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.
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:
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.
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.
good to hear from all the first hand experiences
as king you wouldn’t deal with the leg work so i guess temperatures is less of a big deal than I think.
It’s not even that much work, to be honest.
I wouldn’t run 6 fireplaces at once, maybe two or three at most, and aside from chopping and carrying the wood inside, there’s not that much work in it. Just set a few pieces nicely with a piece of paper (think jenga style more than a cartoon bonfire), se it alight. Let it breathe for a while, get a good flame, then fill 'er up once it’s going nicely. I mean, depending on how hot you want the room. I’d never actually shove them full, about halfway at most maybe. Then let it burn. Then fill it up a second and maybe third time in the winter, then just let it cool while stoking the coals.
It really doesn’t feel like work.
And now I’m nostalgic.
But yeah temperature would be the least of your worries as king imo. Perhaps not the least, but a small one anyway.
People don’t even need AC on the latitude I live in.
It’s basically two winters and August.
Literally for most of the year I wear the same amount of outdoor clothing, which is a lot.
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.
You could just invent bureaucracy lol, or do we get brain wiped in this hypothetical?
Breaucracy is worse.
If you’re the emperor, don’t let them ruin your groove.
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.
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.
Live now. Because 500 years ago I would have died as a child from pneumonia that was easily treated these days
100% now, I’m an average person and so many average people I know live a far better life than most kings 500 years ago.
they can travel around the globe at whim, enjoy different cultures, learn just about any subject without restriction and don’t have any responsibilities they don’t choose to carry.
Monarchs 500 years ago could also travel at whim, enjoy different cultures, and learn about any subject available to them without restriction. And the great thing about a divine mandate is that monarchs didn’t have to do a single damn thing they didn’t want to and could still keep their power.
monarchs were limited by duties, responsibilities and mandates to such an extent they could not travel at whim.
those that did travel had to trade months of their life prone in a gilded cage of a carriage or ship to travel a distance i, an averageman, can reach in hours at an insignificant fraction of the cost and risk.
monarchs similarly could not learn about most subjects and cultures because the knowledge and expertise was simply unavailable. information traveled at the pace of “we can learn about that when we can gather resources to launch a 5-year expedition and perhaps return with the answer eventually but maybe not”.
now, all available human knowledge is floating in the aether, constantly updating and instantly available at our fingertips.
divine mandates come with an unrelenting burden of responsibilities.
historically, those who shirked their responsibilities were likely to be dethroned or decapitated.
also, new reason: bidets.
life now is miraculous compared to the dreams of an aged king.
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.
I’d like to believe that I have it in me to be a benevolent monarch, but I know myself well enough to tell that I am entirely too human for that.
I’d rather not see how rotten I could get with power unbound, and my current conscience wouldn’t let me impose that on whoever I’d be ruling over, so modern-day-meh life it is.
Yeah, bang 16 years olds until someone stabs you in the throat because you forgot to do the same to them last week. Nah :/
Live average today for sure. If I was a monarch I’d probably be responsible for the deaths of lots of people both intentionally and unintentionally. There’s a big chance I’d have to go to war too and that’s like not really my vibe.
I‘d actally choose the monarch 500yrs ago.
Not because it is a better life. Probably I‘d de better off as the average person I am now. But it is absolutely exiting to get to explore and get to know the world. Everything is in a flow, the world is both changing and stable at the same time.
And i wouldn‘t see our world and climate die, i would see it blossom, awaken.
You’d trip in some mud and die of a million bacterial infections like 3 weeks in.
I was just listening to Behind the Bastards on King Louie XIV and his building of Versailles and how he forced all the aristrocrats to live there 24/7. You might not be able to reach your goal of exploring and knowing the world depending on where you end up.
I see everyone worried about hygiene in European countries. So I would ho with a monarch in an Islamic region because of higher standard in hygiene. Muslims clean themselves Fromm 1 to 5 times a day. Take full baths after having sex. They also avoid eating dirty foods or animals that could cause disease like pigs. They also had a somewhat better medicine and medical practice.
At the time some of the monarch had a good time, and some of them lived in a constant state of unrest.
So if I had to respawn my same territory it would be great. I would have some occasional attempted assaniation or coup but its just a but more than what we see today. But having my own guard and stuff would make me feel less worried. Even if I endup getting assassinated I would have lived a better life than today maybe.
For sure we have many technologically induced freedoms like travel and telecommunications but I don’t have the means to travel. But as a monarch, while it would take me longer than today, I would still manage to travel as I want. In fact Arabs are known to be biggest travelers.
I would not mind being a Mughal emperor.
