resortes805
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Paisley said:I'd say the main thing we've lost is common sense at all levels. It's been lost in everything from doing aerials on a crowded dance floor to doctors recommending starchy, sugary diets even for diabetics (starch breaks down into sugar) to issuing or taking out mortages that can't possibly be paid.
Nick D said:You forgot World War 1
LizzieMaine said:The past was no different than today in that people suffered, dealt with unpleasantness, and sometimes found themselves frustrated, defeated and broke. The difference is they *expected* such things as a normal part of life, and when it happened, they just braced up and started over. (And yes, before the wise guys start in, some people jumped off buildings or stuck their heads in the oven, but they were the exception rather than the rule.) Nowadays, *any* setback or defeat or adversity is too often seen as an intolerable cataclysm.
I suggest that, as a people, we've lost our ability to take setbacks and defeats and failure in stride. Most of us are not going to get to do everything we wanted, have everything we wanted, and be everything we wanted to be. *Deal with it.*
missjoeri said:Exactly!
I think we can safely say that as humans living in the West we have been spoiled rotten since the 1950s or so, yes that includes us.
The modern human seems to be less able at dealing with poverty, shortages, critique, hardship, etc, etc.
People before us grew up with more hardship, I think it made them better or at least stronger.
I see this in the elderly people I meet a lot.
I guess it is the price we pay for progress and living in a consumption society where we have everything we want and more.
Sister, have you ever opened up a large-economy-size tin of fat, protein-packed nightcrawlers with that little exegesis. I would love to have a debate with you about it sometime - preferably over pastramis on rye, a crate of choice dance band platters and a 6 pack of Narragansett. Till then, fwtw, a few thoughts.LizzieMaine said:The past was no different than today in that people suffered, dealt with unpleasantness, and sometimes found themselves frustrated, defeated and broke. The difference is they *expected* such things as a normal part of life, and when it happened, they just braced up and started over. (And yes, before the wise guys start in, some people jumped off buildings or stuck their heads in the oven, but they were the exception rather than the rule.) Nowadays, *any* setback or defeat or adversity is too often seen as an intolerable cataclysm.
I suggest that, as a people, we've lost our ability to take setbacks and defeats and failure in stride. Most of us are not going to get to do everything we wanted, have everything we wanted, and be everything we wanted to be. *Deal with it.*
skyvue said:There was all kinds of crazy medical advice given back in the day, jitterbugs were hardly sedate in their dancing style, and financial missteps have been with us forever (see: the Great Depression and the actions that led up to it).
People are people, then, now and always.
Was it common sense to deny women the vote, to prohibit adults from drinking alcohol, to treat people of color as second-class citizens (or worse)?
Honestly, the notion that people once had the answers, and we've forgotten them all is farfetched.
Some things were better then. Others were worse. It has always been thus and will always be.
Silver Dollar said:Before anyone talks about the"good old days", we need to remember this. The late teens--the deadly flu epidemic of 1918.
The 20's--prohibition, rampant crime, drive by machine gunnings,
The 30's--The Great Depression, Dillinger, et al. The Dust Bowl, concentration camps in Germany (Dachau, 1934)
The 40's--WWII ( this was more than enough)
The 50's --The Korean War, the nuclear end of the world threat, Communism.
The 60's --Drugs, sex and rock and roll, Viet Nam, national political unrest
the 70's--The rest of Viet Nam, increasing crime, Disco :rage:
the 80's-- Iran, -----------
Were there really good old days or are we just kidding ourselves?
Lizzie, Shangas, I agree with everything you two said. (Except for the pork chop. I'm Jewish)
Fletch said:Sister, have you ever opened up a large-economy-size tin of fat, protein-packed nightcrawlers with that little exegesis. I would love to have a debate with you about it sometime - preferably over pastramis on rye, a crate of choice dance band platters and a 6 pack of Narragansett. Till then, fwtw, a few thoughts.
...For the sake of cantankerous contrariness, what you call "dealing with it" I'm going to call coping. It's a more positive idea, whereas "deal with it" kind of says, "There's me and the rest of us. You don't matter."
