When was the best time to be alive?

[ohfook]

If right through history you had to pick a point somewhere in between say the Stone Age where there was no technology at all, life was exceptionally tough and people didn't have any rights right up to now where we have every convenience known to man but we live so out of tune with nature and we're watching the planet burn in slow motion. Where do you think the sweet spot was? The point where we had enough to make our lives easier but we weren't producing so much that it was actively destroying our planet?

Feel free to take other factors like wars or disease into account too if you like, but you don't have to!

I don't have an answer, I just posted this because I was reading about the Ancient Maya and thought it seemed like quite a nice life until I heard they sacrificed children.

I’m a woman so it’s got to be now. My mum only narrowly missed having to resign when she got pregnant, and I believe couldn’t get a credit card without her husband. Rape within marriage was legal. Etc etc.

Also - hot running water!

Agree add anaesthesia into that as well.

I’m quite keen on medieval England myself, perhaps Tudor king Henry VII’s reign. An end to centuries of war, peace and prosperity reigning, machinery getting going but nowhere near the Industrial period or the tyranny of Henry VIII, and corruption of wealth not fully set in yet. The beginnings of real English identity under one of our greatest but unsung monarchs in my opinion.

Now. How can it be otherwise? As a woman, it must be now.

Before modern medicine, I would have been dead in infancy. So I have to pick modern day, thanks.

I feel my parents generation was very lucky (in the west). They are from the 1960s youth generation and got to enjoy sex drugs and rock and roll without looming ecosystem collapse and a public service in tatters. University was free and it was easy to buy a house on a basic wage. You could start in the mailroom and work your way up to director level, or if you wanted an alternative lifestyle it was possible to be an artist or a musician and carve out a new groove for yourself. There was a real sense of optimism and progress according to my parents, and they speak about how they never thought things would decline to where they are now.

I think 2014-2016 was a good two years. Just before brexit, women had the same rights as they do now. It felt like a really good time for a lot of reasons

I’d have blind years ago.

Yeah now. I have particularly enjoyed hot running water, the internet, and not dying in childbirth.

The ‘Boomer’ generation who were born in the 1950s & grew up in the 1960s definitely had it good. Massive advances in science & healthcare, the start of female emancipation, the pill, free higher education, the birth of modern pop culture, full employment, cheap houses, affordable foreign holidays etc etc. England even won the World Cup. Life was good. As long as you were white, able bodied & heterosexual, of course…

The 1990s were pretty great.

I think my parents were born at a good time - the tail end of WW2. They had well over 70 years of peace and prosperity, until everything went shit in 2020.

Second vote for the nineties.

I wish I had been of an age to truly appreciate them.

I'm quite happy to have been born when I was, late 70s. But my parents had it pretty good too. My kids also have the life of riley. And my grandparent had jazz bands, 30s clothes, the golden age of cinema, and saw most of the 20th century.

All ages are good for different reasons, aren't they?

For me the late 60s early 70s. Not for the economic situation or women’s rights but for the music, clothes, style and vibes ✌🏼
in America ideally.

As a woman, and a woman of colour, I was lucky enough to live London in the 90s. It was brilliant and my skin colour hadn't yet been widely politicised. It was pre invasive tech. London was a city for adults and the population was more manageable and every other shop wasn't a takeaway etc. Things were still a but glam.

I struggled with depression and anxiety, but apart from meds, a walk along the Embankment or a trip to the National Gallery was all the therapy needed.

Now.
As it should be.

I loved the 80s! Great music, arts, films and as Harry Enfield put it, ‘Loadsamoney’! Travel was fun, living and working in London felt safe and was an exciting time for me personally.

2012 - all modern technologies /Obama /the Olympics / no Brexit/ my kids were cute and biddable. Happy happy days.

I love the late Georgian / Regency period, for fashion, politics, music, advancements in science, agriculture, etc. But let's not kid ourselves, the way of life for everyone would be impossible for a modern person to contemplate. Hardly any medicine, poor food, Napoleonic Wars, poverty, etc. As most have said already, it had to be now, as dismal as it seems.

May be pre agricultural era, c 12000 years ago.
A non stationary, hugely adventurous hunter-gatherer life where people are still not slaves to material resources, not feeling alienated, depressed and pressured every day.

Agree

No. As a woman it was probably five to ten years ago.

I was born in the 60s. Good childhood as parents not too poor..not like their parents. Good education opportunities. Good time to buy property in the 80s have babies in the 90s. Peaceful time. Opportunities to travel. Good time for kids to be young. Good pension..Changed with Covid/ war/ rising house prices for kids trying to buy. But for me l couldn't imagine a better time in history.

Agree as well.