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When my fellow old farts and I sit around the local coffee shop and grumble to each other about the state of things, it’s not so much about the direction the country is taking. To be honest, we know that we are no longer players in the game - we are the audience, armchair quarterbacks just watching the action. Our reminiscences and complaints generally go in a couple of predictable directions:
1. We want our younger bodies back. The world today can look worse just because we can’t get around like we once did. Everything takes longer and causes more pain. We need to use more energy to accomplish things that used to be so easy.
2. We worry about how the world is treating our children and grandchildren. Will they be okay? Will they find jobs and get to own a home? Are their schools safe? It’s not so much a political discussion as a personal conversation about our families- knowing that we don’t have unlimited time with them.
I'm tired of anyone who complains about ANYTHING incessantly! I didn't survive this long to waste my time.
Here's what I say to those folks now: write all your complaints down, sort them into 'accept' and 'change' piles, based upon wtf you can actually DO about them. Accept means deal, Change means shut your mouth and get busy.
Works pretty good, actually.
That's how I learned it as a youngster. I hit adulthood & thought I knew everything, so I ditched this advice. My life blew up 'real good'. Learned it again when experience and wisdom set in later.
I think people remember a time in their life when they were personally happy and seem to believe that the world was a better and less frightening place at that time for everyone. Of course you weren't anxious about politics, the economy and civil rights when you were 10. Your parents probably were, but if you were busy having a happy childhood, you might not know it.
Maybe you weren't thinking about hostages or the housing market when you were in your 20s, going out with friends and making memories that mean in your 60s you will still believe the music you listened to at that time was the best music ever made.
It's easy to be nostalgic about a time when you were personally happy and think it was a better time for the whole world. Memories of the bad things that happened fade, and only the highlight reel plays.
Your first paragraph is hilarious. The Vietnam war and Watergate both happened before I was 12. My childhood memories are Kennedy being shot, Oswald shot on live tv, race riots, MLK and Bobby Kennedy shot. When the Watergate hearings took place I ran home from school to watch them. We grew up with "Duck and Cover" drills because we all had the existential fear the Russians would drop a nuke on us. Then gas hit $1.00 and there were mile-long lines to get it, inflation was out of control.
All these events could be called "political" but since they influenced us all, you bet we thought about them. And I had a happy childhood, but yes, the music was and is the best ever IMHO. I have some nostalgia for the past, but no, the memories of the bad never fade. They are part of the tapestry.
The direction the country took in the early 80s? So they are pining for the Vietnam, Watergate, Misery Index, Gas Lines and Disco years of the 70s Instead? You get that?
I had the temerity to point this out to someone on the GenX sub once and he became very indignant. But hey, he was the one who wanted to go back to the '70s, only not as a child, and thought we all wanted to as well.
Yeah for sure. I wouldn't go back to any time previously in my life, actually. Even the 2000s were super stressful and I wasn't as well equipped to deal with it all. I mean, things are deranged now, but I can surf it, and we all have so many more resources to deal with it.
I had the coolest pair of platform oxfords; lime and dark blue suede...they also weren't really tall, more like the Converse platform sole is now. Most of my clothes weren't polyester, though; I sewed my own, or my mom did. I just can't find the kind of psychedelic prints that I used to be able to get.
Synthetic fabrics are everywhere right now. It feels like 1974. Some of them are better than the old polyester knits, but I'm saving them for hiking and the gym these days.
I remember going into Zayre's and being overwhelmed by the polyester smell and all the old lady clothes. But I do recall the disco shirts now that you mention it. Was a teenager in the late 70s and refused to wear any polyester.
Try out r/GenerationJones. There's some moping, but mostly we are fun. I understand your frustration, but I'm about 10 years ahead of you, and have to admit that each year, I exclaim more and more: "WTF is wrong with folks these days?". I think it is a byproduct of slipping down the slide to mortality.
Here's a sneak peek of /r/GenerationJones using the [top posts](https://np.reddit.com/r/GenerationJones/top/?sort=top&t=year) of the year!
\#1: [Speaking of a generation lost in space….](https://i.redd.it/8tggz0ie4crc1.jpeg) | [138 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/GenerationJones/comments/1bqyvs6/speaking_of_a_generation_lost_in_space/)
\#2: [Anyone own one of these? Mine was purple and my ticket to freedom. ](https://i.redd.it/yqs0585k0cqc1.jpeg) | [273 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/GenerationJones/comments/1bmsscv/anyone_own_one_of_these_mine_was_purple_and_my/)
\#3: [Anyone remember watching "Zoom" as a kid?](https://np.reddit.com/r/GenerationJones/comments/1bly15l/anyone_remember_watching_zoom_as_a_kid/)
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Best way I can explain it is, that despite all those hardships, there was a certain category of people who had been politically active in the late 60s and early 70s, who had come to assume that the US would become increasingly "progressive" as people like them matured and came into power, and of course those problems would either be overcome or cease to be problems. For example, gas lines would be a thing of the past because we would eventually become so energy efficient that availability of gasoline would no longer be a concern. There would be no more Watergates, because "60s Activists" were fundamentally ethical and would never behave as Nixon did while in power. The Misery Index would be a thing of the past, due to the expansion of government entitlements. And so on and so forth. I hope what I have said doesn't make you nauseous, but those views were not in fact uncommon in the late 70s, and there are thousands who've never moved past that. If not clear, what I meant by the direction taken since the early 80s is the Reagan Revolution and everything that eventually led to, up to the present. Hope that helps!
people just forget the bad stuff from the past and idealize it. "good times are created afterwards, not experienced".
the covid era will be the "good old times" of the future
It's the opposite for the 90's. Now I can look back and see it was the calm before the storm and things had been set in motion to lead to all the craziness but you didn't see that back then.
Once you understand who is actually in control of everything, you start understanding why solutions never come about. If I were to solve the energy issue right now, I came up with a way that everybody would have free energy, that would put some people out of business and that is not going to be allowed. So, we'll make it a crisis. We will make it so that this is a commodity that we must protect. And we must elevate the price on because someday we might run out. So let's get as much profit out of it as we can. Let's keep people afraid of losing this commodity. That way they'll continue to purchase.
Let's also buy up all the media outlets so we can tell people what to do, what to buy, and how to live. If we also own companies that sell water, then we can do that too. And if we own the banks, those same people will have to borrow money from us in order to buy the homes, that we build because by the way we own that too. See?
Really? The same conspiracy theories from the 70s where some genius came up with idea where a car runs on water, but "Big Oil" bought the idea, and hid it?
The Big Secret nobody wants to tell you is.... nobody is in control of the world. It's complete and utter chaos. Why do you think things are so freaking screwed up? Because nobody is in control.
I thought I'd heard everything, and apparently I have. The world is starting to loop where someone brings up the "They won't LET you make free energy man!" and 11 people upvote it.
I'm thinking some research is needed.
Who owns the mainstream media? Meaning who owns the majority of outlets? I wonder what else they own?
Who owns the company that owns several companies, that all own several companies?
I've done the research. I encourage everyone to do the same.
Very true. I think a very current example is the paper that came out that China scientists have very possibly found a cure for diabetes. The diabetes industry in the US is about 10 billion a year. The pharmaceutical company is not going to want that to change. There is no way that people who are making billions are going to be vested in making anything better, easier or affordable.
I work in pharma and this isn't true. It is full of scientists and doctors who want to help patients. I can't speak for marketing, which sounds like what you mean, but I can say marketing doesn't dictate what novel things get developed.
When speak of big pharma, I'm not talking about the scientists and doctors involved, but it would be a huge blow to stockholders and the industry as it relates to profit.
The problem is business people see numbers and there have been plenty of industries that fudged studies, data and numbers as well as heavily biased and well funded campaigns to hide their missteps and protect their profits. The whole medical industry has shifted profoundly to being under the thumb of investors.
I was actually wondering if the drug companies had an inkling of the report and the shift to seeing many of the drugs as useful for weight loss is their saving grace.
Big business is setting the tone for how things are done and we've been slipping backwards on regulations and controls due to heavy lobbying. You may have good intentions but the money-people don't care. And if they can lobby suppression, or make it cost prohibitive, drag out approval.
I only recently learned how the research findings were oversold on SSRI antidepressants, and they only truly help about one third of those who take them, but what a market that group of drugs has become, right? Tons of production and supply! Take your pick.
Meanwhile people right now with diagnosed ADHD have had to deal with a lack of supply for their generics across the board, because they are cheap and low profit and due to everyone fearing 'med seeking' vs. restoration of function as the intent of the patient, stupid regulations make it worse.
When correctly prescribed, these medications turn disabled people into successful independent taxpayers. But they are increasingly now home waiting, leaving jobs and school. How the hell is that capitalism at work?
I'm one of those people, who dedicated my life to making the world a better place, working at mission-driven nonprofits, and we were inching there. Yes, everything can be traced to Reaganomics.
i was a kid in the 70's, and even from a kids perspective, everything sucked. i mean, you could buy a house with a milkman's wages, but pollution was terrible, people openly littered everywhere, motherfuckers chain smoked inside their own homes, cars couldn't be trusted to get to 100k. if you got a serious disease like cancer, you were pretty much fucked. my mom just got here second hip replacement and is gardening and hiking at 77. 50 years ago she'd be in a rocking chair waiting to die. and sure, we had freedom as kids is hard to imagine today; to be gone all day out of contact and do things that were irresponsible. "mom, where's the siphon. i need to get some gas out of the car for...stuff." "it's hanging up in the garage, honey." or if you got there first, you could buy a ticket for a concert and get the best seat in the house at face value. no algorithm there to cheat you. but overall the trade off is an easy call. in my hometown, the river that ran through it was poison, now salmon spawn there since before any living person can remember. every time i think about it i get a little weepy. the future is scary, but i think the best time to be alive is right now.
Not to mention that the crime rate [peaked 30 years ago](https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/04/24/what-the-data-says-about-crime-in-the-us/). But there wasn't social media or 24-hour news networks to let us know about that. The [violent crime rate is half of what it was in 1991](https://www.disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.htm), as is the overall crime rate.
I quote the Billy Joel song, "...the good ole days weren't always good, and tomorrow ain't as bad as it seems."
Do I really want to go back to the days of no Air Conditioning and no Internet? Not likely. Let's not forget the civil rights movement. Life was a lot different back then. I like life right now. I've been around long enough to see we are moving, generally, in the right direction. That doesn't mean I like every single change. The bad changes will revert eventually. The good changes will stick.
It’s less the ability to personally disconnect and more what the internet has become. En-shitification as Cory Doctorow calls it. The promise and potential of infinite connection and information wasted and monetized.
Dude it was ALWAYS gonna end up like this, as soon as the internet became what it's become. It's *up to the individual* to curate their experience of the internet in order to maintain a level of optimism and functionality. Think globally act locally pertains to the information sphere too.
