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I am getting older. Well, not that old, but still in my mid 50's and things seem different, but are they? I remember "the good old days" before computers, social media, hype and more, BUT there might be more than meets the eye here. What do I have left? 20? 30? 40? (doubtful) years left and they are not like my 30's and 40's as far s quality, that I know. Anyway, I am complaining about young people with their smartphones and the fact they can't seem to concentrate, but wait. Is it because I am getting closer to death? Do I want to think it is worse because it will make it easier on ME? Will it be easier because I feel things have gotten worse? I don't know if things have actually gotten worse. Actually, things are SUPER easy these days. Why do I want to look at the future in a negative manner? I think it is because I am older and don't have as many years left as a 20 year old. Am I right?
I base this on even people who lived through really hard times, eventually looking back and thinking of them as "better." Realistically, people were not necessarily better "quality," or communicated "better" or were kinder to each other in the past. We selectively forget dads telling kids to shut up at the dinner table or kids getting beaten up in school while teachers looked the other way, or bosses calling employees morons...etc. We forget about whole groups of people we were not supposed to “associate with” and how everybody looked the other way from the wife who had a black eye or the kid who “fell down the stairs a lot.” I mean let's be real about the 70s and 60s now.
My grandparents thought people were "better" during the Great Depression, and times and activities and music and so on were higher "quality," for a whole bunch of reasons they were able to list.
Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote of her childhood, when she literally spent a winter starving to death, she wore patched clothing, she had nearly no medical care, and she saved the single penny she got at Plum Creek for 10 years, as "better" than the 30s, 40s and 50s.
In "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn," Betty Smith's character Francie feels sorry for the "good times" her sister will miss - Francie's father was a drunk, Francie's mouth dripped water onto her homework from starvation and she at 12 had to endure being sexually touched by the rag man to get her five cents plus her "pinching penny" (the butt fondling) in exchange for the rags she picked - because her sister unfortunately will be raised by a policeman who earns an income.
Everybody thinks the old days were better because we were then looking more toward a future than more time being done, in the past. We can come up with a whole bunch of reasons that soothe us and sound logical, and make us feel better because we are "so much luckier" than young people this way.
I'm 50, BTW.
ETA: ugh, sorry to sound so awful, LOL. I guess I'm just trying to say, with the time we have left, let's look forward, not defensively try to insist things used to be better. The times we live in are fascinating. I can't wait to see what comes next - the changes we have seen are incredible - we are so very lucky.
I don’t look at it as an “either/or” matter; some things were better then and some things are better now. I’m 66.
Thank you. I'm eighty, and it seems obvious to the point of not requiring any comment that this is the case....about almost everything in life, not just "things" but ourselves as well.
ETA: ugh, sorry to sound so awful, LOL. I guess I'm just trying to say, with the time we have left, let's look forward, not defensively try to insist things used to be better. The times we live in are fascinating. I can't wait to see what comes next - the changes we have seen are incredible - we are so very lucky.
There was a song from the musical Laguardia which had this refrain, "Waiting for ships that never come in, a girl is likely to miss the boat." The past is dead and cast in concrete - it ain't coming back, the future never never arrives. What you have is today, the rest is BS right up there with the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny....fantasies.
When looking back, we often remember the best of certain times and block out the negatives. We're left with seeing the past through rose-colored glasses. The reality is that might have been better, maybe worse, maybe similar.
The problem is that mankind is not evolving; it is not learning to be less selfish and make our legacy better for all. As we age, and I'm in my mid 50's, we become more vulnerable, and we feel that, and I think it causes us distress and anxiety. The world still revolves around this made up thing called money. John Lennon's imagine comes to mind--he had it right. Social media is a failure, bringing out the worst in so many. Stubborn arguments on social media with nobody willing to listen to the other side and budge nor meet in the middle, and the banter is absolutely pointless. I'm rather disappointed in mankind at this point.
I wish my response didn't have to be so dark. I suppose it is possible to live a decently good life by shutting off and ignoring what is happening that is so depressing. Maybe that's the difference--when I was young I was self-absorbed and didn't pay much attention to the plight of others less fortunate.
