Tohm's top times to be alive (and powerful)

Hello you, here I am heading into the off season of a quiet season for power equipment due to prolonged drought conditions and stuck spending the same amount of time a day here as the same days when we are at our very busiest.
Yet another institution I'm sorry Peter Lalor that doesn't make sense. But I've been reading and perusing wikipedia it's a wonderful distribution of knowledge, along with blogs which are distributors of knowledge with the taint of stinking opinion.
Anyway since being a little boy I have oft fantasized about periods in time that it would have been better to be born.
Not that it isn't easier to be alive in this day and age, the age of ipod, no other time period yet has had something so magical as being able to have a varied and abundant soundtrack to your life. Amazing.
No doubt Parky would pick sime obscure period in history to be alive where he could debate some highly contentious piece of Polish Legislation however for me...

1. The Rennaissance - The time where man emerged from the dark ages to become more interested in the world around him. An artist or mathematician could earn a living from wealthy sponsors and have their own studios with apprentices and furthermore all food at market was organic.
Of course you don't want to be anywhen without being anywhen the place to be in the renaissance was Italy, or France. There were wars to be had between states. An arms race was in full swing. Trade was up and Christofor Columbo was making a Spanish funded Journey to the New World, in fact there was still world to go discover.
Instead of going to crappy tourist attractions to see what European culture was, it was being defined like never before.
It was an age for dreamers. For thought and you could wear something called a hose. Puffy hats, fencing swords and architecture. The air was clean and you had anywhere betwixt 1 and 3 popes at any one time telling you how to live while you openly defied the rules.
More than the 1960's it was a revolution for young punks to challenge the status quo. Everyone important spoke a romantic language and if you were rich you were expected to spend most of the time simply entertaining yourselves.
With all these time periods of course it was a good time to be alive if as always you are at the top of the food chain.
But seriously I can think of no better pursuits than painting, whilst pondering mathematical and philisophical questions that shake the foundations of that institution that spawned the dark ages.

2. The Golden Age of Piracy - The Caribbean, an ideal place for multiculturalism with the slave trade thriving, 4 European powers shipping Mexican Silver back home and a wholly undepleted Ozone layer.
The name of the game is 'casual wear' cruising around the Caribbean sea on the take performing acts of cruelty and sacking upstart foreign colonies.
You could start your own business with very little capital, simply throw the captain of your naval ship over board, start flying the black colours on the mast then cruise around ransacking settlements, taking hostages and going to dance's with Governers daughters or at least that's how Sid Meir depicts it.
I'll forget having your head cut off, and displayed on the helm of Naval Pirate Hunter's, the scurvy, lice and maggoty pork that came from the latest European sailing techniques.
What this is about is a life of high adventure in weather that promoted nothing more than a loose shirt and some pants. You got to swashbuckle and stuff.
If you had moral qualms you could hope to serve under Black Bart, or Roy Morgon as a Pirate Admiral.
Yes being a pirate would have been sweet.

3. The Industrial Dawn -
Top Hat's champagne and the respect of the world for building big impractical things. It was an age for pushing engineering to it's very limits. Finding ways to create luxury at all costs. Like the Leviathon, the Brooklyn Bridge and other such wonders that served a purpose 100 years after their creation. They were built to last and with foresight.
And the fact banks actually backed such impractical genius, labour laws were relaxed and the class system was in full swing. One of the only times it would have been kind of cool to be British.

4. The Mongolian Empire
A given, riding around on fast ponies, having completely outclassed every single opposing army that could hope to challange you. Recieving tribute, building a world capital to your exact specifications. Drinking fomented yoghurt and encouraging multi faith debates.
The 'Join the army see the world' lost all appeal after the Mongolian empire and had little appeal before hand. But in those days you just rode out of the mongolian steppes and explored Russia, China, India right through to Turkey me thinks. Pick up some souveneirs, hold public seminars and otherwise camp out as you had done all your life.

5. But for the Ladies -
I don't really think there was any time where women got their due, except maybe 600 BC Sparta, but even then that life was rough. At least it wasn't as rough as the boys got who were fair game once they went to school for pedetry.
Girls were encouraged to speak their mind and even criticize and mock men so that their menfolk would not be weak.
I mean much like being a man or woman to be powerful in any time is pretty sweet. Yet seldom were woman venerated for intellectual pursuits or high adventure and that sucks.

Yeah so pretty much as far as health and education goes by far you are better off to be born now.
But there are periods romantically idealised and others not. And the chances of discovering something new and revolutionary where large because in hindsight we know how much we didn't know at any given time now that we presumably know more.
That is to say, unless Physics itself is a sham, a huge hood to hoodwink us unsespecting people to the dominant control of a master race of half lizard half panda like creatures who can kill us with their very thoughts...