When My Modern Life And History Collide

the 18th century and the 21st century are constantly colliding they're clashing they're grinding against each other i am a 21st century man i live with all the conveniences of the 21st century indoor plumbing that is amazing i have a house that is automatically kept at a particular temperature whether it's hot or cold that's unthinkable i have electricity it does amazing things i plug into the wall and and do all sorts of things with it computers i get i don't even know how to describe them digital cameras cell phones uh you know internal combustion engines i have a car i can go out i can turn the key and go anywhere i want modern banking again conveniences that uh we take for granted every day we live in a world with uh advances that are just impossible to believe even 50 years ago 100 years ago it is truly amazing and yet i've chosen to constantly study the 18th century even sort of imbibe it more than more than just study it in a book but you know we try to live little bits of the 18th century and these two things they clash they are so dissimilar why would we study the 18th century isn't it interesting that we live with these great modern conveniences that kings and and and mighty rulers of the past would have wished they would have had the things that we have today just modern everyday people anybody on the street and yet we yearn for something different we know nobody says today 2021 status quo yeah i think it's really really good let's just keep it exactly the way it is right nobody nobody thinks that right now is good so what's broken if we have all these amazing wonderful physical things that we enjoy what is broken well we know that family community um these things are are broken right now what's going on i mean obviously there were broken families in communities in the 18th century but it was nothing like what's going on right now what happens in the 18th century in a house that's as primitive as you could possibly be a house that is not very warm okay it's just plain cold and water comes through the roof what advantages does that have that our modern house doesn't have what is lacking in the modern world what can we go back to that cabin and figure out what went right there and what we lost on the way i think one of the one of the things that's happening that's so different in the 18th century and this cabin is a perfect example and william nolan's bark covered house really kind of if you if you read it and you study it and you understand what's going on there you kind of get an idea uh about what's what's happening the william nolan his family they go out to michigan and they uh they go to a piece of ground there's just a bunch of trees and they build a cabin and they live and they that household that primitive cabin it it was it was more than just a house where they went to sleep right it was it was an economic unit it was a little factory and they all worked together to survive they cooked food they preserved food they made their own sugar you know they went out hunting they did agriculture then there was probably textile manufacturing going on they made their own clothes they made their own furniture they did they created they had to create all the things that they needed and every part of the family was working together to make that happen to make that so that they could survive it was a community effort a family effort our houses aren't like that today we we don't have to make our own clothing we don't even have to make our own food for that matter even prepare it none of these things are happening in a typical household today our households are places where we might go to sleep and we entertain ourselves but it breaks the actual fabric of the family itself when the household isn't a little factory and we read about this over and over again as we look at different diaries and you know journals from the 18th century martha ballard's diary is wonderful and it talks about all the different things she does and they do in the household and matthew patton's diary from that same time period late 18th century early 19th century and he's doing all those things in the home and you know whether it's you know different uh different jobs that are all based around the home or things that are going on you know mere survival things but truly those those families from the 18th century had something that we don't have something that locks everyone together that's what we do here on the channel we study the 18th century looking for those things sometimes we're just dealing with very very material things you know simple things understanding how they how they could live without all the modern conveniences and sometimes we can dig a little bit deeper and and and so we can find truths by just looking at the the the simple details of life i hope you can come along subscribe come along and you know watch what's happening in the 18th century with me because it's there are many things that we can learn from that there are some things we don't want to bring into the 21st century we don't want that from the 18th century right but if we don't know about it then we can't understand it we can't discern it find the good things find the bad things that's what we do here on the channel i hope that you've learned just a little bit about something that we can grab from the 18th century i hope you have a great day and thanks for watching

Channel: Townsends

Views: 154,495

Rating: 4.9604106 out of 5

Keywords: townsends, jas townsend and son, reenacting, history, 18th century, 19th century, jon townsend, 18th century cooking

Id: na_wewqQdSE

Length: 7min 4sec (424 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 26 2021

Reddit Comments

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