Comparing 2018 and 1918...Are we happier?

[goout]

No, it doesn’t.
How many homes consumed pornography in 1918?
How easily available was it?
How much money was spent on it?
How many women were involved in it?
How many drug overdose calls did the police receive in 1918?
How many abortions occurred in 1918?
How many mass murders of born human beings occurred in 1918?
School shootings?
How many sex slaves were kidnapped in 1918?

Some of these, the statistics don’t even exist because the problem was barely existent.
Others, there are some statistics. The WHO has studies attempting to compare opiate addiction rates across decades.
Or you can simply ask your police and prosecutors for comparison of today with even 40 years ago, let alone 100.
Abortion was nowhere near as prevalent, as it was illegal.

 

[goout]

Do you think it is possible to say that we are actually better off in 2018 compared to 1918?

Do we really live happier lives than they did? Or vice versa?

Or basically the same essentially? Do you have a wish at all to live your life one century ago or are you decidedly happy to be living and grown up in the time period you are in now?

I wonder sometimes, too, if we might be better off spiritually 100 years ago before mass media, the information age, and communication came along.

Knowledge, comfort and physical well being don’t equate to happiness and joy. They are all good things and they should be sought after for the good of others and to glorify God, not to comfortably pat ourselves on the back for our “enlightened progress”.
God himself is our end and fulfillment. To the degree we allow ourselves to be found by God we will find happiness and joy.

 

[alice24]

No, it doesn’t.
How many homes consumed pornography in 1918?
How easily available was it?
How much money was spent on it?
How many women were involved in it?
How many drug overdose calls did the police receive in 1918?
How many abortions occurred in 1918?
How many mass murders of born human beings occurred in 1918?
School shootings?
How many sex slaves were kidnapped in 1918?

Most of this is adressed in the book I linked above. Stats existed. The munich police for example held a sex traffic and porn stat.

 

[goout]

Great.
Doesn’t answer the comparison.

 

[Xantippe]

And yes, you might say we do have chemicals and medical plans to deal with clinical depression.
But still we have more of it.
Isn’t that odd?

US alcohol consumption is WAY down from what it was in the past–we drink about 2/3 less.

“Americans drink an average of 2.3 gallons of pure alcohol a year compared to 7.1 gallons in 1830.”

The time when Americans drank all day long - BBC News

Hence Prohibition–people wanted alcohol banned because alcohol was a much bigger problem than it is today.

I’d argue that Americans used to do a lot of self-medicating with alcohol that we don’t anymore.

 

[DarkLight]

Some of these, the statistics don’t even exist because the problem was barely existent.

Sometimes, the statistics don’t even exist because the problem wasn’t acknowledged or wasn’t tracked.

Remember this is a year before the prohibition - and much of the reasoning behind the prohibition was attempting to combat alcohol addiction. That’s the point with anxiety and depression and other mental illness as well; there really weren’t many options between just dealing with it as best you can and being locked up in an asylum. So we don’t have any statistics on how many people were depressed back then because depression wasn’t a thing that anyone recognized. Much of things like sexual assault were like this as well; if it wasn’t a clear-cut case where an innocent woman walking home was grabbed by a man in a dark alley, it was probably in the woman’s interest to not go to the police or make any sort of official report - which would make the statistics appear lower.

 

[goout]

At the same time emergency responders in our small American town of about 17,000 receive an average of 3 drug overdose calls every single day.

About a month ago, there were 17 near death experiences from drug overdoses at our local hospital from Friday night to Sunday. One weekend. 17.
My daughter heads the HR dept at the hospital. They had to call an emergency meeting of three area hospitals and cooperating law enforcement agencies to make an emergency plan. Psychiatrists, emergency docs, police.
If you talk to people on the streets dealing with this, we have an unprecedented life and death sitation happening right now in 2018 that did not exist to this degree at any time in the past.

And part of the problem is we bury our heads in the sand! And say it can’t be that bad.

 

[goout]

Rerum Novarum:
http://w2.vatican.va/content/leo-xi...nts/hf_l-xiii_enc_15051891_rerum-novarum.html

…
18. In like manner, the other pains and hardships of life will have no end or cessation on earth; for the consequences of sin are bitter and hard to bear, and they must accompany man so long as life lasts. To suffer and to endure, therefore, is the lot of humanity; let them strive as they may, no strength and no artifice will ever succeed in banishing from human life the ills and troubles which beset it. If any there are who pretend differently - who hold out to a hard-pressed people the boon of freedom from pain and trouble, an undisturbed repose, and constant enjoyment - they delude the people and impose upon them, and their lying promises will only one day bring forth evils worse than the present. Nothing is more useful than to look upon the world as it really is, and at the same time to seek elsewhere, as We have said, for the solace to its troubles.

 

[Xantippe]

And part of the problem is we bury our heads in the sand! And say it can’t be that bad.

No, that there have been other problems in other times and that (medically and in many other ways) it’s better to be an American woman in 2018 than in 1918.

 

[Augustinian]

Hence Prohibition–people wanted alcohol banned because alcohol was a much bigger problem than it is today.

I’d argue that Americans used to do a lot of self-medicating with alcohol that we don’t anymore.

If you watch an old movie from even the 1950’s or 60’s, if the boss calls you into the office, the first question you got is “what are you drinking”.

