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| When we were young, things were pretty simple
Posted: 8/30/2009 7:47:39 AM |
Having been short for my age, I found girls and young women more will to date than the women of today's age. It was an age where people accepted others for who they were and were willing to get to know them. Today, people are more guarded, judgmental and superficial. They let the drones of the television and fashion industries govern what should be socially acceptable, from height, hair, dress, income, material possessions and social status.
. Today people are judged on whether they drive a BMW or a Honda or a Yugo (that's if there's a Yugo that's still running).
I disagree with most of this based on the fact I have a transgender child, the kids their age are very accepting and actually have very few issues...people my age are haters. I think if you read up on things in the past as now when the first lady wore something it immediately became fashionable...Jackie O. The difference is our role models might have changed more.... | |
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| When we were young, things were pretty simple
Posted: 8/30/2009 8:00:47 AM | They let the drones of the television and fashion industries govern what should be socially acceptable, from height, hair, dress, income, material possessions and social status.
Yes I agree, and we're inundated with shows like......
Bulging Brides
Lover or Loser
Cougar Wars ????
Rich Bride, Poor Bride
.....to name a few.......Brainwashing and socially acceptable behavior, at it's finest?
Makes me wonder if it wasn't necessarily about life being simpler "back when"? But, more that we've become sheep.......being herded by advertisers and consumerism. | |
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| When we were young, things were pretty simple
Posted: 8/30/2009 10:38:11 AM | Phoebe48 wrote:
They let the drones of the television and fashion industries govern what should be socially acceptable, from height, hair, dress, income, material possessions and social status. Yes I agree, and we're inundated with shows like...... Bulging Brides Lover or Loser Cougar Wars ???? Rich Bride, Poor Bride .....to name a few.......Brainwashing and socially acceptable behavior, at it's finest? Makes me wonder if it wasn't necessarily about life being simpler "back when"? But, more that we've become sheep.......being herded by advertisers and consumerism.
And this is why I will never have subscriber (cable, satellite) TV enter my domicile until I'm offered a free choice cafeteria plan option.
Ack, Ack.
TK
{TV, wasteland; Talk Radio, good; TK, happy} | |
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| When we were young, things were pretty simple
Posted: 8/30/2009 10:39:27 AM | Yes those times were simpler to me . I had two sets of grand parents that loved each other . We were poor but so was everybody I knew . I was very afraid of King Kong and the Bogey Man . Today I see more fear , confusion and loneliness than I thought I would ever see . I am constantly trying not to be so COOL and just have fun.  | |
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| When we were young, things were pretty simple
Posted: 8/30/2009 11:14:54 AM | "When we were young, things were pretty simple" ...
more likely, we just didn't know how complicated "things" really were ... I spent my childhood in Santa Cruz, California which was a sort of artsy seacoast village back then ... still is, actually ... I could ride my horse in the hills around our ranch pretty-much all the time alone ... altho there were always loaded rifles by the doors and my Dad wore a revolver, my folks probably thot their children were relatively safe up there riding alone with only a dog and a horse for "protection" ...
but I do vaguely remember some incident where there were kidnapping fears in the area and we children had to have police protection at school, when we went trick-or-treating and at the bus stop while waiting for our school bus ... we weren't particularly scared because there were police around all the time ... I thot it was fun to have a police escort ...
years later, I helped an "old" man write his memoirs and we wrote about being kidnapped by a man on horseback and how he escaped due to bees ... that was probably in the early 1900s or possibly earlier ...
it's not that "things" were simpler ... there was no instant notification of the events of the day ... with the internet, television, etc. we KNOW INSTANTLY ... there will be an "Amber Alert" INSTANTLY when a child is abducted ... we know and we know NOW! it wasn't simpler back then ... we just didn't know ... | |
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| When we were young, things were pretty simple
Posted: 9/2/2009 11:17:21 AM | Yeah, what she ^^^^^ said. Molly Maude nailed it.
Things were never simpler. They were just less talked about. There was a strong culture of SSS (shoot, shovel and shut-up) in the world pre-media in your face every minute of every day.
I don't believe the Ward & June Cleaver myth. Afterall, look at their last name! Beaver Cleaver was probably the first one to murder his parents with a kitchen implement. At least he moved it inside. Certainly neater than Lizzie Borden (hint: "Lizzie Borden took an axe and gave her mother forty whacks").