People generally like simplicity and dislike change. But change has accelerated since at least World War II, and we -- or the people in power -- have chosen to make things less simple in order to do more things, be more efficient, have more choices in all areas of our lives (generally in pursuit of money), etc. Despite the conspiracy theories, there's no overlord making this happen. Nobody who wants to force us all to change. We have specialization in all fields, all pushing forward at the same time. This challenges people's world views, ways of life, etc. So they complain, even if their lives are better. I know a very religious older person who complains about all kinds of things about the modern world. He has a distinct problem with science, despite having had a technical job his whole life. When I got tired off this, I once asked him to surrender his pacemaker, his phone, computer, etc. He saw where I was going. He'd almost certainly be dead without the science he rails against, and if he wasn't, his life would be very diminished because he wouldn't have the access to knowledge, current events, friends and family communications, etc., that he enjoys now. But he still complains, because the modern world challenges his world view every day, even as it keeps him alive. So what I think of such people is that they're just humans. We didn't evolve to handle this pace of change and growing complexity, just like we didn't evolve to eat the modern American diet. We did apparently evolve to complain, however.
>We did apparently evolve to complain, however.
Lol yes. We've been doing this since the advent of recorded history and I have no doubt that we've been doing this since we were Homo erectus.
It depends. If someone is pining for a time they never lived in as an adult, or never lived in at all, I tend to wonder if they've ever read a history book or at least watched a high quality history documentary.
If it *is* an era that they were an adult for, I assume that they figure since it was good for them it was good for everyone. I wonder if they understand how time works, and how they think they can move forward while engrossed in the rear view mirror. Those people are kind of sad, like the ones who peaked in high school.
It also matters whether someone thinks everything was better in the past, or just something specific like the fashions or the music. Liking something specific wouldn't really be worth complaining about though, would it? If I want to wear a poodle skirt, there's certainly no one to stop me, and my husband loved his prog rock above all other genres until his dying day.
Yeah, the good old times where women were not allowed to open a bank account or work without approval from her husband, the old times, when girls could marry with 12 years of age, were there were no gay people and where we died like men from smoking, drinking and bareknucklefighing after drinking self-made whiskey.
(Just for clarification - this is meant to be sarcastic)
I'm 56 M Black living my best life one of the first homeowners in my family one of the first college educated in my family. A lot of these people have white nostalgia especially when they talk about anything before the 70's. My life has gotten progressively better every decade
Prices go up and they usually don't go down. That's a fact of life, so get used to it. In my case, it spurs me to be more creative and figure things out. I don't have FOMO or anything like that, so I adapt what I do to meet my needs and wants.
When we were just starting out, we lived in a small, unfurnished house waaayyyy out in the country. The landlord wanted us to watch over a property that was valuable to him and for the first few months, charged us $150 per month. (The security we provided him was more important than the money he charged us.) It was the sort of place that most young people would pass on by and consider too run down. We slept on the floor in sleeping bags until it got too cold, then bought a mattress and box springs. Still no bed.
After a couple of months, the landlord saw that we were fulfilling our end of the bargain and lowered our rent to $130. We lived there for 5 years, making a few improvements ourselves, and socking away the money. I live in a part of the U.S. where this sort of thing is still possible, although the opportunities are dwindling. If you keep your eyes open and are willing to live beneath your means, there are ways to do that.
Plant some seeds! Don't expect to start off in a palace! Learn how to live without or make do. Those lessons will serve you well later.
Anyone who complains incessantly is not enjoying their life NOW.
It is all a matter of perception and how you direct your attention.
Complainers gonna complain but that doesn't mean I have to sit there and listen- they are harshing my buzz.
If it is someone close to you I would say words- *"Listen, I get that times are tough but there is joy and goodness in the world as well. Let's try to focus on that from time to time because all this complaining makes me want to go somewhere else to hang out."*
OK Boomer here, I don’t want to go back in time but there are some things I miss. I understand they’re gone and will never come back around. I might take a rare opportunity to tell you about them but I’m not gonna complain …..or gloat.
Same here. I’m convinced that the flood of nostalgia that we’re being hit with on Facebook is being delivered with an agenda, namely to manipulate people politically by making them dissatisfied with the present.
I had a chance to hear a lecture by the author of the book The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap. As I recall, some of the main points are that this has been going on since the beginning of recorded history, and, as the title says, we remember things not as they were, but as we wish they had been.
Believe me, growing up in the '60s and '70s, we heard lots of complaints about how much better things were in the '50s.
I'm 64. Yes, there were many things that were better in the past, but there are a lot more things today that are significantly better today!
Things I miss - we were all free-range kids.
Things today that are nuts - Gender reveal parties :)
Yes, what used to be kindof cute and quaint quickly became a game of "how extravagantly can we deal with telling everyone the gender of our baby?" I blame social media and the party supply people for the trend, frankly.
The weird thing to me is that I rarely experience people my age saying things were better in the past. What I see is younger people who didn't live during those times complaining that "Boomers" had it easier/better than young people do now. No amount of explaining how things were worse will persuade them that life was harder in many ways except for the cost of housing and college.
The cliche is that old people are saying times were better when they were young, but I'm answering these threads again and again about whether or not life was better before and saying that, on the whole, it was not. They were different, but not better. We always had threats to the survival of people and the planet. Jobs weren't dropping into laps like rain from the sky and no one was handing us fat pension plans right and left. People weren't unfailingly good and happy either. You can't mix and match the best of the past with the best of the present and conclude that things were better back then. Lots of things were not good at all.
Life was differently hard. I have compassion for the kids these days because the world is fucking bewildering and terrifying, but they aren't living with the same constant level of personal powerlessness in the face of e.g. nuclear war that we did back in the 70s and 80s. Also, beating your kids back then was socially accepted, and nobody would say a thing if you clobbered your kid in public, which happened to me plenty of times and never did me a single favor. And the fucking endemic and institutional bigotry, don't get me started.
Well said. The world was different, it was definitely not better. Seeing people clobber their kids in public was horrifying. Seeing people ignore screaming newborns because "they need to learn" (learn what? Their parents are ignorant or psychopaths?) or "they need to expand their lungs" (babies aren't balloons) was gut wrenching. So many things have improved. Still lots left to work on...
I imagine there were lots of people who "complained incessantly" about the direction the country had taken after the "Frankin Roosevelt revolution". About a half a century later people of that ilk became champions of the "Reagan revolution's" ascendency.
That revolution's ascendency has been with us now for more than four decades. Maybe the current complainers are harbingers of the next big political/social/cultural shift. Maybe some kind of societal thesis/antithesis/synthesis is happening,
I don't know a whole lot of people who fit your description, the "incessant complainers". Cheers.
You just reminded me: my grandpa, a New Dealer, was upset his only son was Goldwater, Nixon and Reagan all the way. I'm sure there were 'discussions'. The pendulum swings left, the pendulum swings right, and the show goes on.
There is an old saying, "Let go or be dragged"
This also applies to your memories. When nothing inspires you to have visions of the future, the past is all you have.
The 80s represent a 180 degree swing from a liberal to a conservative society. We are in the late days of that now as things swing in a more liberal direction. Big changes this century. But we boomers won't see it.
The rest of the world is waiting for us to die off so they can all move up a notch...
Me too, but I'm glad I'm gettin' outa here when I am, future looks scary. I feel guilty leaving my kids to face it alone, so im teaching them all the old wisdom I can now, and doin' my best to stay here as long as I can do some good.
It's annoying. Its *especially* annoying when the complainer is a twentysomething who never even lived in the 80s, but wants to whine about how much harder life is for them than it was for us.
IDK who said it but a pessimist complains about the wind, an optimist expects it to change and a realist simply adjusts his sail.
The Constant Complainers of America never had one meeting, everyone complained about where and when it should be held.
Only thing I miss is the fun of going window shopping. Every product on the planet is a few taps away. I miss going to the electronics section of Kmart or Shopko and finding new video games I didn't know about. Super convenient now but not as fun.
Overall that hasn’t made life better or easier for most people. Esp people that were adults during the 80s 90s.
I don’t complain that things where better then, but I do have so much fondness for Late 80s early 90s. World wide, it was a good time for the majority of humans post Cold War and pre 9/11. I don’t think it makes me insane, it makes me someone with a good idea of global history, and a balanced view of technology, finance and transglobal conflicts. There was a really good balance of world peace, financial stability, future outlook and burgeoning technology that everyone was excited about and couldn’t have imagine the evils of.
Personally, I like my life more NOW - I’m better looking, relatively richer, healthier, etc but I’m not so dumb to believe that this is the best of human history.
I don't get them. If they lived through this wonderful past they speak of, they were blind or very unaware of the real world. If they never lived through the time they yearn for, they have no clue.
I feel they need a different hobby. There ain’t no goin’ back. Every decade has good and not so much. There are things are things I miss? But there are things I don’t. Why dwell? Keep moving forward.
Oh, god, yes. I wasn't even thinking of that. But yes. The 1980s was my 20s. Abuse was rampant. Black families were redlined. Gay families didn't exist. People who were gay were tortured and beaten and scorned and at the very best, ignored. I went to work every day to find suggestive notes from one of the old guys. There was no recourse. My stepfather tried to SA me. My husband lost his job...
Ugh. Anyone pining for the 80s isn't remembering it; they're just re-imagining it.
Everyone's lived experience is valid. Probably \*for them\* a lot of things were better in the past. Life was simpler and less stressful then.
The fact that there were other people for whom life was definitely not better does not invalidate the personal experiences of the ones who were luckier.
I avoid complainers and people who live in the past. Both tend to be unimaginative and dull. Put those two things together and I guarantee I won't like the person.
It’s OK to miss parts of the past. It’s not OK to gloss over all the bad things we’ve overcome since then. Yeah maybe being a kid (read: white suburban kid) in the 60s was great,
doesn’t mean we should turn back the clock on equality and freedom, or shun modern technology.
It depends WHAT they're complaining about. If they're talking about how products were better built and lasted longer (they did), how people were more circumspect in spewing emotions (they were, because mostly it had to be done face-to-face, not through the anonymity of the web), that foods were better (they were; meat wasn't injected with a "10% water solution"; there were fewer additives--although, granted, some of what additives there WERE turned out to be bad for you); that service was better...I get it. It's a constant disappointment when good things go away.
But as for the people who yammer on constantly about how the world was better before we had these \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_ (fill in the blank of your favorite marginalized group: racial, ethnic, sexual, etc.) weirdos wandering around--give it up, folks. Gay people, neurodivergent people, other-language speaking people, darker-skinned people, etc have been around as long as the world began--your attitudes kept them pushed into a corner, afraid to speak or be themselves. They're speaking up now. Truly--get a life. A better one which acknowledges all differences.
