BLACKlittleTHORN

A long time ago

Tuesday, August 2, 2011 5:49:53 PM

It's difficult to imagine that Paris was like this over 100 years ago! Although we all know that things change, when you actually see the proof, it's kind of strange! What I find even stranger is to watch documentaries of young people going to war, World War I, happy, getting on trains laughing, hopeful that the war they are about to fight will undoubtedly last a few weeks at the most....not over 4 years in trenches, knee-deep in mud, shit and crawling with rats. To think that EVERY SINGLE one of them is now dead and have been for a very long time....I always get struck by this. All these smiling faces on photographs...in the old movies the limbs moving, the lungs breathing, the hearts beating... Anyway, here is an interesting link on Paris as it was in the early 20th century: well before our time.

Teenage mistakes?Animal paper sculptures

Comments

Aidialigan0510 # Tuesday, August 2, 2011 11:44:53 PM

Time pass so quick.

BLACKlittleTHORN # Wednesday, August 3, 2011 5:18:13 PM

Yes it was: and it seems that events went faster than during the previous centuries, or perhaps it's with the sheer intensity of said events! All these wars that changed the world... Am I wrong in thinking that we are "lucky" to be living now for the future appears to me to be so uncertain, bleak and excessive? People self obsessed, surrounded with a multitude of gadgets slowly replacing their brains and in constant competition for hypothetical nirvana?

Phantas31 (Richard)Phantas31 # Thursday, August 4, 2011 1:50:43 PM

as I'm a 30 year old (just turned 32) I feel I am of a generation in between - some of us embrace the "electronical age" with everything it has to offer...others like myself are wary of all this electronical stuff taking over everyday things.
Shops are closing/shutting down because of competition with online shops, banking is almost 90% online as well (scary thought), and although the electronical age brings us a lot of good things, it has some nasty, probably lasting side effects.
Amongst what I just mentioned, also the individuality of people increases whilst they "create" more online friends.

Examples of this can be seen in films like Pulse, The Signal and even 28 days...oh and Children of men is a good example as well. Most of them basically horror movies, but they scetch scenarios that cóuld happen.

The outlook of the future looks bleak, and we are now even more aware of this due to the media and internet. So in that light, the boys who went to war smiling were better off I think

BLACKlittleTHORN # Thursday, August 4, 2011 7:03:56 PM

Yes Richard, you are probably right in saying that they were better off...And indeed this generation had probably a better outlook than us, untarnished hopes...I don't know, things were undoubtedly far from perfect for the majority of people but it seems that their expectations were more down to earth, healthier and simpler in a way... I don't think I am managing to get my point across very clearly

You were talking about shops closing down and internet banking: actually it is partly true (for the shops, it is very true and the saddest is that every town centre in France (although I guess it is probably the same where you are) you find exactly the same shops!!!!! selling exactly the same stuff so that people can clone each other from one end of the country to the other

) I used to live in a town that over the years lost its shops apart from the bakery (so sacred in France!) and every single one of them were replaced by in order (by number): banks with machines, real estate agencies, hairdressers and chinese take away or kebabs!

badkitty1967 # Friday, August 5, 2011 1:32:58 AM

Richard, we have a saying "ignorance is bliss". If those kids had known what they were in for they wouldn't have been smiling. I think the 21st century is going to be replete with wars over deminishing resources. Oil, ores, arable land, even potable water are issues that are already taking shape.

Phantas31 (Richard)Phantas31 # Friday, August 5, 2011 8:20:45 AM

Badkitty, quite right - and I fully understand the implications of that time, and that it wasn't all good and such. But I meant it naturally in context

BlacklittleTHORN - so true! At this point in time shops that leave or move or become smaller...the space they leave doesn't get filled up as fast as it used to. What we get in return is phonehouses, nailstudios or what have you not!
And the same shops....yes, too true!!