Have things really improved much over the past 50 years?

[JJW]

Ha! Ha! You keep saying you're a pessimist. But, compared to me you are an optimist. Ha! Ha!

I know that I'm be on this planet for a long time. God doesn't want me because I'm too negative. The devil doesn't want me because I'm kind hearted. So, I guess that makes me universal unwanted. Ha! Ha!

I had a friend that claimed the title of optimistic pessimist.  That's the tendency of being certain the worst is coming. 

 

[priscella]

That's true for I do not believe things will get better.or maybe I should say things might get better in certain areas because of a cultural change but worse in other areas because of stupidity.. I am a pessimist.. priscella

 

[Finished]

With most of the political changes my future becomes darker. We are fast becoming a socialist country. However, I set myself up to live in a capitalist country. I guess I screwed up. The future is all about lifting the low lower class up and pushing the upper lower class down. That's a reality. I guess I should sell off everything, hide my savings, and live off the government doll. But, at some point we might actually wake up and realize socialism isn't the correct path as it is close to communism. Didn't we fight a war against that a little while ago?

 

[Azariah]

50 years? I think so. Technology wise-a great deal. We still have a lot of room for improvement socially/morally.

At least we're not slaughtering one another like in the middle ages. We do have gun and gang violence but that may or may not be as common as the media wants you to think it is. Im just glad we're more civilized now than we were a hundred years ago.

 

[Finished]

50 years? I think so. Technology wise-a great deal. We still have a lot of room for improvement socially/morally.

At least we're not slaughtering one another like in the middle ages. We do have gun and gang violence but that may or may not be as common as the media wants you to think it is. Im just glad we're more civilized now than we were a hundred years ago.

What technology? What major advancement have we made? Sure, things are a little smaller and a littler faster. Big deal. Those advances come at a cost of being more difficult and troublesome.

 

[JJW]

Hmmm...

I just deleted a line that started 'America was at its best...' but then realized it wasn't.  It has always been a matter of what your station in life has been.  "things improved" depends on who you are.

Technology?  The internet is killing social empathy.  There has always been hate, but now it's available to everyone.  Automation is only marginally better than in the 60s.

I'd say manufacturing has improved with regard to air pollution, but long lasting metal products are now replaced with engineered-to-fail plastic products.  It's plastics that are most damaging to our environment.  We replace items more often and then throw them out.  Much of what you think you are recycling is just rerouted to landfills because most plastics are too expensive to recycle, and paper eventually loses its fiber length and can't be used for more than papier-mâché.  Greater production to supply demand has offset any benefit gained by efficiency, not to mention the role computers have had in reducing the job market.

A well tuned 1964 Chevy on today's fuel would pass EPA testing.  Cars are somewhat more efficient thanks to better fuels and lubricants, but as for environmental impact, there are more cars, and people drive longer.  It's actually a net loss.

We are producing more food than ever, but it is proven to be less nutritious than in the past.  Did you know, the banana has been so genetically altered that there are no more seeds to grow bananas that haven't been?  The true banana is extinct.

Everyone has a phone in their hand at will.  No one looks at people anymore.  We're all going to get Spina bifida.

Things haven't improved, they are just different.  People are more damaging to the world than ever before, and when you think of 1960s population of three billion as compared to today at just under eight billion that's a lot of damage.

I won't even mention climate change.

 

[priscella]

I knew I was pessimistic for a reason..Glad I am old but the young generation is smart--at least some of them--lol and they will handle the future I hope. I just at this stage of life do not have enough of energy to do anything to help only to be informed and pass the knowledge on ahead but people's attitudes and having nothing in common is making even that hard to do and leave me wanting for a to and fro communication...In my opinion things are really getting worse and a sample is what the prior poster wrote. Plastics are a very real danger and we actually pay other countries to take care of the problem and all they do is store it..I just feel too old and writing to the representatives does not seem to help. Terrible....thanks  priscella.

 

[Finished]

I was going to link to a somewhat reliable website that shows that nearly everybody has plastic particles in their bodies from food contamination. But, in order to read the article you have to put in an email address. So, I put in a fake one to get rid of the box. Then advertisements showed up along with a privacy waiver. Really? Is all that necessary? Do you really think I'm going to buy products from you when you blast me with BS advertisements? The Internet has become such a damn mess. So, what exactly is going to happen to us with all this plastic in our bodies? We are going to become sicker and sicker with no explanation of why. Oh well, time to go buy a new TV that'll last about one month beyond the six month warranty.

However, I will say that one thing has really improved over the past 50 years. Monster trucks have become amazing! The things they can do is awesome! The amount of force and abuse those things can handle is incredible! Thank goodness for Monster Trucks!!!!! Maybe they'll bring peoplekind back from the brink of destruction some how. 

