loquitur

I was reading this blog post and thought it might be fun to see what people here would say about it:What do you think? How well would any of us do in a world with no technology and a society centered on the local church? Some of the comments to the post are very interesting, BTW.

Tully Mars

Personally I think we'd all be fucked. Might do alright until contact with people is made. Once that happens I'm guessing we'd all be burned at the stake as witches. Just a guess though.

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Vice President Starkizzer Fan Club

People are always bitching about getting what they deserve... I think if they did they'd be greatly disappointed. Me

smoore

Be a mute.

Strip naked.

Keep your knife.

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smoore

Tully Mars

A naked witch! Burn (her/him)!!!

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Vice President Starkizzer Fan Club

People are always bitching about getting what they deserve... I think if they did they'd be greatly disappointed. Me

Willravel

I'd like to be in the UK, that way I at least have a shot at understanding people. Then I'd commit the most incredible acts of plagiarism and copyright infringement ever. I'd invent everything and become a multimillionaire, then I'd ruin history.

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ɯǝɥʇ ǝʌlos uɐɔ ǝʍ ʇɐɥʇ ǝɔuɐɹouƃı ɥƃnoɹɥʇ ʇou sı ʇı 'sɯǝlqoɹd ǝʇɐǝɹɔ uɐɔ ǝƃpǝlʍouʞ ɟı

Tully Mars

Yeah could always go the other way for you.

From Monty Python and the Holy Grail:

Who's that then?

I dunno, must be a king.

Why?

He hasn't got shit all over him

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Vice President Starkizzer Fan Club

People are always bitching about getting what they deserve... I think if they did they'd be greatly disappointed. Me

onesnowyowl

I've read the SAS Survival Handbook by Lofty Wiseman, and am working on learning to identify plants for foraging purposes. Personally, I think that knowledge would come in handy were I transported 1000 years into the past. I've also read Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series, and so I have an inkling of what it would be like to transported to an entirely different time.

One thing I would think would shock me would be the hygiene.

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If I am not better, at least I am different. --Jean-Jacques Rousseau

RetroGunslinger

I'm with Will. I'd totally have to just invent everything and then sit back and let the smelly, hairy babes grace me... hell, maybe I'd even invent my own religion just for shits and giggles.

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To summarize:

It's a rare pleasure in this world to get your mind fucked. Usually it's just foreplay.

The best porn is gun porn.

It's only rape if the bitch lives.

Suffer For Your Art

Baraka_Guru

You do realize that you'd be burnt at the stake with Will, right? Spouting all those crazy ideas? Seriously.

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"The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. [...] In our age there is no such thing as 'keeping out of politics.' All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred, and schizophrenia. When the general atmosphere is bad, language must suffer."

—"Politics and the English Language," George Orwell

"Humankind cannot bear very much reality."

—"Burnt Norton," Four Quartets, T. S. Eliot

RetroGunslinger

I'm sure I could figure something out... I mean come on, there's a chance I'd be worshipped as a god... a little bit of chance... really...

__________________
To summarize:

It's a rare pleasure in this world to get your mind fucked. Usually it's just foreplay.

The best porn is gun porn.

It's only rape if the bitch lives.

Suffer For Your Art

Baraka_Guru

Um, no. I'm pretty sure the dumbest thing you could do is start talking about or inventing little things that were far beyond the imagination of the culture. They'd think you were either possessed or a messenger of God.

You could roll the dice, but I don't think that would be good from a survival perspective. Have you heard of the term "Instrument of the Devil"?

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"The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. [...] In our age there is no such thing as 'keeping out of politics.' All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred, and schizophrenia. When the general atmosphere is bad, language must suffer."

—"Politics and the English Language," George Orwell

"Humankind cannot bear very much reality."

—"Burnt Norton," Four Quartets, T. S. Eliot

RetroGunslinger

Oh fine, spoil my fun...

I think if this ever happened, I would try to blend in and simply use my superior to knowledge to try and duck out of bad situations. There, that's my boring answer, as opposed to my fun one.

__________________
To summarize:

It's a rare pleasure in this world to get your mind fucked. Usually it's just foreplay.

The best porn is gun porn.

It's only rape if the bitch lives.

Suffer For Your Art

loquitur

heh. You'd need to feed yourself, clothe yourself, communicate with other people and find a place to stay. How easily do you think you could do that before you had a chance to invent and write? and in a largely illiterate non-technological society, that sort of stuff would be useless to you without a patron, which means you'd need to get in to see the local lord somehow, and convince him to take you under his wing.

Bottom line: I don't think any of us would do too well.

Baraka_Guru

Yeah, especially considering that even as late as the Middle Ages, peasants between local districts couldn't understand one another for local dialects.

Just one of the many ways lord held onto their power.

How would a modern English-speaker fare? Um, you'd be mistaken for a foreigner. The English might think you were French and vice versa. Depending on the year you land on, this could be either bad or catastrophic.

__________________
"The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. [...] In our age there is no such thing as 'keeping out of politics.' All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred, and schizophrenia. When the general atmosphere is bad, language must suffer."

—"Politics and the English Language," George Orwell

"Humankind cannot bear very much reality."

—"Burnt Norton," Four Quartets, T. S. Eliot

Tully Mars

Lets assume you arrive, unlike the "Terminator," with your clothes. At best you're going to stand out. At worst it's going to be seen as evil and the results likely not good. Even if you got a pass on your clothes, language would be nearly impossible. Within a day you'd need clean water and within a few days food would be an issue. I think your days would be filled with feeding yourself and keeping yourself hydrated.

