Comparing 2018 and 1918...Are we happier?

  • Thread starter Thread starter JamalChristophr
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It certainly isn’t better for the voiceless. And there seems to be a great silence, especially at the local level in Parishes even more than 20 years ago.
http://www.usccb.org/issues-and-action/human-life-and-dignity/abortion/living-the-gospel-of-life.cfm
There must be some reason for this. I won’t convey what I have been told, only that
national leaders in the cause echoed the same thing. There seems to be much bowing to political expedience and a certain anthropomorphic attitude in what congregations are told.
I don’t know all the reasons at all, but we are far from living up to our own exhortation,
based on Evangelium Vitae. We have the highest death toll per capita in history, world wide. With the main reason that agendas either directly opposed to the Gospel or contrary to the Gospel captured the imagination of a vast number of the intellectual elite.
And their solutions involve anything goes if we form a consensus to it. There has been
too much hiding behind stained glassed windows. And I thank God for those who believe
The Gospel that get into the extreme difficult political arena - who not only have to suffer
the propaganda of ideologies opposed to The Gospel, but from many factions in The Church. While this is only one facet of society it certainly has shaped the judicial branch
who more and more do not uphold the natural law which reflects Gospel morality.
~
It took thousands of years for the tragedy of 1/2 billion combined causalities of war
and atrocities to accrue. It only took a micro portion of 50 years for triple the death
toll of 1-1/2 billion world wide just for children yet to be born. In 1918, if one truly looks
at history objectively this was mostly unthinkable. One hundred years later our society
has become so anesthetized to this tragedy & atrocity — there is much complicity and
complacency.
~
We could have been living in a better time. But we do not.
God help us!
 
Another great observation confirming that advances in good things are not the same thing as The Good Thing, which is God himself.

Mother Teresa noted that “the West has the greatest poverty in the world” because we can kill our unborn in barbaric numbers.
We are at the same time:
advanced, progressive, and prosperous
and barbaric, unhappy, and despairing .

A happy people does not kill innocent children by the millions, does not numb themselves with drugs in pandemic numbers, does not consume pornography in pandemic numbers. And we could also talk about atheism, apostasy, and indifference.
That is not a happy people.
 
If I had lived back in 1918 instead of now, I probably would have died because when I was twenty-three I had serious surgery at that time. I don’t think they could have helped me back then.

I am also grateful for tooth implants and reconstruction, not to mention air conditioning and central heating.
 
We all live and are perfectly happy in our reality.
The world we face now is perfectly normal to us.
We can be as happy as we want to be with it.

Likewise those that were alive at whatever time in the past. Whatever circumstance was simply the norm. And they could be just as happy then as we are now.
 
amen.
All we can do is pray, speak, and act for The Kingdom of God;
the natural law to be honored again,
and to alleviate the apostasy.
Never giving up.
Even so, I think it will take an act of God to wake up His Church,
and everyone else.
 
African-Americans, other people of color, and women are definitely happier. The grass is NOT always greener. History through rose colored glasses is an illusion.
 
I’m a huge history buff. Watch, the “Hidden Killers” series about dangers in the Tudor, Victorian, Edwardian, and post-WWII home.
 
I’ve seen some of those. Have they released more to Amazon lately? I honestly haven’t looked.

The electric table cloths and all the cords running into the overhead outlets were incredible.

So were the baby bottles and what passed as formula. (THAT was actually fairly hard to take.)

Might go watch them again now!
 
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Asbestos in everything. Arsenic in green paint/dye. Belladonna eye drops. Radon in lipstick. Whew!
 
Have you seen the series Dark Matters: Twisted But True? They talked about the “Radon Girls” who used to paint that stuff onto watch faces around WWI and how they developed all sorts of weird cancers from licking the brushes - and because they were women they weren’t taken seriously, even as they were dying and their jaws were disintegrating from cancer.

My grandfather had a cat clock with creepy eyes that was painted with radon from that era. Sort of wish I still had it.

Another awesome history series, though it’s British: London Hospital. It is based off of actual patient records and people known to work at The London Hospital (now called “The Royal London”) in the East End. In the UK it was called “Casualty 1904” and “Casualty 1905” (I believe I have the years correct). They’ve also done one in the field hospitals in WWI. Totally fascinating.

Give me modern ills any day.
 
