Would you like to live in the past or the present?

[Boyz_Zoo]

If you are given a choice, would you like to live in the past where is there isn't any/much technology but peaceful or live in the present where there is so many technology advancement but the life is hectic?

[Keiko123]

Haha, a difficult question for me indeed. Can I have a peaceful + advanced life? :laugh

Well, if really need to choose either one, I may choose to live in the past where there isn't any/much technology but peaceful~ Haha, the best is I can have my own idleness with calm mind, rather that living in a hectic life where there are many criminal cases happen, which disturb community's harmony.

[Boyz_Zoo]

I will choose the present. I love the technology advancement here. It is very easy to go from one place to another with a car, communicating with each other through Internet like wat we are doing now and so on. I know that life might be hectic as students we have to study, get involved in co-curricular activities, go to tuition, do chores until don't have much time to enjoy life like our forefathers.

However, now when everything is over, I missed that life. Now, I am rotting at home waiting for my life to get back hectic so that I enjoy it in a way.

[yanno_yamster]

If you are given a choice, would you like to live in the past where is there isn't any/much technology but peaceful or live in the present where there is so many technology advancement but the life is hectic?

Even in the present there are still places that lack modern technology, the best examples would be Antarctica and Africa :laugh.

There are both pros and cons living in the past and present so if possible I'll choose the in-between: the 1990s :P It's at the end of the 20th century and near the beginning of the 21st century. After all, I am of the 90s generation.

[technicolor]

Hard to choose. But, I think family relationship in the past times is more tighter. Years ago, almost everyone in the family spend much more time together watching TV etc Nowadays, you can see all the technologies & modernizations. The children always isolated themselves in their respective room, sitting in front of laptop for hours, listening to music non-stop. That's frustrating... I can say this because this is what happened in my house right now :P

[youngyew]

If you are given a choice, would you like to live in the past where is there isn't any/much technology but peaceful or live in the present where there is so many technology advancement but the life is hectic?
But there had never been any period in the past that was peaceful.

[technicolor]

I wanna live in the past but with all these modern technologies....

:freak:

[Boyz_Zoo]

But there had never been any period in the past that was peaceful.
Technically there is. Of course there is a lot of wars but besides the World Wars, the war is short and does not affect much the civilian's life except that they have to accept a new chain of command.

[youngyew]

Technically there is. Of course there is a lot of wars but besides the World Wars, the war is short and does not affect much the civilian's life except that they have to accept a new chain of command.
If we were to follow this loose definition of peace, then one would argue that the current world is one of the most peaceful time in history.

[Boyz_Zoo]

If we were to follow this loose definition of peace, then one would argue that the current world is one of the most peaceful time in history.
Well, I prefer we stay to the topic about the peace in ones' life than the world's.

And I said the past which can be anytime like the time when Melaka was the biggest entrepot in the South East Asia or other peaceful times. It is does not has to be during the Occupation times.

[youngyew]

Well, I prefer we stay to the topic about the peace in ones' life than the world's.

And I said the past which can be anytime like the time when Melaka was the biggest entrepot in the South East Asia or other peaceful times. It is does not has to be during the Occupation times.
What do you mean about peace in one's life rather than the world? Aren't they closely related? Or do you mean people in the past have less domestic argument than the present?

[nickvl]

The past...our parents and grandparents got along just fine without the iPod. In those days, they went to school in the morning and played football, fly kites, have fun in the evening. Now, kids are rushing from one tuition to the other. Ppl nowadays don't really live life....

And besides, in the past, there was actually good music too..

[Boyz_Zoo]

What do you mean about peace in one's life rather than the world? Aren't they closely related? Or do you mean people in the past have less domestic argument than the present?
yes, they are closely related, but people those days don't have as hectic and complex life like the modern people. Those people do have some hectic times but not as much as the modern people.

[vikraman]

I would like to live in the future. :D Semantics aside, the present is truly the best time to live in. The 8 year period between 1999-2007 was the highest rate of economic growth and prosperity in the recorded history of the planet. The last 60 years have been the period with the least armed conflict in the planet over the last 900 years or so (measured as a proportion of the world population directly affected by armed conflict.) We've also had the greatest exercise of rule by the people in the last 60 years with democratization and strengthening of the rule of law across the world. The expansion of personal freedoms in the last 60 years have also been the greatest in the history of mankind. I could go on and on and on..

