Remember The Good Old Days? I Want Them Back. Come Take A Trip Down Memory Lane.
Here's a post to get you thinking.
Let's go back in time, before...
- cell phones, video games & computers replaced real life.
- people forgot how to look someone in their eyes.
- dependence on texts and emojis for expressing human emotion.
- dating apps trained people to treat others like fungible inventory.
- using your "corporate-stored" fingerprint or face to log into your devices.
- people forgot how to write by hand.
- the media and Internet controlled weak-minded masses.
- credit cards taught people how to spend money they don't have.
- living off Mommy and Daddy's money was acceptable (see above).
- quantity over quality.
- guilty before proven innocent.
- Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
- mumble rap and auto-tune.
- hand sanitizer and germaphobes.
- throwing pharmaceutical pills and drugs at everything.
- nature became an inconvenience.
- aging became our greatest fear.
- chemicals flooded our air, water and lands.
- GMOs ruined our food supply.
- processed foods filled with chemicals and artificial ingredients.
- birth defects swelled.
- cancer became a household name.
- helping others was inconvenient.
- people forgot how to earn something vs expect it.
- people became fucking lazy.
Or, when...
- it was ok for kids to play in the dirt and get a few scrapes.
- bugs were cool.
- people knew how to talk on the phone.
- people took the long way home.
- people knew how to get around without an app or car service.
- smart eating and exercise wasn't something special.
- natural medicine was respected and administered.
- infidelity wasn't an option.
- vows were kept and marriages lasted.
- people could express themselves in a healthy fashion.
- people had a backbone for what they believed in.
- independence and self-sufficiency was the way of life.
- people were proud to work hard and serve their country.
- companies cared about their employees.
- people created and built with their bare hands.
- people fixed and repurposed things instead of tossing them.
- people knew how to listen and understand.
- common courtesy and chivalry was normal.
- people had patience and a real attention span.
- people saw the value of building and maintaining friendships.
- people knew how to care about others and themselves.
- foul language led to a bar of soap in your mouth.
- accountability and good faith mattered.
- honesty, honor, and integrity meant everything.
- loyalty and respect meant something.
- family came first.
- our elders were celebrated.
- people knew how to love...
But, what do I know...
...Oh yeah, and before a few greedy profiteering bid-bot owners plagued Steem.
The irony is that most of these are manageable and can be reversed if we make the effort. Will you rise above it, or go with the flow?
Any to add?
Time to go out and find recycled packages to ship some recycled electronics, and save more household items to sell.
Moments ago, I just sold a stroller I recently found on the curbs for $220 cash, so that's good positive reinforcement for me trying to doing things the old fashioned way. Your turn!
Thanks for reading,
@steemmatt
That's an Old Fashioned if you could use the hint.
We became selfish and senseless.
but I have a good feeling about the future! <3
I was mesmerized by the perfectly assembled Old Fashioned!
But, I remember these things and carry them with me. I tell my godkids two boys (5&8) that my phone doesn't have games and when I was there age I woke up before the sun to milk the cows, and collect the eggs. I walked miles in knee deep snow to get to school where we all looked forward to recess when we would play mostly imaginary games. I'd get home from school and even though I was only 8 some days I was left home alone without fear of burning the house down despite the fact I made my own grilled cheese sandwiches. When it was dinner time the family gathered around the table and a meat and two and talked about what we learned today in school. My parents would let me know if I don't want to be a latchkey kid we had options but I assured them I understood and was fine alone for a couple of hours where I could watch duck tales. A cartoon that was drawn by humans without code.
After dinner the neighborhood kids would gather to play some sportsball or build very unsafe bike ramps, get concussions and not cry or tell our parents what happened.
I saw the advent of the video game age, I even won a Nintendo for wearing my dodgers uniform to the mall for a contest. I played Super Mario a few times and then let the whole neighborhood come over to play because I was bored with the mashing buttons. I wanted to go play ball and it was easy to convince my friends to be of the same mind. I then saw the dawn of the internet and it was OK but the sun is still up wanna play ball to will nearly collapse ? I respected the influx of tech but also despised it at the same time. I remember being angry when my friends got pagers and later cell phones that their parents would call to "check in".. This is bullshit I'd say, I got a job at 14 washing dishes, paid for half my car, all the gas, insurance and maintenance, why do I have to carry this thing in case of an emergency? WTF could happen that a screwdriver or jack can't fix? My grandpops made it through 50 years of driving without a cell phone so can I thought 🤔 Alas I was wrong and became perfunctory to be able to navigate the internet and email just to go to college. I will always be old school, it's much of the reason I'm not exactly the most popular steemian and never will be. I'm playing catch up because I see an angle to take some if the power back that was stolen away from us. Doing it with the latest technology is ironic and I appreciate having this thing in my hands that really old schoolers beyond all hope are afraid of.
I don't fear change, I fear those that can't think for themselves and use that fear as their currency.. I might have just made a future post with this comment. That's called teamwork or communication, symbiosis, and it's the cornerstone of a life worth living.
