Future Past
Pictures of ordinary street life from long ago are fascinating. Look at this picture. It’s New York in the 1880s. Everyone is wearing hats. It probably smells god-awful. And part of you wants to enter that picture and walk the streets for a few hours. Not long enough to contract typhoid, but just for a little while, to see how people walk and talk and what they wear. Right?
This is the same impulse that creates period films and practices creative anachronism. I loved the Sherlock Holmes stories and read all 4 novels and 56 short stories. Same thing.
So sometimes when I’m walking down the street in 2010, I like to remember that I’m walking through a future past. My great grandson (not yet born) would love to switch places with me for a few hours and see what life was like back in 2010.
His interest is attenuated by the huge number of archived youtube videos from this period, but today’s video capture technology will look pathetic compared to what they’re recording in 100 years, and certainly won’t compare to being there. He’ll feel like he’s missing the full picture.
Sometimes it feels like we’re living in the future, so it’s nice to remember that we’re also walking through the past.
fcastellanos on 22 April 2010 at 7:58 pm
Beautiful
Sankar on 22 April 2010 at 8:02 pm
Your grandson might say, “In my grandfather’s time, people were able to record and watch only 2d videos, that too on those ancient ultra-low-definition tools called monitors”
LanceHaig on 22 April 2010 at 8:05 pm
Very insightful Nat I had never thought of it like that.
Adam Tauno Williams on 22 April 2010 at 8:30 pm
Your grandson might say, “In my grandfather’s time, there were fish in the ocean and the sky wasn’t mint green from the sulfur dioxide used to regulate the planet’s temperature.”
Jack on 22 April 2010 at 10:08 pm
“Everyone is wearing hats. It probably smells god-awful. And part of you wants to enter that picture and walk the streets for a few hours.”
“Not long enough to contract typhoid”
Yeah, Life was so bad that’s a “mystery” how we are all here. How could they have survived?
Common misconceptions about the past always annoy me.
Did you know that despite the common view that Middle Ages was a dark time in human history, that the average quality of live for average person was much better than it’s now?
Lets see
Stress related diseases (equivalent to PTS in soldiers in war zones)
Lifestyle related diseases (sedentarism, malnutrition, lack of sleep, etc…)
Chronic diseases (heart; lungs; intestines; joints; respiratory that are a consequence of lifestyle and environment (not climate)
Oh yes we are soooo much better!
Nat Friedman on 23 April 2010 at 3:12 am
You can keep glorifying the past if you want, but I don’t see a long line of people eager to shorten their life expectancy, visit doctors who try to balance their four vital humors through bleedings (your phlegm is low!), or endure the low-stress lifestyle associated with periodic famines in an era without modern agriculture.
But we’re getting a little bit off-topic here. There’s a lot that’s interesting about the past — that’s exactly why I wrote this. And I have nothing against hats.
Ddorda on 22 April 2010 at 10:13 pm
Is it only me or there’s Hebrew script on the sign (on the wall) at the left-upper part of the picture?
Atul Chitnis on 23 April 2010 at 2:55 am
For a reason I cannot yet determine, you just made my day.
Thanks!
Marcel on 23 April 2010 at 9:45 am
Nice one. Someone’s getting lyrical?
Something quite similar I like to do sometimes is to switch perspectives of view: I walk through my everyday places and try to look at them like someone who sees them the first time. It is like feeling the “magic” visiting a new place, city, etc. for the first time. It is pretty enlightening, you get to see things that didn’t bother you for a long time and may begin to appreciate them.
Again, very nice and inspiring post.
robert on 25 April 2010 at 4:58 pm
I’m afraid you won’t have a great grandson, or even a grandson, as the world is supposed to end in 2012. Enjoy this history as there won’t be any more.
Michael Stahlberg on 11 September 2010 at 1:05 am
Great reflection on the past there, Nat. It’s peculiar how alike most people are. I mean, I can identify with that urge to visit the good old days, when I see old pictures.
Have you seen Wallace Levinson’s pictures from New Jersey in the 1880′s?
They really “make history come alive”, and one to ponder on life and death.
Michael Stahlberg
Sweden