 

[DarkLight]

It’s been within my lifetime that my grandparents even had 911 service - there certainly wasn’t any such thing in 1918. I can’t really imagine that in 1918 the response to an overdose would be to call the cops.

 

[goout]

That’s true.
?

 

[goout]

That’s also true

 

[Xantippe]

If you watch an old movie from even the 1950’s or 60’s, if the boss calls you into the office, the first question you got is “what are you drinking”.

Right. And you even see that (I believe) right into the 1970s in American TV, that it’s just normal that an executive has a bar with hard liquor set up in his office, and the first thing he does is offer a visitor an alcoholic beverage. (I believe you see that in the old 1970s Columbo.)

Our relationship to alcohol is radically different than it was 100 years ago.

I know, for example, that around that time, almost all the males in the side of my family I know well were alcoholics (and a few women). It was a radical break in our family when my grandpa (born early 1920s and married post-war) decided not to drink.

 

[DarkLight]

Yeah, I’ve mentioned upthread - my grandfather (this would be the 60’s) used to go out and drink, and then come home and beat my grandfather. They stayed together because that was just expected, especially when you had children.

I imagine it would probably have been an improvement for them to divorce.

 

[Xantippe]

Nowadays women consume about 90% of Valium and Librium.

I haven’t caught up with the thread, but at the end of the 19th century/very early 20th century, some very hard drugs were readily available to the public.

Louisa May Alcott, for example, was a heavy and habitual opium user.

In a way, our current opioid problem is kind of retro–it’s a return to a drug problem that was common 100+ years ago.

 

[goout]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...d-rates/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.3fcd1c519250

Total alcohol consumption per capita by year U.S. 1850-2022 | Statista

Alcohol consumption has generally decreased in the U.S. since the 1980s. However, alcohol consumption has increased in recent years.

www.statista.com

Suicide Rate Highest in Decades But Worst in Rural America

Demographics, gun ownership and the economy largely account for the regional differences.

www.governing.com

U.S. Suicide Rate Surges to a 30-Year High (Published 2016)

Rates increased among almost all groups, a federal data analysis found, with women and middle-aged Americans hit particularly hard.

www.nytimes.com

Opinion | Why Are Suicide Rates Rising?

Completed attempts are just the tip of the iceberg

www.medpagetoday.com

 

[goout]

For all our medical and technical advances, are we happier?
No. Only God brings true happiness.

 

[IsaiahSpirit]

Thank the Lord God for advances in medicine and preventative health.
While it is good we have child labor laws, the widespread ‘individualism’
has hurt the extended family, the first safety net. Churches and
community chests were our second. Alms in general. If those things
would have increased in proportion to the need we could have
prevented a huge wasteful generational cycle of dependence bureaucracy.
BTW, I’m neither conservative nor liberal. There is much waste in the high echelons in the military industrial complex, also.
Since three schools of thought did historically using rebranded
more palatable terms - Gramsci, Fabian, and Frankfurt — did
what they set out to do; use propaganda (playing at heartstrings,
honey speech rhetoric) in every facet of society in the industrialized
West — and it was so gradual — and those who adhere to parts
of it deny the source of their ideology, even making those who report
the historicity of it look like whacko conspiracy theorists — no, young
people though more physically healthy — and having better rights
after being born, not before — should know that those rights came
from the Judaeo Christian ethic of the God given dignity of every
human person. The opponents of sincere Judaeo Christianity; even
those who use it for funds for social justice — plucked the vine
of human rights for their various agendas. And certain moral issues,
when they find they can get popular support — they change their minds and become of one mind opposing The Church.
~
So, by all means, praise God for advances in health and human rights;
but also affirm the source of those things. And realize many young people, do to many Church goers over the decades mixing with worldly ideology for the sake of social justice — have been seduced
into a false Gospel or even do not believe the Gospel.
The Holy Bible teaches this had to happen. But I will pray, speak, and counter this ‘strong delusion,’ until my last breath. And it is our purpose as part of ‘We The People,’ to bring The Kingdom of God with it’s natural law moral principals to every facet of society. This only helps Evangelization. The other schools of thought somehow convinced many Christians that this is not our place. God help us!

 

[Xantippe]

How many homes consumed pornography in 1918?

There used to be a lot more prostitution in the Western world than there is today. Likewise, in Western countries (and elsewhere) it was simply assumed that prosperous young men would frequent prostitutes. Prostitution is much less part of normal life than it used to be.

As you can see from 19th century literature, the assumption was that any young woman who left her family’s protection was going to wind up a prostitute. The fact that women have far more respectable ways to make a living today is part of the explanation why prostitution is less of an industry than it used to be in Western countries.

Likewise, there are a lot more protections available to children than there were 100 years ago.

How many mass murders of born human beings occurred in 1918?

You know, the 20th century was kind of rough.

Consider, for example, what was happening in Russia in 1918.

Plus, WWI only ended Nov. 11, 1918.

How many abortions occurred in 1918?

When an activity is illegal, it’s hard to get a firm number for it.

How many sex slaves were kidnapped in 1918?

Given that the Mann Act on inter-state sex trafficking was passed in 1910, I think the answer may be “more than you might think.”

Mann Act - Wikipedia