AndiTheBarvarian
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Bavarianbarbarian - Semper Semprini
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Post by AndiTheBarvarian on Mar 3, 2019 23:14:59 GMT
Yup, vikings were well known as slave holders, and not all slaves were volunteers! But I guess they dreamed of having a sword. (both)
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Post by Gunnar Wolfgard on Mar 4, 2019 14:02:51 GMT
For me it's because it was the primary weapon in the period I wish I had lived in. We have given up so much of our freedoms today for ease and comfort. Granted I would have to give up my 100 HP Motorcycle for a 1 HP horse but that's the only thing I would miss. My sister once said I'm the only person she knows who turned the inside of a log home into a castle. My interest in swords goes way back. I hate to break it to ya man, but most people living several hundred years ago were not remotely free. They probably lived under feudalism and had FAR less rights than we enjoyed today. Also they could just die randomly from diseases we've completely dealt with in modern day. Heck my appendix burst when I was ten years old. If that had happened in 1200 ad, I'd be super duper dead. It's not like people back then got to wear a sword and swagger from town to town and battle to battle doing whatever they please. Thats just kinda a modern romantization of the past. Well elbrittania that depends on your definition of freedom. No one stopped Eric The Red from sailing off and settling Greenland or his son Leif from sailing off to North America. They didn't have anyone tell them the government owns that land so you can't build your homes there. They didn't have to apply for permits or was required to have certain safety equipment on board. Their ships didn't have to be registered and insured. They wasn't told they couldn't bring their children along because it was to dangerous. They didn't have to fill out any kind of paperwork and wait for permission before they sail off. Even when America was settled pioneers could freely travel out west and homestead any land that was available. If you needed to put food on the table you grew it or hunted for it. You didn't have to buy a permit and wait for hunting season and have a limit to what you took. Now we have to buy our food not knowing what's in it or where it came from. Now we have to buy a home and pay taxes on it. We have to ask permission if we want to make improvement on our home and have our taxes go up after the improvements are made. We have to hire a lawyer to buy or sell that home. I had to pay a lawyer $250 to just say sign here and here. I said to him, you mean here where it says signature with an X ? We have satellites in the sky that can watch you even in your own back yard. People flying drones over you. Surveillance cameras watching you where ever you go. GPS's in your car and cellphones keeping track of your every move. By the way, I do not own a cellphone. I just read where the government is looking to put restrictions on people who retire, sell their homes and live in motorhomes traveling the country. A lot harder to keep track of you if you're on the move all the time. Even with the negative parts of living back then I would go back in a heartbeat. I'm no stranger to the hardships of being in the wilderness, spend a good amount of time there. You invent a time machine I'm gone.
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Post by elbrittania39 on Mar 4, 2019 16:13:53 GMT
I hate to break it to ya man, but most people living several hundred years ago were not remotely free. They probably lived under feudalism and had FAR less rights than we enjoyed today. Also they could just die randomly from diseases we've completely dealt with in modern day. Heck my appendix burst when I was ten years old. If that had happened in 1200 ad, I'd be super duper dead. It's not like people back then got to wear a sword and swagger from town to town and battle to battle doing whatever they please. Thats just kinda a modern romantization of the past. Well elbrittania that depends on your definition of freedom. No one stopped Eric The Red from sailing off and settling Greenland or his son Leif from sailing off to North America. They didn't have anyone tell them the government owns that land so you can't build your homes there. They didn't have to apply for permits or was required to have certain safety equipment on board. Their ships didn't have to be registered and insured. They wasn't told they couldn't bring their children along because it was to dangerous. They didn't have to fill out any kind of paperwork and wait for permission before they sail off. Even when America was settled pioneers could freely travel out west and homestead any land that was available. If you needed to put food on the table you grew it or hunted for it. You didn't have to buy a permit and wait for hunting season and have a limit to what you took. Now we have to buy our food not knowing what's in it or where it came from. Now we have to buy a home and pay taxes on it. We have to ask permission if we want to make improvement on our home and have our taxes go up after the improvements are made. We have to hire a lawyer to buy or sell that home. I had to pay a lawyer $250 to just say sign here and here. I said to him, you mean