This question is common throughout the internet, but I’d like to see Lemmy’s response.
The country you end up in would be random, you don’t get to pick.
Average person today
With all the power of Rome elegabulus couldn’t purchase bottom surgery. Yet even as a middle class American I did.
You could’ve probably purchased bottom surgery, sort of.
But the quality would’ve been, eh, less satisfactory, I would presume, and you’d have died of infection in like two weeks.
My point here being you’d surely have been able to persuade some quack to take sharp implements to you with enough gold. Royalty did crazy shit back then.
But yah I’m on your side on this. Being in power in an age we romanticise might seem. Until you remember that if you fall down and scratch your knee, you could die of that with bad luck.
Healthcare systems and governments might be shit nowadays but the level of medical technology is so vastly superior that it’s the obvious choice.
Congrats on what I gather was probably a lot of work, of all sorts. Enjoy.
Average person now, hands down. I like being able to live my life knowing I’m not surrounded by people who want to kill me.
Man I wish I knew what that was like
Lmao this is what most people don’t seem to be aware of. They thought it’s all rainbows and butterflies being a monarch with an absolute power. Of course other people would try to get that seat every chance.
Also don’t forget about all the affairs, both national and international.
As a woman, I’ll stay right here, thanks.
Having a bad/infected tooth and no modern dentistry tech is already a dealbreaker for me. Then there’s all the wars, disease, and lack of sanitation. So no thanks, I’d rather live as a normal person in the modern era.
I do not want to go where there is no anaesthetic
Well, first:
then:
Live now. Because 500 years ago I would have died as a child from pneumonia that was easily treated these days
It would be interesting to experience life 500 years ago just for the difference in perspective. It would be a lot of pressure, though.
No Toilets and ac is a deal breaker
🎼 Shit on the floor 🎶
Poop deck lol
Get schwifty
AC wasn’t really necessary. It was cooler and walls were thicker. I used to live in an old stone farmhouse and when it was 40C outside it was 20C inside.
What about other way around. Wouldn’t it get too cold? They always show ot drafty and fireplaces in every room on tv.
Fireplaces create a wonderful soft warmth. Unless you live in some huge castle or it’s completely blowing through your house, warming the house with fireplaces is great. Even when there are some small drafts here and there in the house. Just wear warm socks as the floors are usually quite cool despite the room being toasty from the heat.
Then you tend the fire for some time, long enough for the fire to properly warm all the stone around it. (Even in wooden houses, the central chimney would be rather thick at the bottom where the fireplaces are, so the stones store heat during the night.)
You stoke the coals and then when it’s just red coals and no more burning, you can shut down the chimney, so the rest of the heat stays in.
It slowly dissipates through the night. (But you won’t get carbon monoxide poisoning, which is why it’s important to have the chimney open while there’s actual fire.) It might get a bit cool around the morning hours, but sleeping in the cool is actually pretty decent.
Waking up in the cold is a bitch though.
We had uhm… two chimneys and six fireplaces in the house I (mostly) grew up in. Was built in the 30’s.
Yeah but you’d live in a castle and they stay very cool.
I dk if you are bias or subject expert.
I’ve been to plenty of castles, they’re always very cool due to the massive thick stone walls.
Definitely now considering I wouldn’t have even made it to 10 years old before dying if it wasn’t for modern surgery. Would have probably died for unknown reasons to them and I probably would have been marked as having been possessed by some sort of evil spirit or demon if for whatever reason they cut me open and found the weird growth attached to my heart.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned from history, it’s that the monarchs who didn’t constantly plot and scheme were at risk to being overthrown by their noble subjects. I hate politics; I hate incessant meetings, and being a monarch always sounds like just constant meetings, all day, every day. Everyone wants to talk to you, get something from you, scheme with you; and it they aren’t scheming with you, you really have to worry, because they’re off scheming against you.
It sounds tedious and horrible.
If you’re the emperor, don’t let them ruin your groove.
You could just invent bureaucracy lol, or do we get brain wiped in this hypothetical?
Breaucracy is worse.
Now. Especially if I’d upgrade to a life of an average person! I have adhd and recurring clinical depression that cause all sorts of problems, and have done so for all my life. I assume the average would be not to have those, at least not together, I hope. (Edit: but on the other hand the average person would have significantly worse situation, forgot to check my privilege in that regard, so thought I’d explicitly state my acknowledgement here)
But even if I continued as myself, I would 100% choose what I have over a circa 1500 monarch. That’s not even tough a choice to make.
The only reason I can see anyone would choose the monarch life is if they enjoyed (undeserved and unwarranted) authority and power over others. I loathe the concept to begin with, so it’s really not even a choice.
Would I be dead rather than a monarch at that time? Now that one is tougher. I’d probably rather check out the world at that point of time, maybe attempt some sort of progressive rule, but I’d be dead before I can get anything meaningful done, I bet. If not by rivals desiring the crown, then just the lack of antibiotics and whatnot. And if I retain my adhd and depression, yeah, I’m fairly likely to just off myself before soon…
Edit: Continuing from the initial edit above; While I’d probably be mentally more stable and healthy, I’d probably have a lot of other problems that I would rather not deal with. So all in all, I would hope there would be an option for things to stay as they are. I am privileged, living in a privileged situation, healthy other than mentally, so I believe I have it better than any average at any point of history, and furthermore, better than even the richest monarchs back in the time. It is sad that this is the reality, but then again, I did not choose this life, and I suppose the appropriate response to being forced to it, is acknowledge the privileges and try and make the world just a little bit better with what little resources I have as an individual and a member of several social circles and hierarchies.
Can I take my chances and live like a peasant 500 years in the future?
I figure either the world won’t exist and I dodge all the existential crap that is fretting death, or I get to fly in spaceships like one flies coach today and maybe conditions will have improved for the bottom 10%.
Wish granted, you live in a bunker somewhere deep underground and is witnessing mutated lovecraftian creatures that can’t even be explained using today’s words.
Yeah but are they, like, available?
Man. Some guys have ALL the luck. 😠
So not much different than now except cooler, hell yeah!
It’s cute you think humans will be alive in 500 years.
Way too many of you think you’re the ‘average person’ in this world.
For context in 1525:
King of England: Henry VIII (with all the wives)
King of France: Francis I (with all the fighting the Holy Roman Empire and Pope)
King of Spain: Charles V (with all the being Holy Roman Emperor and inbreeding)
Emperor of China: Jiajing (with all the torturing and murdering dissenters)
Edit: I chose these 4 because between them they were monarchs of the 4 most powerful countries in the world at the time, especially Charles of Spain and Jiajing of China but France and England were soon poised to eclipse the others.
Henry VIII suffered from numerous painful ailments that killed him eventually.
What about African countries and other Asian regions? Maybe America?
Kongo - Afonso I Mvemba a Nzinga - first Catholic monarch of Kongo
Songhai - Askia the Great - zenith of Songhai’s power
Adal - Abū Bakr ibn Muhammad - founded city of Harar
The concept of absolute monarchies wasn’t really that well established 500 years ago. It was just really in it’s earliest phases. What’s usually called the age of absolutism doesn’t start till the early 17th century.
How do you define average? Cuz when you include the whole planet, that’s below most people on this website current living standards.