Fletch said:...Do you think the sovereignty of the individual is part of the problem? Do we just have more to be disappointed about with the popular myth that success, wealth, egg in our beer, etc., is our birthright? In a way, that's punishing as hell on those who don't succeed. It makes failure, of any kind, seem ordained, karmic, profound.
Fletch said:..Is the helping/therapeutic culture of the past half century, perhaps, another part of the problem? Is coping something that can only be learned, never taught? Or do we just need to open up the frame and get the focus on something outside the individual - ie: where s/he stands in a place, a circle, a life? If not, should we instead dial up the hardness and indifference just a tick or two and let the baby cry itself to sleep?
Fletch said:...Is the way we're unkind or cruel to each other different today? Is there less honesty to our unkindness - more phony smiles and underhandedness? Is it harder today to know where you stand with others, and what you should or shouldn't do about it?
Are we just too self-aware for our own good? And what the hell could anybody do to be less in touch with themselves - even assuming they should? Maybe this is where resignation is in order.
Cool hats and clothes.Mr Vim said:What we've lost since the Golden Era
LizzieMaine said:By "Deal With It" I mean "accept the reality of it." Whether we like it or not, none of us are the Center Of The Universe, God's Own Perfect Little Gift To Humanity, Entitled To Everything The World Has To Offer. We're just one of four or five billion bits of compressed dust on the planet, whatever the number is now, and none of us are more *entitled* to happiness than any other, by right of birth or position or anything else. The sooner people realize that, the better off they'll be -- because they won't take every little setback that comes along as an affront to their entitled place in the world. Deal with it.
The culture does too much navel gazing and not enough Dealing With It. The reality is when we're born the only thing we're *entitled* to is air. Everything else you gotta work for, and sometimes you're not going to get it.
....
Well, it's tough to navel-gaze when you've got your nose to the grindstone.
Paisley said:Unless someone is my employee or child, I don't believe it's my business to correct them--outside of telling someone they're driving down the street the wrong direction. Littering can get you a big fat fine here in Colorado, but I'm not a cop.
Shangas said:Oh thank you Glad I brought you joy, Silver Dollar.
Another thing which I think we've lost from the Golden Era is simple education.
By this, I mean that children are being taught to run before they can crawl. They're taught Information Technology, computers, the internet, how to use calculators, how to do document analysis in English...
...But the basics, like reading, writing and arithmatic...are things of the past. Kids can't write properly, and they sure as hell can't spell properly. When I was in school, which still wasn't that long ago (less than 10 years), we learnt reading, writing and arithmatic. And now?
Give a kid a pen and you get block-printing. What happened to learning cursive? And then, they can't spell, because no emphasis is placed on it. I find it so sad. When I chat to people online who are my age (in their teens and twenties), all I get is...:
"Oh I dont type properly because its not important".
Yeah? Good luck finding a job where proper command of written English is important.
The kind of social dancing that prevailed then - a venue for genteel m-f interaction - is now all but gone. The swing, lindy, etc., that survives does so because it fills a more specialized need. The point is the moves, the intricacies, the stuff that takes work - ie, dancing is itself an outlet for performance. Probably, some enthusiasts don't know what it is to dance without performing - they would find it dull, and the music bland and oversweetened.Paisley said:1) According to what I've read, aerials were pretty much limited to performances.
Sadly, it wasn't quite so benign as that. The usual method was to maintain a state of near-starvation - early death was considered inevitable, but a bit gentler that way than thru loss of sight, limbs, etc. Anyway, my point is that nowadays carb cutting is part of pretty much any decent diabetes control program. One can't deny that a lot of diabetics still don't get or exercise good care, but it's not an issue of lost medical knowledge.3) A hundred years ago, it was fairly commonly known that a starchy, sugary diet caused weight gain. Doctors did their best to get diabetics to limit their carb intake.
This isn't the place for the debate, but I suspect the priorities of society these days are not quite so focused on ordinary people's progress. Even the common folks often ask no more than "bread and circuses."In civil rights and medicine, ordinary people were making progress. Maybe that's how I should have put it: we seem to be going backwards in certain important respects.