 

[priscella]

Yea then people try to imitate that on the highways and you should not give them any encouragement. lol  priscella

 

[ainesbaptist]

You covered so many topics in this thread, and it was super interesting to read. I am a younger person, and there is something I can both agree and disagree with.

 

[Finished]

You covered so many topics in this thread, and it was super interesting to read. I am a younger person, and there is something I can both agree and disagree with.

Welcome to the forum!

 

[ainesbaptist]

Smart technology makes people stupid, and it’s a fact. We need to think less because smart machines do everything for us. But we can still develop in others; maybe “smart” means something else for modern kids. I am not sure about that, but I am sure that phones and computers are making human memory worse, and it’s bad. But some part of this talk looks more like old people ranting about how bad young generations are – it has always been, and I always will be. We will never be good enough for you just because we are younger. Everything was better in the good old days. Guys with extended Medicare insurance to cover all possible diseases like to talk about how everything is bad now, and the youngsters are so lazy.

 

[user 188685]

You covered so many topics in this thread, and it was super interesting to read. I am a younger person, and there is something I can both agree and disagree with.

Hello and welcome

 

[insecure]

This old lady I knew once told me:

When I was in my twenties, and I had to go to the doctor, I would need to undress completely, and he would thoroughly examine my whole body. Only after this he was able to tell me what I had.
When I was in my forties, I only needed to take down my shirt, and he would do this thorough breast examination, in order to give me a diagnosis.
Now that I'm in my eighties I just need to stick out my tongue, and he infallibly tells me what's ailing me.
Isn't it amazing how medical science has progressed over the years?

 

[Finished]

Smart technology makes people stupid, and it’s a fact. We need to think less because smart machines do everything for us.

Welcome to the forum! I agree to a point. I use my computer to help me design electronic circuits. I also think about more advanced stuff because my computer can take of the essentials. But, yeah, my advanced algebra skills are not too sharp any more.

 

[NoxApex(N/A)]

**** no! ****'s definitely going downhill.

"The nine most feared words in the English language are: "I'm from the Government, and I'm here to help."
- Ronald Reagan

I don't really care for Reagan, but the man's got a point there.

Blackrock and Vanguard are pretty much have the entire world financially by the balls right now. For all intents and purposes, those two basically make up The Golden Handcuffs of 99% of global society.

The Phoebus Cartel inventing Planned Obsolescence definitely didn't help. Now that just got copied and pasted everywhere as a Manufacturing Industry Business Template.

That's the thing about Business Templates and Industrialization:

As soon as someone Innovates with a new Business Template, everyone else in that Industry copies that Template and pastes it, even if they cannot afford to do so, they will usually at least take a risk in trying to do so anyway.

The irony of it is that most corporations have cut out Research & Development and outsourced it to their customers by releasing inferior products because they know that Materialistic Consumerism and Commodity are symptoms of Mental Illness. Compulsive Spending is a symptom of Mental Illness.

That's the real reason why there is such a repression on both the professional world of Mental Health Workers as well as Mental Health Patients: Because the Consumer Market of Capitalism is built upon the foundation of people being mentally unhealthy and compulsively spending.

There's actually a lengthy historical video that Then & Now has made on it for educational purposes. It's pretty thorough and dense, but for an inquiring mind, that's the sad truth of our reality:

 

[9006]

It depends what you class as improved, and what's important to YOU. I mean in 50 years a hell of a lot has improved, and something you didn't mention was modern medicine. I would love to live a simpler life, but I'd miss modern medicine. Personally it's saved me when I got a rare form of leukaemia, I think 50 years prior the treatment I had wouldn't exist, I think it was only developed in the 90s. But on the flip side something I mentioned in another post is that modern medicine also lets us exist for longer, I say exist because it's not really living after your 90, mostly people are immobile at that age, fragile, prone to infections & viruses and generally much weaker. But it sucks that governments just see statistics and come out with a later retirement age, like we're all sat behind a desk until we retire.

A lot of technology now is based on prior technology of course, it wouldn't be an [/i]improvement[/i] otherwise. Things like AI have dramatically improved our life, just like in the last example it's allowed medicine to greatly improve. But generally as you make something more advanced there's always more problems to iron out, and it takes time to do so.

The problems with phones (and most of our other tech) is that it's based on software to operate, and the problem is that there's so much to go wrong in terms of undesired functionality or "bugs". Coding software can get very complicated and doing it perfectly is impossible, so it becomes part of life that eventually something will go wrong with it. As a consumer you're kind of a tester, in that if loads of people report a problem it'll eventually get fixed.