[yipilala]

i think present is the best. if we are in the past, thr's no reCom, hehe :P
i like the high quantity of open-minded ppl in the present, if not, i will not be allowed to go to school and study coz i m a girl! ^^
the past is good in its serenity(i m a serenity lover), still, i think present is the best.

[youngyew]

I think we should make a good distinction between rural rustic life and the past. Yes what we see in the rural area today may be a good glimpse of what it was to live in the past; but that doesn't mean that life in the past is overall serene, rustic, peaceful and wonderful. Not everyone in the past live in small villages, so what you see in villages today is not equivalent to "what it was in the past".

In the past there was World War One. There was World War Two. The Great Depression. Colonisation. Invasion. Spanish flu. Black death. Typhoid fever. Many others.

[Young]

I think we should make a good distinction between rural rustic life and the past. Yes what we see in the rural area today may be a good glimpse of what it was to live in the past; but that doesn't mean that life in the past is overall serene, rustic, peaceful and wonderful. Not everyone in the past live in small villages, so what you see in villages today is not equivalent to "what it was in the past".

In the past there was World War One. There was World War Two. The Great Depression. Colonisation. Invasion. Spanish flu. Black death. Typhoid fever. Many others.

He speaks the truth.

Though I do envy the olden days where life was pretty simple. No kiasuness, no morning jam, no working your butt off to get rich. Life back then revolved around.. well, life itself.
Happiness in simplicity.

[yipilala]

ya, i think i m mistaken ovr tht.
after considered what u had stated, i prefer the present with less wars and epidermics(despite H1N1 flu):P

[Young]

ya, i think i m mistaken ovr tht.
after considered what u had stated, i prefer the present with less wars and epidermics(despite H1N1 flu):P

Swine flu's nothing compared to the plague, cholera, measles and cowpox they had back then.
And don't forget, back then there were no anaesthetics. The 'doctors' just give you a strong shot of vodka and went straight into sawing off your foot if you needed an amputation. :laugh

[yipilala]

Swine flu's nothing compared to the plague, cholera, measles and cowpox they had back then.
And don't forget, back then there were no anaesthetics. The 'doctors' just give you a strong shot of vodka and went straight into sawing off your foot if you needed an amputation. :laugh

yaya...and what u said was so scary man:omg
past and present.....present is better.
but i think we should not idle in saving the earth so tht we can maintain the present.

[senksiang90]

I would like to live in the past if my money let's say RM 1000 stays the same and everything is as cheap as last time like RM 0.50 for a bowl of noodles. That way, I can enjoy life as a very rich person. hahaha!!!

[twinkle4_ever]

i would like to live in the past.....but during indus civilization period. i would like to learn all those skills and knowledge that was practiced. those skills and knowledge is no more exist. even though some exists, they were no more pure. they was spoilt in name of technologies advancements.

[Boyz_Zoo]

I would like to live in the past if my money let's say RM 1000 stays the same and everything is as cheap as last time like RM 0.50 for a bowl of noodles. That way, I can enjoy life as a very rich person. hahaha!!!

i would like to live in the past.....but during indus civilization period. i would like to learn all those skills and knowledge that was practiced. those skills and knowledge is no more exist. even though some exists, they were no more pure. they was spoilt in name of technologies advancements.
Please state your opinion in the poll too.

[music_freak28]

i like the high quantity of open-minded ppl in the present, if not, i will not be allowed to go to school and study coz i m a girl! ^^


Yeah! Totally agree with you. The past may have all its peace and family bonding and all but literally no women rights. Women were greatly suppressed in the past where there were almost no opportunities for us at all. I can't imagine having my marriage arranged before birth, spending the rest of my life as a housewife with no knowledge of the outer world and having no education at all. I would die of boredom!

