How Different Is It Really??

I often find myself contemplating the current times, wondering just how different they are from times of old. At first glance things today seem much more serious, and sometimes it seems like some giant dark cloud hangs over society ready to unleash its fury at any moment. People talk about the evil of the "right" and the "left", about revolution and civil war, about hate and doom. They talk about whole societies collapsing, and how it's just around the corner.

Sometimes I think all this 'in your face' immediacy is a product of the Information Age, a product of the Internet and the instant gratification it brings. And I often wonder if these things are new, or have things always been this way. There's no doubt society is continually changing, adapting and evolving. To expect things to be the same as they were 50 years ago would be foolish, but are things really worse, or are they just 'different'?

I find irony in a number of things I see today. As the world population grows, more people wind up occupying the same amount of real estate, and people wind up closer together. But the closer people get physically the more distant they become inter-personally. Fifty years ago everyone knew their neighbors for a mile in every direction. Now, people are more likely to be best friends with someone 10,000 miles away and not even know who their next door neighbor is. Fifty years ago, when the phone rang, people would trip over themselves to answer it. Today, when the phone rings, people start looking around for someone to sneer at.

When I was about 7 years old I used to worship yellow cake with chocolate frosting (especially the frosting!). Mom very rarely made it, and I couldn't get enough of it. One day I rode my bike to the store and my friend and I decided to go in and buy some stuff. I took my couple bucks and went and bought a tub of chocolate frosting. I got about 3/4 of the way done with that tub of frosting and realized it wasn't really all I'd hoped it would be. In fact, I was downright sick of it, and didn't eat yellow cake with chocolate frosting for a long time. You know, come to think of it, society and chocolate frosting have a lot in common.

I still like yellow cake and chocolate frosting, but just not tubs of it at a time. In society today, due to things like the Internet and social media, we are consuming 'tubs' of information, opinions, gossip, propaganda and all manner of other things. Sometimes I get sick of it, we all do, just like too much chocolate frosting. But as I sit here and look back, the more things have changed, the more they have stayed the same, just different.

And I wonder...how different is it really??

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

When the phone rang and you answered it and listen for a click to see if someone on your party line was listening. Life is always better when done in moderation. You should never eat a tub of frosting. Bet you were on one hell of a sugar high.

This is something I often ask myself...I do not think we are better than the past...but I can see us being worse...but I do not know. As I grow older, my perspective changes.

Was it really better? Maybe we are challenging ourselves more and more, creating growth.

I can imagine the typical human settlement of the 50s. Maybe something out of the movies. Manicured lawns. Kids playing outside after dark without fear. A stable family with only one earner, able to fully provide including vacations off of a manufacturers salary. Food and housing were cheep and plentiful.

But if that was such a desirable environment, why are we here today? Wouldn't that type of society have continued/flourished and we became better as humans. Has it been a nefarious plot to reduce our environment to fear and just trying to survive day in and day out. Does that make us easier to rule. Or have we done this to ourselves simply because we grew fat and content?

What about that type of society that didn't allow any alternative life styles or the atheist/agnostic. You would have to conform to the norm simply to get a job in a lot of towns. The straight and narrow, hiding your sins and perversions behind closed doors. Maybe we are simply being honest and letting it hang out now? Could this bring us growth to a new level.

I spent my teens and early twenties in the seventies. It was a great world for the young back then. We went to the bars and played foosball and pool and they had bands in multiple bars every weekend. There were winter festivals, big social events, and even Frisby tournaments. Kids went and partied at beaches and old fields on weekends, out of the way from the towns. The Cops came by and checked to make sure things weren't getting out of hand, some of us were responsible at every place and made sure to put the fires out. The cops said it was better the kids were out there than causing problems in town, the kids worried about losing their ability to go to these gatherings so they kept their mouth buttoned with their parents, they refrained from arguing and did their chores all week.

Those days politics was a joke, the criminals were sent away to a different city and as long as they kept our roads fixed and kept the price of utilities and fuel reasonable then we did not mind. Now the cost of those necessities has gone way up. Health insurance was cheap, forty bucks a month for a family and it covered all hospital costs and had a ten dollar deductible on the doctors visit. If you did not have insurance back then, the welfare office would pay for a bad accident or sickness once, meaning you went on Medicaid immediately if you got hurt or real sick. Once you went back to work, the claim would go on for the month or the end of the need, but it would not be available a second occurance, you needed to go get a job with benefits, many places of work supplied benefits. No cost to the workers at all. I remember when you used to be able to buy a major catastrophe policy which covered hospitals with a thousand dollar deductable for fifteen bucks a month or thirty for a family back in the nineties. Then it paid a hundred percent. Now that is the standard high deductible policy for eight hundred a month.

Times have changed, not that many people got cancer when I was young, they just retired and dropped dead from a Heart attack. There wasn't that much diabetes back then either compared to today. Kids went outside and played after school, homework only took a half hour to finish. You went to work, did your job, and the rest of the day was yours...to do what ever you wanted most times. You made a living wage working one full time job, you could even live off a minimum wage job and rent a small efficiency with what you earned. Not that many people had to go on Welfare.

