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 think on these types of threads, many people romanticize a time when they were young free and single with no ties, no kids, lots of surplus income, no DH, no in-laws, no mortgage, clubbing every week til 3am, backpacking freely around the continents, travelling and working abroad, hopping from job to job, not having to worry about anything.

For me it was the 1980s. Wonderful decade for me in so many ways. I left school (which I hated,) I started work, I had my own money for the first time ever, I dated lots, I travelled lots, I lived in London for a while working as a temp, I lived in Paris for a few months, I lived in student digs for about 2 months - with a guy I was dating at the time, I spent a few weeks in New York, staying with a penpal, I had about a dozen friends, and I generally had a fucking blast. At the end of the decade I met my now husband.

The memories of the 1980s, from some people I know (particularly a decade older or more,) are high interest rates, strikes, wars, high mortgage rates, multiple redundancies, struggling financially, losing their home, marriage breakdowns etc etc etc.

So yeah, to sum up it up, there IS no 'best time' to be alive/to have been alive. It's all subjective.

Is the question aimed at the point at which most people were doing well, or when I was doing well?

basically, if you lived in a particular sector of society, racially, your sex, your status etc, when would be your peak, versus when was the world best for all?

I can imagine I would have loved living in certain periods of history, if I was in with the right crowd.

1990- 2000

Peak progress was pre violent porn.
I’d like to go back to before social media, before internet dating, before childhood was so sexualised and frightening for young women.
maybe 2000’s.

Quite. I grew up mixed race in that era. I wouldn't choose it again. I prefer now where the racism is at least non politically correct.

Now

Agree with you

It's not great now in the UK

Yes, I think this too.

I agree 100% with this.. sure there are some issues I would like to go back and change (give myself more confidence and faith in myself) but overall, I think this is spot on.. plus My Nan and Dad were both alive then too.

Larte 1990's. It was such an optimistic time when things really did seem to be getting better. Culminating in 2010 the NHS was crowned the best health service in the world.
I miss that sense of optimism.

I would have probably died in infancy without antibiotics, I remember Claire Raynor who was a nurse in the fifties talking about this miracle drug that a Dr got hold of to help a young patient. It was not generally available but the Dr had a contact in the services where they were trialling this new drug. They gave it to a young man who was dying from an infection and he made a miraculous recovery. The nurses were all amazed. It was penicillin.

I also think looking back that we do not appreciate what we have until it is gone.

Hmmmmm
I’m not sure about the corruption of wealth thing.
Peasants were kept in their place precisely because of the corruption of wealth

Today.

Strangely, I vividly recall reading a research paper on this very subject a few years ago.

They looked at equality, healthcare, education, mortality death rates and many more factors. (Presumably from a 1st world nations perspective though!)

The study conclusion was the best time to live was in the late 1970's

Antibiotics and anaesthetics had been invented, the pill was available to unmarried women, it was pre the aids pandemic, not as many pesticides in foods nor as processed, far less people were overweight or obese than now, the average couple could afford a mortgage on an average wage and buy a house, children played in the street/socialised with friends/rode bikes and weren't sat in front of a computer screen all day etc

I wish I could find the paper now as it was very insightful!

1990-2012. 2012 was the peak for the UK and it's been downhill since then.

Around 1997. A really optimistic time, and before the pressure of social media.

I rather suspect women had more rights then than we do now.

We had the right to request same sex HCPs for a start.

That right only exists in theory now.

We also had the right to single sex services and rape centres weren't run by male people telling us to reframe our trauma.

1990s when every Friday and Saturday we would meet at the pub and then go on to a cool club . The music was great and our city had loads of shops unlike now where so many shops are empty and boarded up . Take aways and fast food was a real treat and there was no obesity problem like today . Most of all my dad was still alive and my mum was happy 😢

1945 was the best time to be born. The war had ended, there was lots of work and lots of investment in rebuilding, lots of new businesses and lots of jobs and opportunities. People could buy houses and afford to live decent lifestyles. And they were were still fairly well behaved and respected authority, anti social behaviour was rare and swiftly dealt with. You would have grown up in the 50s and 60s, then the NHS came along, foreign travel, television. Then you got to live through the 80s and 90s. Your life would cover the longest period of peace in recent history. And then you’d pop your clogs as you approached 80 and miss all the bad stuff that has recently started to happen - Covid, cost of living crisis, unemployment, war with Russia, migrant crisis, collapse of the NHS etc.

Up till about 2008? Before successive crashes and brexit. But then of course we'd not have had the Savil scandal, me too and Weinstein and the world is better that these things have been uncovered. As a woman is a bettter tine than ever before in history in sone parts of the world (though not in others).

90s and 00s before smart phones took over lives and everything was documented! She says typing on her smartphone...

Agree.

I think there is a bit of rose-tinted spectacles here. The 40s and 50s were the time of the Krays and various gangsters who operated with impunity. Teenagers were sent to Borstal so the low level crimes was less, but organised crime was awful. One of my relatives was a gangster during this time.

In terms of medical breakthroughs and women's rights it's got to be now. I think life was less pressured in past decades, but sexism was horrible, even quite recently. And if you get a nasty illness you want the most modern, up to date treatments available. Again, even in recent decades, some treatments were brutal and not that effective.

And life was grim in the 40s and 50s. My grandma told me how shit it was during and after the war. Rationing went on for years, shortages of everything, the country was absolutely broke, life was basic and pretty grim. Just watch 'Back in time for Tea' featuring that time if you don't believe it.