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Was the world better today or 100 years ago?

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Vigilans
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30 Apr 2012, 12:39 am

Joker wrote:
Kraichgauer wrote:
Exclavius wrote:
There are so many intangibles that are lost today that were there 100 years ago. 20 minutes out from the city, and you were out of the city, and back to nature. Now most of the world lives at least an hour away from any real nature (not including the corner park). The air was clean, there was not nearly as much stress, you didn't have to carry around a cellphone 24/7. Mental Illness was much lower, even if other illnesses were higher and the treatments far less effective and far more barbaric. But just 100 years ago, we hadn't lost touch with the earth, the very thing that sustains us. Today we have.

Paraphrasing a line from a movie i watched last night, If you are hungry, naked and in a forest with no shelter, water, food, clothing etc. You are not happy. But if you were taken to a small log cabin, with a fire on the hearth, a stew bubbling away in the pot, a warm bed and a full set of clothes, then you would be made happy. Over the past 100 years (well, even just the past 60) we have been led to believe that if what I just said is true, than by having twice as much "stuff" we should be twice as happy, and if we have 10 times as much stuff we should be 10 times more happy. Today, the only thing there is anymore is this unending quest to acquire more things, to get a higher score in this new video game we call life. And each time we get more points, we lose sight of the fact that we are no more happier than before, and instead just keep on trying to get more.

That said, I'd still pick today to live in over 100 years ago... But that's because if i was born 100 years earlier, i wouldn't have the pleasure to witness humanity destroy itself like I will have the privilege of because of when i was born.


A hundred years ago, industrialization was well under way, factories were spewing poisoned smoke into the sky, and there were hardly any regulations protecting consumers or workers yet. Working conditions and pay were atrocious, and organized labor were seen as radical and Un-American. The world back then was hardly a piece of cake.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer


Yeah and to thank that a 100 years ago you could get away with crimes like Rape because back then it was not a crime to rape your wife.


They weren't as good at forensics and detecting poison, either, so hopefully said wife won't make a tasty revenge for dinner, served cold, naturally


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30 Apr 2012, 12:42 am

Vigilans wrote:
Joker wrote:
Kraichgauer wrote:
Exclavius wrote:
There are so many intangibles that are lost today that were there 100 years ago. 20 minutes out from the city, and you were out of the city, and back to nature. Now most of the world lives at least an hour away from any real nature (not including the corner park). The air was clean, there was not nearly as much stress, you didn't have to carry around a cellphone 24/7. Mental Illness was much lower, even if other illnesses were higher and the treatments far less effective and far more barbaric. But just 100 years ago, we hadn't lost touch with the earth, the very thing that sustains us. Today we have.

Paraphrasing a line from a movie i watched last night, If you are hungry, naked and in a forest with no shelter, water, food, clothing etc. You are not happy. But if you were taken to a small log cabin, with a fire on the hearth, a stew bubbling away in the pot, a warm bed and a full set of clothes, then you would be made happy. Over the past 100 years (well, even just the past 60) we have been led to believe that if what I just said is true, than by having twice as much "stuff" we should be twice as happy, and if we have 10 times as much stuff we should be 10 times more happy. Today, the only thing there is anymore is this unending quest to acquire more things, to get a higher score in this new video game we call life. And each time we get more points, we lose sight of the fact that we are no more happier than before, and instead just keep on trying to get more.

That said, I'd still pick today to live in over 100 years ago... But that's because if i was born 100 years earlier, i wouldn't have the pleasure to witness humanity destroy itself like I will have the privilege of because of when i was born.


A hundred years ago, industrialization was well under way, factories were spewing poisoned smoke into the sky, and there were hardly any regulations protecting consumers or workers yet. Working conditions and pay were atrocious, and organized labor were seen as radical and Un-American. The world back then was hardly a piece of cake.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer


Yeah and to thank that a 100 years ago you could get away with crimes like Rape because back then it was not a crime to rape your wife.


They weren't as good at forensics and detecting poison, either, so hopefully said wife won't make a tasty revenge for dinner, served cold, naturally


Yeah that too I mean 100 years ago a lot of people where suffering now adays you have medicine for mental illness ect back then you where locked up for being mentally ill.



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30 Apr 2012, 12:44 am

Joker wrote:
Kraichgauer wrote:
Exclavius wrote:
There are so many intangibles that are lost today that were there 100 years ago. 20 minutes out from the city, and you were out of the city, and back to nature. Now most of the world lives at least an hour away from any real nature (not including the corner park). The air was clean, there was not nearly as much stress, you didn't have to carry around a cellphone 24/7. Mental Illness was much lower, even if other illnesses were higher and the treatments far less effective and far more barbaric. But just 100 years ago, we hadn't lost touch with the earth, the very thing that sustains us. Today we have.

