Gregory's Server
 97 comments
 @paulisci TL;DR: Life was better 50 years ago... and always has been. It's like how @KeithOlbermann says that soccer is the sport of the future... and always will be.  @paulisci Well, nostalgia seems to be almost as alive today as it was, erm, 50 years ago...  @Devonkiwi @paulisci Especially the music. I remember getting a new album and having it just light up my brain. Now I'm not sure it mattered too much what the album was.   @darwinwoodka yes, we know. it's the «want» part that's missing once you're past the point where you can _remember_ fifty years back. @paulisci I might perceive that life was better in some previous decade(s), but that perception would have been fuelled by the ignorance of reality that was part of my social conditioning, an ignorance that increases with distance in time. That said, our economic and government apparatus has gotten much better at degrading our social interactions, our political dealings and our perspectives on the future.   @paulisci    FWIW, I was alive 50 years ago, and life then absolutely was better ... for white men. It was—at best—hit and miss for the rest of y'all. @paulisci hahaha brilliant! Reminds me of Aristotle complaining about teenagers’ language @thesteelrat @paulisci Exactly my thoughts! They are just nostalgic for their late teens and twenties.  @paulisci There are texts dating back to Roman times complaining about how "the youth of today" are lazy and feckless and have no respect @mloxton @paulisci Yup. And people have been whinging that "the old days were better!" literally for millennia. Ecclesiastes 7:10: "Say not, 'Why were the former days better than these?' For it is not from wisdom that you ask this." (Personally, I think everything's gone downhill since our ancestors left the oceans, and that the decline accelerated when we left the trees.) @msbellows @mloxton @paulisci This whole bipedalism thing just wasn't well thought out, in my opinion.  @msbellows @mloxton @paulisci related: people have been complaining about "kids these days" since Babylonia. I find it comforting that we're still the same people across the millennia. @paulisci guess this is why they keep insisting on dragging us backwards, it has been instilled in them forever... It's a mindset.  @paulisci 50 years ago things were cheaper, the effects of climate change were well known but not blatantly obvious, tech was new and largely used for useful things, businesses were largely in business to please the customer when now they know that's beside the point of making money... Socially we've made some good progress, but from a quality of life perspective for the average white, cis male I'd say 50 years ago probably was a lot better. I'm 50 though. You grow static. I enjoyed my 20s.  @crazyeddie @paulisci Lol. I am older than you, I remember the 1970s, too: Record inflation, peaking at 14% by 1980, so, no, not cheaper. Oil embargo, no gas or rationed gas. Draft of white cis men to die in Vietnam. White schools fought desegregation. Corruption of Watergate. Lead in gas. Smoking and second hand smoke everywhere. Hot dogs had red dye #2 a carcinogen causing intestinal tumors. Yes, I see, definitely good times.  @paulisci my favorite part is about music of “today” is worse than the music “I grew up with”. My own youth would throw off the curve. My parents listened to classic rock from the 50s and 60s, but when I got the radio it went to classical stations. Weird Al was the only modern music I sought out for a long time.  @IslandUsurper @paulisci god, most of the radio music of my teens was garbage Pop, Pop punk, emo and Nickelback. Mainstream music now is definitely better than music then @paulisci lol it's wild people have nostalgia for the 70s now. That was a greyer, more polluted age. Among many other things.  @paulisci saw a lovely article last week connecting this with "Childishness" Ignorance is Bliss   @paulisci So just looking at the information we're given here, life was actually better in the 1840's then?  Life has been in decline for hundreds of years. Now, we are really beginning to see it! @paulisci the climate has been getting slowly worse, the rich just got even richer, and we don't even have public colleges anymore!  @paulisci As Douglas Adams put it: “Many were increasingly of the opinion that they’d all made a big mistake in coming down from the trees in the first place. And some said that even the trees had been a bad move, and that no one should ever have left the oceans.”  🎼🎵   @paulisci @paulisci  @renwillis @paulisci actually, I believe complexity is a disguise for corruption. healthcare is complex, the economy. Hear a child's question ad it cuts right past the bullshit. No, the truth is simple, hiding it is complex @TAI @renwillis @paulisci "For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong." - H. L. Mencken
The US has suffered from 60 years of catastrophically bad government, and this is what it led to. https://medium.com/@colingajewski/requiem-for-a-world-power-4a7cd0b6e43c @paulisci The problems start when today's young 'uns imagine the 1950s as "50 years ago" 😒 @paulisci So it’s proof that life has gotten continuously shittier every fifty years. 😉  It must be the youths fault, because every generation since at least Socrates, when grown old and wise, were sure, the youth is useless, and will end civilization.  As @pluralistic points out, all of this politically motivated nostalgia asks folks to return to the infantalizing worry-free existence of childhood. A childhood run by abusive wingnuts bent on vengeful dictatorship & the child has no control over that version of their life. @paulisci "remember when we had polio and scurvy? @paulisci 1990s "I really believe the quality of life was better 50 years ago".. the f?  @paulisci well, yeah. 50 years ago I was 6 years old, everything was new and exciting and I didn't have any responsibilities. Life was better and easier. @paulisci people in the 80s saying life was better 50 years previously in the 1930s is…something, for sure @paulisci in Britain, there was a real peak in lifestyle for common folk around 1000 AD, largely established by examining skeleton bone density. They ate well, weren't too stressed etc. They didn't have the benefits of modern medicine and you could probably get hung for giving the local toff a funny look but they were healthy and had a good life expectancy. After that with wars & plagues etc they didn't get back there until the 1950s. @paulisci "things used to be so much better. When Reagan was president i never had this damn arthritis pain!" @paulisci No. No it absolutely damn well was not. @paulisci I will give the 1920 artist the bonus that the contemporary woma'sn fashion really was, lets say, a bit strange. ;)   "Kids today! The got no respect. They dress like bums. And their music is just noise." -- Aristotle (attributed)  @paulisci You really gotta respect the power of rose-tinted glasses when you think for just a minute about the 1994 one.  @paulisci "life was better in the 1940ies", that's dark; especially reading this in germany. when I'm under the impression "these are absurd times" I think: "compared to 1933-1945?" though - and counterfactual nostalgia may be part of it - it's time to be afraid of exactly this time: it has happened so it can happen again. lighter stuff : you know douglas adams' three rules of technology? |
@paulisci I wonder what polls says about how life will be 50 years from now, to reveal if people believe civilization is on a long show decline or they just think the particular circumstance of the present are uniquely difficult.