In the 50s - 60s, it was legal to leave infant and pre-school children in the "care" of a 9-year-old babysitter until the wee hours. It was perfectly okay to have kids sitting in the car outside the bar while the parents partied all day and all night. It wasn't considered abandonment to park young children at the neighborhood theater at 10 am on a Saturday and forget to pick them up until after 7 pm when one of them had wet her little pants and they all wanted something for breakfast / brunch / dinner, and the manager had to call the kids' grandparents to come get them. Do these sound like memories? Hmmm?
Teen pregnancy has always been an issue. At least now the girls are usually not cast out of the family or killed for their sins.
There has always been time and opportunity for enjoying life just as there will always be people who assume the worst outcomes.
There have always been people who hurt and desert each other just as there can be "grandparents" and friends to pick up the pieces.
There have always been UGLY clothes, short people, girls who wear glasses, and there have always been people who love them.
It's about making the right connections, seeing that anything is possible, even the unthinkably evil and the amazingly miraculous.
Callothewild
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| When we were young, things were pretty simple
Posted: 9/2/2009 11:25:31 AM |
...more likely, we just didn't know how complicated "things" really were ... Agree.
Things were never simpler. They were just less talked about. ...
I don't believe the Ward & June Cleaver myth. .... Also agree.
Perhaps it's about selective memory too. Things were not so good for people who were suspected of or accused of committing crimes--no Miranda rights. There was little awareness of child abuse (always taking place behind closed doors). Women who accused someone of rape were treated so badly by the defense attorneys and public opinion that they often did not make any charges against their attacker. Black men in the South were lynched for even looking sideways at a white woman. People died of things we now treat and cure on a daily basis. Handicapped people were essentially house bound. Mentally handicapped people were treated as if they were sub human. Do I really need to go on with this. Things were not simpler, they were just different. We were children. Life seemed simpler, but we were protected from many of the harsh realities. | |
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jbogie
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Joined: 9/30/2008
Msg: 58 | |
| When we were young, things were pretty simple
Posted: 9/2/2009 11:56:05 AM |
Does morality tend to get lost in the advance of technology or is it the forebearer?
morality is within each of us. in the US, i see society as far more moral than thirty or forty years ago. for the most part segregation is all but gone. violent crime has declined steadily for decades. we're all far better off than we've ever been. this thread could have been written by our parents thirty years ago, and their parents sixty years ago.
Does anyone want to predict what 30 years from now will bring?
sure, that's easy. life will be better and people will have become morally and ethically superior than ever before. and they'll be singing the same tune that generations have sung for milinia. goes something like, "why can't they be like we were, perfect in every way, oh what's the matter with kids tooooooooodaaaaaaaaaaaaay?" | |
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| When we were young, things were pretty simple
Posted: 9/2/2009 1:23:11 PM | Things weren't simple then.
We were.
Now that life has made us all complicated things seem that way too.
Follow you're own inner truth and don't worry about others.
(read that on a fortune cookie. I was hoping for winning lotto numbers, but that's what I got.) | |
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| When we were young, things were pretty simple
Posted: 9/2/2009 1:26:12 PM |
Follow you're own inner truth and don't worry about others.
(read that on a fortune cookie. I was hoping for winning lotto numbers, but that's what I got.)
...hey, I'm gonna use that. Maybe even include it on my profile.
Yes, when I was 12, things were pretty simple...miss those days.
...maeflowers | |
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| When we were young, things were pretty simple
Posted: 10/31/2009 9:35:54 PM | | I suppose it depends where you grew up and who your family was. I didn't find life simple then, nor did I find people to be decent and moral. I don't have a TV at present so I can't address the issue of what may be on TV. As an adult I have more choices about who I allow in my living space. This makes life more simple for me as I can more often exclude those who lack morals and good character. In 30 years human nature will probably be about the same. | |
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| When we were young, things were pretty simple
Posted: 10/31/2009 11:42:15 PM |
The standards and morals that our nations were founded on are ebbing away
Please don't forget that the man who penned our Declaration of Independence had a very long illicit affair with an enslaved woman, who was 15 at the time it started (and he was 42) and was the 1/2 sister of his dead wife.
On the other hand, people had pretty darn open and healthy attitudes about sexuality before Victorian "morality" skewed everything to one extreme (read "Sex in Middlesex if you want to see how lusty even a Puritan community was). People have basically good sense and I'll predict that we'll become more relaxed and European in our attitudes towards sexuality, less focused on the almighty dollar, more willing to spend time with family and friends, and generally a happier people. But that's just my opinion! | |
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| When we were young, things were pretty simple
Posted: 11/1/2009 12:08:59 AM | batteries were used mostly for transistor radios
Wake up... "Happy Days" was myth... Like "That 70's Show"...