But for the fun of it what would be your first "invention?"

Myself, if I were in a village of some sort, I think I'd be working on some sort of "sanitation system." A septic tank is a really simply concept.

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Vice President Starkizzer Fan Club

People are always bitching about getting what they deserve... I think if they did they'd be greatly disappointed. Me

Willravel

Nopers. I'm a psychologist that comes from a family of fundamentalists. If anything, I could probably be pope.

Step 1: Become a doctor
Step 2: Cure basically everything by adopting the use of basic medicine
Step 3: Use riches to buy baron status
Step 4: Use modern economics and agriculture, develop the most wealthy surfs
Step 5: Become a member of the king's court
Step 6: Design policy
Step 7: Marry the king's daughter
Step 8: Teach the king's daughter about bathing (actually, reverse those)
Step 9: Become king
Step 10: Kick it

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ɯǝɥʇ ǝʌlos uɐɔ ǝʍ ʇɐɥʇ ǝɔuɐɹouƃı ɥƃnoɹɥʇ ʇou sı ʇı 'sɯǝlqoɹd ǝʇɐǝɹɔ uɐɔ ǝƃpǝlʍouʞ ɟı

RetroGunslinger

And the language barrier?

__________________
To summarize:

It's a rare pleasure in this world to get your mind fucked. Usually it's just foreplay.

The best porn is gun porn.

It's only rape if the bitch lives.

Suffer For Your Art

smoore

Not to stereotype, but Occam's razor really doesn't get much play here on TFP, does it? People here try to find the most complex solutions to the simplest problems.

I'm standing by my original reply. Oh yeah, keep your modern knife hidden from the locals.

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smoore

Tully Mars

I gotta ask...

Since you're going to be nakid... where planing on hiding the knife?

__________________
Vice President Starkizzer Fan Club

People are always bitching about getting what they deserve... I think if they did they'd be greatly disappointed. Me

Martian

Really Tully, do you have to ask? That's information I could do without, myself.

__________________
Some will win, some will lose
Some were born to sing the blues
Oh, the movie never ends
It goes on and on and on and on

- Journey, Don't Stop Believein'

smoore

That was my big problem too.

Hang onto your clothing until you find other people and stash everything together or if you're surrounded by natives then strip quick and hide the knife in the piles of filth around the town. Get native garb and return to your trusty blade.

A pair of Redwing boots would go far in 1008 if you had to flee on foot.

edit: of course, at 6'0", 190lbs I'd stick out like a sore thumb no matter what.

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smoore

levite

Learning a classical language before you went time-travelling would probably help. I have, because I am endlessly geeky, often fantasized about what would happen should I somehow end up 1000 years ago. It made me feel better once I mastered Hebrew and learned Latin, Middle English, Saxon, and picked up a little Greek and a little Old French. If I ended up back there, I could always pass myself off as a scholar. I also learned how to fight with a broadsword-- it's not the commonest hobby, I know, but it is fun-- and that might help, too. Plus, I can shoot (archery), though I'm not the greatest.

Will's ideas are actually not bad at all. People back then actually did not go around constantly burning everyone who spouted weird stuff, if for no other reason than they generally were too busy trying to survive. Mastering some basic herbology, pharmacology, and field medicine before one went jaunting back in time would probably be the best course of action: successful healers wrote their own tickets back then, and lords were willing to pay well for their services. Whether one could end up getting rich enough to marry royalty...that might be a different matter. But one could end up getting rich enough to live fairly well. Maybe even purchasing a title and lands. Also, if one were perhaps slightly more flexible in one's ethics, a little basic knowledge of chemistry, physics, and weapons design could earn one an excellent living as a provider of military technology to a lord or king.

Without pre-existing language skills, and some helpful knowledge with which to make a living, if you got tossed back 1000 years, it would be mighty difficult to survive long enough to learn the languages and figure out a trade.

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"How wrong Emily Dickinson was! Hope is not the thing with feathers. The thing with feathers has turned out to be my nephew. I must take him to a specialist in Zurich."

Woody Allen

highthief

I'd be hoping I remember my high school Latin and the formulas for making penicillin and gunpowder. Otherwise, I think I might be in trouble. Neither modern English or French would be a lot of help 1000 years ago, English didn't really sound like English until almost Shakespeare's time.

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Si vis pacem parabellum.

Tully Mars

I think that whole "get native garb" might not be that simple. Once you strip, even if you start whistling "It's raining men", it's going to be a problem.

I'm a big fan of Occam's razor but I think once you're nude the logic of Occam switches to the the locals. Simplest solution for them is to do away with you and go back to their lives.


I give you the most likely to succeed award. Knowledge of the lingo will take you far, I'm learning this the hard way right now. Might want to bone up on history as well. Wouldn't want to show in 1080 and start speaking Old French or French-Norman while in Britannia. The Normans weren't real popular there for a few hundred years starting around that time.

I think you'd do better if you were dropped in a large city such as London. Easier to blend in, esp if you were able to communicate.

Also might want to bone up on historical medical condition and illnesses. You're likely going to be carrying germs they can't fight off and they're going to be doing the same.

__________________
Vice President Starkizzer Fan Club

People are always bitching about getting what they deserve... I think if they did they'd be greatly disappointed. Me

Baraka_Guru