Where did we go wrong? The greedy took over this country and made us believe our wants are our needs and people buy things they do not really need while the cost of living keeps increasing.

a reply to: rickymouse

Do you think it is our current ideology? Our lust and greed for material objects? We so admire those that take advantage of the stupid or poor in scams and schemes to soak them of their resources. Why do we encourage this? Why do we idolize those who prey on the weak? We worship those with fancy objects and big houses. We pedestalize those that lie to us best (actors/actresses). We love those that whisper sweet nothings in our ears 'just let the government take care of you'.

From a country based on freedom that allowed you to pursue that wonderful childhood to a country of tyrants that want to control everything and leaving a trail of misery in their wake.

How do we change? Will there ever be a time when we celebrate honor and integrity again?

a reply to: ClovenSky

Christianity has tried to warn of us of devious people for a very long time. But we decided to trust in others because of their success and credentials more than in their truth and honesty. We believe that following the successful down the wrong path is acceptable in society now, and evidently it is. The salesman at the store will tell you a sales pitch and if you are looking for the best they will sell it to you even if they know it is junk.

Ask questions like will that expensive refrigerator last longer, does it require more service. The salesperson may tell you the truth, that they are mostly more reliable and that people who buy them can afford to buy another one in way less time than a poor person can afford to buy one. They do not really like to outright lie, they have been taught deceitful tactics to use, to make us believe more cost always means better. I ask the salesmen questions about returns, service calls and what ones to avoid if you want less hastles. Usually they refer me to a product that is cheap and reliable, they say that the less bells and whistles the less it breaks down.

Even though it is socially acceptable to deceive people here, people still do not like to outright lie to another person. There are fifteen percent who do lie and one percent that actually get high on deceiving others. These ones who love to trick people most often love the challenge, they do not even like the financial gain as much as they like the game itself. They get a dopamine rush by tricking someone. One percent may not seem like many but we live in a society of three hundred some million people, that is over three million of these people and they get around. One person can screw over lots of people.

Here is a possible reason why our people are messed up in their thinking. www.sciencedaily.com...

I know the smell of organophosphates, being brought up on a farm in the sixties. I can smell them on cabbage and some other foods, I take my cabbage apart and wash the leaves separately when I make soup. For the coleslaw, I usually get organic cabbage from the coop.

I can even smell it a tad in some flours and can taste these organophosphate compounds a little, they make the flour more bitter. The roundup has a little different smell but the bitterness is about the same so I am not sure if it is roundup residue or pesticide residue in the flour that I am tasting or smelling.

I am aware that we need some kinds of pesticides for our crops, but it is very evident that often these chemisries do not need to be sprayed so much on the crops. Big farms often spray if they see a bug fly by. I do not like that smell, I spent a lot of summers with my father on the tractor spraying pesticides when I was young with a handkerchief around my mouth and nose. My dad died of brain cancer, and it has been found to have killed a lot of farmers who sprayed DDT. The adjuvant in DDT is not what caused the cancer, it was the organophosphates. The adjuvant just made it get absorbed faster, the replacements also had adjuvants that increased absorption.

The effect of these organophosphates causes symptoms like ADD and conditions which necessitate taking antidepressants and some other kinds of drugs like SSRIs. Look how many people are on meds for these things nowadays. The thing is if they have a varying diet, then the meds may be too strong or too weak at times to treat the conditions.

It's not really at all different... It's just that more peoples secret laundry; is out of their closet, their neighbour's closet, and all out in the street.

Best to think of life as having three stages; gong show, main show, side show.

Too many people; It could be said, "just act" trying to get by in life; when that is not their actual job? That's when most everything in life needs work.

The biggest warning sign of that; is talking oneself into things... as the lies one tells oneself? Soon, become the lies they tell others and before they even realize it? All they are doing is acting... all that does is bring stress and suffering. Over time that "act" compounds into a huge # storm no one wants to have any part in.

Like the real issues in politics? Just a game of hot potato... they've only managed to create more problems; mostly by pyramid scheming. Of course; they see it as bundling insurance; to those just wanting car insurance? Do they want to pay more or not get good rates because they also cover houses etc? Hell no. State governments were supposed to follow the federal government... instead in many places; they follow their own state constitution making many statutes (not law and yet enforce whatever the junk is as law) and ignore the federal raping citizens until the state gets sued in federal court over it.

For example; why is Roe vs. Wade still being challenged? It wasn't the state it took place in being sued. If so? The federal would have been forced to make a decision... and the issue? Nothing further to be discussed; however, as seen with experiment called the war on drugs due to the pharmaceutical lobby? Whatever decision made whatever it is will still go on... meaning it's a Schrodinger's cat situation as far as the closet goes.

Notice anything? That's why NO issues have ever been solved by any government ever; peoples business has and gets put out in the streets; in effect as a showing that nothing has actually changed. The one's pretending all that that stuff in the streets wasn't existent? Feel free to reread about what lying does.

Of course they figured that out in the 40's; so it's the three stages... two old coots or political parties throwing their opinions on the three stages and eventually; most will look away and ignore whatever it is.

Currently; it's a three card Monty... and has been that way for far too long; so much so the states have been doing that against the federal, as they hide in their closets county by county... then as a last resort? They try to hide behind the federal amendments to it's constitution; instead of changing or amending their own.

As an independent? I simply consider that... as being registered politically free. If I could tear those old fringed battle flags and bibles out of court rooms? I would. That should be the first act of the next president honestly; as "separation of church and state"? Still not country wide. Many still being subject to that regardless of belief or faith or even lack thereof... So hey State and Fed? How about just getting your # together already.