Which would you rather live in the "Good Old Days" or today?

fuzzybuddy

fuzzybuddy

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Northeast PA. 3 miles from the Pocono race track
We've all heard people ramble on about how good the "Old Days" were. And how lousy today is. So which would you prefer to live in the "Good Old Days', whenever they were; OR the present. Keeping in mind that you won't have the perks of the present-NO internet, wide screen TVs, etc.etc.
 

fuzzybuddy said:
So which would you prefer to live in the "Good Old Days', whenever they were . . .
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Ok FB, I'll take "good old" 1986. I was 38 years old, weighed around 175 pounds and was in excellent health. I had a beautiful 34 year old wife and two beautiful, healthy children, owned a very nice house, and had a good job that I really enjoyed, and lots of close friends. The future looked to be one big, wonderful adventure (which indeed it was). Would I give up the internet, my wide screen TV, and my etc, etc. (failing eyesight, aching joints, lack of energy ...) to return to those days? Only in a heartbeat!

:yes:
 
I would gladly give up the conveniences of today for the youth/good health of yesterday.

Even though I have enjoyed a few of them [conveniences] , no widescreen-flat TV can take the place of a walk around the block.
 
I tend to agree with SeaBreeze. Today's life can be quite good...but old age has a way of limiting what a person can do. There are times when I seriously wonder what the future will bring.
 
I would give them up. In the 50's when I was growing up there seemed to be more time for everything. It was a much slower pace back then. Time was made for family and friends. People wrote letters and the anticipation of getting one and the pleasure of sharing it with the family far exceeds getting emails and Facebook messages. It wasn't a piece of cake,My Dad putting chains on the car so he could get to work on time, Putting coal in the furnace, Spending all day washing and ironing the next, just to name a few but the good times back then outweigh what is going on in the world today. I'd love to physically feel the way I did back then also.
 
Today

They'll be 'the good old days' soon enough


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Some very excellent replies here!

I tell folks, "If I were to go back to the Lassie and Rin Tin Tin days, I'd have my cell phone and laptop with me." The only problem would be connecting to a source.

There are things that happen today, that, when looking back, also happened in the "good old days" also. Like today, plenty of crime in the big cities of Chicago and New York (mobs), gas wars/shortage, etc., etc.

Some would definitely say, "The Good Old Days weren't necessarily "good"".
 
Tommy said:
Ok FB, I'll take "good old" 1986. I was 38 years old, weighed around 175 pounds and was in excellent health. I had a beautiful 34 year old wife and two beautiful, healthy children, owned a very nice house, and had a good job that I really enjoyed, and lots of close friends. The future looked to be one big, wonderful adventure (which indeed it was). Would I give up the internet, my wide screen TV, and my etc, etc. (failing eyesight, aching joints, lack of energy ...) to return to those days? Only in a heartbeat!

:yes:
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Incredible isn't it?..I was 30 in '86..I cried on my birthday..dear God what a snowflake, but I really thought I'd got old!! jeez what I'd give to go back to being 30... never even took a painkiller in those days, now I have so many things I have to take meds for, I'd go back in a heartbeat.
 
Both eras have their minus and pluses. But imo the past was more on a human level than todays sitting around a room full of people texting or talking on your IPhone.
Food was healthier and so were people. Funny how just this morning talking to an old friend of almost 60 years I said " the time period of our mothers was the best time to be born.
 
I would like a mix of both times. Modern advancements ,cures for some diseases(I wish there were more cures)etc. From the past family life where families had more time together. Mom's were home and Dad's worked. Families all sat down together to have dinner.The past seemed like calmer times to me. I never remember hearing about a shooting in a school or movie etc. Yes,for me a mix of both.
 
I've mentioned this book before, but I'll mention it again: The Good Old Days - They Were Terrible! Just flipping though a few pages of this fascinating (and stomach-turning) description of the so-called good old days would make anybody grateful that they are living in the present!

https://tinyurl.com/y8c7l5ue
 
I sometimes tend to live in the good old days. I miss my parents all the time and think back about the great times we had together. Sunday’s were the best. We would go to church, then Mom would make dinner right afterwards. After dinner, we would take a Sunday drive around and maybe stop and visit an aunt or uncle and their family. If we didn’t visit with someone, we would just go to a park and walk the paths.
 
But that is just longing for your own personal youth, which we probably all share. Longing for youth, energy, health, etc. is not really the same thing as longing for the "good old days," which to me
means that you think life in general for most people was better back then.

Some day, our grandchildren, when they reach 90, will probably be talking about the "good old days," meaning right now.
 
When fuzzybuddy started this thread with "We've all heard people ramble on about how good the "Old Days" were", my thought (possibly incorrect) was that most older folks would be thinking about their own earlier years, not the last half of the 19th century.

Every decade since, lets say, the 1930s has had it's own distinct triumphs and tragedies ... the great depression, the polio epidemic, WWII, the Korean and Viet Nam wars, but also life saving advances in medicine like penicillin and the Salk vaccine, the booming post war economy of the 50s, the excitement of space exploration, the rise of electronic technologies. Each of these was, of itself, simply an event and such things will continue to happen again and again. Economies will fluctuate, wars will be fought, epidemics will still occur, and technologies will continue to evolve.

When I think fondly of the "good" old days in a broad sense, I think in terms of changes to society and, from my own narrow perspective, the 1960s were a turning point. The 60s saw the beginning of the meteoric rise of the professional iconoclast and the professional demagogue - an unholy pair if there ever was one. The iconoclast shouted "What you always thought was good and decent is not true and never was!". The demagogue expertly stirred the pot, convincing people that they were somehow lacking things, that they were being treated unfairly, that they were "entitled" to something more. This, to me, was the start of "professional social engineering". Of course, iconoclasts and demagogues have always been with us, but facilitated by virtually uncontrolled growth of the television and movie industries and enticed by the enormous wealth that could be had, the erosion of our social fabric exploded.

Among the direct results were the widespread abdication of personal responsibility, the rise of the "Me! Me!" culture, the breakdown of the family, a skyrocketing divorce rate, a huge increase in the number single parent families, the virtual extinction of the stay-at-home mother, the phenomenal rise of the drug culture, the death spiral of sexual morality, and the unprecedented explosion of government bureaucracies, to name just a few.

Sunny wrote "Some day, our grandchildren, when they reach 90, will probably be talking about the "good old days," meaning right now." Sadly, I suspect she's probably right.

Sorry for the long post.
 


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