damnportlanders: Discuss.

The Mighty Nori (

girl_next_dork) wrote in

damnportlanders,
@ 2008-01-31 08:53:00

Discuss.
Do you feel like you are a good fit for this time and place? Or do you pine for another era, location, or perhaps event in human history, where you feel your full potential would be realized? When and where? What might constrict you in an undesirable locale (i.e. now)? What strengths do you have that would see you through in your chosen life?

We're not talking time machines - we're talking living your entire life like you were born to change the world there.

(I know you love your internet and pore cleansers and everything, but try to think outside the box on that one.)

(Post a new comment)

	sage_and_sea 2008-01-31 05:03 pm UTC (link)
	My wife and I have considered doing something like Pioneer House; we both would love that time period, or think we would. (Reply to this)(Thread)

	girl_next_dork 2008-01-31 05:09 pm UTC (link)
	Ah, my sister had an obsession with PBS' Frontier House for a while. For those sorts of shows they always pick people who are going to fare horribly (go interesting TV!), but still, I imagine I would do pretty well in that kind of setting too. :) (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	sage_and_sea 2008-01-31 06:58 pm UTC (link)
	One of the cool things about that time is that we could pull of being a straight couple pretty well - wife passes for boy most of the time anyhow, so it would be easy to do. Which would make life much much easier :) (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	girl_next_dork 2008-01-31 07:02 pm UTC (link)
	There's the sexual equality rebuttal I've been hoping for in this thread! I knew it couldn't ONLY be for lady pirates! :D (Reply to this)(Parent)

heddalee
2008-01-31 05:08 pm UTC (link)

Venice, in the 1500s, where Judaism was tolerated, the city was rich but anxious, and it served as a bulwark against Muslim territorial expansionism, that is, Venice mattered in the world. It had a mission, a purpose, and a well-organized system to secure its own prosperity and its place in the world. Also, the city refused to participate in the worst excesses of the Inquisition, and its architecture was stunning, and its art collection quite impressive (although far too much of it was stolen from Byzantium).

(Reply to this)

	tertyl 2008-01-31 05:11 pm UTC (link)
	i think about this about .74% of my day. everyday. i think i should have been a woodworker or indian scout during the post-colonial war era. think Daniel Boone with less hunting. either that or King Arthur... (Reply to this)

	1940's for me irishiii 2008-01-31 05:15 pm UTC (link)
	I've always felt that I belonged in the 1940's, I don't really believe in reincarnation but I feel a strong connection to that era and have dreamed that I was an American living in Berlin during the war, married to a German. I love everything about that era, especially the way everyone came together to save the world. I'd like to think I played a small part in that... (Reply to this)(Thread)

	girl_next_dork 2008-01-31 05:19 pm UTC (link)
	I can definitely see that. There's this visual of everything being so passionate, focused and involved. Whenever I watch WW2 films, I find myself wondering if there were any apathetic people milling around. Maybe because apathy seems so prevalent today. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	neurophyre 2008-01-31 07:06 pm UTC (link)
	Yeah, actually I was ... eh, fuggit. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	girl_next_dork 2008-01-31 07:07 pm UTC (link)
	... I win? (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	neurophyre 2008-01-31 07:15 pm UTC (link)
	meh (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	girl_next_dork 2008-01-31 07:16 pm UTC (link)
	Gives you pie (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	neurophyre 2008-01-31 07:17 pm UTC (link)
	mm, pie's okay i guess ;) (Reply to this)(Parent)

	socktree 2008-01-31 05:19 pm UTC (link)
	I have always felt that I would have fit in better if I was born 10 years later, where I would have been a teenager in the 1990s, rather than younger than that. I can't explain it, it's just something that's always been on my mind. At this point, I also date people almost 10 years older than me, which is unintentional. (Reply to this)(Thread)

	everanddespair 2008-01-31 11:07 pm UTC (link)
	HEY! Me too! I have always felt older than I am. Physically and mentally. And I am dating someone 12 years older than I am. So I should have been born like 10 years earlier. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	violet_tigress1 2008-01-31 11:35 pm UTC (link)
	Yes, I would probably also have fit in better if I'd born 10 years later. Possibly. (Reply to this)(Parent)

boy_asunder
2008-01-31 05:19 pm UTC (link)

I've never liked this type of question. Every time I heard someone pine for the long-ago days I think about the fact that if I'd lived in any other time than the last few decades I'd be in the closet, miserable, and would never have been able to meet and fall in love with my partner. So no nostalgia for me. In fact, I wouldn't mind living 20 years from now when I (hope) to be recognized as a full part of society.