here where it says signature with an X ? We have satellites in the sky that can watch you even in your own back yard. People flying drones over you. Surveillance cameras watching you where ever you go. GPS's in your car and cellphones keeping track of your every move. By the way, I do not own a cellphone. I just read where the government is looking to put restrictions on people who retire, sell their homes and live in motorhomes traveling the country. A lot harder to keep track of you if you're on the move all the time. Even with the negative parts of living back then I would go back in a heartbeat. I'm no stranger to the hardships of being in the wilderness, spend a good amount of time there. You invent a time machine I'm gone. Ho boy, this isnt an easy one to respond to. Your post is basically a collections of individual claims that all need different responses, some of which would need to be pretty researched. I'm gonna do my best to respond to the ones I can, while skipping those I don't feel qualified to answer. (ie, I only know the cliff notes of the travels of Eric the Red). Also keep in mind that my point was that people living in the past were on average less free. I am NOT arguing that you cannot find specific individuals who led abnormally free lives or that things in the past weren't sometimes different to someones benefit. 1. "when America was settled pioneers could freely travel out west and homestead any land that was available" Following the Louisiana purchase and the end of the Civil War, the US Government passed the Homestead Act to encourage people to settle the Western United States. You had to apply for the land, meet certain criteria to get your acres, and meet more criteria to keep them, namely improving the land the Government gave you. There was bureaucracy surrounding this process, and it was more of a Government program that was to the benefit of the State as well as the individual. This was a somewhat necessary policy the government enacted, and was not just an eclectic free for all of people taking whatever land they wanted. The Government did own the land, they just decided it would be a good idea to let people settle some of it for them. 2. "If you needed to put food on the table you grew it or hunted for it. You didn't have to buy a permit and wait for hunting season and have a limit to what you took" This varied massively by region and time period, but in general, this claim is false. You cannot grow food where you please in Medieval Europe. In Medieval Europe, the people who grew the food were peasants, and the people who owned the land lords. The lords granted plots of land for peasants to farm in exchange for their service. They were not free to take what lands they would, plow them at their own leisure, or even allowed to leave when they got bored. Most people didn't own their crops back then so much as their crops owned them. As to hunting, post hunter gatherer society, hunting alone couldn't sustain the large static settlements that developed. While an individual could hunt to sustain themselves, this isn't gonna work beyond a few individuals. Furthermore, you were often not free to hunt as you saw fit. Lots of the hunting grounds were owned by the local lords and poaching (illegal hunting) was forbidden. That deer you saw outside your house was not just some wild animal, but your lords property. 3. "Now we have to buy our food not knowing what's in it or where it came from." I don't see what knowing whats in your food has to do with freedoms. Regardless, NOBODY knew what was in food back then because they didn't have the science to tell them what was in it beyond basic ingredients. Nowadays, if you go buy some Oreos, you can flip over the package and get a full FDA mandated list of ingredients and nutrition facts allowing you as the consumer to make informed decisions about what goes into your body. If you purchased a bowl of stew in 1200 AD and asked what was in it, the inkeep would probably give you a blank stare and say "stew?" 4. "Now we have to buy a home and pay taxes on it" No. You are perfectly allowed to not own a home if you don't want to. You can live in a mobile home or float between air BnBs, or lead any other amount of perfectly legal non sedentary lives. Also, every true government in history had taxes. The idea that paying taxes is a modern thing is categorically and unequivocally false. Unless you are looking at a culture whos government didnt go beyond a tribal council, then they absolutely paid taxes with strict penalties if they refused. 5. "We have to ask permission if we want to make improvement on our home and have our taxes go up after the improvements are made" Ya got me there. I'm not gonna defend home owners associations for a second although do bear in mind that regular joe schmoes like you and me owning their own property and not just living on land granted to us by our liege lords is a pretty new thing. 6. "Even with the negative parts of living back then I would go back in a heartbeat. I'm no stranger to the hardships of being in the wilderness, spend a good amount of time there. You invent a time machine I'm gone." I do not doubt your sincerity. I only think that your idea of what it meant for the average person to live in the past is out of step with the kinds of lives most of those people actually did lead.
