Was it really better "Back in the day?"

In My Humble Opinion
81

My grandmother was born December 17th, 1904, and died just a little over a year ago. Many years ago she told me that she didn’t believe in the concept of “the good old days” and the only thing she missed in her life was friends who had passed before her.

Grandma said she liked indoor plumbing, air conditioners, washing machines and clothes dryers, refrigerator/freezers, fans, modern medicine and so on. She said living “now” was easier than when she was a little girl. As for bathing she said “How did we ever keep clean?”

82

I’m female, born in the 1950’s, grew up in a rural area. Yes, sometimes I get nostalgic for a young body and a time when all possibilities were open, when I hadn’t made many mistakes made yet. Sometimes I wish I could have personal do-overs. That’s the personal nostalgia. However, beyond the personal, I’d say that conditions in the US and western world are some 80% better now, 10% worse, and 10% just different. Obvious advancements in healthcare, and technology, in opportunities for women, people of color, gays, as other posters have detailed, so I don’t need to.

I agree about kids and cats and dogs having more freedom back in the day, and none as much as my Dad during his childhood during the Great Depression. He makes it sound like paradise. They were farmers, so they always had food, they all made their own entertainment, and, without electricity, they didn’t even have radio until later, when they got a gasoline-powered generator, so no one knew they were poor. He enjoyed late '20’s-early 30’s childhood more than I enjoyed my safer but somewhat less free '50’s childhood.

My quibble with the present is a bit more existential. The more means of instant communication that come into being, the less deep communication takes place. Frequent short emails don’t replace long, thoughtful letters, for example. More high tech stuff makes for less contact with the people physically present. As bricks and mortar stores disappear and most shopping is done via internet, even more opportunities to be out and about and having contact with other humans disappear. I suspect that more people are more lonely than before, but they also have more pre-packaged entertainment options for covering up their essential loneliness.

Overall, life is vastly easier, safer, more prosperous…materially better for most of us in the western world. But I suspect there is less soul.*

*defined here as a person’s deeply felt moral and emotional nature.

83

Usually, back in the day means when we were kids. And it was always better then, because we didn’t have to worry about the things we worry about as adults.

If I could revisit any time, it would probably be the summer between 8th and 9th grade.

84

If things are objectively better today in the U.S. than they were in the past, how is it that surveys have shown that our average levels of happiness haven’t changed much at all since 1946, despite the fact that antidepressant use has skyrocketed in recent decades?
http://worlddatabaseofhappiness.eur.nl/

85

“Objectively better” means measureable, which generally means material things. Happiness, on the other hand, is a state of mind, that doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with material possessions. Happiness has more to do with a sense of purpose and experience of meaning.

86

One of the things about modern medical care that has made our present world better is the recognition of and ability to treat mental illness. And some antidepressants are used for things totally unrelated to depression.

87

There are a lot of poor countries where people are relatively happier than Americans.

That makes sense to me. Misery loves company, and so does happiness. If everyone is poor, everyone is in the same boat. There’s less competitiveness and less trivial stress to contend with. You don’t deal with very many feelings of inadequacy when every single person you know takes a dump on the railroad tracks right alongside you every morning.

Still, I ain’t packing my bags to leave my American life any time soon. I’m willing to trade some happiness if that means I don’t have to worry about cholera in my drinking water or walking three miles in the burning sun to get it every day

88

This is something my grandparents held against television - being poor is often relative and lots of folks pre-television weren’t aware they were poor. Life was how it was, exposure to different lifestyles was fairly limited and often seemed silly and wasteful (more for a car than a house, more for a watch than a car, etc). Then television saturated the market and different lifestyles were right there in your home, making the comparison’s glaring, and the “why don’t we have that?” epidemic was born. Happiness levels have been down ever since.

89

Succinct.

90

That is true but I still firmly believe that 1995 - 1999 were the high point of U.S. centered existence so far. It is true that I was in my mid-twenties at that point but I still think that was the apex of everything I know about U.S. culture. The mid 1950’s were similar.