I feel technology has played a large role in looking back on times past with longing. Maybe as the youth of the early 20th Century entered adulthood, they longed for the days before radio, citing "In my day, we didn't just sit around and listen to the Lone Ranger". I was part of the Television Generation, and parents tended to use it as a techno-babysitter/pacifier to a degree. Looking back, I wish I had spent less of my childhood and youth watching it.
It is said today's youth suffer from narcissism and detachment due to spending so much time texting and computer gaming due to the two replacing actual human interaction and the skill sets that develops.
I long for a day when there was not the 24/7 ability to be contacted via smartphones, tablets, laptops, "Dick Tracy Watches", etc. Humans need secluded downtime to re-calibrate their thoughts and lives, this access continually disrupts that time. Not to mention "Techno-Shamers" who state "What's the matter with you, didn't you have your phone on, or with you? Iv'e been trying to reach you for the last 20 minutes!!..."
I feel technology has played a large role in looking back on times past with longing. Maybe as the youth of the early 20th Century entered adulthood, they longed for the days before radio, citing "In my day, we didn't just sit around and listen to the Lone Ranger". I was part of the Television Generation, and parents tended to use it as a techno-babysitter/pacifier to a degree. Looking back, I wish I had spent less of my childhood and youth watching it.
It is said today's youth suffer from narcissism and detachment due to spending so much time texting and computer gaming due to the two replacing actual human interaction and the skill sets that develops.
I long for a day when there was not the 24/7 ability to be contacted via smartphones, tablets, laptops, "Dick Tracy Watches", etc. Humans need secluded downtime to re-calibrate their thoughts and lives, this access continually disrupts that time. Not to mention "Techno-Shamers" who state "What's the matter with you, didn't you have your phone on, or with you? Iv'e been trying to reach you for the last 20 minutes!!..."
You can always turn it off. Unless I am on call, there are times my phone sits upstairs on do not disturb after I come home in the evening. My parents, grandparents, and aunt are set to where they always ring. Everyone else - no, you can wait until I feel like picking up the phone again.
I think the perception that "times are getting worse" has to do with the incredible amount of information we are bombarded with on a daily basis nowadays, and the news fear mongering and doom and gloom attitude.
Before the internet and 24 hour news channels, if you didn't read about it in the local paper, hear it from a friend or see it on the 5 o'clock news, you didn't know it happened. You were limited to the information that could be dispersed in your local community, skewing your perception of the rest of the world. Basically there's a world outside of Mayberry (the town you live in), people just didn't think about it before because they weren't "aware" of what happened outside of it.
Someone once made the analogy of "It's like getting a job in the ER and thinking people are all of a sudden more accident prone". Not true, it's just more front and center and you're more aware of it now.
People are also so quick to forget history. I hear it all the time, people act like "all this stuff that's happening is new and scary and it's never happened before". Uhh, what? Although I'm only 23 years old, history is one of my favorite subjects to read and learn about, and I see the same things being replayed over and over and over again. Can't tell you how many times I've watched old news broadcasts from the 50's, 60's and 70's and thought "Wow, this is the same type of crap that's happening today, just with different people and in different places." Never have truer words been spoken than "Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it."
I'll use Russia as an example. We've been in a peeing match with Russia since after WWII, fighting proxy wars all over the middle east and the world, avoiding directly attacking one another out of fear of starting WW3. Doesn't anybody remember the nuclear arms race? The Cuban missile crisis? The Berlin Wall? The list goes on and on, with each country trying to outdo one another and prove who's got the bigger cojones.
Does Russia have spies over hear trying to influence American decisions? Of course! But it's nothing new, just like we have ours over there and throughout the world. Pretending like it's never happened before and like it's somehow now "new and scary" is frankly laughable.
Also can't forget about the rose colored glasses of nostalgia skewing your perception, as we tend to overlook lots of the bad and emphasize the good. Kind of like taking all the timeless "classic" movies and saying "Movies were so much better back in the day compared to now". Yes, there were lots of great movies made back then, but there were MANY more that were mediocre or utter crap and have been lost to time, just like today.
IMO it's all about perception.
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