If You Could Choose Your Year of Birth

[Florestan]

You may keep the last two digits and you are allowed to change the first two.

For instance, I was born in 1972 and I would choose 1772 hands down.

How about you?

[Mandryka]

460BC - go to the symposium with Socrates, Alcibiades, Aristophanes, drink lots of wine, talk a bit of philosophy, and party.

[Florestan]

460BC - go to the symposium with Socrates, Alcibiades, Aristophanes, drink lots of wine, talk a bit of philosophy, and party.

Very nice.

You were born in 1960 then. Good to know. 

[Daverz]

460BC - go to the symposium with Socrates, Alcibiades, Aristophanes, drink lots of wine, talk a bit of philosophy, and party.

Sorry, Mandryka, barbarians get sent as slaves to the salt mines.

[Symphonic Addict]

You may keep the last two digits and you are allowed to change the first two.

For instance, I was born in 1972 and I would choose 1772 hands down.

How about you?

Is a rule to keep the last two digits?

[amw]

Unless you can also choose your place of birth this seems counterproductive; no point choosing to be born 400 years ago but then realising you would have been somewhere in the middle of the Iroquois Confederacy with no way to cross the ocean in time to be present at the first performance of Monteverdi's L'incoronazione di Poppea or whatever

[Brian]

Unless you can also choose your place of birth this seems counterproductive

Not to mention if you're not a Euro white man or a member of a royal family somewhere...

Personally being born as a man in 89, my options could be to either die in WWI or die fighting Napoleon. No thanks.

[Mirror Image]

I'd choose the year of 1882 and my place of birth would be Vienna, Austria. Why this year and why this place of birth? Well, I'd be the witness to some of the greatest musical creations this world has ever known like Stravinsky's Le sacre (I'd attend the 1913 premiere in Paris --- not to mention Debussy's Jeux, which premiered months earlier). I'd be in attendance at the Skandalkonzert headed by Schoenberg, which featured the music of the Second Viennese School plus Zemlinsky and Mahler, I'd get to see Mahler and Strauss conduct, etc. I would be able to see many Bartók works performed by way of Budapest, Hungary. Anyway, you get my point. It would be a magnificent time to see all of my musical heroes in action.

[Brian]

I actually think about this quite a lot, wondering what the "ideal" lifespan would be. I think it would be something like 1929-2015. You come of age as the economy's lifting, don't have to fight in WWII, enjoy a prosperous world for your first few decades at work, and die before everything goes to hell. Just now googled to see if anyone famous had those exact dates, and found Anne Meara, who also got to marry a legendary comedian, give birth to another, work productively for 60 years, and live so quietly that the "personal life" Wikipedia section has no gossip whatsoever. Sounds perfect.

1901-1995ish would be good but your middle age is wiped out in the Depression, and actually Mirror Image's choice of 1882 wouldn't be bad either. At the end, you'd get to see the rise of Boulez 

[(poco) Sforzando]

If I had been born in 1848, I could have seen the premieres of works by Brahms, Verdi, Wagner, Mahler, Bruckner, Tchaikovsky by the turn of the 20th century, and I could have heard Chopin in the last year of his life. If I survived until 1930, I could have heard premieres by Stravinsky, Schoenberg, Berg, Bartok, Debussy, Ravel.

[amw]

I guess I would choose to be born 200 years in the future just out of sheer curiosity, in all honesty.

[SimonNZ]

Its easy for me to remember that Proust was born in 1871, so perhaps a century earlier I could have been one of his schoolyard chums. A model for one of his characters would be less likely.

[Mirror Image]

...and actually Mirror Image's choice of 1882 wouldn't be bad either. At the end, you'd get to see the rise of Boulez 

One of the pluses of being born in this year is it was the same year Stravinsky was born. Following his career, if I were to be lucky enough to live as long as he did, would be incredible. I'd also get to see Sibelius, Shostakovich, Ravel, Les Six and Martinů!

