Some people feel they are born out of time. Is there an age you would have rather lived in?

2016-08-18T09:08:45-04:00

My sister-in-law once told me that she would rather have been born some time in the past, "a more romantic age". (Right, when only the lucky survived childbirth and she would have been some man's chattel). Others have wished to live in the future. How about you?

Response by CSM Chuck Stafford made Aug 18 at 2016 9:10 AM

2016-08-18T09:10:26-04:00

Nope -- doing just fine in the here and now

Response by SrA Edward Vong made Aug 18 at 2016 9:11 AM

2016-08-18T09:11:37-04:00

Nothing on the United States history, but as an Asian man living here, I think I'm pretty content with where I am now.

Response by CDR Terry Boles made Aug 18 at 2016 9:24 AM

2016-08-18T09:24:03-04:00

I think John Wayne once said he wished he had been born 100-years earlier, then maybe not. I think about space travel, exploring the unknown. I enjoy the now and here but to be born maybe a 100-years in the future and zip around in my Galaxy 100 space mobile from one planet to another visiting friends...now that would be something!

Response by SFC Joseph Weber made Aug 18 at 2016 9:50 AM

2016-08-18T09:50:18-04:00

Future. I'm pissed I won't be able to see what happens in a couple hundred years. Colonies on the moon? Alien Invasion? 150 years life expectancy?

Response by LTC Private RallyPoint Member made Aug 18 at 2016 10:01 AM

2016-08-18T10:01:46-04:00

There are times I think it would have been fun to have been a warrior in the days of physical combat, then I think about how much I enjoy my daily shower and the bed I sleep in and am content where and when I live. Great question CPT Jack Durish

Response by Col Joseph Lenertz made Aug 18 at 2016 10:01 AM

2016-08-18T10:01:54-04:00

CPT Jack Durish Thought about it. Then realized I really appreciate flush toilets. Really.

Response by PO3 Steven Sherrill made Aug 18 at 2016 10:06 AM

2016-08-18T10:06:02-04:00

CPT Jack Durish I often think about how great it would have been to live during the Viking Age. Then I am reminded that everything from drinking the water to farming could kill you, and even if it didn't there was the very real possibility that starvation could occur. So if I could VISIT the Viking Age, that would be awesome. To be born in another era, not so much. As for the future, at the rate mankind is going, there may not be much of a future for us. It could go either way. It could be the utopian future with flying cars, no poverty, peace on earth, united mankind, live 200 years, farts smell like roses, etc. On the other hand we could get the dystopian future with a world ravaged by nuclear war, resources at a premium, killing our fellow man because they taste good, living to thirty years, and so on. I would be bored in the utopian future, and scared of who I would become in a dystopian future, so thanks, but I will just stay right here, drinking mead from a horn, surfing the web, wondering how some people made it to adult hood with no common sense, and wondering if I should have been born in another time.

Response by MSG Private RallyPoint Member made Aug 18 at 2016 10:16 AM

2016-08-18T10:16:06-04:00

Nah, I'm good where I am. While the current time line has it's issues, the health and sanitation of the yester-years makes me cringe.

Response by Cpl Private RallyPoint Member made Aug 18 at 2016 10:30 AM

2016-08-18T10:30:03-04:00

If the past, the dark ages, but I'd prefer the future. I could be an extra-solar traveler.

Response by 1LT Private RallyPoint Member made Aug 18 at 2016 10:45 AM

2016-08-18T10:45:43-04:00

CPT Jack Durish - I always felt I should have been born earlier . . . taking risks that made more of an immediate difference . . . as a member of the French Resistance or the German Resistance during WWII . . . or maybe old enough to have known and to have fought the Russian Occupation of Czechoslovakia at the side of my father and mother . . . or maybe old enough to bring back more sufficiently detailed information about the Nazi Mass Extermination Camps to motivate a rescue mission earlier in the war to save more of the twelve million jews and others who died under such harrowing conditions. I would have loved to have known Wild Bill Donovan during the very earliest years of the OSS, Stanislaw Ulam / Edward Teller / Robert Oppenheimer during the Manhattan Project, and Admiral Hyman Rickover during the earliest days of the development of the nuclear submarine force. I would have loved to have been born in time to lead WWII bomber attacks on Nazi war resources, captained American diesel electric submarines, led covet ops to capture Nazi / Russian / Japanese cryptographic assets, or led covert teams in mass sabotage of Nazi / Russian / Japanese war assets. I would have loved to be among the first officers to rescue concentration camp survivors. In the end, perhaps I am out of place and time . . . should have led covert ops during hot rather than cold wars. Perhaps I should have been the one to put a bullet in the head of Adolph Hitler and other members of the Nazi / Russian / Japanese leadership who caused so much pain and suffering around the world. Warmest Regards, Sandy :)

Response by COL Lee Flemming made Aug 18 at 2016 10:49 AM

2016-08-18T10:49:02-04:00

CPT Jack Durish I know I am taking a chance with this --- 2216! I have read about the past, lived the present, and now would love to see the future!

