All from a man to whom PROGESSIVE is a dirty word and REACTIONARY is da bomb! He loves yesterday and what usta be. I wonder if he even knows how to use a computer or are his talents limited to tweeting? You are what you tweet. You are what you promulgate. You are what you deliver. You are what you are. SIGH. :(
There was a study done in Brazil a few years ago (all on film). They took a group of parents and asked them what they saw for the future. 100% of them replied just as you did. They said that world was a terrible place, it was going downhill and there was little hope for future generations. Then they asked their children (ages 6-10) what they saw for the future. 100% of them replied hope. They were eager to become things in their life – librarians, veterinarians, dancers, and such. They were looking forward to a bright future. Then they showed the kids responses to their parents. Not a one of them - men and women – could keep a dry eye. The future is what our children or we make it.
I’m as guilty as you are. I too look back and long for the “good ol’ days”. Yet just how “good” were those days? I’m guessing you were born in ‘37 or ’38 - just in time for WWII. I’m willing to bet a great many people didn’t see them as "the good ol’ days”. Husbands and fathers sent off to war, many never to return (3 million people killed). Kids made orphans, wives turned widows at young ages, food and gasoline rationing, concern that the Germans might invade America (U-boats off the Atlantic coast), pearl harbor bombed (getting close to the then 48 states), Japanese-Americans stuffed into internment camps (just because of their ancestry), … were those the “good ol’ days”?
The 50’s and 60’s saw racial segregation in the south. Many were treated atrociously, beaten and even killed just because their skin was black. Don’t forget the “Korean conflict”. Nearly 127,000 US soldiers were killed there. Good ol’ days?
The 60’s and early 70’s saw massive protests against a so-called “police action” in another country (Vietnam). Young men - some barely out of high school, were shuffled overseas against their will – many never to return (over 58,000 killed). Don’t forget the assassination of Kennedy, the Watergate scandal, and the energy crisis of the mid 70’s. Ah, yes… the “good ol’ days”.
I could go on about the 80’s, 90’s, 00’s, 10’s … but I believe you see my point.
When we long for the days of old, we tend to remember only the “good” times. The world is full of evil. It always has been and it always will be. Someone once told me, “These are the good old days”. Those words stuck with me. You know something? He was right. We look around and see noting but evil and violence – racial unrest, mass shootings, wars, political upheaval, yet as bad as we think these days are, 25-50 years from now the children of today will look back and long to be here again. Not because things will be any better (or worse) by then, but because they will remember the good that happened.
If the world is so bad and there’s no hope for the future, why do we keep bringing children into the world? Why do we plan families if their fate is to be killed by some whacko with a gun, or in a war … or even by a drunk driver? If the future is so bleak, why don’t we simply give up?
A very wise man once said, “Don’t long for ‘the good old days.’ This is not wise.”