When was the past better? (Iran, Christmas, health care, crime)
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You probably were not a Black living in the Jim Crow south at the time. Or a leftist or a gay. Or a woman or a Jew or an atheist. I'll let it go at that.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ColoGuy
Take away Vietnam and I might consider the 60's...mostly because of advances in automobiles....power steering and power brakes.
Riots, bombings, and assassinations were nothing compared to power steering. Especially for a young futz who could never figure out how to parallel park.
I think I see it clearly because the women in my family usually live into their late 90's. People have always been the same at the root. It is easier to be civil when you have it easy, but the same people can turn to wolves when things get hard. The prejudices and bigotries of the past were born from stupidity(lies). I haven't seen an investment in education(truth) over yesteryears to make me think there are any less prejudices and bigotries than today, nor the future for that fact.
What has steadily changed with each generation? Convenience. From the beginning of time our technology has advance to make things more convenient so we can in turn produce more. This leads to future generations taking things for granted and becoming more materialistic. The cycle will only continue as future generations become more dependent and more entitled.
Everyone remembers the past to be better than the present. As life goes on, things continually get harder and time seems to move faster. Everyone, swears that music from their youth was the best. How can this be unless our minds are geared to remember things better as we are younger. It is cheesy for me to use this, but I really think it hits this home.
"Things always seem fairer when we look back at them, and it is out of that inaccessible tower of the past that Longing leans and beckons."
- James Russell Lowell -
The only times the past was better than the then-present were when the then-present was during a disaster such as Katrina. As a general rule, the future is always better than the past, when you take everything into account. That's because people are always working towards a better future, and a lot of that work is successful. We're gradually evolving from a barbaric past towards future civilization. Presently we're at a compromise period, where we're less barbaric but not quite yet civilized.
And technology is the biggest thing, which people would miss most, if they were transported to the past, and forced to live then instead of now. George Washington died from primitive medical care based on ignorance. Back then you were at high risk of dying of horrible diseases that are no longer around because we solved those problems. There were no cars. You couldn't order stuff via the internet, because, even if there had been an internet, there was no easy way to deliver stuff to you. Parcels could take weeks to arrive via stagecoach, and cost a small fortune in shipping charges. There were no supermarkets, and the local grocery had a very limited inventory of basics only. If you wanted cooking oil with no trans fats, you couldn't even find anyone who ever heard of trans fats. You had to settle for lard. No non-stick cookware. But you could scrub your pots and pans with steel wool, if it was already invented. No TV, but you could read books, if you could find enough light. Instead of learning math in school, you learned how to quickly and accurately add up a column of figures. The difference between the best math students and the worst was that the best could add the column of figures faster, with fewer errors.
Your favorite computer games would all be fantasies that would make you sound crazy if you even talked about them. All your favorite movies would be imaginary, in your dreams. Life consisted of learning how to survive in primitive times. Your skills were survival skills. You never had any time to be lazy. Work from dawn to dusk, hoping to get enough work done to survive.
But if modern people have it made, and can even be lazy if they want to, imagine what people of the future are going to be like. In the end, are we going to all die of sloth, because we no longer have any real need to make any real effort to survive, because survival is becoming automatic?
Whever people ask me this, I always reply back, "How rich do I get to be?"
If I get to have a lot of wealth - whatever that society valued - I'd go to pretty much any time.
I would not even want to be Genghis Khan, with all his wealth. He was impoverished compared to me. He couldn't even buy an iPhone, and was at constant risk of Smallpox, plague, and other horrible diseases. What good does it do to have all the money in the world, when you can't even buy the basics with it? People back then could never really relax. They were in constant survival mode.
I would not even want to be Genghis Khan, with all his wealth. He was impoverished compared to me. He couldn't even buy an iPhone, and was at constant risk of Smallpox, plague, and other horrible diseases. What good does it do to have all the money in the world, when you can't even buy the basics with it? People back then could never really relax. They were in constant survival mode.
Poor Genghis. No Apple Pay at the musk ox market.
But surely striking fear into the hearts of his enemies and ruling over much of the known world must have been at least a modest compensation for not being able to download U2's timeless melodies.
He wouldn't have known anything better than what he had. Had a time-traveler gone back to the 13th century and showed him "Baywatch" videos, it would have been a different story.
life was slower in times past(50s and before). there was more trust and neighbors knew each other and communicated more. People lived in real communities. I grew up in a town of about 8,000 people and when someone bought a new car and drove it down main street once the whole town knew that so and so had bought a new car. that was back in the late 50s. now that community unit is gone. everything is fractured and there really is no community so to speak
The small town I'm currently in is still mostly like that...but knowing everything about everyone is not always a positive thing;
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