Response by SPC Michael Korth made Aug 18 at 2016 11:22 AM

2016-08-18T11:22:19-04:00

No, the 80's were a good time

Response by PO3 Sandra Gomke made Aug 18 at 2016 11:24 AM

2016-08-18T11:24:06-04:00

Great discussion, CPT Jack Durish!!

Response by MCPO Roger Collins made Aug 18 at 2016 11:26 AM

2016-08-18T11:26:53-04:00

The baseline is what is happening today for our youth. Since we have created these ungrateful little whelps, it's our fault they think as they do. BTW, guilty as charged.

Response by PO1 John Miller made Aug 18 at 2016 11:56 AM

2016-08-18T11:56:07-04:00

Right now is a great time. We're working on faster than light space travel and I honestly think it will happen in my life time. Just think about it, we'll finally be able to travel to other planets, maybe even beyond our own solar system. Yeah I'm a bit of a Star Trek nerd!

Response by Sgt Kelli Mays made Aug 18 at 2016 12:13 PM

2016-08-18T12:13:48-04:00

I wish I were born in the Future....about 200 years from now.

Response by SGT David A. 'Cowboy' Groth made Aug 18 at 2016 12:54 PM

2016-08-18T12:54:54-04:00

Back before automatic rifles, when you had to make your shot count.

Response by MSgt James Mullis made Aug 18 at 2016 1:03 PM

2016-08-18T13:03:04-04:00

Anytime earlier than 1950 and I'd have died at the age of 12. So, no I'll stick with the deal I was given.

Response by SSG Private RallyPoint Member made Aug 18 at 2016 1:20 PM

2016-08-18T13:20:06-04:00

We don't know what the future will look like... however I could handle living in one that resembled Star Trek, a future where people focused on excellence instead of money. I'm not sure we are capable of attaining such a thing though... a distopian future seems more likely than a utopian future.

As for the past, unless I could be fantastically wealthy... heck no. Then again if I could be fantastically wealthy, I might as well enjoy this current time in history.

That said, what I would like to do is cherry pick certain aspects of the past and see them reintroduced into the present. Things like reverence for elders, chivalry, extended families as the basic economic and social unit instead of the individual, as well as a much closer relationship with, and reverence for Nature.

Response by CDR Michael Goldschmidt made Aug 18 at 2016 1:25 PM

2016-08-18T13:25:01-04:00

It has always depended on who you are and where you are. Most people don't know about the booms before the busts, since 1913, when funny money was reintroduced into US banking. Me, I'd love to have experienced the Gay '90s or the Roaring '20s, just not the 1920s in Germany, or as a Great War veteran. Technology was changing quickly and people were exploring new ideas, not all of them good ones. The 1960s would have been fun, too, if not of an age to get drafted. Then came the busts. TINSTAAFL!
(The '20s would have sucked in the USSR and Germany. The '60s would have sucked in the USSR and Israel. Here in the US, the '60s would have sucked for black Americans, as would have the 1890s and 1920s, although they got better with each passing decade, maybe until the 1970s.)

Response by Cpl Alan Mackin made Aug 18 at 2016 2:37 PM

2016-08-18T14:37:39-04:00

For the first 12 years of my life we had an out house and we used a galvanized tub for baths ( 10 person family) that we brought in and put in the middle of the kitchen. Heated up the water on a gas stove.
Boot camp was my first exposure to air conditioning while sleeping ( except when our family took vacations and stayed in motels)
With that being said, I'm glad I grew up and became an adult before the internet.
I got to experience things that some of the younger people will never get to experience.

