I hear you. But we just have so much freedom to do - well, about anything. In no time was the world going the way everyone wanted, the only difference now perhaps is we have the means to know just how wrong it is going.

I've always been a little ADD I think, I was never able to kick back and relax and just enjoy the peace, I've always felt I had to be accomplishing something. I may be getting a spec better in my late middle age. Part of why I like this board is that I have an excuse to learn new things. Many times I'll start to go off on a knee-jerk rant quoting "the fact is ..." only to find out that the fact as I quoted it really wasn't a fact.

In fact the best clue something isn't a fact is the sentence starts with "in fact..."

Now I almost always go to Google to fact check myself before I rant. And sometimes I never get back to my rant because I get drawn into a wiki-web of discovery. I remember Apple hypercard (which programers here know more about than me) which was the first time I saw hyperlinks from words - and I thought that was so cool to be able to make a word link to it's meaning, it's origin, or a whole encyclopedia of hyperlinks. Now all you have to do is double click on > hypercard < right click and search google to get 433,000 hits. Is that not an awesome thing to be able to occupy ones mind?

After all:
cogito ergo sum

[onlooker]

I think all of us have become a bit bemused by the internet and it's copious amount of information and satisfaction of many interests . Nevertheless, it is a double-edge sword to know what we here know. Part of me wishes I did not discover the gravity of our situation as a species yet I really do not regret it. What i like especially now days is to exchange ideas and viewpoint with others to gauge the reactions and thoughts of others related to all these matters we discuss on this site. I find that highly interesting and fun.

[KaiserJeep]

Just curious, don't know how germane this topic is to anything discussed on this website but just am curious if you could chose a time and place to live on this planet what and when would it be? It can be past, present or future. I think i would chose to live in North America sometime between 5 thousand to 1 thousand years ago. I just think the American Indian way of life would suit me in so much as their was harmony within the tribe and they were spiritual and had reverence towards the Earth. I know it was without the conveniences of modern life but I think those are overrated. Just the sense of living in contact with nature and in harmony with it and your fellow man is appealing to me. Physical work is not a problem in fact it is a way to stay in shape. Also, I think for the most part they avoided some of the worst parts of the Old World history like Roman brutality and the Christian-Vatican heyday etc. Also, consumerism had not taken hold there and then. So I think those people had peace of mind.

Today in the USA.

I believe we live in a Golden Age. The average American lifestyle I believe peaked about the 1970s and is slowly declining but is still better than 99% of the other countries. The problems arise because American exceptionalism has not been recognized by most.

As for the American Indians, they don't hold any special status with regard to reverence for the Earth. If you want to understand why I say that, then read the 1997 book War Before Civilization: The Myth of the Peaceful Savage by Lawrence H. Keeley. It is out of print but available in a Kindle version.

The Hollywood version of the Native American has little truth to it. Read this: http://www.amren.com/news/2013/08/the-real-life-tontos-how-comanche-indians-butchered-babies-roasted-enemies-alive-and-would-ride-1000-miles-to-wipe-out-one-family/

Personally I learned of this from a fellow recruit in boot camp. He was a Coeur d'Alene "Native American" from Idaho who told me that the Coeur d'Alene teenagers went to the Lutheran Mission to see movies frequently. Whenever the film plot was Cowboys & Indians, they did not recognize the movie version of "Indians" as themselves - and cheered for the cowboys.

[Timo]

I think i'd choose the gypsy nomad life of the Australian Outback in the 23rd Century. The Antarctic ice sheet will have expanded up to the southern shores of Aussie Land, and the Outback will be a very nice, lush tundra, full of wildlife and edible plants to sustain the few dozen human survivors on that continent. Global CO2 levels will have fallen into the 300 ppm range, and the radiation and nuclear winter from WWIV will have pretty much dissipated by then. That time and place will be the fresh start for the rebirth of humanity, and that means that all future civilizations will be based on my genome. What more could a man ask for?

[Ibon]

I think i'd choose the gypsy nomad life of the Australian Outback in the 23rd Century. The Antarctic ice sheet will have expanded up to the southern shores of Aussie Land, and the Outback will be a very nice, lush tundra, full of wildlife and edible plants to sustain the few dozen human survivors on that continent. Global CO2 levels will have fallen into the 300 ppm range, and the radiation and nuclear winter from WWIV will have pretty much dissipated by then. That time and place will be the fresh start for the rebirth of humanity, and that means that all future civilizations will be based on my genome. What more could a man ask for?

Very nice. I don't know if I can top that. Maybe the foothills of Appalachia in what is now Georgia, in the 25th century, a small settlement by the shore with rice fields and mangoes and avocados, bananas and papayas. a little higher up with oranges and corn and apples and peaches on the tops of the ridges. All this agrarian land comprising only 2% of what is now a vast wilderness. Grizzly bears having recolonized east of the Mississippi to keep us all on our toes.

[Timo]

Ibon, don't forget to wear your bear bells.

[dinopello]

Timo and Ibon you cheaters - the topic is clearly in the past tense "would have liked to live"

I don't know the exact time or place but it would have been cool to be there when music was first invented.

[Timo]

Dino, go back and re-read the second sentence in the first post in this thread.

Apology accepted.

I do, however, heartily agree that it would be cool to witness the first invention of music. I'm just glad that it wasn't hip-hop. Quite honestly, though, i doubt the actual "invention" of music can be attributed to humanity. Humans more likely imitated the calls of birds, learned how to coordinate the different notes with different rhythms, and finally figured out the mathmatical formula for putting notes on paper to replicate a certain melody. Different cultures invented different instruments to produce different sounds. Then, everything went to shit when it was all plugged into an amplifier. I can't even hear myself think anymore. Thanks a lot, STYX! You suck!

[careinke]

Can't decide between 2100 to watch the collapse of civilization, or back a couple of thousand years to check out this carpenter guy.

Probably 2100, because I'm not sure if the carpenter was real.

[Tanada]

Okay Born 1936 in Alaska, Matanuska Valley, become a young adult male just after the Korean War ends, enjoy the 1950's and 1960's in my 20's and 30's, die around 2040 having seen the rise and fall of the Petroleum Age.

[onlooker]

Hey Tanada that sounds like suspiciously like your actual life chronology. Haha

[onlooker]

Careinke, you sure you could just watch and avoid getting caught up in the onslaught of the collapse, sounds like you want to do like me, just be an onlooker haha

[onlooker]

By the way nobody said Middle Ages or Dark Ages between 500 to 1500 AD. No surprise has to be one of the worst place and times to be living EVER.

[jesus_of_suburbia]

Those time periods weren't necessarily bad for everyone in the world. Some would say they weren't as bad as they are portrayed in the places they impacted the most.