Paraphrasing a line from a movie i watched last night, If you are hungry, naked and in a forest with no shelter, water, food, clothing etc. You are not happy. But if you were taken to a small log cabin, with a fire on the hearth, a stew bubbling away in the pot, a warm bed and a full set of clothes, then you would be made happy. Over the past 100 years (well, even just the past 60) we have been led to believe that if what I just said is true, than by having twice as much "stuff" we should be twice as happy, and if we have 10 times as much stuff we should be 10 times more happy. Today, the only thing there is anymore is this unending quest to acquire more things, to get a higher score in this new video game we call life. And each time we get more points, we lose sight of the fact that we are no more happier than before, and instead just keep on trying to get more.

That said, I'd still pick today to live in over 100 years ago... But that's because if i was born 100 years earlier, i wouldn't have the pleasure to witness humanity destroy itself like I will have the privilege of because of when i was born.


A hundred years ago, industrialization was well under way, factories were spewing poisoned smoke into the sky, and there were hardly any regulations protecting consumers or workers yet. Working conditions and pay were atrocious, and organized labor were seen as radical and Un-American. The world back then was hardly a piece of cake.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer


Yeah and to thank that a 100 years ago you could get away with crimes like Rape because back then it was not a crime to rape your wife.


My Dad had told me about how around a hundred years ago or so in my part of the country - the Pacific Northwest - old west frontier violence had not yet ended. He had recalled how my grandfather had known a local horse thief who had been strung up by his neighbors. Times like that might seem romantic - unless you're the guy with his head in the noose.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer



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30 Apr 2012, 12:46 am

Kraichgauer wrote:
Joker wrote:
Kraichgauer wrote:
Exclavius wrote:
There are so many intangibles that are lost today that were there 100 years ago. 20 minutes out from the city, and you were out of the city, and back to nature. Now most of the world lives at least an hour away from any real nature (not including the corner park). The air was clean, there was not nearly as much stress, you didn't have to carry around a cellphone 24/7. Mental Illness was much lower, even if other illnesses were higher and the treatments far less effective and far more barbaric. But just 100 years ago, we hadn't lost touch with the earth, the very thing that sustains us. Today we have.

Paraphrasing a line from a movie i watched last night, If you are hungry, naked and in a forest with no shelter, water, food, clothing etc. You are not happy. But if you were taken to a small log cabin, with a fire on the hearth, a stew bubbling away in the pot, a warm bed and a full set of clothes, then you would be made happy. Over the past 100 years (well, even just the past 60) we have been led to believe that if what I just said is true, than by having twice as much "stuff" we should be twice as happy, and if we have 10 times as much stuff we should be 10 times more happy. Today, the only thing there is anymore is this unending quest to acquire more things, to get a higher score in this new video game we call life. And each time we get more points, we lose sight of the fact that we are no more happier than before, and instead just keep on trying to get more.

That said, I'd still pick today to live in over 100 years ago... But that's because if i was born 100 years earlier, i wouldn't have the pleasure to witness humanity destroy itself like I will have the privilege of because of when i was born.


A hundred years ago, industrialization was well under way, factories were spewing poisoned smoke into the sky, and there were hardly any regulations protecting consumers or workers yet. Working conditions and pay were atrocious, and organized labor were seen as radical and Un-American. The world back then was hardly a piece of cake.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer


Yeah and to thank that a 100 years ago you could get away with crimes like Rape because back then it was not a crime to rape your wife.


My Dad had told me about how around a hundred years ago or so in my part of the country - the Pacific Northwest - old west frontier violence had not yet ended. He had recalled how my grandfather had known a local horse thief who had been strung up by his neighbors. Times like that might seem romantic - unless you're the guy with his head in the noose.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer


Killing a man for taking a horse leads me to think: those horse are worth a man's life? Expensive horse


_________________
Opportunities multiply as they are seized. -Sun Tzu
Nature creates few men brave, industry and training makes many -Machiavelli
You can safely assume that you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do


Last edited by Vigilans on 30 Apr 2012, 12:46 am, edited 1 time in total.

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30 Apr 2012, 12:46 am

I am so greatful to be born in 1989 I would have been put to death a 100 years ago but I get the cold chills a lot and shake randomly when it happens. They would say witch and burn me at the stake :lol:



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30 Apr 2012, 12:47 am

Joker wrote:
I am so greatful to be born in 1989 I would have been put to death a 100 years ago but I get the cold chills a lot and shake randomly when it happens. They would say witch and burn me at the stake :lol:


Contrary to "popular belief" the Salem Witch Trials did not in fact take place in 1912


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Opportunities multiply as they are seized. -Sun Tzu
Nature creates few men brave, industry and training makes many -Machiavelli
You can safely assume that you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do


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30 Apr 2012, 12:54 am

Vigilans wrote:
Joker wrote:
I am so greatful to be born in 1989 I would have been put to death a 100 years ago but I get the cold chills a lot and shake randomly when it happens. They would say witch and burn me at the stake :lol:


Contrary to "popular belief" the Salem Witch Trials did not in fact take place in 1912


That is what I hate about American history cause it is normally wrong when did it start btw?