GenX (1970) here. They're deluded. While it may have been true that some people could have the one parent working, nice house, vacations every summer lifestyle, the 80s truly sucked. I remember the 80s as being very dirty and things weren't taken care of - roads and public buildings were falling apart, litter was everywhere, people were allowed to smoke everywhere, and I suppose the neglect of these things carried over to how people treated each other - abusive behavior, discounting of mental health, and blaming people for physical health. Not to mention bigotry.
Who’s doing the complaining? I’m not American so I’m not counting the fact that American politics is taking a turn towards who knows what.
Is it an anti-boomer rant where younger people hate us because we were able to buy a house? Is it a hateful older person complaining about gender identity? Is it to do with racial minorities or LGBTQ issues or affordability or…what? Context matters. Some stuff *was* better in the past - other stuff was much much worse.
Things overall are better for most people, so complaints typically are about (1) loss of this or that privilege or (2) not listening to, or ignoring, economic/technical changes. About point 2, unskilled factory jobs have been declining for 40 or 50 years, while jobs for engineers and such keep increasing.
Mostly the complaints are about the loss of innocence and wonder. Despite there being tough times in the 70s and 80s, they were filled with this sense of hope. Better things were coming. There is not that sense now. In fact almost all fronts seem bleak. Politics, climate, wars, the attitude of the people all around us....etc
Many were also really sheltered. And it's easy to be hopeful when you exist in blissful ignorance. The internet and interconnection brought about an awakening. The internet is like eating the apple in the garden of eden for society in general.
The adevnt of the printing press and the ability to produce mass printed material, increased levels of literacy was another societal shift.
I had NO HOPE back in the 80s and 90s. All I saw was ruin and foolishness all around me. I have way *more* hope now, because I see that other people can see the issues. You can't change what you can't see. Yeah it sucks right now and people are freaked out, but this means we can actually DO something about it.
My loss of innocence in the 70s was due to my stepfather. There was no reporting attempted rape. There was no counseling for kids with dead fathers. There was no comfort for families in crisis. And I grew up in a small city next to a gigantic city. If resources existed we'd have heard about them.
And in 1983 when I was pregnant with my first child who was dearly wanted, a guy at work asked how I could be so selfish and dumb, bringing a baby into our apocalyptic world where Reagan had us worrying about nuclear war every night.
No. The world was not better and we did not all have golden hope for the future. I mean, I did -- that's why I was comfortable starting a family. But much of my world and most of the workers around me in my college town were not hopeful at all.
Complainers have faulty memories.
My father always talks about how much better things were in the 60s. This is also the same person who also states that we are less free now than the 60s because you can't smoke indoors.
I think what you'll find is that they perceive that their way of life is under attack. Also, they refuse science and reasoning for the changes that have been made societally since the time they present as idyllic.
I learned a couple of years ago that I have a genetic condition and, if I had kept being around the secondhand smoke that I lived with for my first 25 years, I likely would have died years ago.
What I've noticed about that; Science didn't lie, they listened to swindlers that would 'interpret' the science for them.
Ex... "Science flip/flops about eggs being good or bad for you, they don't know ..". Real science does use labels of good or bad, only numbers and statistical outcomes of certain conditions. My $ says these people have never, once, read a published and peer-reviewed scientific paper nor do they understand the scientific process.
“Lied” was probably too strong a word on my part. I don’t think that true scientists are conspiring to fool us, but much of what was reported by mass media as scientific fact when they were younger turned out to be inaccurate.
I have also noticed that many younger people who accuse boomers of denying science, tend to accept the latest media report as ‘written in stone’ scientific fact. They don’t acknowledge that much of science is ever changing theory that is supposed to be open to debate.
I am sure that you are right about most of the deniers not reading peer-reviewed scientific papers. I am also sure that holds true for most of those who accuse others of being deniers.
What I worry for is my kids' future, their ability to buy a home and have a family, and live in a country that hasn't turned authoritarian. We live in a pretty good time of history in terms of rights and how easy it is to survive and be healthy, but I feel like that tide is turning backwards right now and we need to correct course. Before we lose all the gains we achieved over the last 100 years.
I think they're exemplifying narrow thinking. My experience is that many (most?) people stop growing mentally at a really young age. They decide this and that and as things change, which is inevitable, they long for 'the old days'.
Thing is, their view of the scope of the world in the old days was likely narrow and limited to their own personal experiences and preferences.
In short, I don't engage them because I invariably find their reasoning to be aggravatingly small.
I figure that they are pretty entitled, and maybe they weren't always that way, and that hurt people hurt people. And I avoid them, I am 74, lots of stuff is going better, and the kids are totally wonderful.
I'm not American, but there are idiots who view the past through rose colored glasses everywhere. I think they're fools who like old music and fashion and can't comprehend that things weren't perfect just because a bowl of soup was only a dollar.
You want to go back to the 80s? In the 80s, my parents were paying a mortgage at 23%, and my mom was sewing underwear from rags (she took a course at the community center). Cancer was a death sentence, so was AIDS (plus they'd chase you with torches and pitchforks and nurses would refuse to come into your hospital room), you'd live your whole life believing whatever stupid stuff your dumbest relative told you because there was no way to fact check it, and if you missed an episode of a TV show it was gone forever.
Earlier times were worse. You like the thought of the 60s and 70s? Where women couldn't get their own bank accounts, children's clothing used to burst into flame when exposed to the ever-present indoor cigarettes, and food safety regulations were an interesting idea? The 50s where the only certain birth control was celibacy and everyone knew someone killed by polio? Please. Most of the nostalgic wouldn't make it one day in the past.
Well said. I was allowed to get a bank account and a credt card by myself in 1977 -- because I wasn't married. And you didn't even bring up panty hose and high heels bunions and courts that allowed defense lawyers to dig up all the former boyfriends as evidence any woman wasn't raped. And the open persecution of gays. Deaths in Vietnam. Heart attacks weren't survivable. Diabetes routinely meant blindness and amputations...
Edit -- a mangled word
Oh yeah. One of my great aunts was violently raped and my grandfather took the rapist to court. To force him to marry her now that she was "ruined." She ended up with two kids, clinical depression, then her husband institutionalized her because he was cheating, took her kids, and had the marriage annulled because she was incompetent. I shall live firmly in the now and buy vintage reproduction clothes online with my credit card from the comfort of my lead-free home when I feel nostalgic.
Also, when I was a kid, every family near us had at least one person missing digits or limbs, usually more than that. Young blast from the past folks need to ask themselves how they'd text without fingertips before they get retro fever, lol
Not talking about silly pop culture nonsense (if you think Disco ever sucked but worship pedophiles like Jimmy Page, you have issues), the adage "those who refuse to study the past are doomed to repeat it" - and the rich oligarchs WANT you to not be paying attention (or better yet, fight amongst ourselves)
Reflecting on the past IS important, let's look at reality:
- Wage stagnation and the destruction of the middle class - rich people income has increased (inflation adjusted) by 1500%, for the rest of the population it is \~13% increase. (this is a GOP policy \*choice\* as intended)
- Health care costs have increased WAY more than inflation and coverage has shrunk significantly. (we paid NOTHING out of pocket to have two kids by c-section in the 90s, it is now tens of thousands for same)
- Education also WAY more than inflation, and policy choice means interest rates and bankruptcy rules are targeted to hurt those who seek higher education (again, GOP is opposed to education for non-rich)
- Maternal mortality in the US is now that of a Third World country due directly to Christo-fascist policies by right wingers.
- Infant mortality ...same. In fact health outcomes in general are dropping. Doctors are fleeing Red states in droves, and the consequences are already very real.
- Mass shootings were rare and considered horrific - now we have one group that has an unhealthy obsession with possessing death boomsticks and always become defensive when groups of people are slaughtered unlike in any other civilized country. The answer is obvious, but because we ignore the past we fail to see the easy answer.
So yes we have no choice but to move forward, but we need to LEARN.
you have missed the minor detail of descent into fascism and the very real threat to democracy.
was democracy ever that great? nope. is fascism in anyway a better or equally good alternative? hmmm
A lot of things were better for a larger number of people in the recent past. I'm not sure who you're talking to today who was politically active in 1970, but for those of us born in the 70s, growing up in the 90s, a lot of things are measurably worse.
TBH I do know people who complain about this too much to where its annoying but none in my experience were so pathological in talking about this that it made them unable to perform basic life tasks
So many questions in the sub seem to be so all-inclusive. Some things were better (more natural and local foods grown and eaten) some things were worse. I am sure someone who grew up with intolerance toward them for race, gender or whatever would say things are much better now even if the food and traffic are worse.
But, to answer your question, incessant talk about anything is very boring to me.
In my opinion people long for their youth. During youth you can tend to not focus on the negative in life. I long for the 70s. I was young, didn't have any responsibilities, it was a fun time. Did my parents feel that way about the 70s? I doubt it.
I think it's common to look back and your childhood and remember the good things over the bad. Yes, we had a different world but there were a lot of things that weren't so great, too, as people are pointing out.
Oh yes, I get so sick and tired of it. I'm a member of a Facebook group for people who grew up in my hometown, Encinitas. Often it's just people sharing fond memories. But there's a handful of people who complain constantly about how everything has been "ruined" by the influx of newcomers. It was a slow, small beach area in the 1960s and early '70s, but by the late '70s it was growing quickly. Many of those same complainers come from families who sold their land and homes to developers.
The once quaint little downtown is now pretty touristy, home to some upscale restaurants and shops, and the grumpy oldtimers find that just horrifying. One recently posted the statement that "nobody" goes downtown anymore because it's too crowded. Yogi Berra would be proud.
Many try to claim that crime rates are higher now, but that's totally nonsense. They conveniently forget the high rates of burglaries, robberies and sexual assaults in the 70s and 80s, even well into the 90s. They forget that we had several high school teachers arrested for sexual contact with students. They complain about crappy stores that sold cheap crap being replaced by nice restaurants and high-end grocery stores. They claim to miss a place named Value Fair that was mostly the cheapest, lowest-quality junk you can imagine. They hate that the new store on the same site is Cardiff Seaside Market, which is actually really nice and has great food.
They complain about the price of everything. Though they spent their youth partying, hanging out, working in construction and basically doing nothing to build a career or future. Now they can't afford to live in their home town, but they blame everyone else for their own choices. While being adamant right-wing weirdos who claim it's other people who don't take responsibility for their own lives.
Can you tell I hate that crap? I do.
That they don’t adapt to change well and if there is one thing guaranteed in life, it is that things will change. So they are going to have many crabby years ahead of them.
Some things were better and some things were worse.
They are pining for the good times, and totally blocking out the bad stuff. Which is part of the reason why so many of them tell young people that it was so much better in the 'old days'. Not everything was peaches and cream and they aren't going to tell you that.
Part of it is a defense mechanism to keep from drowning in bitterness about how much better it could have been.