(Reply to this)(Thread)

	girl_next_dork 2008-01-31 05:22 pm UTC (link)
	Oh, you've got me there. Ouch! It would really suck if I couldn't flirt with girls on the MAX and feel okay about it. Man, now you've got me double-thinking all of this. May society grow a pair. :) (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	boy_asunder 2008-01-31 05:25 pm UTC (link)
	Yeah. I've always been impatient with nostalgia because I don't think we appreciate the equality (race, sexual orientation, gender, class) that comes with modern society. Also, I really really like my iPhone. But that's a secondary consideration. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

girl_next_dork
2008-01-31 05:35 pm UTC (link)

The nostalgia on my end comes from these images of struggle and gain. With all of the social progress, modern convenience, and medical advances, it's also really difficult for a well-rounded, middle-class, consequently healthy person to satisfy that primal "life! arrr!" toiling that builds character. Unfortunately, the people who really suffer are usually in really tragic circumstances that society still can't keep up with. That's my viewpoint, anyway.

I'm sure that my visions of heroics and such are warped; fighting for things isn't glamorous. It's difficult, it hurts, it probably doesn't even pay off in your lifetime. Icky.

(Reply to this)(Parent)

	violet_tigress1 2008-01-31 06:06 pm UTC (link)
	I always think about how I would have been dead at age 5. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	boy_asunder 2008-01-31 06:09 pm UTC (link)
	Now there's an argument against short-sighted nostalgia! (Reply to this)(Parent)

	threw_a_spark 2008-01-31 05:31 pm UTC (link)
	If it were seventy years ago and I was born male, I'd have been an intinerant sign painter. I also wouldn't mind living in some of these portland houses when they were new, and leaving them to my children with explicit instructions to keep the place ship-shape. (Reply to this)

fozz47
2008-01-31 05:38 pm UTC (link)

I always saw myself as being born in the colonial days, around 1780.

I see myself dying about 4 days after childbirth from pneumonia, my mother would have died from amniotic fluid embolism shortly after I was born. My father, who was a farmer, would marry a neighboring 16 year old in order to take care of his 5 other kids.

Because that is the way life worked out for most people those days.

(Reply to this)(Thread)

	girl_next_dork 2008-01-31 05:39 pm UTC (link)
	Hahahaha. You're very right. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	varro 2008-01-31 05:44 pm UTC (link)
	I always wanted to go back to the 19th Century and be a dirt farmer in the most backwards part of the dying Hapsburg Empire, which is what my great-great-grandparents were. Or be born in the same time, but different place - the Gen Xers in Czechoslovakia overthrew the Communists in 1989, when I would have been a 19-year-old second-year college student. (Reply to this)(Thread)

	yoopie 2008-02-01 08:48 am UTC (link)
	gotta love the czechs =) (Reply to this)(Parent)

	girl_next_dork 2008-01-31 05:47 pm UTC (link)
	The DamnPortlander demographics of romantic versus realist are becoming very clear to me through this post. Where's that census poll? Or maybe: romantics, embrace your own demise. Realists, embrace your past redneck self! (Reply to this)

	metamadman 2008-01-31 06:58 pm UTC (link)
	Right here, right now. I am going to be the one that pushes the button that blows up the world. (Reply to this)

	neurophyre 2008-01-31 07:04 pm UTC (link)
	I need to be transported to the time when the emotionally articulate fuckbots reign. (Reply to this)(Thread)

	girl_next_dork 2008-01-31 10:01 pm UTC (link)
	Awesome. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	_dilate_ 2008-01-31 07:12 pm UTC (link)
	I wish I was born when being fat was hot. (Reply to this)