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30 Apr 2012, 1:11 am

Vigilans wrote:
Kraichgauer wrote:
Joker wrote:
Kraichgauer wrote:
Exclavius wrote:
There are so many intangibles that are lost today that were there 100 years ago. 20 minutes out from the city, and you were out of the city, and back to nature. Now most of the world lives at least an hour away from any real nature (not including the corner park). The air was clean, there was not nearly as much stress, you didn't have to carry around a cellphone 24/7. Mental Illness was much lower, even if other illnesses were higher and the treatments far less effective and far more barbaric. But just 100 years ago, we hadn't lost touch with the earth, the very thing that sustains us. Today we have.

Paraphrasing a line from a movie i watched last night, If you are hungry, naked and in a forest with no shelter, water, food, clothing etc. You are not happy. But if you were taken to a small log cabin, with a fire on the hearth, a stew bubbling away in the pot, a warm bed and a full set of clothes, then you would be made happy. Over the past 100 years (well, even just the past 60) we have been led to believe that if what I just said is true, than by having twice as much "stuff" we should be twice as happy, and if we have 10 times as much stuff we should be 10 times more happy. Today, the only thing there is anymore is this unending quest to acquire more things, to get a higher score in this new video game we call life. And each time we get more points, we lose sight of the fact that we are no more happier than before, and instead just keep on trying to get more.

That said, I'd still pick today to live in over 100 years ago... But that's because if i was born 100 years earlier, i wouldn't have the pleasure to witness humanity destroy itself like I will have the privilege of because of when i was born.


A hundred years ago, industrialization was well under way, factories were spewing poisoned smoke into the sky, and there were hardly any regulations protecting consumers or workers yet. Working conditions and pay were atrocious, and organized labor were seen as radical and Un-American. The world back then was hardly a piece of cake.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer


Yeah and to thank that a 100 years ago you could get away with crimes like Rape because back then it was not a crime to rape your wife.


My Dad had told me about how around a hundred years ago or so in my part of the country - the Pacific Northwest - old west frontier violence had not yet ended. He had recalled how my grandfather had known a local horse thief who had been strung up by his neighbors. Times like that might seem romantic - unless you're the guy with his head in the noose.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer


Killing a man for taking a horse leads me to think: those horse are worth a man's life? Expensive horse


Tom Horn had been hired to clear out horse thieves and small homesteaders by the Wyoming Cattleman's Association. Let's just say, if they didn't head out on their own, they'd end up with a bullet hole in them. But when Horn had shot and killed a teen age boy after mistaking him for his father, that had been more than enough for the law. Horn had ended up swinging for the murder, but the men who he had killed for were never brought to justice.
In Everett Washington, members of the Industrial Workers Of The World (IWW, or Wobblies) had been approaching port on a ferry, when gunmen hired by business owners had opened fire on them. Even though it had been the Wobblies who had been killed in the gun fire, the surviving union men were prosecuted for murder.
Back then, human life was cheap, unless you belonged to the upper crust.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer



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30 Apr 2012, 1:13 am

We may have medicine to treat the mental illness, as was noted above, but most of the new mental illness is an inability to cope with the drastically changing environment that we are now apart of, we've stalled evolution with the invention of modern medicine (and the welfare/nanny state), and we use that self-same medicine to proxy for a cure (treatment, really) for those illnesses and say we're better off as a result of it.

Let's simplify what I just said... Let's create a problem, then come up with a band-aid treatment for it, and presto, we're better off, because we have that treatment. Phooey!! !!

Most of the drugs to "treat" mental illness are actually no different than a prison... 'cept they only keep our mind locked up, not our body.

As for industrialization being well underway 100 years ago, well yes it was. But it was only really so in the major cities. But say in 1950 less than 30% of the world lived in cities, now it's over 50%... I can only extrapolate backwards for the % in 1912 to likely be about 15 to 20%. It was actually HUMAN farmers than grew your food, not factory farms. Your food wasn't injected with synthetic growth hormones.

Also on the medicine front.... we live longer, yes. (though infant mortality rates account for the largest part of the increased lifespan) but... are we really healthier? How many of us are overweight? what has happened to the rate of diabetes? (oh wait, cause we have insulin and dialysis we're better off) What i'm saying, is that for all the improvements in health, we really aren't any better off, all we've done is alter the things that harm us.



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30 Apr 2012, 1:20 am

Exclavius wrote:
We may have medicine to treat the mental illness, as was noted above, but most of the new mental illness is an inability to cope with the drastically changing environment that we are now apart of, we've stalled evolution with the invention of modern medicine (and the welfare/nanny state), and we use that self-same medicine to proxy for a cure (treatment, really) for those illnesses and say we're better off as a result of it.