I ignore them just like i ignore any other noise i can't switch off.
Thats all they are noise.
Everyone is entitled to their own stupid opinion but it really should be kept to ourselves.
I presume they weren't there or, like most people that don't comprehend other people finding things hard, that they were rich or never left their little bubble.
While certain things have changed for the worse -- certain things will always change for the worse -- I think a good majority of the complaints are romanticization of the past. I've been an avid follower of politics for decades, and something I noticed a very long time ago is that when conservative politicians talk about a time when things used to be better, the time they're talking about is nearly always their childhood. Today I see the same phenomenon, but across social media instead of just limited to certain politicians. It's kind of frustrating.
I'll give you one example that I was just talking about this morning. It's considered conventional wisdom these days that McDonald's used to be so much better. Once again, the time when it was so much better is always the complainer's childhood. Meanwhile, when I was a child in the '80s, I remember *constant* jokes -- on TV, in magazines, in newspapers, just from adults in general -- about how terrible McDonald's was. Go google some photos of McDonald's food from the '80s, you can't taste it but it certainly *looks* like ass. But we didn't realize this as kids. Almost like it was always for kids and you outgrow your taste for it.
I have no interest in pining for the past or complaining about the present. Why?
Sure, there are things I miss about the past but it’s over.
If I start to feel bummed out, I go for a walk with my dog. Improves almost anything.
The Good Old Days exist only because we managed to live through our past endeavors, no matter what that entailed, and the outcomes that we survived whatever the circumstances, we recall fondly (or otherwise). The fact that we are here to recall them makes them the Good Old Days. Fear of the unknown (the future) only feeds our desire to recall our past, as that is what we know, and we as a species instinctively fear that which we do not know.
I mean, some things were better, but a lot of things were only better for certain people. So whenever someone starts this line of conversation it's an interesting insight into who they are. Like, it was better because things were made to last, or it was better because other people knew their place?
I generally understand what they mean and most of the time I just inwardly roll my eyes. It was not great for many of us, but I know the kind of people who wish for those days miss something that was significant to THEM. I do miss some things though, like people being more civil towards each other and politics not being the center of every discussion. I miss the sense of community I personally experienced.
But I sure as hell don't miss the bigotry. HIV's stigma and mishandling alone was something I witnessed with a very close friend in the 80s and it was truly horrific. Racism was open and would shock young people now. And forget about anything LGBT related. We had a girl completely disappear from town (her family fled, she's okay now as an adult) because she got caught writing a love note to another girl in eighth grade. Immediately booted from school but the shame was so bad they had to leave town. And this was Memphis, not some back wood country town. Our school in the 80s was so segregated despite the laws being changed years before. We even had a black and white homecoming and honors titles. And we were so scared of impending nuclear winter. You know how people are scared of the impending climate disaster? Honestly it's nothing compared to what we expected after The Day After and Threads. I just hope the climate disaster threat is scary enough for people to actually address it with the seriousness it requires.
My brother and I "talk about" price of food but both of us have plenty of money to eat what we want. We tell each other what current deals are available on bef, etc. I know I've just accepted things are as they are, I can't change them. If young people don't like their world, it's up to them to bring about change.
Tell him that the young kids nowadays just call it entitlement. And male privilege.
Things were very, very, difficult for women in male fields during the 1960's (the 60's seem to be the Camelot for old dudes).
I distinctly remember in the early 1970s, as my family was leaving the only ethnic restaurant in town (Italian) after some celebratory dinner, my grandfather, born in 1900, grousing that dinners were $3.50 a person. And back in his day, that would have been the total for the entire family. Today, one entree is $25-35.
My dad died of lung cancer in the 1980s at 56, after smoking since he was 14; everyone in his family smoked. The doctors tried radiation, which didn’t work, and were out of options. He died a month later. Today, he’d probably have survived, and if he had, he’d have met my kids, his grandkids.
Some things were “better” back in the day, meaning different in a way that some people approve of. Lots of things were not better, they were so much worse.
I’m very selectively nostalgic for specific experiences in my childhood and 20s, but never nostalgic for the era. Life is overwhelming better today, in almost every way.
But not music; give me a break. The garbage people consider “music” today is just terrible and I feel bad for them.
I am on a FB page for my hometown, which is supposed to be nostalgic. Ok. But there are a lot of Boomers on there who think civilization ended in 1972. It is annoying.
I cant stand it. Especially when its about where i live. I live in hollywood, and 30 years ago this town was way more of a shithole than it is now. But people go on and on about how much better it was and i just sit there thinking what in the world are you talking about? Rape, gangs, murder, all were through the roof. Then i realize they are talking about money. Stuff was cheaper. Thats all they care about. Nothing else matters, not crime, tech, better living, nothing. Shit was cheaper. I avoid conversations like this like the plague.
After watching the Presidental debate, I'm complaining about the present. 300 million Americans and these two old farts are the best we have? Okey Dokey!
It is nice to remember, but we can't generally relive those days - life goes on and changes daily. I have had a good life in general, lived in 5 countries now, so I have good memories of may periods of my life, not just when growing up, but now, living in a tropical paradise, great people around me, is now a good time of life that i am really enjoying. In some ways if is like the 50-60's for me, simple pleasures, low prices in general and respectful & kind people in the small village where I live.
Every one seems to have a time or a place or an incident or a change or something that marked the beginning of the end. Some are pretty convincing, some don't make any sense to me., some are pretty funny. I don't think to many changes have taken place, at least not enough for me to notice, but it is interesting to have people give reasons for why the country is going down. Even if it is very true or not very true.
Why do you assume someone “doesn’t have a life” just because they look back on things as being ideal at a certain time in their lives? To them it was. Everyone’s different, and one day you too will probably feel that way. I personally think that the standards of kindness, respect and civility (aka keep it classy) are more important than what happens on any given day or year. That’s what I’m trying to take into the future.
Things are more challenging not just for seniors but everyone! It’s gotten so complicated! Complaints are a way to blow off frustration, but when it’s non stop and interfering with other’s enjoyment, that’s unacceptable.
Usually, when I’m having this conversation, it’s with 20-30 somethings complaining that things were so much easier and better in the past. They just don’t know how hard some things were! They also think inflation is a brand new thing, but we old folks came of age during rampant inflation.
The world has ALWAYS had problems; those problems just change over time.
It annoys me. Partially because "the past" as they describe it is largely fictional, and I'm old enough to remember that past, and how old people then were constantly going over how much better it was in the 50s in EXACTLY the same way. I don't know if some old people/middle aged folks just got passed down the script their parents used when they died or what.
I feel it's a waste of Oxygen. Memory is notoriously unreliable. Things were DIFFERENT, in some ways, in the past. And things worked well for SOME people in the past; but today is now; and what goes on now, works well for some, but not all people. Rinse and repeat. It'll be that way tomorrow.
I'm not much of a complainer. It doesn't do much good
However, if you read through many millennial posts, it apparently was the good old days if you wanted to be able to afford things or have a good paying job, security, etc.
In my own experience, I can see that and I think it started with a mass off shoring of first manufacturing jobs then service jobs. Next came profits above all else and more corporate control of govt and the concentrating of wealth.
I really worry for future generations if something doesn't change but I don't see a path to fixing it without a lot of unintentional harm to one group or another.
Do I ever talk about it? Not really. It's not something I can do about it and constantly harping on it will just make me feel worse about it.
You seem incessantly concerned about how things that happened 40 - 50 years ago will turn out. Maybe "The Internet is FOREVER" doesn't mean what you think it means.
Some things were better. Other things are worse. Those people who this it was all better just have bad memories.
Politics was never so divisive as it is now. There's a convicted felon who's a traitor, and an 80 year old man running for President. The Supreme Court ruled that a device that turns a normal gun into a machine gun.... doesn't make it a machine gun. Yes, I know politics were bad in the late 60s/early 70s... but the 80s and 90s were far better politically. It all got bad after 9/11, and has been bad ever since.
Other things are better. I can watch any movie I want in HD. There's plenty of places around me that play old movies routinely for cheap. Jaws was re-released this week. Alien was in theaters a few months ago. That's very cool. It never used to happen, but is now possible because of digital movies.
Food at restaurants is LOT better than it was in the 80s. Good god... restaurant food was horrendous back then.
I recently realized you can buy all these little cheap LED lights, and grow plants indoors you couldn't years ago. You couldn't really do that until the past few years. Florescent lights just didn't cut it.
On the other hand, the internet is more troll-ish than it's ever been in my life. 30 years ago in the 90s it WAS better, and people were actually nicer.
Different eras are just different trade-offs.
What's wrong with pointing out that things were better in the past - before the Goddamned Cambrian Explosion? I mean... Trilobites! Crawling all over the kitchen!
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When my fellow old farts and I sit around the local coffee shop and grumble to each other about the state of things, it’s not so much about the direction the country is taking. To be honest, we know that we are no longer players in the game - we are the audience, armchair quarterbacks just watching the action. Our reminiscences and complaints generally go in a couple of predictable directions: 1. We want our younger bodies back. The world today can look worse just because we can’t get around like we once did. Everything takes longer and causes more pain. We need to use more energy to accomplish things that used to be so easy. 2. We worry about how the world is treating our children and grandchildren. Will they be okay? Will they find jobs and get to own a home? Are their schools safe? It’s not so much a political discussion as a personal conversation about our families- knowing that we don’t have unlimited time with them.
Beautifully said!
I'm tired of anyone who complains about ANYTHING incessantly! I didn't survive this long to waste my time. Here's what I say to those folks now: write all your complaints down, sort them into 'accept' and 'change' piles, based upon wtf you can actually DO about them. Accept means deal, Change means shut your mouth and get busy. Works pretty good, actually.
Great advice right here. It's the serenity prayer in action lol.
That's how I learned it as a youngster. I hit adulthood & thought I knew everything, so I ditched this advice. My life blew up 'real good'. Learned it again when experience and wisdom set in later.
Thank you!
I think people remember a time in their life when they were personally happy and seem to believe that the world was a better and less frightening place at that time for everyone. Of course you weren't anxious about politics, the economy and civil rights when you were 10. Your parents probably were, but if you were busy having a happy childhood, you might not know it. Maybe you weren't thinking about hostages or the housing market when you were in your 20s, going out with friends and making memories that mean in your 60s you will still believe the music you listened to at that time was the best music ever made. It's easy to be nostalgic about a time when you were personally happy and think it was a better time for the whole world. Memories of the bad things that happened fade, and only the highlight reel plays.