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Zen_Hydra
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Born with a heart full of neutrality
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Post by Zen_Hydra on Mar 4, 2019 17:27:56 GMT
I hate it when people romanticize the past. Such notions almost always come from a place of ignorance (unwilling, or otherwise). Life was almost universally nasty, brutish, and short. There were always exception, but no one could count on being an exception.
In the premodern era, even the most enlightened of physicians were lucky to not make a medical situation worse by intervention. Most children didn't survive to adulthood. Most women didn't survive to old age (often due to complications of child birth).
Everyone's diets were terrible, even (perhaps especially) the aristocracy (who historically ate mostly meat washed down with copious amounts of wine and beer).
There have been taxes and legal obligations for the totality of history (and almost certainly predating history). Those taxes and legal limitations were almost universally less fair than they are nowadays. Civil rights and freedom of religion were a long, hard-fought road to our still inadequate modern reckoning of such.
A middle class American or European citizen today has more choice, luxury, and health than most kings throughout history. No Caesar had access to medicines remotely comparable to even the over-the-counter options we have today (let alone prescription medications and inoculations). No pharaoh had the variety of spices and produce we can find at our local green grocer (and nowadays many fruits and vegetables are available year-round!).
I could go one for pages listing how much better most modern people's lives are compared to just about any time in the past, but most of the arguments pining for a bygone age aren't rooted in logic, or reason. They are almost always a fantastic version of a time and situation which never existed outside of fiction, and driven by emotional longing. Given an option, almost any sane person from the past would choose to live in our modern time.
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Post by elbrittania39 on Mar 4, 2019 17:37:02 GMT
I hate it when people romanticize the past. Such notions almost always come from a place of ignorance (unwilling, or otherwise). Life was almost universally nasty, brutish, and short. There were always exception, but no one could count on being an exception. In the premodern era, even the most enlightened of physicians were lucky to not make a medical situation worse by intervention. Most children didn't survive to adulthood. Most women didn't survive to old age (often due to complications of child birth). Everyone's diets were terrible, even (perhaps especially) the aristocracy (who historically ate mostly meat washed down with copious amounts of wine and beer). There have been taxes and legal obligations for the totality of history (and almost certainly predating history). Those taxes and legal limitations were almost universally less fair than they are nowadays. Civil rights and freedom of religion were a long, hard-fought road to our still inadequate modern reckoning of such. A middle class American or European citizen today has more choice, luxury, and health than most kings throughout history. No Caesar had access to medicines remotely comparable to even the over-the-counter options we have today (let alone prescription medications and inoculations). No pharaoh had the variety of spices and produce we can find at our local green grocer (and nowadays many fruits and vegetables are available year-round!). I could go one for pages listing how much better most modern people's lives are compared to just about any time in the past, but most of the arguments pining for a bygone age aren't rooted in logic, or reason. They are almost always a fantastic version of a time and situation which never existed outside of fiction, and driven by emotional longing. Given an option, almost any sane person from the past would choose to live in our modern time. "Everyone's diets were terrible, even (perhaps especially) the aristocracy (who historically ate mostly meat washed down with copious amounts of wine and beer)." I agree with all your points except this one. Ribs and beer is clearly the dinner of champions
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Post by Jordan Williams on Mar 4, 2019 17:59:31 GMT
I eat mostly meat washed down with the tears of my girlfriend for cooking such boring meals. The British Royalty ruled over most of the world, so logically I could have ruled over most of the world if I existed in the 19th century! Gunnar Wolfgard you can still get on a boat and sail away today - you even have a better chance of not dying or getting lost vs back then. You can also become a member of the elite by running for a public office - even though you really may not be qualified for it by having been born into an elite societal position, or fighting your way into richness by raiding and stealing from innocent foreigners. You can also be remembered by generations just like your viking Heros, you just have to go and do something memorable. You won't discover any new nations, but I hear there's a small island tribe that doesn't know about steel armor yet near India. I think, Gunnar, that you should indulge your fantasy. Why not go on a camping trip where it's just you and the wilderness? I'm sure you have hunted before, just bring your bare essentials, or what you imagine you would have had if you moved out west or gone sailing in the viking age. Go out far enough into the wood and you might even find a spot to make a primitive cabin.