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JamalChristophr said:
Do you think it is possible to say that we are actually better off in 2018 compared to 1918?
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Answering from a USA perspective I will say generally “Yes.” Though it will depend on what social or ethnic group to which you belong and where in the USA you lived.
 
I’ll have to watch the series. It’s horrible what happened to the women working with radon.
 
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I think it’s on Amazon, or it used to be. Even if you have to buy it, it’s worth the expense.
 
glencor63 said:
Asbestos in everything. Arsenic in green paint/dye. Belladonna eye drops. Radon in lipstick. Whew!
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…and this was so bad even half a century ago! I worked at the costume department of a museum last year. I first opened many boxes after years to categorize the items. The only reason I´ve done this without full covering protective clothes was the fact that this museum had not enough money back then in the 50s and 60s to conservate those items “properly” in the view of the time - with bactericidal and fungicidal substances that cause cancer and are mutagenic. They sprayed it literally everywhere in the storages of big museums back then.
 
I’m hesitant to re-enter this thread, but I just want to clarify one thing. When I made my point, much earlier in this thread, about agriculture taking only 4 months a year of hard work, and being somewhat leisurely the other 8 months, I was talking about small-scale agriculture in a completely pre-industrial country. By that I meant subsistence farming for a family of 5-10: you grow what you need to feed yourself, and you keep a handful of goats, chickens, maybe some buffaloes. That’s it. Where I live, people did and do live that way, and where I live was certainly 100% pre-industrial in 1918, because even now half the country is pre-industrial.

Just wanted to get that out of the way. No need to remind me how wrong I am about all of this.
 
Augustinian said:
Over in India, there are temples standing that are many hundreds of years old and have pornographic statues. Smut is nothing particularly new
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Just as explanation: these statues are meant to depict the joy of conjugal relations. They are not meant as “smut” or to depict adulterous sex, as most modern pornography does. The reason they are kept inside temples is precisely because sex is considered an utterly sacred act.
 
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Have you documentation to support this argument? I think it might be difficult to come up with numbers for domestic violence, abortion, or pornography from 1918?
What sources are you utilizing to back up your assertion?
 
Roguish said:
I’m hesitant to re-enter this thread, but I just want to clarify one thing. When I made my point, much earlier in this thread, about agriculture taking only 4 months a year of hard work, and being somewhat leisurely the other 8 months, I was talking about small-scale agriculture in a completely pre-industrial country . By that I meant subsistence farming for a family of 5-10: you grow what you need to feed yourself, and you keep a handful of goats, chickens, maybe some buffaloes. That’s it. Where I live, people did and do live that way, and where I live was certainly 100% pre-industrial in 1918, because even now half the country is pre-industrial.

Just wanted to get that out of the way. No need to remind me how wrong I am about all of this.
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But then you still need to cut wood for fuel and carry water, take care of the horses, etc.
 
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From today’s Quora:

France wrecked their economy in order to win the war … World War 1. All the European Powers that fought WWI had spent much more than they could afford and believed that war reparations from their defeated enemies would somehow fix things. It didn’t. Germany had been bankrupted by the war and simply did not have the money to pay the Allies. In addition, the economic and physical infrastructure of France had been seriously damaged by the war. Mines (especially coal mines), factories, farmland and the rail lines took years to be restored to productive use again. In some cases they could not be repaired. To this day there are areas of France that are off limits because of the danger of live ordinance left over from WWI. This was one of the motivations for the French occupation of the Saar and Ruhr coal regions of Germany after the war. This damage to the French economy had huge implications for military strategy and the strength of France’s armies in WWII.

Defeatism- Because of the huge casualties of the war (some 5.6 million soldiers killed and wounded) many French became disillusioned and cynical towards the postwar settlement and the aims of their government. In this the French were not that different from the rest of Europe and the USA. Pacifist movements sprang up all over Europe and America after WWI and played a major role in how the various governments approached defense. For example, the desire to avoid the massive casualties of WWI was one of the major motivations for the building of the Maginot Line. Another factor that had huge implications in WWII was the partisan divisions between the different political parties and fragmentation of French society as a whole. Many political groups simply refused to support action against Germany at the beginning of WWII or did so without the enthusiasm of the previous war. The Communist Party was very notable for non-support (especially after the Nazi-Soviet Pact of 1939). The Communists did change their tune after the attack on the USSR and became very active in the Resistance after June, 1941. But that is another story. Also, the Germans were unified towards victory in 1940 much as the French were in 1914.
 
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