Through research and development, batteries now experience a longevity unheard of back when you listened to Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs on your Japanese transistor piece of shit... Did it have six transistors?... Your dad must have been well-heeled... Wore expensive suits, and kept his dope well hidden in the back of the medicine cabinet...
I don't mean to make light of antiquated technology... But how else would the Japs have found Pearl Harbor?...... And all those "beep beep beeps" in the ears of the sonar man must have eventually caused him to malfunction...
"It's a small boat... A cadre of replacements would outweigh the validity and surprise involved with the effect of this mission..."
"Shut up, fishfood"...
Yamamoto knew what was up... His schooling and administrative skills spoke to him... Told him that fvcking with the US would be a costly mistake...
But he was compelled... To remain true... To a flag...
Is painted cloth that important?...
Some say we're advancing...
We've been overtaken by our own technology... That's the down-side...
Something to give you hope?... An upbeat perspective?
Not my area of expertise... I crap in ceramic bowls like the rest of you...
But sometimes, relaxed on the throne with an intriguing magazine, I stop and wonder:
"Where does all this shit really go... And who hears it?"... | |
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| When we were young, things were pretty simple
Posted: 11/2/2009 12:56:24 PM | Is Tarnished Knight attempting to be funny? Yes it couldn't have been the people that cooked up those crazy financial derivative and and billions by selling worth bond issues based on those derivatives nope it was ma and pa billy and betty sue that brought down the house of cards.
Friendly Free Spirit ,remember when Rome fell It was a Christian Empire. | |
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| When we were young, things were pretty simple
Posted: 11/2/2009 1:19:36 PM | op,
in the teens and early 20's, no responsibilities (beyond school) and lots of available single people at similar stages in life. as life progresses, people diverge...one gets married, another focuses on the kids, another on the career, one moves, etc... with all the divorced people in their 30's, 40's, and even beyond, i've seen somewhat of a reversion in the pattern... my life has become simpler now that i'm single again...esp w/no kids and the like...i'm pretty well free to come and go on a whim (other than work responsibilities). with all the divorced people...even those w/kids...as their kids move out, etc., you see a trend where they sort of revert back to the way they were before life became so complicated. i think it's all good. | |
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| When we were young, things were pretty simple
Posted: 11/2/2009 2:00:35 PM | artz:
Those "crazy financial derivatives" were a response to the crazy political interference foisted upon the business community. Left wing agendas forcing lenders to loan money to folk who wouldn't otherwise qualify, creating huge amounts of indebtedness that was riskier than junk bonds and yet had less chance of return; with government controlled entities like fanny mae and freddie mac buying forcing this indebtedness on investment houses; the repeal of Glass-Steagall; and the subsequent monetization of all that housing debt into instruments that could be sold on the market.
All of it a house of cards that needed but one small shift in the financial winds to bring it all down. Well, that shift came with a small, very small, contraction of the economy (not unexpected and part of the normal cycle) and it all fell to hell.
So, yeah, I place the economic situation we are in right in the hands of politicians who think and act like they're some kind of gods. Government should only regulate to the extent that it equalizes opportunities ( a minimalistic regulation), not guarantee equality of outcomes (over regulation). No one is equal in results to anyone else. I also stand by my belief that a nation of 300 million decider's is preferable to a nation of one decider. People acting in their own self interest (I said self interest, not greed) tend to make, on average, smart decisions. Further, by eliminating the pain of failure we reduce the chance of success; if not through legislation, then the reduction of available capital as lenders become skittish to loan.
TK
{geepers, I had to go back 2.5 months to figure out what you got your panties up in a bunch over. Please, next time, give a reference, eh?} | |
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| When we were young, things were pretty simple
Posted: 11/2/2009 2:55:23 PM | all i can say, knight, is don't get me started on this economy & how we got to this point. meanwhile, i eat up all the financial news i can find to make decisions. i'm just hoping we pull out of this thing quickly...but i fear we're in for a W and then a slow, long recovery with a good possibility of 'stagflation' to boot. even worse would be more of a depression...this thing is beyond a recession. it's pretty tenuous right now. i'm sticking my head in the sand for a while...tap me on the shoulder when all is well again! | |
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| When we were young, things were pretty simple
Posted: 11/2/2009 3:21:19 PM | Oh, ya, they sure were: I was gonna die -- the Rooshans were gonna drop a bomb on SLC, and that wuz gonna be it (reinforced by weekly bomb drills), and we had neighbors digging big holes in their back yards for their bomb shelters, who would shoot us if we tried to get in. Every other body was a Commie, and it wuz your dooty to turn your friends and neighbors in (and we did, with knobs on, as a country).