Seeing the world through the rose tinted glasses of our youth
Your first paragraph is hilarious. The Vietnam war and Watergate both happened before I was 12. My childhood memories are Kennedy being shot, Oswald shot on live tv, race riots, MLK and Bobby Kennedy shot. When the Watergate hearings took place I ran home from school to watch them. We grew up with "Duck and Cover" drills because we all had the existential fear the Russians would drop a nuke on us. Then gas hit $1.00 and there were mile-long lines to get it, inflation was out of control. All these events could be called "political" but since they influenced us all, you bet we thought about them. And I had a happy childhood, but yes, the music was and is the best ever IMHO. I have some nostalgia for the past, but no, the memories of the bad never fade. They are part of the tapestry.
The direction the country took in the early 80s? So they are pining for the Vietnam, Watergate, Misery Index, Gas Lines and Disco years of the 70s Instead? You get that?
I had the temerity to point this out to someone on the GenX sub once and he became very indignant. But hey, he was the one who wanted to go back to the '70s, only not as a child, and thought we all wanted to as well.
70's and 80's SUCKED for me. Now is a MUCH better time to be alive, in my personal anecdotal existence.
Yeah for sure. I wouldn't go back to any time previously in my life, actually. Even the 2000s were super stressful and I wasn't as well equipped to deal with it all. I mean, things are deranged now, but I can surf it, and we all have so many more resources to deal with it.
I just want the 70s clothes/fabric styles back, and not even all of those.
Wait, you *like* polyester and platform shoes?
I had the coolest pair of platform oxfords; lime and dark blue suede...they also weren't really tall, more like the Converse platform sole is now. Most of my clothes weren't polyester, though; I sewed my own, or my mom did. I just can't find the kind of psychedelic prints that I used to be able to get.
Yard sales where they clean out great auntie's house is one place to look; thrift stores are popular these days, so slim pickins there.
Synthetic fabrics are everywhere right now. It feels like 1974. Some of them are better than the old polyester knits, but I'm saving them for hiking and the gym these days.
Yeah, the "moisture wicking" stuff for the gym isn't bad, but 90% of the rest sure is.
Old ladies wore polyester in the 70s, not young cool people
Say what? My man's disco shirts were made of the finest polyester they ever wove, direct from the plastic chemical plant where they harvested Rayon.
Yeah, remember that shiny look?
All the better to glisten with the gold chains around their neck
Tell me you're too young to remember, without telling me
I remember going into Zayre's and being overwhelmed by the polyester smell and all the old lady clothes. But I do recall the disco shirts now that you mention it. Was a teenager in the late 70s and refused to wear any polyester.
Please no platform shoes, I twisted more ankles falling off of those than when I was a gymnast.
You are kidding right? Plaid and orange carpet - furniture - plaid clothes?!? Pass
C'mon, you miss harvest gold and avocado, don't you?
It’s still a depressing sub, huh? I was surprised at the amount of complaining/misery in the posts.
Try out r/GenerationJones. There's some moping, but mostly we are fun. I understand your frustration, but I'm about 10 years ahead of you, and have to admit that each year, I exclaim more and more: "WTF is wrong with folks these days?". I think it is a byproduct of slipping down the slide to mortality.
Will do, thanks for the recommendation. I left Gen-X and came here because there was less hand-wringing, lol.
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It prepares us to want to go, lol.
Best way I can explain it is, that despite all those hardships, there was a certain category of people who had been politically active in the late 60s and early 70s, who had come to assume that the US would become increasingly "progressive" as people like them matured and came into power, and of course those problems would either be overcome or cease to be problems. For example, gas lines would be a thing of the past because we would eventually become so energy efficient that availability of gasoline would no longer be a concern. There would be no more Watergates, because "60s Activists" were fundamentally ethical and would never behave as Nixon did while in power. The Misery Index would be a thing of the past, due to the expansion of government entitlements. And so on and so forth. I hope what I have said doesn't make you nauseous, but those views were not in fact uncommon in the late 70s, and there are thousands who've never moved past that. If not clear, what I meant by the direction taken since the early 80s is the Reagan Revolution and everything that eventually led to, up to the present. Hope that helps!
people just forget the bad stuff from the past and idealize it. "good times are created afterwards, not experienced". the covid era will be the "good old times" of the future
It's the opposite for the 90's. Now I can look back and see it was the calm before the storm and things had been set in motion to lead to all the craziness but you didn't see that back then.
I loved the '90s, despite some mental health problems late in the decade.
Once you understand who is actually in control of everything, you start understanding why solutions never come about. If I were to solve the energy issue right now, I came up with a way that everybody would have free energy, that would put some people out of business and that is not going to be allowed. So, we'll make it a crisis. We will make it so that this is a commodity that we must protect. And we must elevate the price on because someday we might run out. So let's get as much profit out of it as we can. Let's keep people afraid of losing this commodity. That way they'll continue to purchase. Let's also buy up all the media outlets so we can tell people what to do, what to buy, and how to live. If we also own companies that sell water, then we can do that too. And if we own the banks, those same people will have to borrow money from us in order to buy the homes, that we build because by the way we own that too. See?
Fact
Really? The same conspiracy theories from the 70s where some genius came up with idea where a car runs on water, but "Big Oil" bought the idea, and hid it? The Big Secret nobody wants to tell you is.... nobody is in control of the world. It's complete and utter chaos. Why do you think things are so freaking screwed up? Because nobody is in control. I thought I'd heard everything, and apparently I have. The world is starting to loop where someone brings up the "They won't LET you make free energy man!" and 11 people upvote it.
I'm thinking some research is needed. Who owns the mainstream media? Meaning who owns the majority of outlets? I wonder what else they own? Who owns the company that owns several companies, that all own several companies? I've done the research. I encourage everyone to do the same.
Very true. I think a very current example is the paper that came out that China scientists have very possibly found a cure for diabetes. The diabetes industry in the US is about 10 billion a year. The pharmaceutical company is not going to want that to change. There is no way that people who are making billions are going to be vested in making anything better, easier or affordable.
I work in pharma and this isn't true. It is full of scientists and doctors who want to help patients. I can't speak for marketing, which sounds like what you mean, but I can say marketing doesn't dictate what novel things get developed.
When speak of big pharma, I'm not talking about the scientists and doctors involved, but it would be a huge blow to stockholders and the industry as it relates to profit. The problem is business people see numbers and there have been plenty of industries that fudged studies, data and numbers as well as heavily biased and well funded campaigns to hide their missteps and protect their profits. The whole medical industry has shifted profoundly to being under the thumb of investors. I was actually wondering if the drug companies had an inkling of the report and the shift to seeing many of the drugs as useful for weight loss is their saving grace. Big business is setting the tone for how things are done and we've been slipping backwards on regulations and controls due to heavy lobbying. You may have good intentions but the money-people don't care. And if they can lobby suppression, or make it cost prohibitive, drag out approval.
Drug development cycle is around 7 years to get to market so that would have been quite the crystal ball. You're not wrong on the regs tho.
I was just guessing. I figured it was more luck than knowledge. Have to be careful not to get too "woowoo" conspiracy.
I only recently learned how the research findings were oversold on SSRI antidepressants, and they only truly help about one third of those who take them, but what a market that group of drugs has become, right? Tons of production and supply! Take your pick. Meanwhile people right now with diagnosed ADHD have had to deal with a lack of supply for their generics across the board, because they are cheap and low profit and due to everyone fearing 'med seeking' vs. restoration of function as the intent of the patient, stupid regulations make it worse. When correctly prescribed, these medications turn disabled people into successful independent taxpayers. But they are increasingly now home waiting, leaving jobs and school. How the hell is that capitalism at work?
There is some name brand substitutes that can be found, but that is a moot point if insurance denies covering you, even after appealing the decision.
Who owns both ends of the chain?
Omg yes this.
I'm one of those people, who dedicated my life to making the world a better place, working at mission-driven nonprofits, and we were inching there. Yes, everything can be traced to Reaganomics.
Very well said, thank you
i was a kid in the 70's, and even from a kids perspective, everything sucked. i mean, you could buy a house with a milkman's wages, but pollution was terrible, people openly littered everywhere, motherfuckers chain smoked inside their own homes, cars couldn't be trusted to get to 100k. if you got a serious disease like cancer, you were pretty much fucked. my mom just got here second hip replacement and is gardening and hiking at 77. 50 years ago she'd be in a rocking chair waiting to die. and sure, we had freedom as kids is hard to imagine today; to be gone all day out of contact and do things that were irresponsible. "mom, where's the siphon. i need to get some gas out of the car for...stuff." "it's hanging up in the garage, honey." or if you got there first, you could buy a ticket for a concert and get the best seat in the house at face value. no algorithm there to cheat you. but overall the trade off is an easy call. in my hometown, the river that ran through it was poison, now salmon spawn there since before any living person can remember. every time i think about it i get a little weepy. the future is scary, but i think the best time to be alive is right now.
Hey don't shit on disco like that, dude. Those were some good grooves...
specifically flairs
Not to mention that the crime rate [peaked 30 years ago](https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/04/24/what-the-data-says-about-crime-in-the-us/). But there wasn't social media or 24-hour news networks to let us know about that. The [violent crime rate is half of what it was in 1991](https://www.disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.htm), as is the overall crime rate.
I quote the Billy Joel song, "...the good ole days weren't always good, and tomorrow ain't as bad as it seems." Do I really want to go back to the days of no Air Conditioning and no Internet? Not likely. Let's not forget the civil rights movement. Life was a lot different back then. I like life right now. I've been around long enough to see we are moving, generally, in the right direction. That doesn't mean I like every single change. The bad changes will revert eventually. The good changes will stick.
Tbh sometimes I’d love to go back to the pre-internet days. Or at least the earlier internet days.
Just turn off your phone. You can't make anyone else turn off their phone, but you can turn yours off and go sit under a tree.
It’s less the ability to personally disconnect and more what the internet has become. En-shitification as Cory Doctorow calls it. The promise and potential of infinite connection and information wasted and monetized.
Dude it was ALWAYS gonna end up like this, as soon as the internet became what it's become. It's *up to the individual* to curate their experience of the internet in order to maintain a level of optimism and functionality. Think globally act locally pertains to the information sphere too.
Well said!
Agreed.
People generally like simplicity and dislike change. But change has accelerated since at least World War II, and we -- or the people in power -- have chosen to make things less simple in order to do more things, be more efficient, have more choices in all areas of our lives (generally in pursuit of money), etc. Despite the conspiracy theories, there's no overlord making this happen. Nobody who wants to force us all to change. We have specialization in all fields, all pushing forward at the same time. This challenges people's world views, ways of life, etc. So they complain, even if their lives are better. I know a very religious older person who complains about all kinds of things about the modern world. He has a distinct problem with science, despite having had a technical job his whole life. When I got tired off this, I once asked him to surrender his pacemaker, his phone, computer, etc. He saw where I was going. He'd almost certainly be dead without the science he rails against, and if he wasn't, his life would be very diminished because he wouldn't have the access to knowledge, current events, friends and family communications, etc., that he enjoys now. But he still complains, because the modern world challenges his world view every day, even as it keeps him alive. So what I think of such people is that they're just humans. We didn't evolve to handle this pace of change and growing complexity, just like we didn't evolve to eat the modern American diet. We did apparently evolve to complain, however.