Plus, family bonding is created with our own efforts and it is not affected at all by the technology advancements. Yes, there maybe computers, MSN, Ipods, handphones to make us isolate ourselves but if parents were to train their children from young about the importance of family, they would ditch their tech stuff and join in a family discussion instead. In conclusion, if we ourselves have no effort to maintain family bonds, even without a TV, there will be no bonding.

The present has many medical teatments and cures for diseases that were deemed to be fatal in the past. The present has endless form of technologies that made our jobs easier and faster and it saves our energy to do more important things.

So my answer:Definitely The present=)

[Boyz_Zoo]

I think we should make a good distinction between rural rustic life and the past. Yes what we see in the rural area today may be a good glimpse of what it was to live in the past; but that doesn't mean that life in the past is overall serene, rustic, peaceful and wonderful. Not everyone in the past live in small villages, so what you see in villages today is not equivalent to "what it was in the past".

In the past there was World War One. There was World War Two. The Great Depression. Colonisation. Invasion. Spanish flu. Black death. Typhoid fever. Many others.
the past is too general. There are times when there is war and there is any. It is up to one to decide which one to choose when they debate on the topic.

[starlover]

lalala~
i'll choose the past.the air is fresher, more serene and tranquil

[youngyew]

the past is too general. There are times when there is war and there is any. It is up to one to decide which one to choose when they debate on the topic.
Precisely, which is also why I maintain that the simplistic view of "the past is more relaxing / lovey-dovey / close-knit" is not necessarily true.

Yes on average a lot of people don't spend the same amount of time at home or close to home compared to before. But guess what, last time if you were to leave your hometown you might not see your family for months, years or decades. But now we have the phone, Facebook, MSN, Skype and what not. And we have airplanes. So the same things that bring us apart easier also bring us together easier too.

Yes it might seem to us that most people today spend a lot of time on the phone, in the office, in the car, attend endless conferences and meetings and discussions during work and ignore their kids. But it would be simplistic to think that there were far few busy people in the past - there were also a lot of people spending time farming, mining, brokering at Wall Street, travelling on steam train, and so on and so forth. So whilst the ways people work were drastically different from today, and despite the undeniable fact that urbanisation has indeed made more people busier today; it doesn't mean that most people were free people who had all the time to spend with their kids and form great bonds with their neighbour's grandchildren.

There are certain things that are undeniable. It's undeniable that an urban dweller today is less likely to know their neighbours as well as a villager in the last century knew their neighbours. It's undeniable that there were less people who led a hectic city life in 19th century compared to today.

However, it's also undeniable that we form bonds in ways people would never have thought possible. People DO find their life partners online. I make friends in ReCom as electrons travel through servers, cobble wires and personal computeres. I get to see my parents regularly from 6000km away and Skype's voice quality is so clear it sounds like they are just talking in front of me. I know that there's no place on Earth where it's just too far for me to get to.

As with most things, there are gives and takes when we progress as a society. Some things we lose; some we gain. It's how we make use of the things we gain and salvage the things we lose that makes all the difference.

[chongkeat]

Well, it kinda depends if you're talking about time traveling back to the past...

If so, then the past would be a much, much better place to live in. Armed with the power of foresight and (by bringing back some books) the gift of knowledge, I could advance the entire human civilization by decades!

Publishing the Principia, inventing the light bulb, preventing wars, stopping tragedies before they even began....

Watching Michelangelo paint, witnessing the construction of the Great Pyramid, making sure Tesla wins the war of currents....

Yes, I know, all those events are in different times, but that's exactly my point. It doesn't matter which era I live in, there will always be something to do.

To hell with bad healthcare, heck, I'd even saw my own leg off to be able to change the course of history!


Talk about a god complex......

[Boyz_Zoo]

anyone else?

[g1noah]

the past is too general. There are times when there is war and there is any. It is up to one to decide which one to choose when they debate on the topic.

Even when there is no war, it doesn't mean a certain place is free of other forms of domestic violence, since according to The Oxford Dictionary, peace means 'freedom from or the cessation of war or violence'. However, one of the other meaning of peace is, 'freedom from disturbance; quiet and tranquillity'. If your peace has that meaning, then the people in the past might have a greater chance of living in a serene environment than the people living in today's hectic world.

