Kirbstone wrote:Now that's a serious bit of cogent social comment, Skip. You posted it under 'a little humour', which it is, but it hits far harder than that.
Yes, it is a biting bit of social satire, but comparing the early part of the middle of the last century to modern times is frought with peril.
Most of the observations are true enough -- up to a point. This was also the time when women stayed home because
they had to in order to run the household to support the man who went out to make money (the modern-day equivalent of hunting) to support the entire enterprise. In the modern world, where one salary supports one adult (more or less), various powered devices are pretty much required if any standard of living or sanitation is to be maintained.
In the early part of the last century, I would have been able to walk to the local railway depot and catch a train that would take me places that would have literally been the gateway to the entire planet (ports). Nowadays I have to take my car to the aerodrome in The Big City, park for exhorbitant fees, and subject myself to a strip-search so I can get crammed into an aluminium tube and shot around the world in a decidedly unsafe (for my condition) environment. That's a big improvement there.
In the early part of the past century there were tram tracks in the road that led into the nearby "Big City"; those were torn up long ago because there was a move afoot to make sure that everybody needed a car. The tram lines also didn't make much money because moving people costs money -- and lots of it. There was also the creeping encroachment of the 24-hour workday coming where one is always "on the clock" in one way or another. There's another big improvement.
In the late years of the century before the last one, my little town had
two railway lines and stations that served passengers; now we have none, and one of those lines was drowned beneath the self-same reserevoir that the Big City to the east decided that it needed and drowned the heart of my little town because of that need. Big win there.
I admit to growing weary when folks expound on "how good the 'Good Old Days' were" because it's mostly nostalgia. If we tried doing things that way now the very fabric of what we've come to know as society would likely be rent asunder; we would have to literally "go back in time" to make it work. Who is willing to do that? What would the costs be to everyone involved in the enterprise? Who would have to give up what to make it happen? Who would have to be culled to reduce the population so the "Old Way" of doing things could support the population?
Could things be a heck of a lot better? Yes. Not just yes, but
Hell Yes! But we're not going to do it by nostalgically back-timing. We need 21st Century solutions to what the 19th and 20th Centuries got us into. We need to work smarter, not longer; we need energy from friendly -- or at least reliable and non-hostile -- sources; and we need to get back to being a society that can work together to solve some of these problems. Maybe, just maybe, I'll see some of that before I depart this little rock in the middle of nowhere. However, I am not at all convinced that I will.
'We all want to get back to Nature!'..................Then somebody else daubed underneath:
'But not on foot!'
I love it.
