(This entry directly relates to the previous one, so you may want to read that first.)
One thing I like to imagine, is how different types of people would have manifest themselves in the past.
For example, what would a gamer nerd have been like in the 1800's or in 1200 bc? Clearly they didn't have video games for them to spend all day playing, but whatever biological inclination those nerds have to play video games, must have some ancient correlation, otherwise it probably wouldn't have evolved so specifically in so many people.
Maybe they just really loved other sorts of non-athletic games and imaginative play, such as pretending they were knights when they were actually peasants or playing home made board games.
Some things are easy to imagine. Artists and poets could have still been driven towards art and poetry in the past. Some things are less easy to imagine, such as filmmakers. (maybe they would just be story tellers or writers? or play-writers?)
One thing that I often wonder about, ever since I learned of it, is people who like to have sex with cars. This is, obviously, very rare. However, it seems unlikely that this man is the first person in history to have whatever it is inside of him that makes him want to have sex with cars. How would this have manifest itself in the ancient past? Would he want to have sex with rocks or trees, statues, or later in time trains?
Of course, there is also the issue that people had much less control over their lives in the past. Someone who may desire to be a primitive version of a scientist or a story teller or an actor may likely be a slave or a farmer. However, I imagine that these people would still exhibit these personality types in their free time, if they had any.
I also like imaging what I would have been like had I lived in the ancient past, or even the near past. I have a feeling I might not have done too well. I think I am the sort of person who has really benefited from modern life. If I lived in a time without psychiatry or psychology, I think I could have ended up homeless or in some primitive institution. Although, perhaps some of the psychological issues I've dealt with are, to some degree a product of our modern world, however I think for the most part they would have manifest themselves in whatever circumstance I was in and had it not been for the help I have received my life would be worse off. Though, perhaps if I had been in a hunter gatherer society rather than seeming mentally ill I would have been seen as a visionary and become a shaman.
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2 comments:
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suppose it is the fate of every generation to look back upon the years of its youth as a Golden Age of normality, against which earlier or later epochs are to be judged. You are starting early, Chris!
Looking back to my own childhood, the nerdish hobbies tended to be somewhat split amongst the sexes. For men and boys, fretwork and marquetry were popular. Later, it was model aircraft, galleons and the like, usually from kits: wood gave way to plastic when the aim was to produce a decorative model. But if you were flying the plane, you’d build it from balsa-wood and tissue-paper tightened with a coat of dope. You could power it with rubber band or a tiny diesel engine – or it might be flown as a glider. For girls and women it was knitting, crochet, cross-stitch, tapestry, embroidery – those kinds of things. More social activities, at home or in pubs, would be cribbage (a card game), darts, dominoes, shove ha’penny, skittles (also known as ninepins). Any of these would be spiced up with small bets.
For children there would be plenty of games played in street or playground. Or you could just take the dog out. There were no rules then about cleaning up after a dog. After the War, many towns had dangerous bomb sites where it was fun to play all kinds of war games. With the help of a parent, children would build a go-cart from wooden boxes, scavenged timber and old pram wheels. You’d have a bridle to steer them by shifting the front wheels and you could race them downhill.
I was definitely the introverted imaginative type. Indoors, I would read voraciously, and design various things as presents for Christmas and birthdays – or make cards for same, using techniques taught in art-class. Outdoors, with my same-age cousin or alone, I would invent my own version of free-running (parcours) which sometimes involved a certain amount of trespassing on private property. When challenged, we would identify the adult concerned as a deadly enemy, creating an evil persona and back-story for him or her.
These leisure activities seem to have been far more healthy, diverse and sometimes more useful than those practised today.
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