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I'm only 38, but this thread makes me think of my great aunt, who died three years ago at the age of 96. She'd be 99 if she were alive today.
Especially as she got into her 90s but even earlier, I got the strong sense that she believed her time had passed -- that she wasn't really supposed to be here, that it was somebody else's era. She had no quarrel with new innovations and technologies. But she also had no use for them. It was probably the late '90s or early 2000s before she got a TV with a remote control. She'd sit in front of the TV, manually changing channels, just like I used to do when I was a kid. In her last years, analog TV stopped working, so her daughter finally got her a rudimentary cable package.
She most certainly never had a cell phone. She didn't even have an answering machine. Her kitchen appliances were all from the '60s and '70s. They worked fine. No microwave. Her furniture was all from back then, too. I remember having a great conversation with her about how she'd had the same boiler for 50 years, then it broke, she got a new one, and that one only lasted five years.
And yet, and yet. This is a woman who was already middle aged during the Vietnam era, when the generation gap was tearing America apart, and back then she would put anti-war stickers on her window (or so I'm told; I wasn't born yet). Back then she had a contentious relationship with her hippie daughter -- the same one who got her cable many years later -- but their disputes weren't over politics. As the years went on, she was proud of how America had moved forward, what it had accomplished -- I talked about it with her many times. She was over the moon when Obama was elected.
I never heard her complain about "kids these days" or anything like that. She had two daughters, the hippie, who grew up to have a few pot-smoking intellectual kids, and another who became very religious and raised a large, religious family. She loved all her grandchildren and great grandchildren equally and uncritically, despite the fact that none of them were living a lifestyle anything like the one she had. She talked to all her grandchildren on a weekly basis, some daily.
Her Brooklyn neighborhood went from all white when she moved in in the '60s to mostly black -- West Indian -- by the time she died. Almost all the original residents bailed out over the years -- white flight. Not her. She never even considered leaving. She had loads of friends in the neighborhood of all races and ethnicities -- everyone knew her.
I'm making her sound like something of a saint here, and of course, few people are. But if you were to model your life after someone, I can't think of anyone better than her.
What I find had to believe, is that people think this day and age is so great because of the brave new world technology has given us. Yet all the time, we are in a steady decline, morally, ethically, and spiritually. 1/2 of all children are born without 2 legal parents, families don't eat or do things together, schools warehouse kids and indoctrinate kids, but they don't educate them. Our laws and rules are only enforced when the elected leaders feel like it. Police are now under attack, only the lives of one race matter, our culture tells us that men are evil and women are all wonderful.
And I know its not just me. My 32 year old son comments on how its gone downhill since he was a kid. As a result, he's found a refuge of sorts, and plans to stay there. We told him our plans and he thinks its a wise move.
Although younger people today will scoff at us for saying the world was a better place 50 or so years ago, we, who were there, know better.........it was.
Did we have problems ? Absolutely. Women and minorities were not treated fairly at all. There were a lot of things that did need to change, however, I feel it was a much safer and saner time in our country.
We all remember not even knowing where the key was to the front door of our homes. How people knew their neighbors and looked out for each other. How jobs were plentiful and people were moving up financially, buying homes, cars, and living the American Dream.
Wasn't perfect, but I am so blessed to have been there and grew up during the 50's and 60's. If someone gave me a magic wand and said I could be born again right now and start all over, I would have to say "I'll have a beer instead, thank you."
One can focus on the negatives in the world and thereby make oneself miserable or one can adopt a mellower attitude (while still being informed and aware) about the many things which are admittedly wrong and instead focus on things one likes to do and people one likes to be around.
When I was younger (20's, 30's, and 40's) I was frequently in a rage about all the irrational violence (are we forgetting the 1970's and all the world-wide terrorism?). Well, we still have irrational violence and probably always will, but it is possible (even if not always easy) to more or less ignore it on the emotional level.
Sometimes I read a headline in the newspaper and just don't go on to read the the details about something that I know will get me upset and angry. One example of that was when Russia took over the Crimea from Ukraine by force. I just couldn't bear to think about it, so I didn't (more or less). Or to put it another way, I thought about it but tried not to dwell on it.
To paraphrase augiedogie : People think this day and age is so great because of the brave new world technology has given us. Yet all the time, we are in a steady decline, morally, ethically, and spiritually. 1/2 of all children are born without 2 legal parents, families don't eat or do things together, schools warehouse kids and indoctrinate kids, but they don't educate them.
That's my take on things. If I think about my own personal life or the lives of my family and friends, okay, but when I think of the larger picture, no.
We were raised to think that the country would always get better and better. We lived through a whole lot of improvements and most of us just assumed that the trend would continue. But now we see constant war, terrorism at home and abroad, shootings all over the country, drugs, corruption.
Do you remember when the only people who used heroin were some beatniks in Greenwich Village? (and no one really knew any; it was just rumor.) These drugs are taking over and there isn't enough money to treat each and every drug addict. So now they want to make heroin legal???
I don't have much of a problem with the young people or their/our phones but what concerns me is the decline of our society. Yes, I know, every generation has thought so, back to the ancient Romans. But every country has a golden age and then slides into decline. It seems as though maybe we were the lucky ones. We lived during the golden age. Now the jobs are overseas. Decent products are hard to come by because it's all Made in China. The younger people don't know or care about quality in anything (well, maybe in their phones!) because they live in a junk culture of low standards. Look at the quality of the food they eat too and how that will affect their health. The junk society surrounds them. This cultural decline is what concerns me the most.
To take just one example... Human communication. We've gone from face-to-face interaction (living and working in close-knit groups) to writing letters, when society became mobile enough to separate us from our friends and family, to ephemeral talking on the phone when letter-writing became too onerous, to e-mailing -- no need to actually talk -- to texting, Facebook, and Twitter, which reduces our meaningful dialogue to "clever" one-liners.
To take just one example... Human communication. We've gone from face-to-face interaction (living and working in close-knit groups) to writing letters, when society became mobile enough to separate us from our friends and family, to ephemeral talking on the phone when letter-writing became too onerous, to e-mailing -- no need to actually talk -- to texting, Facebook, and Twitter, which reduces our meaningful dialogue to "clever" one-liners.
Boy, are you right. I was in a restaurant one day and at another table there were 4 people eating together. Each one was staring down at their smart phone and texting someone somewhere else, instead of actually having direct conversation with the people sitting right next to them ! In our company lunchroom, 3 or 4 people will be eating together and no one says a word to anyone else, they are all staring at that damn little screen and pushing keys on the front.
The other day I was in the check out line at Costco, and there were two little girls, probably 2 and 4, and the older one had a smart phone in her hands, doing God knows what. My first thoughts were "They sure start young, don't they ?"
No wonder people are so insensitive and unmoved when they see another human being being hurt or killed, it is just another video game to them.
Don
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In our company lunchroom, 3 or 4 people will be eating together and no one says a word to anyone else, they are all staring at that damn little screen and pushing keys on the front.