Back to the topic, I would prefer living at the present. At least I don't need to spend most of my time doing boring and tiring house chores.

[BattleBoyz]

I choose to live in present, but learn from the past. I am happy living in the present. I like my life, love my friends and family and thats all that matters. :laugh Living in the past will not guarantee a good and happy life for me which I have now.

[Restl3ss]

I think I would like living in the past. I remember those days when I can see eagles flying in the air, monkeys jumping away in the nearby forest, and monitor lizards crawling in front of our houses. x] But now it's all gone. I miss the birds chirping in the morning, the stars blinking at night, and how I can see and catch fireflies in front of my grandparents' house. People those days are more warming too. At least in my opinion they are. And we get to move and exercise our body more easily.

However, I would miss the Internet and how we are connected globally so easily with just a click. Not to say our rich materialistic life and how we can enjoy food from other country too. xP

[seahjiachen]

I would like to live in the past! when the girl i fall for is still "available"! LOL!

* juz being honest* XP

[senksiang90]

I would like to live in the past! when the girl i fall for is still "available"! LOL!

* juz being honest* XP

Don't worry dude.. now you should learn to let go and learn to live in the future for as long as you're willing to let go of the past, there will be a brighter tomorrow.

*I mean that's what I experienced. LOL. When I forgot one, a new one came into my life, 100 times better than the last. STAY AWESOME MAN!!!!!!!!!!

[Chinchin_92]

LOL... I think I'd want to live in the present...
Who knows... some strange/ interesting/ funny thing may occur...
After all, we've read the past before (from books/historians) ... it's some history...yeah... it may be interesting but if I go back there... LOL... I wouldn't feel like it's me anymore... LOL... I'll feel fake and unnatural.

[CelineD]

Bumped:amuse

Now if only I can create a time machine and travel through all the empires of the world, and even until the very end... :wink

I would like to live in the present, because I feel blessed that people of the past had worked hard to make things better and more advanced, as well as more knowledgeable, about things. I mean, now we have broadband internet, a mobile phone for every Tom, Dick and Harry(who wants one!), seeing how outer space looks like, travelling around the world in mere days, etc., and all this couldn't have happened if our ancestors were just lazing around, they were creative, innovative and hardworking! (unlike me...procrastinate all the time:(...must learn from them)

However, I would also want to adopt the principles of people from the past. Sure, there were the ruthless, and the evil, but I want to retain the so-called "conservative" qualities of honesty, dignity, modesty, humility, and putting family as priority. (Yay to NO corruption!)People of the past knew how to hold parents and authority in high regard, because they knew that Mom and Dad knew what's best for them, and the authorities were good, trustworthy people. But look at now, times have changed, everyone is basically looking out for themselves only(I'm guilty!), and many people misuse their rights in every way possible. Kids rebel and curse, parents abuse and ignore, certain people of power use their authority to suppress others, etc. and relationships become selfish(for example, think of how many 'love' songs actually have the singer only desire a girls body and nothing else!). So I would still practice good principles from the past.

[Lance_Kuan]

In the past there was World War One. There was World War Two. The Great Depression. Colonisation. Invasion. Spanish flu. Black death. Typhoid fever. Many others.

Indeed there was all those wars and pandemics in the past, but coming to think about it we also have social problems in the present, for example H1N1, Dengue, etc and not to be forgotten, economics downfalls like those happening during 1998 and 2008, and also the case that is happening in Greece recently :)

Every times have their own problems, who knows maybe in the future we will face more tough challenges?

[youngyew]

Yup there are challenges in every single era you can think of, which was my point in that previous post, that it would be naive to think that everything in the past was rustic, peaceful, colourful and cheerful.

[Lance_Kuan]

Yup there are challenges in every single era you can think of, which was my point in that previous post, that it would be naive to think that everything in the past was rustic, peaceful, colourful and cheerful.

Ah yes, this is exactly what I meant :)
Be grateful that you are born in this era, at least you guys are involved in ReCom forums :))

[Jinglet]

Yup there are challenges in every single era you can think of, which was my point in that previous post, that it would be naive to think that everything in the past was rustic, peaceful, colourful and cheerful.

