It’s not uncommon to hear somebody say, “I was born in the wrong generation, life used to be so much simpler.”
Honestly, I’m guilty of saying it myself. I’ve frequently been told I’m an old soul, but mainly because my personality is classic and authentic, not sharing traits with the average person from such different time periods.
I’ve often said I’d love to grow up in the 1950s or some other time just because of the music and the simplicity of a small-town dynamic, but, in reality, it would be nothing short of horrendous.
Of course, our grandparents and older generations are sometimes bound to remember their childhoods fondly rather than with hate for the way it was, but it’s a decently clear and true statement to say that the “good old days” weren’t necessarily good after all. The world may have gotten better, but we got worse.
Things may still be bad, but at the very least, they are better.
It is well known that in the 1950s women, people of color, people in the LGBTQ+ community, and minorities had, to put it generously, very limited rights. Women were expected to stay in the kitchen and stay home with the children. Segregation and discrimination were at an all-time high for most of the era, and, even during and following the feminist and civil rights movements, it never entirely reached the point where everybody had the same rights as the majority. While some groups today still have that hateful outlook on life, it’s overall much more understanding and welcoming than it once was.
Even considering the pitfalls of today’s world, nearly every single aspect of the “good old days” was somehow objectively worse than they are today. A lot of progress has been made over the past few decades, but we tend to be blind to such progress in many aspects of life. Things may still be bad, but at the very least, they are better.
Natural disasters are never good, but today we have the technology available to combat them and take more preventative measures against them. We also know every event happening with social media, so there’s at least a sense of awareness that wasn’t previously present.
Even just 20 years ago, the rate of murders in the world was double today’s rate. Crime as a whole is down nearly 30% from where it was three decades ago.
Stillbirths have decreased significantly in the past century, and, while they still occur, miscarriages are far less common. In 1870, the infant mortality rate was 25% and now it’s 0.26%, almost exactly 100 times less. Arguably every single concept and practice in the medical world is thousands of times better than it had once been. With new medications, procedures, technology, and even just areas of study, the overall health of the world is stronger. Since 1920, the average life expectancy for men and women has shifted from the former average of 47 and 49 years, respectively, to today’s 76 and 82 years.
The world is becoming more and more oversimplified, focusing only on the clean outside view of circumstances.
Yes, I would love to walk down the street and know every person I pass. I would love to go to a 1950s party, dance with a stranger, and fall in love with the boy next door. I would love to live in a movie like Meet Me In St. Louis, but that’s not how the world is.
History is not a movie. Even when the world wants it to be, it isn’t.
It may be hard to think about sometimes, but the world we live in is a lot better than it could be, and infinitely better than it once was.
