OT: The Good Old Days

[warspite1]

Picking up on m10bob's suggestion, here goes!

So - why were the Good Old Days the Good Old Days? Were they really? What would /do you say to your kids / grandkids about why things were so much better in the past?

[RichMunn]

They weren't.

[:)]

[warspite1]

ORIGINAL: RichMunn


They weren't.

[:)]

warspite1

Well they did have things in those days we don't have now.... Ricketts..Hitler.. Ah I see what you mean [;)]

On the other hand I'm sure the weather was sunnier back in the 70's...

[crsutton]

Well, I had a much easier time getting an erection.....Sorry, but you asked.[X(]

[warspite1]

ORIGINAL: crsutton

Well, I had a much easier time getting an erection.....Sorry, but you asked.[X(]

warspite1

Er.... thanks for that crsutton. Maybe just a little TMI?


Yes, I must say I remember them....vaguely....I mean mine, not yours


[:D]

[witpqs]

ORIGINAL: RichMunn


They weren't.

[:)]

I agree. They weren't old at all. They were quite new, back then!

[tocaff]

Maybe as we age we start to feel like we don't fit in the present like we did back when we we younger?

[Chickenboy]

I've always wondered why people would want to return the days of yore when life was short, nasty and brutish. I'm particularly nonplussed about the desire to return to some form of romanticized agrarian subsistence bronze-age agricultural lifestyle. We live in the richest, healthiest, long-lived and, yes, peaceful times ever seen by man. Sure, exceptions to the rule exist, but life is so much better in so many ways than it once was. It's imperfect, but I'll not take exception to my fortune at being at the technological apex that we are.

In other words, the good old days blew. I'm not nostalgic for them at all.

Except for that erection thing. Mine, not yours, of course....[;)]

[MarcA]

ORIGINAL: warspite1

Picking up on m10bob's suggestion, here goes!

So - why were the Good Old Days the Good Old Days? Were they really? What would /do you say to your kids / grandkids about why things were so much better in the past?

If you read classical literature, whether from the medieval times, or the time of the Saxons and Vikings, all the way back to the ancient Romans and Greeks etc, the days before are always remembered as better times, when men were better warriors or more pious.

Wishing for the good ole days isn't new phenomena, it has been around for thousands of years.

[Anthropoid]

About 10,000 years ago our ancestors made some kind of "mistake" and now here we are paying for it. I agree that the intermediary steps from Paleolithic-Mesolthic-Neolithic-Metallic-Explosive-Atomic eras were generally a mixed bag, but based on what I know about Paleolithic peoples, I am quite confident life was pretty awesome prior to the decline into civilization . . . well, confident in a silly speculative and slightly wistful way!

Imagine you, your family, and all the other families in your group are all world-class naturalists, hunters and atheletes, mean body fat to muscle mass ratios that would make modern day triathletes envious, taller, stronger, more sturdy, healthier in many ways (low pop densities = most of the infectious diseases that have killed us in droves for the last 8 or 9K years would've been inconsequential; speculative, but many think no cancer, diabetes, obesity or related chronic degenerative diseases; no writing and no confusing written or recorded culture [apart from cave paintings, carvings, oral traditions]. About the worse thing back then would've been the preadators, physical injuries from accidents, the occasional intestinal parasite, and tooth decay.

So, I think there is some basis to the zeitgeist that "the good old days" were better. You just gotta go waaayyy back to be confident that they really were "better."

[warspite1]

ORIGINAL: tocaff

Maybe as we age we start to feel like we don't fit in the present like we did back when we we younger?

warspite1

Very true.

They say having kids helps keep you young. I think having kids helps me personally for the simple reason that I have to try and stay in touch with what is going on for their sake, whereas I would likely otherwise be more inclined to simply "shut out" new ideas and stuff that I don't readily "get".

My little warspites are also handy to have when I have issues with modern technology - they seem to understand this stuff so much more than me!

I Still say it was sunnier when I was younger though [;)]

[rockmedic109]

Things weren't any better in the past.....I was just younger.

But I also have to say that the older I get, the better I was. At the present rate of advance, I will have been able to bench press a piano while running up hill and holding my breath sometime next year.

[wdolson]

My world was sunnier in the 70s, but then I lived in Southern California then and live in Washington State now. We get a little bit more rain here...

There are a lot of isotopes that used to be very rare that are now spread all over the world. One way to date a wine claimed to have been grown before 1945 is to test the levels of some isotopes created from nuclear weapons. If there are missing, it's authentic.

I can't think there was anything about the "old days" that were really much better than now. Some things are just different, but on whole, my life is better now than it was in the past. Getting older has its drawbacks, but the alternative is generally considered to be worse.

As for kids keeping someone young, there is a different mindset when you don't have kids at all. In some ways I don't think of myself as all that much older than I was at 20. I don't have that yardstick of children growing up to measure my life against.

I saw some high school kids being kids in the store one day and it got me thinking, their parents are probably my age or younger. It's not something I normally think about.

I usually don't have much trouble figuring out modern technology though, unless it's made by Apple. Their OSs do things in the most non-intuitive way possible, at least the way I think. My SO seems to have no trouble with it.