BUT in the past ppl who live in the past have a life which is less hectic and life pressure compare to us people who live in present.their enviroment is less polluted n the student life is more freedom no need to have extra tuition n they can spend their extra time to do other things...well this is what i envy abt the ppl in past lo...

[youngyew]

BUT in the past ppl who live in the past have a life which is less hectic and life pressure compare to us people who live in present.their enviroment is less polluted n the student life is more freedom no need to have extra tuition n they can spend their extra time to do other things...well this is what i envy abt the ppl in past lo...
You are probably comparing schooling life and I concur that what you said might be true. But if you compare life in general, especially with regards to works, this is not necessarily the case. Why would you think that people in the past have generally less responsibility or life in less stressful environment?

Anyway, to support why I said it's overly simplistic to generalise the past as "rustic, simple and wonderful", have a read of this excerpt (http://www.penguin.com.au/lookinside/spotlight.cfm?SBN=9780713999914&page=extract) from Superfreakonomics that I recently read (which together with the previous version "Freakonomics" are both must-reads to learn what being *skeptical is all about)

When the world was lurching into the modern era, it grew magnifi cently more populous, and in a hurry. Most of this expansion took place in urban centres like London, Paris, New York, and Chicago. In the United States alone, cities grew by 30 million residents during the nineteenth century, with half of that gain in just the final twenty years.

But as this swarm of humanity moved itself, and its goods, from place to place, a problem emerged. The main mode of transportation produced a slew of the by-products that economists call negative exter nalities, including gridlock, high insurance costs, and far too many traffic fatalities. Crops that would have landed on a family's dinner table were sometimes converted into fuel, driving up food prices and causing shortages. Then there were the air pollutants and toxic emis*sions, endangering the environment as well as individuals' health.

We are talking about the automobile-aren't we?

No, we're not. We are talking about the horse.

The horse, a versatile and powerful helpmate since the days of antiquity, was put to work in many ways as modern cities expanded: pulling streetcars and private coaches, hauling construction materials, unloading freight from ships and trains, even powering the machines that churned out furniture, rope, beer, and clothing. If your young daughter took gravely ill, the doctor rushed to your home on horseback. When a fire broke out, a team of horses charged through the streets with a pumping truck. At the turn of the twentieth century, some 200,000 horses lived and worked in New York City, or 1 for every 17 people.

But oh, the troubles they caused!

Horse-drawn wagons clogged the streets terribly, and when a horse broke down, it was often put to death on the spot. This caused further delays. Many stable owners held life-insurance policies that, to guard against fraud, stipulated the animal be euthanized by a third party. This meant waiting for the police, a veterinarian, or the ASPCA to ar rive. Even death didn't end the gridlock. 'Dead horses were extremely unwieldy,' writes the transportation scholar Eric Morris. 'As a result, street cleaners often waited for the corpses to putrefy so they could more easily be sawed into pieces and carted off.'

The noise from iron wagon wheels and horseshoes was so disturb ing - it purportedly caused widespread nervous disorders - that some cities banned horse traffic on the streets around hospitals and other sensitive areas.

And it was frighteningly easy to be struck down by a horse or wagon, neither of which is as easy to control as they appear in the movies, espe cially on slick, crowded city streets. In 1900, horse accidents claimed the lives of 200 New Yorkers, or 1 of every 17,000 residents. In 2007, meanwhile, 274 New Yorkers died in auto accidents, or 1 of every 30,000 residents. This means that a New Yorker was nearly twice as likely to die from a horse accident in 1900 than from a car accident today. (There are unfortunately no statistics available on drunk horse-drivers, but we can assume the number would be menacingly high.)

Worst of all was the dung. The average horse produced about 24 pounds of manure a day. With 200,000 horses, that's nearly 5 million pounds of horse manure. A day. Where did it go?

