Frazz by Jef Mallett for October 04, 2018

Just before the social media nastiness. And before that, there were two wars that wiped out most of the young male population in Europe in two successive generations. And in between, a flu pandemic that killed more people than WW1. And that covers about 40 of the ~150 years between the two events he named.

Iguess one of those books would have been, The Jungle . Pretty much sums up the history,

Carefree is relative, young padawan.

We could still have that whole polio thing if we listened to the like of Jenny McCarthy and Jim Carrey.

The good old days are only in our minds

Wow, do I remember the “polio thing”. First day of school you’d count the new leg braces — and the empty seats — and shiver a little. The beautiful Venetian Swimming Pool in Miami was referred to as “the Polio Pit”.

The polio thing was why I never got to see the summer movies or go to a swimming pool. And then, a classmate died of a reaction to the Salk vaccine in 1958.

Not too many rough novels for me – it was a great time to be a kid!

@magicwalnut – Sounds like you too might be a leading edge Baby Boomer. Me as well (didn’t want anyone on the lookout for t00 to get a false hit).

@everone else – make no assumptions about my personality or politics from that. I’m not much of a stereotype.

The 1980’s felt like a good time to be a kid

It was the ‘war babies’ [born during WWII] that mostly missed the polio – it’s was my sister’s group born after the war that seemed to have the most incidents. I remember getting the shots and then the ‘sugar cubes’.

@wagnertinatlanta: it only has to fail once and the rest of our troubles will disappear – along with us.

Frazz nailed it. As I have aged, I think from time to time about my early years. In a very short time, I can rack up an equal list of what was great and what was not.

The primary conclusion to me is that everything was done was with the hope of improving the lives of humankind. That it sometimes failed or caused unanticipated alterations in the lives of millions does not detract from the fact that it also achieved some of its higher goals.

I still see that many of those goals are still being pursued by people who care for others and for the planet. There is a light that shows the path. It is called HOPE.

There has been no time in history that didn’t have bad stuff going on. But, we could, in most places, count on water that was safe to drink and air that was safe to breathe. The worst time in history?——— I doubt if we’ve gotten there yet.

A couple of World Wars come to mind.

That and that whole, Hide Under Your Desk In Hope That Stops The Nuclear Blast training thing also happened.

In general — in general, not in every specific instance — the world is getting better all the time. Read Stephen Pinker’s 2011 book The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined and Hans Rosling’s 2018 Factfulness for documentary evidence.

The reason it may seem otherwise is that no news is no news. The fact that 60 million kids went to school today, learned things, and didn’t get shot will not show up as a screaming headline on your 24-hour “all paranoia all the time” news feed. There’s a reason why a common TV-production motto is “If it bleeds, it leads.”

But, by definition, “news” is not what’s normal, it’s what’s unusual. What’s normal is actually a pretty good story.

It seems to be a natural human reaction — “the good old days” of our youth. Come the 2060s today’s tweens will be looking back fondly at our world…

As bad as today may seem, it could be, and was worse in the past.

Aaaah, reminiscing—-remembering the past without reliving the pain!

Polio, measles,smallpox, cholera pandemic, yellow fever… enjoy life without vaccines. My grand-mother remembered when she was a little girl one of her friends died of one of those diseases. There was a mark on the door to warn people away. Once she died her family had to burn everything, bed, clothes, bedding, toys… just to make sure that the disease didn’t spread.

PostsFrazz15 hrs · 10/4/2018 T-623

There’s an almost ironclad argument to be made that the Good Old Days never really existed. But if you can find a good day among the old days here and there and mix in that curious amalgam of forgetfulness and reverse optimism, you can see where the notion comes from. And a wonderful notion it is, if you use it right.

Let us not forget child labor during that same period that the scab like reactionaries adore so very much