If you could choose when you live, when would you choose?
Years from now, you are on your death bed and given an offer:
If you wish, you may choose a year (or era) to be born for a second life. You can choose any time that humans exist on the earth. The more specific you can be about the timeframe, the better.
Two things to note:
– You will not remember anything about your current life.
– Who you are (including the region where you are born) will be a matter of random chance.
Do you take the offer? What do you choose? Why? (And how do you imagine it going?)
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As grim as the future appears, I would probably choose to come back several hundred years from now. To my way of thinking, either the problems confronting us now will be overcome and solved or there won’t be any people left. There are several good reasons to take a chance on the distant future as preferred to any time in the past. And those reasons (in my mind) are so obvious that there is no need to list or expound on them now.
Probably 1950’s-1960’s America. I’ve always been intrigued with the period, lifestyle, cars, sock hops and soda fountains.
Or the Victorian Era in Britain, or 1861–1914 Britain-the golden age of the ‘country house party’.
(Of course being poor in Britain at that time would be a bummer.)
@KNOWITALL I would too. But she doesn’t allow you to choose WHERE you are born or the circumstances. which means you may well exist as a cannibal in New Guinea or a Chineese peasant coolie freezing toward death in Mao’s army in Korea. Nope. The past is too risky, and the present isn’t much better.
@stanleybmanly I’d still take the past over the future, at least we know we have food, water and semi-clean air.
You know no such thing. For instance, you could pop up in Dickens’ filthy london where a trip across town would leave your clothes (and lungs) covered in coal soot. My point is that to be born at random anywhere on earth anytime in the past is such a risky business, you and I have forgotten just how lucky we are. I experienced that living through exactly that ideal period you listed—postwar America in the 50s & 60s. But believe me I beat some fantastic odds being born to middle class parents on the South side of Chicago.
@stanleybmanly Dang it, that’s true. I keep forgetting we can’t pick the location.
Chicago is not far from me as the crow flies. I didn’t realize you were from around here. Must be the Midwestern charm that makes me like you despite myself…haha!
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Possibly about 1910 -1914, a fairly positive and peaceful time before the world wars. But it is really hard to make a choice if one can neither choose place or status of one’s new life.
That would put you square in the sights of the 1918 pandemic, and if you had the amazing good fortune to be born in America, you would grow up just in time to be allowed to vote, then experience all the joys of the great depression. Just imagine being born in Ireland or Russia in 1910. Screw the past. I’ll take my chances in the future.
@stanleybmanly Oh that’s true. i wasn’t really thinking of being born then but of being an adult then. It is truly impossible without knowing the where or status.
When would make no difference if one can’t choose where and what station in life one has.
Poor station in life in any era..not good for survival.
Rich station in life any era also not good as riches don’t last nor makes one happier.
So that leaves the present time..but again in what station in life..makes a big difference.
So I choose not too choose and live out my life and passing peacefully knowing what life I had lived already.
I’d like the early 50’s. A great era to grow up in with great music and an easier, less stressful time.
Oh, why not? Sometime after the Eugenics Wars, when the Federation is mostly at peace.
Well I was planning on being born in the early 50’s and growing up in the 60’s.
@chyna Well, I got you beat. I planned on that and I did it! :-)
Did you two go to Woodstock?
I was 15, and working that summer, and my mom wouldn’t have let me. :-(
@chyna A friend and I talked about it but didn’t. My 12 year old cousin did!
So you both wasted growing up in the 60’s. {shakes head}
Good stuff! At the end of human days…I would return from a distant place in the fastest vehicle ever produced to save the remnant, because they are deserving. That is my choice!
The 1999/2000 first year of university. Oh a random person. I’m good no thanks.
I was born one generation too late. I should have been born in the early 1920 (The Great Generation).
One hundred thousand years ago, when homo-erectus were mixing it up with Neanderthal.
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