Decades earlier, when horses were less plentiful in cities, there was a smooth-functioning market for manure, with farmers buying it to truck off (via horse, of course) to their fields. But as the urban equine population exploded, there was a massive glut. In vacant lots, horse manure was piled as high as sixty feet. It lined city streets like banks of snow. In the summertime, it stank to the heavens; when the rains came, a soupy stream of horse manure flooded the crosswalks and seeped into people's basements. Today, when you admire old New York brownstones and their elegant stoops, rising from street level to the second-story parlour, keep in mind that this was a design necessity, allowing a homeowner to rise above the sea of horse manure.

All of this dung was terrifically unhealthy. It was a breeding ground for billions of flies that spread a host of deadly diseases. Rats and other vermin swarmed the mountains of manure to pick out undigested oats and other horse feed-crops that were becoming more costly for hu man consumption thanks to higher horse demand. No one at the time was worried about global warming, but if they had been, the horse would have been Public Enemy No. 1, for its manure emits methane, a powerful greenhouse gas.

In 1898, New York hosted the first international urban planning conference. The agenda was dominated by horse manure, because cit ies around the world were experiencing the same crisis. But no solution could be found. 'Stumped by the crisis,' writes Eric Morris, 'the urban planning conference declared its work fruitless and broke up in three days instead of the scheduled ten.'

The world had seemingly reached the point where its largest cities could not survive without the horse but couldn't survive with it, either.

And then the problem vanished. It was neither government fiat nor divine intervention that did the trick. City dwellers did not rise up in some mass movement of altruism or self-restraint, surrendering all the benefits of horse power. The problem was solved by technological in novation. No, not the invention of a dung-less animal. The horse was kicked to the curb by the electric streetcar and the automobile, both of which were extravagantly cleaner and far more efficient. The automo bile, cheaper to own and operate than a horse-drawn vehicle, was pro , claimed 'an environmental saviour.' Cities around the world were able to take a deep breath-without holding their noses at last - and resume their march of progress.

The story, unfortunately, does not end there. The solutions that saved the twentieth century seem to have imperilled the twenty-first, because the automobile and electric streetcar carried their own nega tive externalities. The carbon emissions spat out over the past century by more than 1 billion cars and thousands of coal-burning power plants seem to have warmed the earth's atmosphere. Just as equine activity once threatened to stomp out civilization, there is now a fear that hu man activity will do the same. Martin Weitzman, an environmental economist at Harvard, argues there is a roughly 5 percent chance that global temperatures will rise enough to 'effectively destroy planet Earth as we know it.' In some quarters - the media, for instance, which never met a potential apocalypse it didn't like - the fatalism runs even stronger.

This is perhaps not very surprising. When the solution to a given problem doesn't lay right before our eyes, it is easy to assume that no solution exists. But history has shown again and again that such as sumptions are wrong.

This is not to say the world is perfect. Nor that all progress is always good. Even widespread societal gains inevitably produce losses for some people. That's why the economist Joseph Schumpeter referred to capitalism as 'creative destruction.'

But humankind has a great capacity for finding technological solu tions to seemingly intractable problems, and this will likely be the case for global warming. It isn't that the problem isn't potentially large. It's just that human ingenuity - when given proper incentives - is bound to be larger. Even more encouraging, technological fixes are often far sim pler, and therefore cheaper, than the doomsayers could have imagined. Indeed, in the final chapter of this book we'll meet a band of renegade engineers who have developed not one but three global-warming fixes, any of which could be bought for less than the annual sales tally of all the Thoroughbred horses at Keeneland auction house in Kentucky.

The value of horse manure, incidentally, has rebounded, so much so that the owners of one Massachusetts farm recently called the police to stop a neighbour from hauling it away. The neighbour claimed there was a misunderstanding, that he'd been given permission by the farm's pre vious owner. But the current owner wouldn't back down, demanding $600 for the manure.

Who was this manure-loving neighbour? None other than Martin Weitzman, the economist with the grave global-warming prediction.

*Note: It would have been ironic if you simply believed all the alternative "unconventional wisdoms" that they put forth in the books and take pride that you are now a "skeptic". The idea, however, is that you learn to be as skeptical as they were and try not to perceive the world as it is but to always look deeper than the surface. :)

[afifah]

hah quite a tough question
for me i prefer to live in the present
cause i think i would die without having internet around..
besides people now are more open-minded
and i don't like how it feels to been colonized