Anyone else have an obsessive desire to go to the past?

Post Reply New Topic

I was born in 1994, but I wish so bad that I could have been born in the 40s or 50s. I know there's nothing I can do about this, but I fantasize about the past almost every single day and how much I wish I could just hop in a time machine and travel back! I already prefer older music to today's music and listen to mostly that. How about you?

I wouldn't say obsessive, but I have always been really fascinated with the 1940's and imagined living in that time (minus the war of course!) I do think about previous eras and have wondered a lot about what it would have been like to have been in those times.

Me, too. Though not obsessive, when I read fictions that describe the post-war period (around 1950's), I fantasize about being there. It also kind of makes me a bit nostalgic thinking about all those lost beautiful times/things. All those very useful things such as mobile phones and the Internet kind of make the world look rather boring (though I looove mobiles, computers etc). And yes, the music from those times is more beautiful, not like the rubbish music of today, which only irritates me.

i'm not quite that old but i have direct experience living in the 60s and can tell you it was not that different from the 50s - a mixed bag. most public places [at least up in washington state] were not air-conditioned in the summer [sweats profusely at the mere thought ], everybody and their brother smoked so there was nasty smoke and ashes everywhere, and cars were not emission-controlled so the air stank of smog most days. there were no cell phones nor PCs nor video games. TV was very basic [no cable back then] with just the 4 networks and a handful of local stations which ran reruns. no DVDs to watch movies, if it wasn't on tv it wasn't available to watch period, outside of the movie theatre. most TV was black and white as well as a lot of movies. sure, the music was more to my taste but in terms of high-fidelity reproduction that left a lot to be desired, with crackly old LPs/45s/78s and hissy open-reel tapes providing the lions' share of sound reproduction through typically crappy and minimalist record players. FM stereo was a new thing, and not that many stations outside the major cities were broadcasting it. movies were 99% in mono with one speaker behind the screen, with bandwidth typically limited from 100-7500 cycles per second, about like good AM radio. no surround sound. in school, teachers were allowed to paddle your behind if you didn't keep your nose to the grindstone. there was a military draft, and if your number was low, you might as well tramp on down to the local recruiting station and join or else you could count on being drafted. there was the vietnam war going on with a constant need for fresh cannon fodder. in the 50s there was the korean war, and in the 40s WW2. there was the cold war with the underlying threat of nuclear annihilation. the one good thing about back then was that the minimum wage really paid the bills [unlike today where you need TWO minimum wage fulltime jobs just to pay the rent]. health care was a lot cheaper back then, also. if you were the wrong color or gender or lifestyle, life could be tough back then, also- not a lot of understanding people around [again, outside the major cities]. if i had my way i'd go back to the 90s, which was probably the high point of this country.

This sure brings back a lot of memories.

We just had the three commercial networks. The tv stations were 100 miles away so our signal was pathetic.



I still remember my first stereo. It was not much as a stereo, but the sound quality was far greater than anything I had before.



I used to wonder what FM was. There were no FM stations around here. For that matter, we only had one nearby radio station at all and it was AM.



I detest the sound at modern movie theaters. It is so loud that they would almost have to pay me to go to the movies. That's part of why I've only been to the movies something like five times in the last twenty five years and have no plans to go again.



As I recollect, the draft lottery was only for a few years. Most of the 60s had no draft lottery, just the draft. I don't think there was a draft lottery in the 50s.

There were some exciting things in the 60s. The space program really got my imagination going.

I still miss the hippies of the 60s and early 70s. They certainly made life more interesting. I almost felt like I was on Mars when I went to a week long symposium one summer at The University of Texas in Austin in 1971.

As far as music, my preferences in popular music is greatest in the 40s, 50s, 60s, and 70s, but the 60s was the best decade of any of those. It was an exciting period to grow up.

Well, thanks for reminding me of all that. I surely had the knowledge, from a lot of sources including fictions, about all those horrible things of old times. Now I guess I do live in the best time ever. But I still insist music then was far better than the rubbish music of today (which is just irritating noise).

When I was a kid I was obssessed with the past, especially the clothes. Almost any era in history would do. I even used to listen to the oldies station on the radio and turn the color off on my TV so I could pretend it was the '50s sometimes. I used to try to get all the other kids in my neighborhood to play history with me, but they mostly wanted to play kickball or ride around on their bikes.

Now I have to live in the present because I've trained myself to live among NTs and I'm married and have a job and the world knows me as NT. I'm getting sad. I have to go now.

The 60's would be my choice. All the major innovations in music took place, the rise of the self contained band thanks to The Beatles. You had Motown turning out hit after hit and creating superstars like Diana Ross and Marvin Gaye. The Whole British Invasion thing, plus radio didn't seem as compartmentalized as in later years. You could hear Sly & The Family Stone right next to The Beach Boys right next to Nancy Sinatra. A true mixed bag of music, which is how I listen to it anyway. Yeah and the clothes were cool too from the mod look, the beats wearing turtle necks and jeans all the way to some of the wild hippie gear. Very exciting time culturally, artistically and of course a volatile political time indeed. I just wouldn't have dug having those dogs and fire hoses turned on me. That would have sucked big time. Other than that...

I totally feel you on this. You can still do it though. Watch an old movie and then replicate the outfit and wear it out sometime. You can have black and white pictures of yourself taken wearing the outfit and frame it. Or you could just wear it around the house listening to music from the era or movies. The possibilities are endless. Also maybe start an era themed club. Just a thought.

Color TV may have been new in the sixties, but color photographs were as common as today.

i wish i could have been born 2 or 300 hundred years later, frankly.

Freeze me and wake me up whenever they've cured cancer, AIDS, resolved social inequity, racism and religious bigotry and invented the warp drive, holodecks and convincing cyborg women.

YES.

I love media from the past, especially from when I was a kid (late 80s to early 2000s). The world was more exciting and intense back then, and at the time, I displayed some pretty obvious ASD symptomology, so this may have impacted the way I perceived the world. I also find stuff from the 70s/early 80s pretty exciting for some reason, which doesn't make sense as I wasn't even alive for most of it. Now that I no longer perceive the world in the same way I did back then, I have been addicted to getting this feeling back, which is why I consider myself *very* nostalgic.

It's one of the reasons I enjoy a certain drug: it seems to activate my episodic memory at times. While on it, I'll often think about toys I played with, things I focused on, events, places and situations I was in when I was a younger. Watching and listening to older media in this state is quite a trip.

[Color TV may have been new in the sixties, but color photographs were as common as today.[/quote]

True color photos have been around for some time especially since the 60's, but Mindsigh was refer to the 40s and 50s when black and white pictures were more the norm. That's what I was referring to. Plus black and white photography lends itself to a more timeless look in any era.[youtube]http://[/youtube]