3 ms·
Less censorship in the media. All that stuff was there in the 1950s as much as it is now, but you didn't see it anywhere in the media because it was not allowed
by bregma 6y ago
Less censorship in the media. All that stuff was there in the 1950s as much as it is now, but you didn't see it anywhere in the media because it was not allowed by fiat of central authorities (from the Hayes office to the boardrooms of various publisher and broadcast networks). Heroin was not introduced in the 21st century and needles are not new but there are far fewer cigarette butts everywhere today. Cities stank of stale cigarettes and urine and car exhaust and if you were anywhere near water, dead fish.
A few photos that do not show the winos or the dog crap on every sidewalk do not prove there wasn't any. It just proves the existence of a few photos. Nobody, for example, picked up someone else's poop off the streets and brought it home in a little bag like they do today, and there were just as many dog owners in Manhattan in the 1950s as there are now. The signs required you to 'curb your dog' which meant leave it in the gutter, but it usually ended up on the sidewalk with all the gum, spit, old newspapers, and pigeon droppings. People went to jail for being homosexual or using birth control. Credit cards and consumer loans were illegal in the US until the 1960s so everything was cash-only and muggings were a real and present threat. Racism was overt, explicit, widespread, and rampant.
I think what you see of the 1950s is selection bias. Times are good now. Better than the 1950s because we stopped hiding stuff and lying to ourselves and have tried to make things better instead.
- ozim 6y agoI would add that photography was quite expensive back then so I bet no one was wasting his film on making photos of awful places. It would be like judging current reality by Instagram photos, so must be that everyone is fit and travels to beautiful destinations ... well homeless people don't put their photos on Instagram.
- zanother001 6y ago> Less censorship in the media. This is a surprising hot take in these times. I wholeheartedly disagree. I understand what you're saying and yes I believe obviously we have more pictures/proof of existence (connected world) and yes there are a lot of areas where we have made progress but is "trust" in general better ? I don't want to make this political but it is the elephant in the room right now. There is a whole side of a political party + media completely dismissing and grouping the whole other side in simplistic and alienating ways. I'm not for either political side and I'm not a trump supporter. (Sadly I have to add this disclaimer, it's incredibly saddening) I think someone else in this thread mentioned China as a high-trustful society. I think that goes to show that we're not talking about overall "better" and overall "accepting" but specifically "trust". Maybe we find out that trust is in conflict with the other values we hold ? but to say that general trust is high now seems really naive. I know it's an outlier but you don't need media selectiveness to show you San Fransico's homelessness problem , in fact I see more of that from word of mouth/first hand experience. I personally have seen signs of deteriorating trust in my "neighborhood". I don't want to put up strawmen but maybe it depends on how much your view is based on media vs what you see ? in which case where you live would probably have a huge impact in what your views on this are ? I hate using that because I don't want to say that some people are too privileged to see this, imo obvious, change. As someone who was raised in a rough neighborhood (poor/high crime rate) and then moved out to a better place, I was shocked how my world view changed and I really thought the whole world had moved to a better place until I went back and realized there are still people in that "old world". It was incredibly shocking that I believed some of these things and now I'm vigilant and accepting that my world view (large part to where I live) tints the world. I obviously don't know the solution and maybe "trust" is a value we have to lose to have some of our more progressive values or maybe it's just harder to incorporate those other values with trust. I think it's fair to say that in the 50's communities were more trusting (for some, racism/monoculture related I'm sure). Not better but more trusting (huge emphasis on for some).