The pictures of the liberation of the concentration camps were beginning to be published. And the Nuremberg Trials. . . .
And *we* put American citizens in our own concentration camps for the crime of having Japanese parents or grandparents.
All my grandparents died, as did my cat, and all our dogs (who were rescued strays) ran away.
I lived next door to my beautiful cousin with naturally curly hair, and clear skin. I had acne for four years.
The neat thing was somebody else had to feed and clothe you. The crumby thing was you couldn't complain about *what* they fed you, or how they clothed you. . . .
And sure, there were lovely times to be had. The mistake is to make the BEST TIME some other time than the one you're living in right now. You can only change the *now* ~~ if you want to feel helpless and hopeless, dwell on the past when things were so good. . . .
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| When we were young, things were pretty simple
Posted: 11/2/2009 3:32:19 PM | I wasn't so crazy about the bomb drills either, scared the crap out of me.
Child abuse ~ of all kinds ~ including sexual, went unreported to anyone.
It was simply ignored within a a family, never dealt with.
No,, things we're that nice or simple all the time, when I was young.
tb | |
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| When we were young, things were pretty simple
Posted: 11/2/2009 4:54:10 PM |
I wasn't so crazy about the bomb drills either, scared the crap out of me.
Child abuse ~ of all kinds ~ including sexual, went unreported to anyone.
It was simply ignored within a a family, never dealt with.
No,, things we're that nice or simple all the time, when I was young.
Glad I'm not the only one who remembers those drills. For us, it wasn't "if" The Bomb fell, it was "when" The Bomb fell. We had to wear dog tags just like the military, in case we were separated when it happened, like if we were at school or something.
I also remember the hyper paranoia over who said what that the neighbors might overhear and report to the House UnAmaerican Activities Committee. HUAC was a very big deal for far too long.
The only 'simple' thing I remember about being young was that it was the adults who had to deal with things. | |
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| When we were young, things were pretty simple
Posted: 11/2/2009 5:05:15 PM | I remember those fire drills but I remember running around the neighborhood, mostly barefoot...late at night playing hide-n-seek...my parents and the other parents werent afraid cause we had a huge german shepherd out with us that watched out for the whole street...
things were more free..neighbors were neighbors...people werent so busy and had time to interact with each other. The neighbors on each side of us didn't have any children but we knew and talked to them daily. In the summer they paid us $2.00 to mow their lawns...not cause they couldnt do it or didnt want to but they wanted us to have the money but they also wanted us to earn it. It is the one thing I missed out of my kids growing up when we moved to Tennessee...nicer neighborhood but people were so busy that you never really had the time to get to know them unless your kids and theirs did the same things together. Most of the time I felt like a taxi cab driver taking kids places vs when I was growing up we didnt go places to do things...the whole neighborhood did them together. | |
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| When we were young, things were pretty simple
Posted: 11/2/2009 5:43:41 PM |
When we were young, things were pretty simple
You got that right NTM...
I remember growing up there was only 3 channels on tv. As kids we actually read books for entertainment.
We stayed physically fit playing outside....like ALL DAY LONG until mom or dad hunted us down (no cell phones) to come in for dinner. In summer you could find us at the local pond or lake swimming and floating around on inner tubes...or riding our bicycles all over hells half acre. Winter time meant skating on any available frozen patch of ice we could find, or toboganning full speed down the nearest hill.
Our imaginations ran wild and so did we. Every blanket in the house would disappear off our beds...along with every chair.... so that we could build giant forts in the backyard to hide in. Kick-the-can, tag (your it!!!) hide-and-go-seek, hop scotch, double-dutch skipping, you name it... we played it. There was no such thing as being "BORED" when I was a kid.
Also candy, soda pop, potato chips, etc. was something we only had on holidays and special occasions. There were NO chubby kids in my neighbourhood!
Does anyone want to predict what 30 years from now will bring?
I predict that there will be even more overweight, unhealthy, and unfit kids and adults in North America.
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