[Jo498]

Reply #8 has something for it; before I saw the digit constraint, my idea was also "roughly my parent's generation", i.e. born in the 1940s or early 50s, skipping the war and living within a long stretch of prosperity for almost everyone in Western countries (and historically speaking reasonable comfort in many poorer/developing countries).

With the multiple of 100 years rule, I'd probably play it "safe" with 1872, so the generation of Zemlinsky, Schoenberg, Ravel, Mann, Hesse etc. Late enough for a reasonably close infrastructure and society (or at least one I think I know far better than any more distant ones, mostly from literature but I also knew quite a few rather old people, albeit born in the early 1900s, not 1870s, of course, as a kid) at least some of modern medicine, enjoying the hothouse culture of fin de siecle and  1920s Europe, too old for service in WW 1 although many of this generation lived to witness both world wars and unlike around 1900, 1914-50 was not such a great time for most people, as almost everyone would have suffered from wars and crises in some ways (losing relatives etc.).

Not sure if there was ever a time period not out of joint... my historically closest candidate would be 1272 (one would mercifully be old/dead by the time of the Black Death in the mid 1300s). 1372 would be the aftermath of that plague (although this might have been a pretty good time, unless one was affected by the war in France; there was such a dearth of skilled labour after the plague that times were uncommonly good for lower/lower middle classes), around 1500 the boiling up of the reformation, 100 years later its aftermaths and religious strife, late 1600s in central Europe not that much better, although it would now be succession wars, not religious ones, around 1800 revolution and Napoleonic wars.

[MusicTurner]

Sorry, Mandryka, barbarians get sent as slaves to the salt mines.

Indeed, romanticizing is fun, but class structures would mean that in most of past societies, including Western, an even bigger majority of people would be living comparatively poor, very local and uneventful lives, by today's standards - besides the prominent risks of widespread crime, oppression, all sorts of diseases, war participations, etc. Yet, human psyche and reverie is to imagine one as naturally belonging to those privileged (and better documented) few, enjoying life's practical and cultural commodities aplenty ... and as for any blessings implied in the Simple Living concept, they can be found in a better and more varied range today as well.

I remember reading though, that in Ancient Rome, even low-class, self-employed handicraft people had comparatively few working hours and tons of spare time, since you'd have an OK income, and slaves and lower classes doing all the inconvenient stuff in society. Not that I'd like living back then, however. And BTW not in the, apparently rather post-human, future either.

[Jo498]

People and popular history romanticize but also demonize some eras or aspects of the past. E.g. almost nothing wrt medicine, hygiene, nutrition, class structure became "better" in our sense in the 16th-18th centuries, compared with the late middle ages, sometimes to the contrary.

[prémont]

I'm completely satisfied by being born the year I was. Growing up after WW II in the middle class in a free country, being able to get the education I wanted and also to live with my family and my interests in a time with an economical and technical (r)evolution never seen before. Honestly I feel that I have been priviliged.

[Rinaldo]

I guess I would choose to be born 200 years in the future just out of sheer curiosity, in all honesty.

This. Year 9082 for me, please. But if going backwards would be the only option, I'd go even further... -500 000 082 sounds about right. Cambrian explosion, gimme all you got.

Musically, I'm with John, although instead of Vienna you'd find me in Bayreuth, at the Parsifal premiere!

[MusicTurner]

Any idea of moving a consciousness across history is of course problematic, since our perceptions are tied to our cultural upbringings. From especially say the 18th century, things become more comparable, including that of the public debate. But in some cases, the differences can probably be so extreme, that the new surroundings would be too difficult to cope with. I'm not sure a Medieval person would be able to digest mentally being placed in a contemporary metropolis, the result might be a mental breakdown (though we still have church institutions to cling to). And 300 years from now, we'd probably be characterized as imbeciles, by local standards.

[prémont]

Any idea of moving a consciousness across history is of course problematic, since our perceptions are tied to our cultural upbringings.

Sure, but if we were born in the medieval age, this problem wouldn't exist.