The ignorance I am trying to fight against is that all time periods are equal as long as you were of a certain age when they occurred. I was alive in the 1970’s and it mostly sucked. The early 1980’s were cool in their bad hair way but we also got the amusement of primitive video games. We also had lots of freedom even as kids but that was tempered by the fact that even our school teachers told us we probably wouldn’t even live to see graduation because of the inevitable nuclear war with the Soviet Union (that wasn’t an idle threat, we truly believed it).

By the mid 1990’s, all of that stuff was gone. The Soviet Union didn’t exist. The internet boom kicked off and everything was stable and positive. I started work in the IT business and got insane amounts of money for doing jack shit as retention bonuses just so they would have someone to call if they needed help. I didn’t go to work for almost a year after the company I worked for was sold and that was the most I ever made in a year to this day. All i had to do was check voicemail box once a day and then head off to the beach or the pool. All you had to do back then was post an online resume and the phone would start ringing a few minutes later (that is no bullshit). It would ring for days and the offers would go higher and higher.

Today, we have skilled people that can’t find employment at all let alone entertain competing offers. All things considered, I think we have took a substantial hit to the America of even 15 years ago and I don’t know if it can ever be recovered.

91

There were struggles 30 years ago and there are struggles now. But for me, things were better “in my day”. I had a better job; I was surrounded by more people who loved me; I was strong and nimble; and my living conditions were far more comfortable. Overall, yes, life was better.

92

There’s no doubt that most things are better now than they were many decades ago. But it seems to me that it’s gotten harder for people without college degrees to earn a middle-class wage than it was 50 years ago, with the decline in manufacturing and all. Income disparity has increased greatly.

93

I used to think this mentality was a character defect of individuals. But now that I’ve learned how about the impacts of social inequality, I’ve realized that it’s not fair to blame individuals for asking “Why don’t we have that?!” It’s a natural feeling, to want what your brother or sister has. That feeling never goes away.

And in some ways, I think the feeling is good because it empowers people to grab what they can and not let themselves be stuck at the bottom of the totem pole. But this only works if the totem pole has some upward mobility. What happens when almost everyone is at the bottom and are destined to be stuck there forever, but the TV still shows the fantastical Ozzy and Harriet life? What do people say to themselves when their children ask “Why don’t we have that?”

94

It seems like kids had a lot more freedom to roam back in the day. I can remember leaving the house in the morning and coming back at dusk. We’d ride our bikes for miles, play football, play in the big ditch (complete with creek) that ran behind our house, catch fireflies, etc. all day.

Now I don’t know if we were actually safer then or if our parents were just ignorant, but I can’t imagine letting my kids just take off in the a.m. with a, “See you at bedtime!”.

For the most part I think it’s a case of rose-colored glasses. The racism and bigotry were a whole lot more pronounced, as noted by others. We’re much more conscious of what we’re doing to the environment. Witness the absence of those styrofoam clam boxes for the Big Mac.

My daughter and particularly her wife were made to feel guilty and alone in high school just a couple years ago, but can you imagine what it would have been like for them in the 80’s, when I grew up? They would still be so far in the closet they’d be in Narnia.

95

Some things definitely were better when I was a kid.
No tv
no computers,
no mobile/ smart phones ergo, no people having stupid conversations with all their psedo friends in public.
no people begging ( in my country )
no bank fraud ( in my country )
no poverty ( in my country )
few animals at risk of extinction
no flaunting of wealth by the new rich
people had real jobs as opposed to stockbroking etc
no one on the dole ( in my country )
food wasn’t full of chemical crap
people didn’t think tats were cool

you really could go out all day without parents being worried about paedophiles etc
you really could leave your house/ car unlocked.
one person really did earn enough for a family to live on
houses really were affordable
Cars wern’t the poncy lookalike pieces of computer controlled junk they are now, and you could actually fix them yourself
motorbikes were cool.

