Those were simpler, perhaps even nobler, times. Sometimes, I wish I could go back there myself.
have you never read Dickens? or had a storm or electic failure leave you with out power for a day or two? or worse yet, not have running (CLEAN) water available to you for 48 hours?
there are plenty of things wrong with society today... but i don't think times past were kinder, gentler or nobler.. they were harsher, more brutal, and lives were shorter.
i know for myself, my family lived in relative luxury. (in dublin 150 years ago) which is why i am alive today.. they escaped the worst of the potato famine because they were employed (as stock men and house servants to rich english)
they were smart--my g.grandfather was a stock broker in the days when that meant he bought and sold stock, (ie, cattle, sheep,horses!) he wasn't independant, but smart enough to get work for an english/company family, and he travelled to the continent, and lived well.--his father was also a stock broker, but only in ireland..
of course living well at the time meant very little, (even the british crown wasn't exempt from the ravages of cholara,) and as house servants, the distaff side had it better than the bulk of the irish populace, but still, as a family, they were bared from owning property in their own right,(men and women both) and could look forward to short, sickly lives (my grandfather died from complications of TB-in the relitively easier times of the second half of the last century.)
and my children can also look to their fathers side and not find lives much easier or nobler
one of their paternal g.grandparents was 'left behind'(she was sick with measles) when the family emigrated west on the oregon trail (before civil war). she was supposed to follow her family, and travel with the next west bound wagon train, but the civil war interupted.. after the war, her 'step parents' alleged they had lost track of the family, and there was no one to send her too.
she was kept on, in virtual sevitude till she was 21 and married. years later when her step parents died, she found a stack of letters from her family in Oregon, begging for her to be sent west.. but many years had past, and she though her parent would likely be dead as well.. she tried, but had no success in finding any siblings.
an other paternal g.grandparent was born to a civil war veterian-one who survived Andersonville prision, (but lost a leg) --obviously these people were grand scale survivors.. times were hard, life was tough...and i for one, am please to have running water, and good lighting, and personal liberty, and all the other perqs of modern day life!
i don't think the southern inflicted any 'special' treatment on the union soldiers at andersonville, the south was suffering, and many were starving.. but there is nothing noble out what happened there!
(you could be one of those people (i think not) who believe they are reincarnated.. have you ever noticed, all those that do, were always a lord or lady, or king or queen in their past lives? i suspect if i had a past life, i would have been a barefoot, illiterate milk maid, who died young and foolishly)
