Does It Bother You That You Were Not Alive in 1888?

[lynn cates]

Och!

Hello CD. English am I? Very well, I'll keep a stiff upper lip in light of your remark. (heh-heh)

Cheers.
LC

[DVV]

I think I very much screwed up on this and didn't make myself clear at all. I probably shouldn't have used 1888.

So let me try again. Here is the point I am trying to make. Does it bother you that there are years from the beginning of time when you were not alive? Not that you missed something just that you were not alive at that point. If you say no, then why should it bother you that at some point in the future you will not be alive? Is not being alive in 2088 somehow worse than not being alive in 1888. You are simply not alive at either time.

Again, this is a philosophical question and nothing to do with conditions in a given year or what may happen in the future.

Hope this helps clarify things but I have a feeling I am still not making myself clear.

c.d.

Hi CD, here the way I (mis)understand the problem : do I think that "after death = before birth" ?
No.

[Ginger]

So let me try again. Here is the point I am trying to make. Does it bother you that there are years from the beginning of time when you were not alive? Not that you missed something just that you were not alive at that point. If you say no, then why should it bother you that at some point in the future you will not be alive? Is not being alive in 2088 somehow worse than not being alive in 1888. You are simply not alive at either time.

To get meaningful answers, I think you have to more rigourously define what you mean by 'alive', so that people are answering the same question.

[c.d.]

Hello CD. English am I? Very well, I'll keep a stiff upper lip in light of your remark. (heh-heh)

Cheers.
LC

You lost me on this one, Lynn.

c.d.

[Beowulf]

To get meaningful answers, I think you have to more rigourously define what you mean by 'alive', so that people are answering the same question.

HAHAHAHA!!!

So here we have the reason why nobody still knows who Jack the Ripper was!

[lynn cates]

Oops!

Hello CD. Thanks.

Oops! That should read DVV, not CD--hence, David.

I regret the confusion.

Cheers.
LC

[DVV]

Hello Lynn,

Confusion about the Hume-Nietzsche-Culloden-Cumberland-referendum post ?
A good fried Mars will set you right.

Cheers

[Pcdunn]

How do I know I wasn't alive centuries ago?
How do I know I will not live centuries hence?
Every book I read takes me elsewhere and else when.

P.S. Fried chocolate bars are a sin against man-made nature.

[Carol]

I've just 'found' this thread and thought about it for about ten minutes. I think as I like history so much I'd miss not studying the Victorian era as Casebook has reawakened my interest in it. As for the future - I really feel we are on a downward slide that will be difficult to get out of. To be quite honest I'd like to go backwards just a little bit to the 1950's and stay there till I die. I'm 68 and am very nostalgic about my childhood in those days! GUT is right - people used to be kinder, politer, more considerate, etc. in my own 'old days'.

Carol

[Carol]

Hi c.d.
I guess I'm not answering your original question either!
Carol

[Mayerling]

Just noticed this thread. Sorry for the late appearance here.

No I would not have wished to be alive in 1888 rather than presently, in the age that nature and my genealogy put me into. I would not have wished to be in 1488 to see the rise of the Tudors or the exploration of the New World, and the Reformation, nor 1588 to be aware as I grew up of Good Queen Bess and the defeat of the Great Armada, nor 1688 to grow up knowing of the "Glorious Revolution", nor 1788 to be aware of the American and French Revolutions and the rise of Napoleon. It does seem odd that "88" always, if not a year of interest historically by itself, is placed so well close to events that one can find of interest, but they are interesting to people who come afterwards - who are like us, looking back to whither we came from. My social and creature comforts are connected to the scientific and economic and political world of 1954 - 20?? right now, and will always be so. I would not mind being able to visit earlier years if time travel were perfected, but to be brought up in that period is just too awkward a concept for me.

One thing that is a big, big turnoff for me. I'm Jewish. Anti-Semitism still exists, but it is not (in 2015) the same as it was in 1888. And guess what? Due to the nature of this website, 1888 is looked at by us as "the year of the Whitechapel Murders". True. But the following year was the year Hitler was born. My family (except for my mother's mother's father's line, which was from Birmingham, England) was from Germany, Poland, Hungary, and Russia. I might have been residing in those countries in the 1930s. As a result I would probably not have been around by 1950.

So I decline being "Miniver Cheevy" who thought all other ages better than his own. I'll stick, despite all present day problems, to the present day.

Jeff