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I would like to resteem this comment. HF22? This was grade A.
Thanks man, your musings inspired the free flow. I'll work on it and fix the grammar stuff. Maybe include an article I just read declaring that crypto is basically evil SMH..
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Best comment. Love it.
You know, I gave my nephews, 11 and 14, 30 bucks of coins for their birthdays yesterday and taught them how to coin noodle, looking for valuable coins. They LOVED it. Best present ever.
The youngest loves fishing, survival stuff, electronics, and anything practical. Gets obsessed and reads about everything he can to learn about it. Oldest reads and reads and goes surfing and skating. My sister is there for them when they come home. They dont watch a lot of telly, screen time is limited. They almost, almost have the golden childhood we did. That my son had, on the cusp of the overly digital age... born as he was in 1997, he wasnt allowed a phone til 16, and wifi went off at 10, and he wasn't allowed it in his room alone. Kudos to parents who understand the dangers of too much tech. Except the modern world with all its fears encroaches... but then, didnt it with us, too?
If i had a switch, I would turn it all off in an instant. Yet here I am, and here you are.
I had a blessed childhood of surfing and horses. Built cubbies by the creek. Travelled before instagram. Wrote letters. Knew what it was to lose track of people, because our lives werent digitised, sanitised, monetised.
How blessed.
But all I gotta do now is switch off. I guess one day I will.
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Well said, it's all about finding a balance I suppose. That's something we can be guided towards but it cannot be defined by anyone other than ourselves.
Here we are indeed.
I can stop to smell the roses and take a shot of them to make a shitpost. 🤗
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You wouldn't have had ebay!
But on a serious note, yep, life has become more mechanical, ironically
He may have got to boot sales and sunday markets instead. Roll.up, roll up...
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Haha, oh, man, there are some real gems in there. I'm legitimately concerned that creativity and problem-solving will be huge decline over the next few decades.... after all, why struggle with a problem when you can just be entertained?
I do think there might be some rose-tinted nostalgia there though... my Grandparents celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary, which was amazing... but they were also miserable with each other and so so mean the entire time I knew them. My parents got divorced and life was better for all of us... the weekend-long screaming matches throughout our youth we're so pleasant.
My Dad has a 12 year old and a 15 year old, and their lives are so different to mine and my sisters. Our parents never knew where we were... and we were only allowed to play inside if it was raining. We got into scrapes and tight spots all the time, and we had to get ourselves out of them... whereas now, my half-brother and sister literally can't do anything themselves... my Dad seriously runs around after them doing everything. It's so weird. I'm such a cranky old man.
The marriage thing was an iffy thing to include as one-size-doesn't-fit-all, but I think society has sort of a video game reset button on the situation. Just get a divorce and shop around for another mate that might be better. Sometimes the issues that cause a marriage to struggle or fall apart are inherent in the mates themselves, so unless they're worked out/addressed with self-reflection, history could easily repeat itself. There are plenty of good reasons to get a divorce, but there are also plenty of people who don't know what being married means, and they act in ways to sabotage or hurt it. As for me, I was engaged once (much younger) but we broke it off just before the wedding because I knew it wasn't going to work.
Since you're a ninja, I never doubted for a second that you were playing Tarzan as a kid, and probably into your early teens. As for your half-siblings... military prep school? Thanks for sharing.
Ah, I didn't know that... I'm glad you two called off the engagement. Honestly, I seriously think that only like 5-10% of the population should be getting married... committing to anything for the rest of your life seems so strange to me. I mean, if I had to pick one car or one job or one mobile phone for my entire life - I'd be racked with indecision... let alone a whole person who changes as they grow... it's so weird.
I completely agree that people throw in marriages way too easily, but I'd personally say it's because 'getting married' is seen as such an achievement... which is distracting.
I remember when you could order pizza or go through a drive through and actually get what you ordered. These days kids can't count or even read in many circumstances. The internet has bred the first generation of non-functional idiots that can't function in the real world without being connected.
Domino's pizza has recently acknowledged this fact by deploying an "intelligent" computerised pizza checking machine that scans the pizzas to check if they look how they should. The simply can't get a teenager with any common sense and an attention span greater than 3 seconds anymore.
All this reminds me of when they installed the first ATM in our town, a local batshit crazy hobo would stand in front of it preaching that they were the work of Satan and this technology would destroy the human race.
We all knew he was mad........
This reply was on point, but also a bit scary. Future generations of impressionable puppets who can't think for themselves makes me realize how lucky we actually are to have been raised prior.
people actually remembered stuff on their own. (without haveing ALWAYS to check on their smartphone).
Nice list of beforeness.
I wanna go there...I'm old enough to remember those beforeness's and miss them.
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There will always be tradeoffs to what seems to be progress (or not)... For $220, I would have put that stroller picture here instead of the drink! Cheers!
A+ for reading my post.
We as a society are not going back in time. Unfortunately. But it was always this way. We call that progress.
On individual level somehow is doable.
In this sense, I personally define the term progress loosely.
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