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...and lived in a society with far more racism and sexism. The world had high odds of being more violent, health was probably worse. (even recent downturns fo
by ergothus 8y ago
...and lived in a society with far more racism and sexism. The world had high odds of being more violent, health was probably worse. (even recent downturns for some groups are small compared to the improvements over generations). We complain about anti-vaxxers today, but we're talking about the struggle to eradicate diseases that were just a fact of life in the past - and a BAD fact.
Wealth inequality and climate change are definitely growing issues, but have not yet overwhelmed the rest.
It's easy to glorify the past if you only look at the healthy and successful people.
- coldtea 8y agoWe could pick some aspects of the past, instead of taking them all wholesale, you know, like intelligent people. In which case all the above negatives are neither here nor there. Or does anyone thing "kids playing outside" is necessarily and always casually correlated with "more racism"?
- ergothus 8y agoI think it's easy to ignore all the kids dead/suffering while talking about how nice it was for those that weren't. Kids today are SAFER than in the past - and we do things to bring that about. I loved riding in my grandparents car without seatbelts - I remember cheering them to slam on the brakes so we could fly forward. As fun as that was, giving that up is directly tied to saved lives. Of course not everything is connected - such as the outside vs racism example you cite. But when people talk about "kids these days", they don't restrict their scope, so I didn't either.