Response by MAJ Private RallyPoint Member made Aug 18 at 2016 2:40 PM

2016-08-18T14:40:52-04:00

1850s and 1860s. But nowhere east of Kansas. Maybe California in the 50s far from all the stuff that ignited the nation by the early 1860s. If not that time period then 1946 to 1960 time frame. Peacetime in the US (if you don't count Truman's war) and no STDs, HIV. I've always enjoyed perusing old mags from those years. A friend actually gave me the PLAYBOY mag from my birth month and year. An interesting era. But no automatic transmission cars! :(

Response by MAJ Private RallyPoint Member made Aug 18 at 2016 2:46 PM

2016-08-18T14:46:26-04:00

Some years back I read an intriguing "alternative history" sci fi book called GUNS OF THE SOUTH. (Spoiler alert) Racist South African "Afrikaaners" in 2014 travel back to 1864 to provide AK47s and training on how to use them to the confederate army. History is altered of course but in the end Gen Lee realizes the future men are wackos and captures them. It is a good book because you will read how a short light-weight "future man" manages to fight and defeat a much bigger 19th century North Carolina man using what you later realize is modern martial arts the way a man from that era would have described it.

Response by LCDR Private RallyPoint Member made Aug 18 at 2016 4:35 PM

2016-08-18T16:35:29-04:00

I would've fit in quite well as a teenager in the 1950s, I think, assuming I could still be from my hometown. Would've grown up in troublesome, exciting times. Could have experienced all the American culture I love.

Response by MCPO Roger Collins made Aug 18 at 2016 5:53 PM

2016-08-18T17:53:03-04:00

That cartoon is about me. Love Amazon Prime with one touch ordering. I wear out my Iphone. The man above must have invented Amazon and the Internet with divine intervention.

Response by SGT Jerrold Pesz made Aug 18 at 2016 6:57 PM

2016-08-18T18:57:00-04:00

I was pretty happy in the fifties and early sixties. Things didn't really start going to hell until the mid sixties. After that I would like to jump about a thousand years in the future. I would love to be able to travel the galaxy.

Response by SGT Private RallyPoint Member made Aug 18 at 2016 8:29 PM

2016-08-18T20:29:19-04:00

I feel like I should be living with Legolas in Lord of the Rings or with Wyatt Earp in Tombstone. Either would be great!

Response by SGT Philip Roncari made Aug 18 at 2016 10:02 PM

2016-08-18T22:02:52-04:00

I was born in 1945,grew up in the 50s and early 60s come on guys you could get" dimey"beers,a shot of " Old Thompson" for 25 cents,oops that's the old alky coming out sorry,but really Rock+Roll the good old USA rolling along king of the heap,I'm probably looking through rose colored glasses,but I wouldn't have any other time,that's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Response by SGM Mikel Dawson made Aug 18 at 2016 10:40 PM

2016-08-18T22:40:52-04:00

I would have loved to gone through the western United States before the white man came.

Response by TSgt Melissa Post made Aug 19 at 2016 3:55 AM

2016-08-19T03:55:33-04:00

My parents told me I was born in the wrong era. I agree. They say I should have been born in the era of Southern belles like pre-civil war. That part I do not agree. I like my feminine products.... But I wouldn't mind anywhere between 1920s-1950s. I like the morality of the nation back then, the simpler times, and just the general way of life.

Response by SPC(P) Alexandra Hinds made Aug 19 at 2016 6:38 AM

2016-08-19T06:38:21-04:00

I question this a lot and as much as I would like to go back to 1920's era however, I appreciate the fine accommodations we have now and think I would only go back to visit. I don't know though considering I have never been one to be intelligent/"with the hype" of electronics and agree with most when they say they complicate things.

Response by CMDCM Gene Treants made Aug 22 at 2016 12:15 AM

2016-08-22T00:15:44-04:00

Like a few others here I would love to live in the future! I began reading Science fiction as a very young boy. The Cat Goes to the Moon, was one of the first books I remember, not long after I learned to read. THAT hooked me on traveling to outer space and beyond! From there on it was Heinlein, Norton, Asimov, Clarke,etc. Not just hooked but an addict. Ace double novels were better than heroin for me, or worse.

As SFC Joseph Weber said,Colonise on the moon, and alien invasion! Heck yes! Those and so much more still make me want to be born 300 years from now or maybe 3000! I was born to be a Starship Trooper and that book made me want to be a Paratrooper or a Ranger. Learning to be a Scuba driver made me want to be a SEAL. So many things influenced me as I grew up, BUT reading SIFI really made me want to be born in a distant future!

Response by Col Dona Marie Iversen made Aug 28 at 2016 12:14 PM

2016-08-28T12:14:58-04:00

Strictly for fun & fashion the roaring 20's and the 50's!

Response by PO3 James Carter made Sep 4 at 2016 9:14 PM

2016-09-04T21:14:22-04:00

Myself, I feel like I have lived in the 30's-50's thereabouts, 1900's that is:)...mainly because we weren't the laughing stock we are today...I could probably go in to a long winded diatribe on here but for the most part that's how I feel:)