Pick a few locations/times you would want to live in

If you could choose any location and any time range (1900-1970, 1920-1990, etc.) to live in what would you choose?

Despite the flexibility of my own question I personally am having difficulty choosing a scenario outside of my current one. I wouldn’t want to live in a previous era .Location wise I would stick to the US although I think growing up in one of the island territories/states (Guam, Hawaii, Virgin Islands among others) would be pretty cool which I guess would count as a change to my current scenario, although not incredibly drastic.

What are your picks?

40 Comments
 

Yup this guy gets it. I tell my parents all the time I was born a decade too late. I also live vicariously through old original Law & Order episodes to get a sense of the true scenery and culture at the time.

Would be cool to have been born in the 80s and come of age in 90s nyc. My uncles on long island who were in their 30s at the time said it was a period that will forever live with them.

 
Funniest

I'll never forget when someone tweeted this and Bebe Rexha responded with Paris in the 1940s. But for me, I would have liked to be in my 20's in the mid-to-late 1980s, in the US, probably same places too (NY/Boston).

I would also love to just go back and live in like revolutionary/civil-war era USA or victorian england just so I can introduce modern words like bruh, deadass, deez nuts, sus, simp, dogwater, fire, etc and try to get them to become as ingrained in the era's vernacular as possible, so one day people can look back and see lincoln call slavery "absolute dogwater bro" in his speeches and like Washington could call the british simps or whatever. Like how fucking sick would that be 

Dayman?
 

Might sound weird but I would want to live or at least check out NYC during the Gilded Age. Obviously a ton of negatives like poverty and corruption but if you had money it seemed like it would have been a very interesting time. But if I was actually forced to live in a place probably would want Hollywood in the 60s-70s or Miami in the 80s. Outside of the US I'd love to check out Paris in the 1920s-1930s and Rome back when it was actually an empire (so like 100-500)

 

Israel, 33AD

"If you always put limits on everything you do, physical or anything else, it will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them." - Bruce Lee
 

NYC after WW2, just seems like an interesting time to have been in. After that I'd say England during the height of the Victorian era. Being a part of the first human tribes would be pretty cool.

 

I started thinking about some cool times and places but then realized that everywhere in America pre-1970 is going to be a bad time for me and anyone else non-white.

 
Most Helpful

amen bro

I wouldn't want to live in any time other than today. also, since my family would've been segregated essentially any time pre 1980, the past doesn't sound super exciting from a practical standpoint.

if race wasn't an issue, I think the enlightenment would've been cool, 1st and 2nd century AD in Rome, height of stoic philosophy, and so on. from a surfing standpoint, I also think it'd be pretty cool to be in Hawaii pre-conquering and surf uncrowded waves for days, ditto for pre-1960 SoCal (before they torched Rincon) and Bali pre-1970.

but if I'm being really pragmatic about it, the past was riddled with war, disease, poverty, monarchy, and shit I'd rather not deal with. I like the 21st century, it's been pretty lit.

and I have no originality when it comes to where I would live. western mediterranean europe (and that's just cause I've never been to east med or southern med), san diego, miami, and the more developed parts of LatAm

 

The 60s - 70s in LA sounded wild 

"If you always put limits on everything you do, physical or anything else, it will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them." - Bruce Lee
 

I'd like to live in Scandinavia and hang out with blonde chicks. Any generation. 

"If you always put limits on everything you do, physical or anything else, it will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them." - Bruce Lee
 

OK. 200 AD. Enjoy. 

Never discuss with idiots, first they drag you at their level, then they beat you with experience.
 

Africa, Mesozoic Era - to play with the dinosaurs. 

"If you always put limits on everything you do, physical or anything else, it will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them." - Bruce Lee
 

NB574

3500 would probably be pretty cool assuming you know...

35,000 would probably be even cooler.

People from year 35,000 would probably consider 2021 as a primitive age. 