Let's simplify what I just said... Let's create a problem, then come up with a band-aid treatment for it, and presto, we're better off, because we have that treatment. Phooey!! !!

Most of the drugs to "treat" mental illness are actually no different than a prison... 'cept they only keep our mind locked up, not our body.

As for industrialization being well underway 100 years ago, well yes it was. But it was only really so in the major cities. But say in 1950 less than 30% of the world lived in cities, now it's over 50%... I can only extrapolate backwards for the % in 1912 to likely be about 15 to 20%. It was actually HUMAN farmers than grew your food, not factory farms. Your food wasn't injected with synthetic growth hormones.

Also on the medicine front.... we live longer, yes. (though infant mortality rates account for the largest part of the increased lifespan) but... are we really healthier? How many of us are overweight? what has happened to the rate of diabetes? (oh wait, cause we have insulin and dialysis we're better off) What i'm saying, is that for all the improvements in health, we really aren't any better off, all we've done is alter the things that harm us.


Regarding industrialization and pollution - there was plenty of industry and pollutants created by the timber, mining, and railroad industries that were common place in rural areas - especially in the far west.
As for dialysis and insulin - I was able to have my Dad in my life longer than I would have without them.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer



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30 Apr 2012, 1:27 am

Okay, on the topic of how human life was worthless, "unless you're in the upper crust" ...

Well, what other species on the face of the earth is that not the natural way of things?
The alpha-male in any non-human social group is the only life that isn't cheap... and it's only got value so long as that alpha-male has the power to maintain his status.

It's our artificially induced delusion that we are "special" that is at the very core of most of our problems today. That each life is special is the reason we have so many non-contributing people in the world. It's why genetic diseases are running rampant, it's why the world is disgustingly overpopulated.

Now, don't get me wrong, we aspies, ARE special, but the rest of the world... well, :lol:

Oh, one more bonus for 100 years ago... Weed wasn't illegal!



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30 Apr 2012, 1:40 am

Exclavius wrote:
Okay, on the topic of how human life was worthless, "unless you're in the upper crust" ...

Well, what other species on the face of the earth is that not the natural way of things?
The alpha-male in any non-human social group is the only life that isn't cheap... and it's only got value so long as that alpha-male has the power to maintain his status.

It's our artificially induced delusion that we are "special" that is at the very core of most of our problems today. That each life is special is the reason we have so many non-contributing people in the world. It's why genetic diseases are running rampant, it's why the world is disgustingly overpopulated.

Now, don't get me wrong, we aspies, ARE special, but the rest of the world... well, :lol:

Oh, one more bonus for 100 years ago... Weed wasn't illegal!


Back then, we Aspies would rarely be seen as anything special, unless you want to call the village idiot special.
As far as that alpha male stuff - the ranks of the upper crust would hardly include Aspies, or people of color, or even women back then.
And finally, from the testimony of WP members, many are what might be labelled "non-contributing people." Many people with a similar worldview you're endorsing have little or no us for us with Asperger's.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer



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30 Apr 2012, 1:43 am

Joker wrote:
Vigilans wrote:
Joker wrote:
I am so greatful to be born in 1989 I would have been put to death a 100 years ago but I get the cold chills a lot and shake randomly when it happens. They would say witch and burn me at the stake :lol:


Contrary to "popular belief" the Salem Witch Trials did not in fact take place in 1912


That is what I hate about American history cause it is normally wrong when did it start btw?


Image


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Opportunities multiply as they are seized. -Sun Tzu
Nature creates few men brave, industry and training makes many -Machiavelli
You can safely assume that you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do


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01 May 2012, 6:33 pm

Vigilans wrote:
Joker wrote:
Vigilans wrote:
Joker wrote:
I am so greatful to be born in 1989 I would have been put to death a 100 years ago but I get the cold chills a lot and shake randomly when it happens. They would say witch and burn me at the stake :lol:


Contrary to "popular belief" the Salem Witch Trials did not in fact take place in 1912


That is what I hate about American history cause it is normally wrong when did it start btw?


Image


yes elaphants are very strong animals but that is not a answer to the question.



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01 May 2012, 6:37 pm

American schools teach that the Salem Witch Trials were in 1912? :scratch:

Weren't they in the seventeenth century? :lol:



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01 May 2012, 6:40 pm

AdamAdam wrote:
American schools teach that the Salem Witch Trials were in 1912? :scratch:

Weren't they in the seventeenth century? :lol:


No, not as far as I know, do they teach that anywhere lol I am just messing around, which Joker may have missed


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Opportunities multiply as they are seized. -Sun Tzu
Nature creates few men brave, industry and training makes many -Machiavelli
You can safely assume that you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do