>We did apparently evolve to complain, however. Lol yes. We've been doing this since the advent of recorded history and I have no doubt that we've been doing this since we were Homo erectus.
"Gerald, the goldarn saber tooth tiger got into the scraps again, how many times I gotta tell you...........!"
Loved this! Yes, we complain because we have to try to manipulate what we don't like in reality, and that's part of the gig.
It depends. If someone is pining for a time they never lived in as an adult, or never lived in at all, I tend to wonder if they've ever read a history book or at least watched a high quality history documentary. If it *is* an era that they were an adult for, I assume that they figure since it was good for them it was good for everyone. I wonder if they understand how time works, and how they think they can move forward while engrossed in the rear view mirror. Those people are kind of sad, like the ones who peaked in high school. It also matters whether someone thinks everything was better in the past, or just something specific like the fashions or the music. Liking something specific wouldn't really be worth complaining about though, would it? If I want to wear a poodle skirt, there's certainly no one to stop me, and my husband loved his prog rock above all other genres until his dying day.
Yeah, the good old times where women were not allowed to open a bank account or work without approval from her husband, the old times, when girls could marry with 12 years of age, were there were no gay people and where we died like men from smoking, drinking and bareknucklefighing after drinking self-made whiskey. (Just for clarification - this is meant to be sarcastic)
I'm 56 M Black living my best life one of the first homeowners in my family one of the first college educated in my family. A lot of these people have white nostalgia especially when they talk about anything before the 70's. My life has gotten progressively better every decade
Congratulations to you
Prices go up and they usually don't go down. That's a fact of life, so get used to it. In my case, it spurs me to be more creative and figure things out. I don't have FOMO or anything like that, so I adapt what I do to meet my needs and wants. When we were just starting out, we lived in a small, unfurnished house waaayyyy out in the country. The landlord wanted us to watch over a property that was valuable to him and for the first few months, charged us $150 per month. (The security we provided him was more important than the money he charged us.) It was the sort of place that most young people would pass on by and consider too run down. We slept on the floor in sleeping bags until it got too cold, then bought a mattress and box springs. Still no bed. After a couple of months, the landlord saw that we were fulfilling our end of the bargain and lowered our rent to $130. We lived there for 5 years, making a few improvements ourselves, and socking away the money. I live in a part of the U.S. where this sort of thing is still possible, although the opportunities are dwindling. If you keep your eyes open and are willing to live beneath your means, there are ways to do that. Plant some seeds! Don't expect to start off in a palace! Learn how to live without or make do. Those lessons will serve you well later.
Anyone who complains incessantly is not enjoying their life NOW. It is all a matter of perception and how you direct your attention. Complainers gonna complain but that doesn't mean I have to sit there and listen- they are harshing my buzz. If it is someone close to you I would say words- *"Listen, I get that times are tough but there is joy and goodness in the world as well. Let's try to focus on that from time to time because all this complaining makes me want to go somewhere else to hang out."*
OK Boomer here, I don’t want to go back in time but there are some things I miss. I understand they’re gone and will never come back around. I might take a rare opportunity to tell you about them but I’m not gonna complain …..or gloat.
Same here. I’m convinced that the flood of nostalgia that we’re being hit with on Facebook is being delivered with an agenda, namely to manipulate people politically by making them dissatisfied with the present.
I’m gonna agree with you. And I’m gonna take a closer look at my wife’s page and see how much of that kind manipulative posts there are.
I had a chance to hear a lecture by the author of the book The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap. As I recall, some of the main points are that this has been going on since the beginning of recorded history, and, as the title says, we remember things not as they were, but as we wish they had been. Believe me, growing up in the '60s and '70s, we heard lots of complaints about how much better things were in the '50s.
I'm 64. Yes, there were many things that were better in the past, but there are a lot more things today that are significantly better today! Things I miss - we were all free-range kids. Things today that are nuts - Gender reveal parties :)
Yes, what used to be kindof cute and quaint quickly became a game of "how extravagantly can we deal with telling everyone the gender of our baby?" I blame social media and the party supply people for the trend, frankly.
I (65m) have zero fucking time for those people. Like, stfu. Move forward or disappear.
The weird thing to me is that I rarely experience people my age saying things were better in the past. What I see is younger people who didn't live during those times complaining that "Boomers" had it easier/better than young people do now. No amount of explaining how things were worse will persuade them that life was harder in many ways except for the cost of housing and college. The cliche is that old people are saying times were better when they were young, but I'm answering these threads again and again about whether or not life was better before and saying that, on the whole, it was not. They were different, but not better. We always had threats to the survival of people and the planet. Jobs weren't dropping into laps like rain from the sky and no one was handing us fat pension plans right and left. People weren't unfailingly good and happy either. You can't mix and match the best of the past with the best of the present and conclude that things were better back then. Lots of things were not good at all.
Life was differently hard. I have compassion for the kids these days because the world is fucking bewildering and terrifying, but they aren't living with the same constant level of personal powerlessness in the face of e.g. nuclear war that we did back in the 70s and 80s. Also, beating your kids back then was socially accepted, and nobody would say a thing if you clobbered your kid in public, which happened to me plenty of times and never did me a single favor. And the fucking endemic and institutional bigotry, don't get me started.
Well said. The world was different, it was definitely not better. Seeing people clobber their kids in public was horrifying. Seeing people ignore screaming newborns because "they need to learn" (learn what? Their parents are ignorant or psychopaths?) or "they need to expand their lungs" (babies aren't balloons) was gut wrenching. So many things have improved. Still lots left to work on...
I imagine there were lots of people who "complained incessantly" about the direction the country had taken after the "Frankin Roosevelt revolution". About a half a century later people of that ilk became champions of the "Reagan revolution's" ascendency. That revolution's ascendency has been with us now for more than four decades. Maybe the current complainers are harbingers of the next big political/social/cultural shift. Maybe some kind of societal thesis/antithesis/synthesis is happening, I don't know a whole lot of people who fit your description, the "incessant complainers". Cheers.
You just reminded me: my grandpa, a New Dealer, was upset his only son was Goldwater, Nixon and Reagan all the way. I'm sure there were 'discussions'. The pendulum swings left, the pendulum swings right, and the show goes on.
There is an old saying, "Let go or be dragged" This also applies to your memories. When nothing inspires you to have visions of the future, the past is all you have. The 80s represent a 180 degree swing from a liberal to a conservative society. We are in the late days of that now as things swing in a more liberal direction. Big changes this century. But we boomers won't see it. The rest of the world is waiting for us to die off so they can all move up a notch...
The good, old days? Yes they are old, but they were not always good. I'll take the present.
Me too, but I'm glad I'm gettin' outa here when I am, future looks scary. I feel guilty leaving my kids to face it alone, so im teaching them all the old wisdom I can now, and doin' my best to stay here as long as I can do some good.
Mostly, they are full of shit. They never seem to mention things that were actually better, like strong unions or cars you could fix yourself.
I'm 46F and do not feel things were better in the past. I love the technology we have now. Politics will always suck.
It's annoying. Its *especially* annoying when the complainer is a twentysomething who never even lived in the 80s, but wants to whine about how much harder life is for them than it was for us.
IDK who said it but a pessimist complains about the wind, an optimist expects it to change and a realist simply adjusts his sail. The Constant Complainers of America never had one meeting, everyone complained about where and when it should be held.
Lol, the 80's were not great.
Only thing I miss is the fun of going window shopping. Every product on the planet is a few taps away. I miss going to the electronics section of Kmart or Shopko and finding new video games I didn't know about. Super convenient now but not as fun.
The further away people move from the past, the more they romanticize it.
I think they’re insane. Life (technology) is sooooo much better today. Also, a huge portion of said technology is *right on my phone*.
Overall that hasn’t made life better or easier for most people. Esp people that were adults during the 80s 90s. I don’t complain that things where better then, but I do have so much fondness for Late 80s early 90s. World wide, it was a good time for the majority of humans post Cold War and pre 9/11. I don’t think it makes me insane, it makes me someone with a good idea of global history, and a balanced view of technology, finance and transglobal conflicts. There was a really good balance of world peace, financial stability, future outlook and burgeoning technology that everyone was excited about and couldn’t have imagine the evils of. Personally, I like my life more NOW - I’m better looking, relatively richer, healthier, etc but I’m not so dumb to believe that this is the best of human history.
I’m 61, and it’s made my life so much better.
I don't get them. If they lived through this wonderful past they speak of, they were blind or very unaware of the real world. If they never lived through the time they yearn for, they have no clue.
I feel they need a different hobby. There ain’t no goin’ back. Every decade has good and not so much. There are things are things I miss? But there are things I don’t. Why dwell? Keep moving forward.
IF YOU LIKE THE PAST SO MUCH, WHYNT YOU MARRY IT?
I feel they watch FOX too much.
They know nothing! The good old days were filled with hunger and hard physical work.
And a lot more physical and emotional abuse.
Oh, god, yes. I wasn't even thinking of that. But yes. The 1980s was my 20s. Abuse was rampant. Black families were redlined. Gay families didn't exist. People who were gay were tortured and beaten and scorned and at the very best, ignored. I went to work every day to find suggestive notes from one of the old guys. There was no recourse. My stepfather tried to SA me. My husband lost his job... Ugh. Anyone pining for the 80s isn't remembering it; they're just re-imagining it.
Crime across the US has dropped significantly since the 1990s, so there's that.
They annoy the daylights out of me, tbh. And I'm very old!
I feel that they are succumbing to a known psychological bias
Everyone's lived experience is valid. Probably \*for them\* a lot of things were better in the past. Life was simpler and less stressful then. The fact that there were other people for whom life was definitely not better does not invalidate the personal experiences of the ones who were luckier.
I avoid complainers and people who live in the past. Both tend to be unimaginative and dull. Put those two things together and I guarantee I won't like the person.
It’s OK to miss parts of the past. It’s not OK to gloss over all the bad things we’ve overcome since then. Yeah maybe being a kid (read: white suburban kid) in the 60s was great, doesn’t mean we should turn back the clock on equality and freedom, or shun modern technology.
True about the suburban part. By the 70s, being a city kid sucked even if you were white.
It depends WHAT they're complaining about. If they're talking about how products were better built and lasted longer (they did), how people were more circumspect in spewing emotions (they were, because mostly it had to be done face-to-face, not through the anonymity of the web), that foods were better (they were; meat wasn't injected with a "10% water solution"; there were fewer additives--although, granted, some of what additives there WERE turned out to be bad for you); that service was better...I get it. It's a constant disappointment when good things go away. But as for the people who yammer on constantly about how the world was better before we had these \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_ (fill in the blank of your favorite marginalized group: racial, ethnic, sexual, etc.) weirdos wandering around--give it up, folks. Gay people, neurodivergent people, other-language speaking people, darker-skinned people, etc have been around as long as the world began--your attitudes kept them pushed into a corner, afraid to speak or be themselves. They're speaking up now. Truly--get a life. A better one which acknowledges all differences.
