I think with more opportunities comes a higher bar for happiness. When you can have a rich and fulfilling career, a life filled with travel, entertainment and great food, a social life where you can interact with many thousands of people-- it’s surprisingly easy to find yourself uninspired.
Overall, though, I’d have to say that we’re probably happier now overall.
I think with more opportunities comes a higher bar for happiness. When you can have a rich and fulfilling career, a life filled with travel, entertainment and great food, a social life where you can interact with many thousands of people-- it’s surprisingly easy to find yourself uninspired.
The USA got off easy in 1918 by my assessment, to be honest. And though we lost more young men in WWII in comparison, we assuredly had a different experience than our European brothers and sisters did.
I think our pride stung more than anything after WWI, because we shouldn’t have sat on the sidelines for so long. I understand why isolationism was so strong, but I don’t think we should have held out for as long as we did. I think it taught us that globalization was inevitable, in a way.
Some of it’s not really our fault, though. We have a geographic location that was pretty hard to get to until the last seventy years, and we are blessed with friendly nations on our borders. We don’t have the ethnic boundaries that exist in such close proximity in Europe in the way they do there (think Bosnia-Herzegovinia, the former Soviet republics, Austria and Hungary and Germany…).
It’s a strange position to be in when everything is “over there” to be sure, to quote George M. Cohan.
Know what else we have in this day and age? The resources to deal with those things. If you were a depressed woman 100 years ago you’d best hope that your parents had enough money to send you on getaways to the seaside. Otherwise, you were SOL.
I just wrote that I live in a country where half the population are still practicing small-scale farming. It is also a country in which women still don’t court men their fathers disapprove of, and where women still don’t go out and live on their own. And you know what? It seems that our women are kinda happy that way.
Young and haven’t studied history. I may only be 30, but I know better. In the U.S., you had widespread industrialization in the north by the civil war - that was a major factor in the war. WWI was so striking in part because with the advances in science and industry we were learning new and exciting ways to maim and kill each other (and sometimes ourselves). All those tanks and shells came out of factories, after all. But at least you can still get a drink.
It is also distinctly possible that I’m just a nerd.
I think Bear was referencing folks even younger than you. I do know very young people who don’t know a lot of what we’ve talked about.
I grew up with grandparents from that era (which blows a lot of minds when they find out I’m not even 45 yet - I’m a late life baby with a brother in his early sixties, LOL) which in my day made me the weirdo who knew about a lot of this stuff and was interested in it.
And it’s okay to be a history nerd!!
I remember reading a book and watching a documentary about the flu epidemic of that era, and remembering that it was my great-aunt (who would’ve been about seven at the time) who taught me, “I have a little bird, his name was Enza…I opened the window, and In-flew-Enza”, which was a dark children’s jump rope rhyme from the era. My grandfather said he could remember kids singing that in the street - he would’ve been 11 at the time, and worked picking up scrap metal to sell so he could help out his single mom.
I’d rather be alive now even as I’d love to time travel just to see that era for myself as living history. I think this is why I have no issues with vaccines and most medications: I grew up with first-hand accounts of what it was like to not have them from all sides (my mom is 84 and my dad would be 88 if he were living).
My grandparents went from no running water and indoor plumbing not being the norm (not to mention electricity) to watching man walk on the moon, the Space Shuttle land at Cape Canaveral, and the first flight of the Concorde. (In fact, my father’s father was born just two months after the “miracle at Kitty Hawk”, so he went from fabric biplanes controlled with bicycle parts to the Concorde and space flight.) That amazes me when I stop to think about it.
Know what else we have in this day and age? The resources to deal with those things. If you were a depressed woman 100 years ago you’d best hope that your parents had enough money to send you on getaways to the seaside. Otherwise, you were SOL.
Isn’t it odd. We have tons of resources to provide material assistance to people who suffer spiritually…and what do we have? More unhappiness, more despair, more carnage.
How can that be?
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?
Maybe something else is at work that resources don’t address.
Maybe we don’t have more of it. Maybe we’re just getting more comfortable with acknowledging it and have gotten better at pin-pointing the mechanisms behind these issues. After all, what did acknowledgment of mental illness get you in 1918 except for an extended trip to the looney bin?
Maybe we don’t have more of it. Maybe we’re just getting more comfortable with acknowledging it and have gotten better at pin-pointing the mechanisms behind these issues. After all, what did acknowledgment of mental illness get you in 1918 except for an extended trip to the looney bin?
I’m not sure why it is so difficult to admit the elephant in the room.
Our current culture is full of despair.
People are committing suicide at unprecedented rates.
We are killing human beings with an efficiency that is unprecedented.
And drug addiction is unequaled. People are numbing themselves to death.
The spiritual disposition of our culture is anything but happy or joyful. Pointing to the deficiencies of 1918 medical practices doesn’t hide this.
It’s a good thing that women can now vote. It’s a good thing that women have career options.
It’s not a good thing that women are beaten the crap out of, raped, objectified through pornography, and murdered by abortion in the millions. So much for progress.
You might be using the wrong measuring stick.
People are committing suicide at unprecedented rates.
We are killing human beings with an efficiency that is unprecedented.
And drug addiction is unequaled. People are numbing themselves to death.
You think people weren’t just as bloodthirsty 100 years ago? We’ve gotten better at killing people because we do it with drones, which people definitely would have used during World War I had they existed.
It’s not a good thing that women are beaten the crap out of, raped, objectified through pornography, and murdered by abortion in the millions. So much for progress.
> It’s not a good thing that women are beaten the crap out of, raped, objectified through pornography, and murdered by abortion in the millions. So much for progress.
If you know anything about history, you’d know that all of those issues were very much present in 1918. Some to a greater extent than today.
Imagine being a woman around Freud’s time. shudder also, as a psych student, I enjoy reading about such perspectives in the past. Anyone remember how people thought women were crazy because their periods were toxic? Or because they didn’t have orgasms?
I’m very grateful and happy in modern civilization.
Milking was done by hand. When were pasteurization and Clarence Birdseye’s processing invented?
I remember the ice man delivering ice for the ice box … no refrigerators yet. The railroads used vast amounts of ice to keep “refrigerator cars” cool.
Ice was harvested in winter.
Butcher shops had sawdust on the floors.
Polio / infantile paralysis was a scourge … my mother was terrified to let me run around. Somebody invented the iron lung.
Everybody smoked cigarettes and cigars. Ashtrays and spittoons were EVERYWHERE. I have some ashtrays … nobody today knows what they were for. Smoke-filled rooms were everywhere and really were smoke filled … when you opened an outside door … there was a CASCADE of smoke to the outside.
Railroad accidents were high. Operating a steam engine took a lot of muscle … to shovel the coal into the boiler’s firebox and refill the tender with water and coal and to operate the throttle and to clean out the ash and repair the boiler almost daily … they had special roundhouses and turntables to service the engines. Mail went by train and was sorted en route in special mail cars. ONLY dare-devils flew airplanes. Steam and sailing ships took many days to reach destinations. On Saturday you took care of the horses … they were the “engine” of your delivery truck.
Imagine being a woman around Freud’s time. shudder also, as a psych student, I enjoy reading about such perspectives in the past. Anyone remember how people thought women were crazy because their periods were toxic? Or because they didn’t have orgasms?
I’m very grateful and happy in modern civilization.
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