I think TV's have greatly improved in the past 50 years. I mean those old CRT TVs where massive and weighed a ton! Moving it around was a pain, and the picture was so poor to todays standard... but then again it's not like you knew it at the time. I like how thin TVs have become, if you had a 22" CRT it took up so much space! But like you touched on there has been many gimmicks like 3D TV, do you remember when they brought out TVs with those LED colours behind them? They would change to the average colour of whatever that it was showing at the time - complete gimmick. Like most things they try to bring something to the market just so it'll sell.

I've never been into VR stuff, but the headache you got many people have also experienced, and I would too. It's because not everyones eyes are perfectly cantered. Most cases you can't even see the difference and you don't noticed at all because your brain is used to dealing with it. But then when you view two images that are cantered true and your brain isn't used to processing that it's where you get a headache.

It's not business sense to make something that will last forever, but if stuff lasted forever we wouldn't have nearly as much stuff as we do now because it would kill innovation. The explosion of modern technology has sparked consumerism, so now it's all about having the latest stuff, and some companies depend on this, not least Apple. It's not just the governments wanting to benefit, I think people in general want to be rich, but it always crosses the line into greed. Have you ever seen the show "Dragons Den"? It's where people are seeking investment for an invention or service trying to build a business, they pitch their idea to a bunch of investors. I like that show, but I don't like their mentality, greed shows right though. People go on with some really good ideas or products, but the investors aren't happy unless they can practically take over the world with it and earn so much money off it. There's no real intent on promoting a product or idea because it's helpful, earning a modest amount and then that's it. It's all what about the next product or how far can we g with this.

When it comes to cars again I think things are so much better. They're a hell of a lot CLEANER than they were 50 years ago (Although you could argue that the consumption of cars have increased dramatically to counter this), efficient, and a lot more safer. But again the more **** they put on a car the more there is to go wrong.. but like before half the time it's software, especially in those Teslas.

Storing energy is a very difficult task, and if it wasn't all our problems relating to energy would be solved. The very nature of storing a lot of energy in a small place is never going to be completely safe, that kind of comes with it. Batteries aren't the most efficient way to store energy and aren't where we'd like them to be in terms of reliability (for cars), capacity and charging rate, but it's the best we currently have for most purposes and they're improving all the time.

Like most things now it's supply and demand, and the problem with that is that you're going to have the problem with making whatever it is quicker and increasing volume, so how do you do that? Unfortunately for food is GMO and chemicals. I think bread is one of the worst things you can eat, just look at the ingredients of bread, there's so many chemicals in it, most of which are preservatives and cooking agents. But it's present in most of our food, it's tough to buy good quality foods nowadays because of the fact that the human population is exploding. Everything becomes a problem and it's these "solutions" that appear.

The governments are pretty useless and seem too busy arguing amongst themselves or trying to make the opposing party look bad than running the country. The government in the UK is a joke at the moment. It you watch any footage from the house or lords it's just like a zoo. They have the complete inability to manage the country on a basic level, there NEVER seems to be enough money yet they're all on £100,000+ a year. There's always some kind of controversial scandal on or sneaky money dodging going on. It's a joke that the guy in charge of the countries finances turned up to a event at a building site in a pair of £800 Prada shoes, what kind of a man who's been born into wealth like that know about setting taxes, social funding, and general money allocation? He chose to increase taxes further despite energy bills exploding and people suffering financially, and then applies to become the PM after he voted out the current PM. It's almost like a comedy and why I don't really believe or trust the government, I think a lot of them are self motivated and the interest of the country comes second. There's plenty of evidence to support this.

The world nowadays isn't a great place IMO, and I often think if I would want to bring kids into it at all. Everything is far more casual now, relationships, kids, marriage, it's all just take it & leave it. It's each generation gradually evolving this mentality because everything is available on demand, and everyone has rights to do what they want. It's super easy to get money in terms of loans and credit, and this has an effect on how people think about money, again for each new generation. As far as I'm concerned it's your responsibility as a parent to teach your child about this kind of stuff, but then that in itself isn't easy because of things I mentioned earlier such as work demands, etc.

 

[4No1]

Internet is great. As much as a lot of other things, things that James Webb can do, we could only imagine 50 years ago.

 

[ardour]

Ironically, America was at its most "socialist" in the mid twentieth century.

 

[When]

I think smart technology is making people stupid, spoiled, and lazy especially the younger generations.

It's not technology per se that is making people "stupid, spoiled and lazy." Rather it's the destruction of smaller communities and within them, small businesses that tended to act as a bonding agent. Large corporate entities rely on rules rather than self-reliance and the necessity of personal decision making. It's dehumanizing and a horror unfolding, and most people are unable to see it.

Thanks!!