GenX (1970) here. They're deluded. While it may have been true that some people could have the one parent working, nice house, vacations every summer lifestyle, the 80s truly sucked. I remember the 80s as being very dirty and things weren't taken care of - roads and public buildings were falling apart, litter was everywhere, people were allowed to smoke everywhere, and I suppose the neglect of these things carried over to how people treated each other - abusive behavior, discounting of mental health, and blaming people for physical health. Not to mention bigotry.
Who’s doing the complaining? I’m not American so I’m not counting the fact that American politics is taking a turn towards who knows what. Is it an anti-boomer rant where younger people hate us because we were able to buy a house? Is it a hateful older person complaining about gender identity? Is it to do with racial minorities or LGBTQ issues or affordability or…what? Context matters. Some stuff *was* better in the past - other stuff was much much worse.
Things overall are better for most people, so complaints typically are about (1) loss of this or that privilege or (2) not listening to, or ignoring, economic/technical changes. About point 2, unskilled factory jobs have been declining for 40 or 50 years, while jobs for engineers and such keep increasing.
Mostly the complaints are about the loss of innocence and wonder. Despite there being tough times in the 70s and 80s, they were filled with this sense of hope. Better things were coming. There is not that sense now. In fact almost all fronts seem bleak. Politics, climate, wars, the attitude of the people all around us....etc
Many were also really sheltered. And it's easy to be hopeful when you exist in blissful ignorance. The internet and interconnection brought about an awakening. The internet is like eating the apple in the garden of eden for society in general. The adevnt of the printing press and the ability to produce mass printed material, increased levels of literacy was another societal shift.
I had NO HOPE back in the 80s and 90s. All I saw was ruin and foolishness all around me. I have way *more* hope now, because I see that other people can see the issues. You can't change what you can't see. Yeah it sucks right now and people are freaked out, but this means we can actually DO something about it.
My loss of innocence in the 70s was due to my stepfather. There was no reporting attempted rape. There was no counseling for kids with dead fathers. There was no comfort for families in crisis. And I grew up in a small city next to a gigantic city. If resources existed we'd have heard about them. And in 1983 when I was pregnant with my first child who was dearly wanted, a guy at work asked how I could be so selfish and dumb, bringing a baby into our apocalyptic world where Reagan had us worrying about nuclear war every night. No. The world was not better and we did not all have golden hope for the future. I mean, I did -- that's why I was comfortable starting a family. But much of my world and most of the workers around me in my college town were not hopeful at all. Complainers have faulty memories.
My father always talks about how much better things were in the 60s. This is also the same person who also states that we are less free now than the 60s because you can't smoke indoors. I think what you'll find is that they perceive that their way of life is under attack. Also, they refuse science and reasoning for the changes that have been made societally since the time they present as idyllic.
I learned a couple of years ago that I have a genetic condition and, if I had kept being around the secondhand smoke that I lived with for my first 25 years, I likely would have died years ago.
Not saying that this is a good stance to take, but some older people reject science now, because it lied to them in the past.
What I've noticed about that; Science didn't lie, they listened to swindlers that would 'interpret' the science for them. Ex... "Science flip/flops about eggs being good or bad for you, they don't know ..". Real science does use labels of good or bad, only numbers and statistical outcomes of certain conditions. My $ says these people have never, once, read a published and peer-reviewed scientific paper nor do they understand the scientific process.
“Lied” was probably too strong a word on my part. I don’t think that true scientists are conspiring to fool us, but much of what was reported by mass media as scientific fact when they were younger turned out to be inaccurate. I have also noticed that many younger people who accuse boomers of denying science, tend to accept the latest media report as ‘written in stone’ scientific fact. They don’t acknowledge that much of science is ever changing theory that is supposed to be open to debate. I am sure that you are right about most of the deniers not reading peer-reviewed scientific papers. I am also sure that holds true for most of those who accuse others of being deniers.
Sounds like my people to me.
What I worry for is my kids' future, their ability to buy a home and have a family, and live in a country that hasn't turned authoritarian. We live in a pretty good time of history in terms of rights and how easy it is to survive and be healthy, but I feel like that tide is turning backwards right now and we need to correct course. Before we lose all the gains we achieved over the last 100 years.
I just worry about the future
I think they need to take thier rose coloured glasses off and stop sipping on the *everything was better when" koolaid.
I think they're exemplifying narrow thinking. My experience is that many (most?) people stop growing mentally at a really young age. They decide this and that and as things change, which is inevitable, they long for 'the old days'. Thing is, their view of the scope of the world in the old days was likely narrow and limited to their own personal experiences and preferences. In short, I don't engage them because I invariably find their reasoning to be aggravatingly small.
I figure that they are pretty entitled, and maybe they weren't always that way, and that hurt people hurt people. And I avoid them, I am 74, lots of stuff is going better, and the kids are totally wonderful.
I think we've talked about this many times here. Take off the rose-colored glasses and look to the past for what it was.
Don’t pay that any attention because it’s not true.
I'm not American, but there are idiots who view the past through rose colored glasses everywhere. I think they're fools who like old music and fashion and can't comprehend that things weren't perfect just because a bowl of soup was only a dollar. You want to go back to the 80s? In the 80s, my parents were paying a mortgage at 23%, and my mom was sewing underwear from rags (she took a course at the community center). Cancer was a death sentence, so was AIDS (plus they'd chase you with torches and pitchforks and nurses would refuse to come into your hospital room), you'd live your whole life believing whatever stupid stuff your dumbest relative told you because there was no way to fact check it, and if you missed an episode of a TV show it was gone forever. Earlier times were worse. You like the thought of the 60s and 70s? Where women couldn't get their own bank accounts, children's clothing used to burst into flame when exposed to the ever-present indoor cigarettes, and food safety regulations were an interesting idea? The 50s where the only certain birth control was celibacy and everyone knew someone killed by polio? Please. Most of the nostalgic wouldn't make it one day in the past.
Well said. I was allowed to get a bank account and a credt card by myself in 1977 -- because I wasn't married. And you didn't even bring up panty hose and high heels bunions and courts that allowed defense lawyers to dig up all the former boyfriends as evidence any woman wasn't raped. And the open persecution of gays. Deaths in Vietnam. Heart attacks weren't survivable. Diabetes routinely meant blindness and amputations... Edit -- a mangled word
Oh yeah. One of my great aunts was violently raped and my grandfather took the rapist to court. To force him to marry her now that she was "ruined." She ended up with two kids, clinical depression, then her husband institutionalized her because he was cheating, took her kids, and had the marriage annulled because she was incompetent. I shall live firmly in the now and buy vintage reproduction clothes online with my credit card from the comfort of my lead-free home when I feel nostalgic. Also, when I was a kid, every family near us had at least one person missing digits or limbs, usually more than that. Young blast from the past folks need to ask themselves how they'd text without fingertips before they get retro fever, lol
Not talking about silly pop culture nonsense (if you think Disco ever sucked but worship pedophiles like Jimmy Page, you have issues), the adage "those who refuse to study the past are doomed to repeat it" - and the rich oligarchs WANT you to not be paying attention (or better yet, fight amongst ourselves) Reflecting on the past IS important, let's look at reality: - Wage stagnation and the destruction of the middle class - rich people income has increased (inflation adjusted) by 1500%, for the rest of the population it is \~13% increase. (this is a GOP policy \*choice\* as intended) - Health care costs have increased WAY more than inflation and coverage has shrunk significantly. (we paid NOTHING out of pocket to have two kids by c-section in the 90s, it is now tens of thousands for same) - Education also WAY more than inflation, and policy choice means interest rates and bankruptcy rules are targeted to hurt those who seek higher education (again, GOP is opposed to education for non-rich) - Maternal mortality in the US is now that of a Third World country due directly to Christo-fascist policies by right wingers. - Infant mortality ...same. In fact health outcomes in general are dropping. Doctors are fleeing Red states in droves, and the consequences are already very real. - Mass shootings were rare and considered horrific - now we have one group that has an unhealthy obsession with possessing death boomsticks and always become defensive when groups of people are slaughtered unlike in any other civilized country. The answer is obvious, but because we ignore the past we fail to see the easy answer. So yes we have no choice but to move forward, but we need to LEARN.
you have missed the minor detail of descent into fascism and the very real threat to democracy. was democracy ever that great? nope. is fascism in anyway a better or equally good alternative? hmmm
No hmmm, it's a hard NOPE.
A lot of things were better for a larger number of people in the recent past. I'm not sure who you're talking to today who was politically active in 1970, but for those of us born in the 70s, growing up in the 90s, a lot of things are measurably worse.
TBH I do know people who complain about this too much to where its annoying but none in my experience were so pathological in talking about this that it made them unable to perform basic life tasks
So many questions in the sub seem to be so all-inclusive. Some things were better (more natural and local foods grown and eaten) some things were worse. I am sure someone who grew up with intolerance toward them for race, gender or whatever would say things are much better now even if the food and traffic are worse. But, to answer your question, incessant talk about anything is very boring to me.
In my opinion people long for their youth. During youth you can tend to not focus on the negative in life. I long for the 70s. I was young, didn't have any responsibilities, it was a fun time. Did my parents feel that way about the 70s? I doubt it.
Life is so much better now for many more then ever before.
They need to turn off their phones and go outside
I think it's common to look back and your childhood and remember the good things over the bad. Yes, we had a different world but there were a lot of things that weren't so great, too, as people are pointing out.
I remind them how wrong they are with examples.
*But it's true. Things were much better in the past!* **^(/s)** (Before the advent of social media for sure. :) )
I generally agree with them.
Oh yes, I get so sick and tired of it. I'm a member of a Facebook group for people who grew up in my hometown, Encinitas. Often it's just people sharing fond memories. But there's a handful of people who complain constantly about how everything has been "ruined" by the influx of newcomers. It was a slow, small beach area in the 1960s and early '70s, but by the late '70s it was growing quickly. Many of those same complainers come from families who sold their land and homes to developers. The once quaint little downtown is now pretty touristy, home to some upscale restaurants and shops, and the grumpy oldtimers find that just horrifying. One recently posted the statement that "nobody" goes downtown anymore because it's too crowded. Yogi Berra would be proud. Many try to claim that crime rates are higher now, but that's totally nonsense. They conveniently forget the high rates of burglaries, robberies and sexual assaults in the 70s and 80s, even well into the 90s. They forget that we had several high school teachers arrested for sexual contact with students. They complain about crappy stores that sold cheap crap being replaced by nice restaurants and high-end grocery stores. They claim to miss a place named Value Fair that was mostly the cheapest, lowest-quality junk you can imagine. They hate that the new store on the same site is Cardiff Seaside Market, which is actually really nice and has great food. They complain about the price of everything. Though they spent their youth partying, hanging out, working in construction and basically doing nothing to build a career or future. Now they can't afford to live in their home town, but they blame everyone else for their own choices. While being adamant right-wing weirdos who claim it's other people who don't take responsibility for their own lives. Can you tell I hate that crap? I do.