	sqwrlydoom 2008-01-31 07:18 pm UTC (link)
	i don't feel like a good fit for any time or place. (Reply to this)(Thread)

	girl_next_dork 2008-01-31 07:24 pm UTC (link)
	Awww. Clearly some hypersleep is in order? (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	sqwrlydoom 2008-01-31 07:47 pm UTC (link)
	yes. for sure i cannot go back to the past. asthmatics didn't have a long life span in the 1800s d: (Reply to this)(Parent)

pdx_girl
2008-01-31 07:33 pm UTC (link)

There are many times and places I'd like to drop in, but none that I'd like to stay in. My friends and family all joke that I was born in the wrong decade, because I love 1910-1950 aesthetics (and sometimes philosophy) so much.

There are perks to "modern" life that I'm not willing to give up, most importantly the opportunity I had for education and the cultural freedom to be with my partner.

Um, and teh interwebz. :)

(Reply to this)

shortcake_004
2008-01-31 08:04 pm UTC (link)

Regency England, where when dressed like Colin Firth in Pride and Prejudice and women got to float around in those gauzy empire-waisted dresses.
OR
Late Renaissance-era Venice--I can picture it just like a jewel. So many colors, a mix of religious views, gorgeous architecture. Plus Titian and his contemporaries made the BEST art.
But all of those come with the stipulation that I would be upper-middle class and well off enough not to live in the squalor that bred the plague and killed millions.

(Reply to this)

10 years earlier...

bennomatic
2008-01-31 09:28 pm UTC (link)

...I started programming just at the end of the 8-bit era, and I really liked it. Back then, you didn't ask your OS for resources, you just loaded up your accumulator and stored the value wherever the heck you wanted. If you wanted a green dot in the middle of your screen, you'd figure out which bit to flip, and you flipped it, for god's sake!

These days, it's all about libraries and cross-platform compatibility, and virtual machines, fer f's sake! 8-bit computing. That was when programming was programming! Wish I'd had a bit more time to become disenchanted with it before it disappeared in a puff of logic...

(Reply to this)(Thread)

girl_next_dork
2008-01-31 09:35 pm UTC (link)

Oh, man. You just made me remember something. I am so going to geek out right back at you.

There was this period where I was researching the pioneers of audio technology. I would so work for Disney, back in the '40s, when they went from gathering an entire orchestra around a single microphone, to inventing stereo sound. STEREO, FOR CRIPE'S SAKE. You couldn't be some random tool with a MySpace if you wanted to record music; no, sir, you had to get your hands dirty.

*High five*

(Reply to this)(Parent)

	glowing_fish 2008-01-31 09:32 pm UTC (link)
	Can I be born in the future? (Reply to this)(Thread)

	katlyn 2008-01-31 10:28 pm UTC (link)
	Yah... I personally have always felt I belong in some post-apocolyptic gritty remmnant-survivalist society. No. Seriously. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	glowing_fish 2008-01-31 10:40 pm UTC (link)
	My future is nicer than my present. No Mad Max here! (Reply to this)(Parent)

	lokidecat 2008-01-31 10:58 pm UTC (link)
	Now. But not here. (Reply to this)

	goosh_betheh 2008-02-01 02:04 am UTC (link)
	I never want to live in a different time period, but I would enjoy to be able to divide myself between Isfahan, a coastal location and a desert location in California, New York, Paris and Mexico City. I would go to New York for novelty, Paris in the fall and Mexico City in the summer. I'd spend spring in Isfahan. I would probably use California as my vacation spots. (Reply to this)

	broknashleydoll 2008-02-01 06:21 am UTC (link)
	i would like to have been hs age in the 50s, in my 20s in the 60s, that sorta thing. really id like to be a vampire and see several centuries. (Reply to this)

	ms_xeno 2008-02-01 06:22 am UTC (link)
	I'd prefer not to live in a world without hot showers and cold drinks. Yes, I am that shallow, but at least it makes my answer nice and short. (Reply to this)

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