On the other hand,
people were casually brutal
children were beaten in school for minor infractions
people were very judgemental
society was appaling for anyone that didn’t live with the herd.
girls “didn’t”, because there was no realistic birth control, and if they did and got pregnant, they HAD to get married to the father.
there was the Cuba crisis and the Vietnam war.
lots of people smoked.

96

What country did you live in? Fairyland? It certainly wasn’t the US!

97

[quote=“jrsone, post:1, topic:675668”]

Or do people see things through rose colored glasses and have selective memory?
There are also people like myself who have never grown up in an era and can only piece together what I think it might have been like.

I was speaking with my father who is in his 60s about how I thought it would be great to visit the era in which he grew up, as it seemed like a better time overall, to which he replied, “I don’t remember it being all that great, actually.”

I often forget how it might have been simpler but during his time, but I, as well as others often forget things that people struggled with a lot of tough issues and it wasn’t “Leave it to Beaver” 24/7, obviously.

So my question is basically, when did you grow up, do you think it was better then than it is now? Also, have you ever wanted to spend time in a different era?/QUOTE]

I am in my 80’s and it all depends on one’s personal situation. We didn’t have modern conveniences People were more secretive. It was much easier in some ways. People mostly stayed at home and entertained or went to a friend’s house. We didn’t need to lock our doors, even when we lived in Chicago but now I wouldn’t even go to Chicago because of so much random killing. There were gangs, but they didn’t try to kill anyone at random. One seldom heard of some child doing any killing. being hit by a parent or teacher was done a lot, Now they would be put in Jail!

98

I am so much happier now as a 27 year old, self-sufficient guy who is living life the way he wants to, has a great network of friends and family, a job he loves, etc. I’m sure 20-30 years down the road, these will be “the good old days” to me, NOT when I was a high schooler or heaven forbid a middle schooler. Dear lord no.

99

One comment : people mention not being afraid of shootings, letting the kids roam free, leaving the keys in cars…

Isn’t it just a matter of impression? It was my understanding that crime rates peaked in the 1970s and have been declining ever since. Just because you weren’t worried about the kids getting into trouble or the car getting stolen doesn’t mean the danger wasn’t actually higher in an absolute sense.

As I understand it, the reason everyone is afraid of these things is not because they are common - they are very rare when you consider how large the U.S. population is - but because whenever they happen, everyone hears of nothing else for days.

100

There are a number of reasons people overrate the past.

As stated above, there’s selective memory, which seems to be tied to the general optimism of the human race. And also noted above, people who were not in groups denied things sometimes fail to acknowledge the plight of people in those groups.

Also, it’s hard to account for some types of improvements. Today, you can watch any movie or TV show, on demand, for a fraction of the minimum hourly wage. In 1970, you had to be rich to do that, and even then, it often was not possible. How much is that improvement worth? Hard to say objectively.

One thing that I believe really warps people’s perspectives on the past: when we’re young, we see depictions of the past which remove much of the unpleasantness. We’re exposed to schoolbook illustrations and Disney movies about the past in which streets weren’t full of manure, lynchings were unheard of, and nobody had polio or smallpox (and adults had all their teeth).

And, a person who isn’t curious enough to learn the whole truth about the past as they grow older can harbor these images as an adult.

Yes, cars pollute. But imagine if we all rode horses instead. Yes, we have more government in our lives. But our children aren’t routinely losing limbs in factories.

One thing that I think was better when I was young (I was born in 1959): the chance to rise up in socioeconomic class (or even stay at the same level as your parents) was available to a larger fraction of the population. In my day, a person of average ability and ambition could get a middle-class job right out of high school. A college degree was much cheaper than it is now, and pretty much guaranteed success. Kids today have to be smarter and/or harder-working to succeed.

But even that benefit was a relatively short-lived aberration, made possible by the U.S.'s position as the only unscathed superpower following WW2. Financial security and social mobility were more widespread when I was a kid than fifty years earlier.