"If you always put limits on everything you do, physical or anything else, it will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them." - Bruce Lee
 

I think this is highly dependent on also being upper class. No point going back in time to be a peasant.

My top picks would be:

  • Italy during the renaissance
  • Paris during the enlightenment
  • US during the settler drive west
  • Babylon or ancient Egypt
  • Serving with any of the great generals from history, like Alexander, Caesar, Genghis etc

What's with people picking fairly recent US places, it will be nearly identical to today.. 

 

"what's with people picking fairly recent US places..."

my dad's side were poor sharecroppers in appalachia, my mom's side were slaves. if I lived in any other time period as myself, I'd most certainly be amongst the peasantry, and anyone who's not a blue blood WASP in the USA would likely have a similarly poor experience. I'm no race warrior, just being realistic.

now, if I could choose my station in life, well of fucking course it'd be sick to be upper class in florence in the 1500s or a consul to hamurabbi, but that's not my lineage. but then again you'd have to deal with no toilet paper, inbreeding, girls who don't do squats, disease and filth, and zero freedom of speech if you go against the pope, so idk that it'd be a great place to live full time.

maybe spend a week travelling back in time, but the 21st century is the best quality of life in human existence by a country mile

 

For real, visiting other times would be fun for a week or two at a time MAYBE. But for most people, they would likely get disillusioned fast and wish to be back in the creature comfort era of the late 20th or 21st century.

"If you don't have any enemies in life you have never stood up for anything" - Winston Churchill | "It's a testament to the sheer belligerence of the profession that people would rather argue about the 'risk-adjusted returns' of using inferior tooth cleaning methods." - kellycriterion
 

Dude the average standard of living we have nowadays would make kings and nobles jealous. Electricity, running water, comfortable clothes, amazing food available for relatively cheap at any supermarket, way better educated population, higher standards of hygiene, etc. etc. etc.

I'm good here.

 

Technology-enabled comfort isn't the same thing as true human fulfillment. Plenty of people would be happy to give it up in favor of something better.

Benjamin Franklin made an interesting observation along these lines:

 When an Indian Child has been brought up among us, taught our language and habituated to our Customs, yet if he goes to see his relations and make one Indian Ramble with them, there is no perswading him ever to return, and that this is not natural [to them] merely as Indians, but as men, is plain from this, that when white persons of either sex have been taken prisoners young by the Indians, and lived a while among them, tho’ ransomed by their Friends, and treated with all imaginable tenderness to prevail with them to stay among the English, yet in a Short time they become disgusted with our manner of life, and the care and pains that are necessary to support it, and take the first good Opportunity of escaping again into the Woods, from whence there is no reclaiming them.

If those Indians could have seen their descendants on today's reservations, I doubt they would have envied them, even though their descendants have all of the benefits you list and they had none.

 

Imagine being a hunter/gatherer and when you literally kill stuff for food, the chicks want you and think you're a badass. This is society. 

"If you always put limits on everything you do, physical or anything else, it will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them." - Bruce Lee
 

California 50s - 2021

"If you always put limits on everything you do, physical or anything else, it will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them." - Bruce Lee
 

Conversation with my girlfriend the other day:

Her: ''Don't you wish you could go back in time sometimes?'' (referring to childhood)

Me: '' Yea. To tell the Byz not to betray Romanos Diogenes''

Her: "what"

Other fun times on top of my head:

- late Roman Republic general, possibly as legatus for Caesar, Pompey or Lucullus

- California in the 50s-80s

- NYC 80s - 90s

- Constantinople around 1000 AD

- Aquitaine around 1200

Probably others. 

Never discuss with idiots, first they drag you at their level, then they beat you with experience.
 

Born in the mid 60s, preferably west coast or NYC, Highschool and college in the 70s, work in the 80s, participate in the tech bubble and throw a shit ton of money at Adobe and AAPL. 

Have nice house in SoCal through 2000s.

Alternatively, 1920s after the depression would be kinda cool to experience. Maybe this century's 20s will be just as fun...

Go all the way
 

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