My answer to this. I’m surprised that no one got there first.
Jason Kuznicki
Jason Kuznicki is a research fellow at the Cato Institute and contributor of Cato Unbound. He's on twitter as JasonKuznicki. His interests include political theory and history.
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I’m imagining someone in 2110 being asked this and answering “I’d love to go back to 2006-2010 and witness Barack Obama’s Senate win followed by his Historic Election and then his Historic Presidency!!!”
On one level, yeah, it’s pretty awesome to be here.
On another… I’m pretty sure that anywhere isn’t quite as awesome *IN PRACTICE* as you can make it sound to yourself.Report
The limits of the respondents’ imagination is shocking. Nearly every one of them picked a time period in the 20th century. I mean, Manchester in the early 80s? I love the Cure and Joy Division as much as the next indie nerd, but are you kidding me? If material comfort isn’t an issue, I think you have to go pre-modern.Report
@Will, Ahaha I totally wrote that before I got to page two and saw Todd VanDerWerff’s comment. A man after my own heart.Report
@Will,
Off topic, but I love VanDerWerff’s stuff…and his wife Libby Hill even more so. Their banter on the TV On The Internet podcast is priceless, and I don’t even watch much TV.Report
@Will, yeah, I was kind of expecting a “Nazareth, 27ish-31ish AD” answer but then remembered that I may as well have been projecting.
How about go back and spend some time with Solomon? Or spend some time in the Library of Alexandria (five years wouldn’t be enough but…)? Or watch Augustus do his thing?Report
What struck me after reading that article was this: When given the choice to see and experience any point in the history of civilization, how many people made their decision based on what bands they could see live on the cheap.
I feel like that has to Mean Something About Society, but damned if I can figure out what.Report
Even by the standards of “what bands do you wish you could have seen live?” those answers were all pretty silly. The guy who picked New Orleans, for example, would arrive to late to hear the legendarily unrecorded Buddy Bolden. (I’d be tempted to go for New York in the early ’40s to catch the proto-bebop that the Petrillo Ban kept off of records, but I’d have to make sure I was 4F.)
But as far as Athens goes, my vote would be for sometime during the Peace of Nicias. The party was definitely over by the time the 30 Tyrants came around, and the proper Golden Age of Pericles had that nasty plague to deal with.Report
@Paul B,
I figured that witnessing both the overthrow of the Thirty and the death of Socrates might be worth it, even so.Report
@Jason Kuznicki,
Suit yourself, but I’ll take Euripides, Sophocles, and all Aristophanes alive and writing…
Plus in 415 you get the destruction of the Herms and the Sicilian Expedition. Can’t beat Alcibiades for political intrigue!Report
@Paul B,
Selfishly, I figured I could write philosophy papers for the rest of my this-timeframe life. That would be fun, I think.Report
@Jason Kuznicki,
Well if you were there while Plato was still just a teenage groupie you could beat him to the punch on the whole Socratic-dialogue thing, and then people would end up writing philosophy papers about you…Report
New York City, between October 3, 1951 and October 2, 1954Report
If I’m promised material comfort and safety? Screw the modern era, forget ancient Rome, I wanna see dinosaurs.
And now I’m feeling guilty for not having thought of Jaybird’s suggestion of Nazareth ~30 A.D. first.Report
@Katherine, J.G.Ballard wrote a very amusing short story about the development of time travel leading almost immediately to teams of television crews competing to cover the crucifixion and Battle of Waterloo like sporting events.Report