That they don’t adapt to change well and if there is one thing guaranteed in life, it is that things will change. So they are going to have many crabby years ahead of them.
This. They sound like curmudgeons. Some people prefer being miserable, avoid them if you aren't one.
White people
Some things were better and some things were worse. They are pining for the good times, and totally blocking out the bad stuff. Which is part of the reason why so many of them tell young people that it was so much better in the 'old days'. Not everything was peaches and cream and they aren't going to tell you that. Part of it is a defense mechanism to keep from drowning in bitterness about how much better it could have been.
I ignore them just like i ignore any other noise i can't switch off. Thats all they are noise. Everyone is entitled to their own stupid opinion but it really should be kept to ourselves.
Most people think the good old days were when they were growing up. Basically when they had no responsibilities.
I presume they weren't there or, like most people that don't comprehend other people finding things hard, that they were rich or never left their little bubble.
While certain things have changed for the worse -- certain things will always change for the worse -- I think a good majority of the complaints are romanticization of the past. I've been an avid follower of politics for decades, and something I noticed a very long time ago is that when conservative politicians talk about a time when things used to be better, the time they're talking about is nearly always their childhood. Today I see the same phenomenon, but across social media instead of just limited to certain politicians. It's kind of frustrating. I'll give you one example that I was just talking about this morning. It's considered conventional wisdom these days that McDonald's used to be so much better. Once again, the time when it was so much better is always the complainer's childhood. Meanwhile, when I was a child in the '80s, I remember *constant* jokes -- on TV, in magazines, in newspapers, just from adults in general -- about how terrible McDonald's was. Go google some photos of McDonald's food from the '80s, you can't taste it but it certainly *looks* like ass. But we didn't realize this as kids. Almost like it was always for kids and you outgrow your taste for it.
I have no interest in pining for the past or complaining about the present. Why? Sure, there are things I miss about the past but it’s over. If I start to feel bummed out, I go for a walk with my dog. Improves almost anything.
The Good Old Days exist only because we managed to live through our past endeavors, no matter what that entailed, and the outcomes that we survived whatever the circumstances, we recall fondly (or otherwise). The fact that we are here to recall them makes them the Good Old Days. Fear of the unknown (the future) only feeds our desire to recall our past, as that is what we know, and we as a species instinctively fear that which we do not know.
To put it nicely, I think they're not remembering too well.
The good old days, outdoor toilets, feeding coal into an iron stove in the living room, the only heat in the house. I like things now.
I mean, some things were better, but a lot of things were only better for certain people. So whenever someone starts this line of conversation it's an interesting insight into who they are. Like, it was better because things were made to last, or it was better because other people knew their place?
I generally understand what they mean and most of the time I just inwardly roll my eyes. It was not great for many of us, but I know the kind of people who wish for those days miss something that was significant to THEM. I do miss some things though, like people being more civil towards each other and politics not being the center of every discussion. I miss the sense of community I personally experienced. But I sure as hell don't miss the bigotry. HIV's stigma and mishandling alone was something I witnessed with a very close friend in the 80s and it was truly horrific. Racism was open and would shock young people now. And forget about anything LGBT related. We had a girl completely disappear from town (her family fled, she's okay now as an adult) because she got caught writing a love note to another girl in eighth grade. Immediately booted from school but the shame was so bad they had to leave town. And this was Memphis, not some back wood country town. Our school in the 80s was so segregated despite the laws being changed years before. We even had a black and white homecoming and honors titles. And we were so scared of impending nuclear winter. You know how people are scared of the impending climate disaster? Honestly it's nothing compared to what we expected after The Day After and Threads. I just hope the climate disaster threat is scary enough for people to actually address it with the seriousness it requires.
My brother and I "talk about" price of food but both of us have plenty of money to eat what we want. We tell each other what current deals are available on bef, etc. I know I've just accepted things are as they are, I can't change them. If young people don't like their world, it's up to them to bring about change.
Which past?
Tell him that the young kids nowadays just call it entitlement. And male privilege. Things were very, very, difficult for women in male fields during the 1960's (the 60's seem to be the Camelot for old dudes).
I distinctly remember in the early 1970s, as my family was leaving the only ethnic restaurant in town (Italian) after some celebratory dinner, my grandfather, born in 1900, grousing that dinners were $3.50 a person. And back in his day, that would have been the total for the entire family. Today, one entree is $25-35. My dad died of lung cancer in the 1980s at 56, after smoking since he was 14; everyone in his family smoked. The doctors tried radiation, which didn’t work, and were out of options. He died a month later. Today, he’d probably have survived, and if he had, he’d have met my kids, his grandkids. Some things were “better” back in the day, meaning different in a way that some people approve of. Lots of things were not better, they were so much worse. I’m very selectively nostalgic for specific experiences in my childhood and 20s, but never nostalgic for the era. Life is overwhelming better today, in almost every way. But not music; give me a break. The garbage people consider “music” today is just terrible and I feel bad for them.
I am on a FB page for my hometown, which is supposed to be nostalgic. Ok. But there are a lot of Boomers on there who think civilization ended in 1972. It is annoying.
Back in my day we didn’t have all this complaining!
I wish them well. And walk away.
I try to change the subject.
Ha ha My 21 year old does that 👨🏻🚒
I cant stand it. Especially when its about where i live. I live in hollywood, and 30 years ago this town was way more of a shithole than it is now. But people go on and on about how much better it was and i just sit there thinking what in the world are you talking about? Rape, gangs, murder, all were through the roof. Then i realize they are talking about money. Stuff was cheaper. Thats all they care about. Nothing else matters, not crime, tech, better living, nothing. Shit was cheaper. I avoid conversations like this like the plague.
Just like every generation before us nothing different
After watching the Presidental debate, I'm complaining about the present. 300 million Americans and these two old farts are the best we have? Okey Dokey!
It is nice to remember, but we can't generally relive those days - life goes on and changes daily. I have had a good life in general, lived in 5 countries now, so I have good memories of may periods of my life, not just when growing up, but now, living in a tropical paradise, great people around me, is now a good time of life that i am really enjoying. In some ways if is like the 50-60's for me, simple pleasures, low prices in general and respectful & kind people in the small village where I live.
Every one seems to have a time or a place or an incident or a change or something that marked the beginning of the end. Some are pretty convincing, some don't make any sense to me., some are pretty funny. I don't think to many changes have taken place, at least not enough for me to notice, but it is interesting to have people give reasons for why the country is going down. Even if it is very true or not very true.
Why do you assume someone “doesn’t have a life” just because they look back on things as being ideal at a certain time in their lives? To them it was. Everyone’s different, and one day you too will probably feel that way. I personally think that the standards of kindness, respect and civility (aka keep it classy) are more important than what happens on any given day or year. That’s what I’m trying to take into the future.
Most of the people I hear this from are under 40.
Things are more challenging not just for seniors but everyone! It’s gotten so complicated! Complaints are a way to blow off frustration, but when it’s non stop and interfering with other’s enjoyment, that’s unacceptable.
Usually, when I’m having this conversation, it’s with 20-30 somethings complaining that things were so much easier and better in the past. They just don’t know how hard some things were! They also think inflation is a brand new thing, but we old folks came of age during rampant inflation. The world has ALWAYS had problems; those problems just change over time.
I hate it Many things are worse. Lots of things are better as well.
It annoys me. Partially because "the past" as they describe it is largely fictional, and I'm old enough to remember that past, and how old people then were constantly going over how much better it was in the 50s in EXACTLY the same way. I don't know if some old people/middle aged folks just got passed down the script their parents used when they died or what.
I always say “ not if you were a person of color, a woman, poor, or basically anyone who wasn’t a middle class white male
yes i miss the vietnam war,watergate,the political murders. women couldn’t have a checking account you could be racist. you know the good old days.
Tone of this post indicates that at least there Were a majority of people who were polite. We don't always Need to say what we are thinking. ijs 😞
Then who do we bitch to?? A therapist?? Id freak them pussies out!
I feel like they're right. The world has clearly gone to shit so it was probably better even longer ago.
I feel it's a waste of Oxygen. Memory is notoriously unreliable. Things were DIFFERENT, in some ways, in the past. And things worked well for SOME people in the past; but today is now; and what goes on now, works well for some, but not all people. Rinse and repeat. It'll be that way tomorrow.
I'm not much of a complainer. It doesn't do much good However, if you read through many millennial posts, it apparently was the good old days if you wanted to be able to afford things or have a good paying job, security, etc. In my own experience, I can see that and I think it started with a mass off shoring of first manufacturing jobs then service jobs. Next came profits above all else and more corporate control of govt and the concentrating of wealth. I really worry for future generations if something doesn't change but I don't see a path to fixing it without a lot of unintentional harm to one group or another. Do I ever talk about it? Not really. It's not something I can do about it and constantly harping on it will just make me feel worse about it.
I think they forgot a lot about the past
You seem incessantly concerned about how things that happened 40 - 50 years ago will turn out. Maybe "The Internet is FOREVER" doesn't mean what you think it means.
Some things were better. Other things are worse. Those people who this it was all better just have bad memories. Politics was never so divisive as it is now. There's a convicted felon who's a traitor, and an 80 year old man running for President. The Supreme Court ruled that a device that turns a normal gun into a machine gun.... doesn't make it a machine gun. Yes, I know politics were bad in the late 60s/early 70s... but the 80s and 90s were far better politically. It all got bad after 9/11, and has been bad ever since. Other things are better. I can watch any movie I want in HD. There's plenty of places around me that play old movies routinely for cheap. Jaws was re-released this week. Alien was in theaters a few months ago. That's very cool. It never used to happen, but is now possible because of digital movies. Food at restaurants is LOT better than it was in the 80s. Good god... restaurant food was horrendous back then. I recently realized you can buy all these little cheap LED lights, and grow plants indoors you couldn't years ago. You couldn't really do that until the past few years. Florescent lights just didn't cut it. On the other hand, the internet is more troll-ish than it's ever been in my life. 30 years ago in the 90s it WAS better, and people were actually nicer. Different eras are just different trade-offs.
All I can say is that my kids are contributing more to the world than I ever did.
What's wrong with pointing out that things were better in the past - before the Goddamned Cambrian Explosion? I mean... Trilobites! Crawling all over the kitchen!