Do you ever think about which bit of history you're living in?

[RosyCheekedandRobust]

My thread title probably isn't very good but I'm just thinking about where I am in time. I'm in my 50s so I was born less than 30 years after the end of WWII and less than 10 years after JFK was shot. The fall of Communism was probably the biggest world event of my youth. So many things that are happening in the world now would have seemed very improbable to 20 year old me. Even when I was a new parent in the early 2000s global warming didn't seem so big.
I wonder what my grandchildren's world will be be like.

Interesting thought. What will be the next big thing? What will be the next 'Covid' or worse, for our dc.

I was partially thinking about Covid. If you were 13 in 2020 Covid would have had a huge impact on you but if you were 13 in most of the world in 1939 your whole teenage experience would have been of war.

I'm also thinking about the 1990s. The world seemed to be getting more peaceful and the internet seemed so exciting. I'm not sure how we got from there to watching a genocide on social media.

I often think about this - how this era will be looked back on. I was born in the early 70s - as time goes on there will be fewer and fewer people who remember a world without the internet, I imagine future generations will see it like I'd see a world without electricity. The reign of Queen Elizabeth II will be seen as a reign of unprecedented change. Of course, the pandemic will go down in history, let's hope in isolation rather than as the first of many.

I think about this all the time because I work in a small borough museum, and part of my job is to archive any literature/news stories I think will be relevant in the future, when people want to find out about the local history.

The difficulty is often in deciding what will be of interest. The pandemic was an obvious one and how global warming affects the borough and its residents, but the rest is sometimes a guessing game.

Just back from a holiday in what would have been a very basic Victorian (?) two-up-two-down with a hearth and an outside toilet in a north-east coastal town. (It now has a double height rear extension for the current kitchen and bathroom).

I wondered what the original (probably large, probably poor) family would make of their home now being holiday rental accommodation!

I realised a while ago that most of us are very special in that we've lived through the turn of a new century AND millennium (and that last happened over a thousand years ago)!! 🍻

I was thinking about that his yesterday when i went around a little history exhibition. I wondered if there would be a similar set up where you could walk around and pick up little phones with voices of us talking about our experiences of the pandemic and there being glass cases full of face mask designs and swab kits and a video of the PM announcing lockdown and the young visitors to the exhibit marvelling and how strange it must have been.

Early 60s born and I was aware of the recent memories of WW2 from my family but as I was so young saw it as recent history, but respected those who experienced it. Late 60s started to become aware of the ant-war/peace movement and environmental concerne. In the 70s learned about the Holocaust through the TV series World at War and a BBC series called Holocaust, The Cold War, punk and became aware of racism.

Fast forward to the end of the first quarter of the 21st Century and it's all gone backwards and nothing has been learned or that recent post WW2 learning has been lost.

I think we should try and find it; it's not gone far, as we were so close before.

Unlikely to be poor if they lived in that house.

Well not poor by Victorian standards anyway.

I have kept a folder of leaflets etc from the covid era as it could be interesting history one day.

I think we've live through a boom and now we're in a decline. The decline of the West as a whole.

Children in the armed forces families would've had a different opinion of this .

I live and work in the country my parents grew up in and emigrated / escaped from. I was born in the UK so never experienced civil war or communism. My mother visits me in her homeland and can't believe "what we get away with" compared to her youth.

Yes I do think about this.

How we are in the technological revolution. Similar to the agricultural revolution and the Industrial Revolution.

How quickly wired tech became wire free and how that liberated many.

So from 1990 to 2000 establishment of wired tech and then the next 24 year developing wireless solution. It's remarkable really and yes internet being comparable to electricity.

What will come next?

But also how Covid to me seems so tiny and small in retrospect. I saw on SM today that lives were allowed to reopen in 2020 at this time of year. Barely a month after lockdown. The nightingale hospitals seem to have been a media stunt too!

How much money was wasted.

The collapse of the NHS with no viable private alternative.

I have a relative who will turn 100 this year. They have lived and served in WW2, seen the age of television, the car and the computer to name a few.

The Age of Idiots.

Brains replaced by bubblegum, regressing instead of progressing, still fighting dumb land grab wars, putting our fingers in our ears whilst the world melts and burns and dies.

@JamMakingWannaBe love the sound of this! Does it have a website?

Some years ago DD did a school project where she had to ask older people their experiences of life in WW2. Ahe made questionnaires and we gave them to elderly relatives, friends and neighbours.

I now wonder what I will be asked by my future grandkids (and maybe great-grandkids) about life before the internet, or about how we lived during the Covid pandemic.

I feel we're in the self imploding, shooting yourself in the foot part of human history. Humans have so much potential but greed, ignorance, fear and apathy (to name a few) will be our downfall. Hopefully before we kill off everything else that we share the planet with.

Yes, that's what I'm thinking of as well. To me the 1990s seemed hopeful and increasing peaceful because I was in Western Europe. If I had been in the Balkans, for example, it would have been so different. Most of our individual lives are such tiny pieces of a huge jigsaw. Then occasionally an individual comes along and makes a huge impact and so much depends on time and place.

I worry that we’ll be remembered as one of the last generations who could have prevented the worst effects of climate change, but who ultimately chose not to.

I keep wondering if the atmosphere I feel, regarding Ukraine, is the same as someone felt in the late 30s before war was declared in Europe.

Age of plastic

Yes. In some ways it seems like we are living in an age of choice but are our choices mostly consumers ones? We don't want Ukraine to be invaded now but we have no more control over it than we did of the invasion of Poland in 1939.

America could do so much more but won’t because of Republicans. The US wouldn’t help Europe until they were bombed in 1941 …Russia is being helped by China …….. history is sort of repeating itself