Whats your view on 1800s

[Svein8]

[Baruch]

Love the costumes, hate the sexual inhibition and hypocrisy.  Of course without sex in the 1800s I wouldn't exist ;-)

My favorite culture is the Wild West however.  Less costumes, more sex, less hypocrisy.  Nothing more plain and honest than the shootout at the OK corral.

The Fall Of Eagles, BBC drama series about the 70 years leading up to WW I, is a good royal costume drama.

Enjoyed the movie version of Young Victoria.  Still haven't seen all the part of the TV version.  I am rather partial to the English.

[drunkenshoe]

That's a tiny fraction of 1800s. They are not people, it is aristocracy.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

That's a tiny fraction of 1800s. They are not people, it is aristocracy.

The slope is steep. Great Expectations, and most of the Dickens' books, can be horrifying to read, but back in the day he was just reporting conditions as they were.

[Jason Harvestdancer]

The situations at the beginning of the 1800s and the end of the 1800s  were quite different.  At the beginning most of the lower classes were close to starving.  At the end there was a very solid middle class and the beginnings of the luxuries we enjoy today.  Even the poor of 1899 were better off than the poor of 1800.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Even the poor of 1899 were better off than the poor of 1800.

Some of them.

[Baruch]

That's a tiny fraction of 1800s. They are not people, it is aristocracy.

Guess you are a fan of Dickens then ;-)  Of the poor, by the sick, for the dying ;-))

[Baruch]

The situations at the beginning of the 1800s and the end of the 1800s  were quite different.  At the beginning most of the lower classes were close to starving.  At the end there was a very solid middle class and the beginnings of the luxuries we enjoy today.  Even the poor of 1899 were better off than the poor of 1800.

Disruption of the Napoleonic wars, vs the long peace and the industrial Revolution.  "Horrible" - Karl Marx probably

[Baruch]

Some of them.

My ancestors who got the Hell out of Europe/Britain/Ireland in the 19th century and came to America, were better off.  They avoided WWI, WWII, Warsaw Pact and the ... shudder, EU.  Europeans .. the White Disease ;-)

[drunkenshoe]

The slope is steep. Great Expectations, and most of the Dickens' books, can be horrifying to read, but back in the day he was just reporting conditions as they were.

It is horrifying. I think, because as a period it is in the limits of the undstrial revolution(s), when most people look at those paintings, they don't realise that everything in those paintings is hand made by countless people who lived in horrible conditions, virtually with no rights, spent their lives serving/living for a handful of people. Their most valuable currency is loyalty, and pleasing the self-entitled scum.

Most people love those paintings and period movies only for that specific visual trait. I guess they think they are pretty, exotic? I used to tell students to watch the movie Vatel -I think the most suitable one in this context, regardless of the period it takes on- and keep it in mind that it is not just food and party tricks for a king's weekend to gain benefits and rights, but every fucking piece of material they see in those 'scenes' represents some sort of slavery, oppression from the smallest landlord and landlady to the top; and all that really ended just a little while back around the corner. The bourgeois wasn't different a bit either.

[Shiranu]

The situations at the beginning of the 1800s and the end of the 1800s  were quite different.  At the beginning most of the lower classes were close to starving.  At the end there was a very solid middle class and the beginnings of the luxuries we enjoy today.  Even the poor of 1899 were better off than the poor of 1800.

Can't help but find this post ironic since you seem to simp for aristocrats who would return society to the peasant-life of the early 1800s.

[drunkenshoe]

I don't get that post because it sounds like linear thinking in the first place. Ancient Roman 'nobles' and their slaves had better 'luxuries' than European aristocracy more than two thousand years ago. They're the original source of inspiration. What is luxury according to whom?

What does "the poor before this date was better off the poor living in that date" mean? The old system is still intact. What's put on paper doesn't mean shit until the modern state is established; the law, human rights, opportunities; standards make a difference which are a mess today in most places.

So, under those circumstances, how is that one small class enjoying luxuries as opposed to the poor majority is progress? It's just creating another level of aristocracy. Let's say you can eat regularly, you have shelter but something happened to you and the event involves a 'middle class' perpetrator. What's your place and odds against him/her in court? Who are you in the society as a working, even educated white man? Others don't even count.

Middle class is a problematic term. The 'middle class' in 19th century -or even in the first half of the 20th- doesn't have much common with what we call 'middle class' after the WWII, let alone what we have today. I wish you could go back in time to 19th century and call them 'middle class' to their face.

[SGOS]

My view is horrifying.  We were slave owners, and when we got done with that, we went to war with each other in what has been one of our bloodiest conflicts, and after that, we sent the Army to the west to eradicate the indigenous peoples in a bloody extermination that made the later Nazis seem like humanitarians. 

But what is the most horrifying at my age, is realizing it was practically yesterday.  I was born in 1943 and my birth was only 70 years later than the worst of the atrocities of the 1800s, and when I was born, the Nazis had already incinerated Jews and protestors by the millions.  But the 1800s seemed like a bygone era when I was 10, even though most television shows were still exulting cowboys with kerosene lamps.  And today I'm farther from my birth that my birth was from General Custer's death by the Indians at the Little Big Horn River.  And it got bloodier still after that.  So today I realize we are better, but not enough time has passed that I know what is now is going to continue.  We may just be living in a sweet spot that isn't going to last.  That's scary.  But how can that be?  We have malls, and we go shopping, and Amazon sends us things we get with a credit card payment.

[aitm]

Pretty much that all the horrible shit humans did to each other “over there” we continued doing “over here”. But with more pride.

[Baruch]

Can't help but find this post ironic since you seem to simp for aristocrats who would return society to the peasant-life of the early 1800s.

You are a peasant now.  Slave of Klaus Schwab etc.  MSM keeps you in the dark, and ignorance is bliss.