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Zen_Hydra
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Born with a heart full of neutrality
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Post by Zen_Hydra on Mar 4, 2019 20:06:55 GMT
I hate it when people romanticize the past. Such notions almost always come from a place of ignorance (unwilling, or otherwise). Life was almost universally nasty, brutish, and short. There were always exception, but no one could count on being an exception. In the premodern era, even the most enlightened of physicians were lucky to not make a medical situation worse by intervention. Most children didn't survive to adulthood. Most women didn't survive to old age (often due to complications of child birth). Everyone's diets were terrible, even (perhaps especially) the aristocracy (who historically ate mostly meat washed down with copious amounts of wine and beer). There have been taxes and legal obligations for the totality of history (and almost certainly predating history). Those taxes and legal limitations were almost universally less fair than they are nowadays. Civil rights and freedom of religion were a long, hard-fought road to our still inadequate modern reckoning of such. A middle class American or European citizen today has more choice, luxury, and health than most kings throughout history. No Caesar had access to medicines remotely comparable to even the over-the-counter options we have today (let alone prescription medications and inoculations). No pharaoh had the variety of spices and produce we can find at our local green grocer (and nowadays many fruits and vegetables are available year-round!). I could go one for pages listing how much better most modern people's lives are compared to just about any time in the past, but most of the arguments pining for a bygone age aren't rooted in logic, or reason. They are almost always a fantastic version of a time and situation which never existed outside of fiction, and driven by emotional longing. Given an option, almost any sane person from the past would choose to live in our modern time. "Everyone's diets were terrible, even (perhaps especially) the aristocracy (who historically ate mostly meat washed down with copious amounts of wine and beer)." I agree with all your points except this one. Ribs and beer is clearly the dinner of champions It's not by accident that gout is called the "disease of kings." What's not to love about painful, inflamed joints?
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seth
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Just Peachy
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Post by seth on Mar 4, 2019 20:48:38 GMT
I know the reasons but you probably won't believe. So better not disclose in public. Please feel free to send me a direct message. I'm curious about your thoughts are. Me too! I think the sword has an allure other weapons don't. I have three boys who from an early age have loved playing with swords. Perhaps it's all my influence but my dad didn't collect swords, and I was hammering two pieces of wood together to make swords when I was 6 or 7.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Mar 4, 2019 21:17:21 GMT
Swords are fun
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Post by nddave on Mar 5, 2019 1:17:13 GMT
The 80s.
He-Man and friends (aka other sword themed cartoons), the spike in fantasy movies (aka Willow,Legend), and of course the breakout of videogames and tabletop games like D&D with heavy sword and fantasy themes.
Yea I think many can attribute the modern allure of Swords to the 80s or specifically the time span between the late 70s to mid 2000s with all the focus on neo-historic and fantasy themed films and culture.
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Post by zabazagobo on Mar 5, 2019 20:12:35 GMT
Swords are fun Slight correction: swords are alluring.
Thanks for the laugh, that break from the rather fun historiophilosophical tangent was spontaneously hilarious
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Mar 5, 2019 23:15:19 GMT
Swords are fun Slight correction: swords are alluring.
Thanks for the laugh, that break from the rather fun historiophilosophical tangent was spontaneously hilarious
Fun is what makes them alluring One's lover or lust can be alluring as well but one could expect (or hope) to have some fun.
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