Bill

[robinsa]

ORIGINAL: Anthropoid

About 10,000 years ago our ancestors made some kind of "mistake" and now here we are paying for it. I agree that the intermediary steps from Paleolithic-Mesolthic-Neolithic-Metallic-Explosive-Atomic eras were generally a mixed bag, but based on what I know about Paleolithic peoples, I am quite confident life was pretty awesome prior to the decline into civilization . . . well, confident in a silly speculative and slightly wistful way!

Imagine you, your family, and all the other families in your group are all world-class naturalists, hunters and atheletes, mean body fat to muscle mass ratios that would make modern day triathletes envious, taller, stronger, more sturdy, healthier in many ways (low pop densities = most of the infectious diseases that have killed us in droves for the last 8 or 9K years would've been inconsequential; speculative, but many think no cancer, diabetes, obesity or related chronic degenerative diseases; no writing and no confusing written or recorded culture [apart from cave paintings, carvings, oral traditions]. About the worse thing back then would've been the preadators, physical injuries from accidents, the occasional intestinal parasite, and tooth decay.

So, I think there is some basis to the zeitgeist that "the good old days" were better. You just gotta go waaayyy back to be confident that they really were "better."

I don't believe this to be true. I remember reading somewhere that life expectancy at that time was around 18 years old, and even shorter before "modern" man came along. You might be correct that contagious deceases weren't as prevalent but people would still die from small scratches getting infected. I'm no expert on the subject so treat this as an opinion rather than a fact.

Edit: But I do agree that it does seem like some sort of utopia to walk around healthy and strong in the forest with you family.

[wdolson]

The life expectancy figures in the past took into account simply staggeringly high infant mortality rates. For example life expectancy in the United States was officially around 46-48 in 1900. However if you factor out children who died before the age of 5, the life expectancy was closer to 65-70.

Life expectancy today is much closer for both groups because infant mortality has dropped so dramatically in the developed world. It's dropped quite a bit world-wide thanks to programs for vaccinating kids in developing countries.

Even in the 1500s the life expectancy of Europeans who had some wealth was in the high 60s if they survived to 21. In the first generations in the American colonies life expectancies sky rocketed because food was much more plentiful and because people weren't crowded together, diseases didn't spread as easily. In the colonial period it was no unusual for villages to have at least a few people over 80.

Bill

[Treetop64]

The good ol' days were great...

...as long as you were White!

[wdolson]

ORIGINAL: Treetop64

The good ol' days were great...

...as long as you were White!

Since the Age of Exploration began, in many places life may have been less bad if someone was of European descent. Economic class had a lot to do with whether you had an easy time of it or not (and there were social barriers preventing some people from climbing the social ladder, sometimes for a few generations and sometimes for many generations). No matter the era, the rich always have it easier.

But lets not turn this into a political debate.

Bill

[m10bob]

I do not "yearn" for the "good old days"..I am just a nostalgia freak..I have a fantastic memory, can remember things since I was 2 years old..In detail with some areas skipped over...
The writer Jean Shepherd also enjoyed this gift.
Of course I have the advantage of remembering things from my own life, not someone just "peeking in" via books, documentaries, etc.
For a child who had parents providing all the basic necessities, (including decisions), life was much simpler an a lot of time was freed up for playing cowboys and indians, etc.
Decades later I would learn some of my ancestors were Piankeshaw..Native Americans....
The Polio shots of my life were nothing to reflect on as an enjoyable thing..They were a necessity.
Everybody got measles,mumps,chicken pox..It was not an option.You just waited your turn.
Having 3 TV stations in lieue of what is available now cannot be imagined by folks who were not there to experience it, and aluminum foil on the rabbit ears was used to get those stations.
How can anybody think my memories of that might be construed as a "good thing".
Maybe someone with a very narrow imagination?
With the advent of computers, (not even available in my college years), I suspect an individuals "imagination" has been somewhat killed, and over-relaince of computers has taken many things from us.
"Original thought" is considered a risky proposition because we are now over-consumed with the concern of what others might think of OUR ideas..
Maybe that is something I miss.
The reliance on people, folks you actually know, and the confidence in oneself that only some of us seem to retain, rather than the rush to judgement that society seems to allow, "the lemming syndrome"..
I consider folks of my age walking museums of an earlier era..The air was the same breathed by the generation which fought WW2, and the memories of that terrible war were more a personal experience of the grown ups of my life, rather than "theories of how it might have been"
Today, we have countless revisionists, perfectly willing to look at the deeds/misdeeds of that prior generation and judge them, when it was those of that prior generation who were required to take the ultimate risks, the decisions which were forced on them by (then) current events.
The need on making those decisions,with all the tragedies which came with them,were forced on that generation by the events of the hour.

When I was maybe 10 years old...in a quiet afternoon on a smill hill overlooking Fall Creek, I asked my dad why he fought in that awful war?
He responded "So maybe you and your brother would not have to."

I am positive, for me, THAT is a major reason I look back on those days,(with all the problems that we did endure),as "good times"..
I had not had to be concerned about my own wars...........

[Chris21wen]

ORIGINAL: warspite1

ORIGINAL: RichMunn


They weren't.

[:)]

warspite1

Well they did have things in those days we don't have now.... Ricketts..Hitler.. Ah I see what you mean [;)]

On the other hand I'm sure the weather was sunnier back in the 70's...

And they don't have thing we do know, ISIS, AIDS.

[Sieben_slith]

These are the Good Old Days.