70 Years Of Change
Any one my age could write a book with this title. The change since 1940 has been at a rather dizzy-istic pace. Some of the change has been good, in fact a lot of it has been good, but we all see things through a different lens so our interpretations of all these changes will be different.
Youth, in my time was filled with a lot of free time. Neighborhood friends took up much of the day and we had to create our own things to do. Games were endless of all sorts---pick-up games, exploring all over on our bikes, trips to see baseball games in the city by ourselves, mowing lawns and other little creative tasks to gain a little money. It never ever entered our mind that we could get shot attending school. Even a fist fight or wrestling fight was unusual. The class room teachers were King then. Aside from the teachers in the high school there was the Prinicpal, the Guidance counselor, Dean of Boys, Dean of Girls, a school Nurse, the Librarian, and that was about all she wrote. The Dean of Boys was like a bouncer, almost always some sort of former Athletic star who roughed you up a bit if you were a slow learner behavior wise.
All adults were our Supervisors, if a neighbor said cut something out we were expected to so so. And that neighbor could be a mile away. Neighborhoods were the center of social life back then with people all over porches, bicycles, hitch-hiking, and the daily reminder to be back home in time for supper or we had to make our own supper. It was hard back then for parents to stay too involved in what you did all day. "What did you do today?" "Nothin". "Well who did you do 'nothin' with and where". "We did different things with different guys in different places." "Why is it such a secret?" "I don't grill you about what you did all day, why you so nosy?" And so it went. This sounds rather bad but it really wasn't because if you had been doing anything bad the chances are the phone would ring and then came the punishment. Whoever said you were misbehaving was always right---that was always the starting point---the only discussion was what the punishment would be. Any exceptions were rare.
Most parents were not welcome at events like sporting events. Every boy's fear was that they might be running to first base and their mother or dad start whooping it up. It made us feel like we were still a baby, even if we mostly still were. There would likely be one 'cool' mother and we would mostly hang out at her place. It takes special talent to become one of the boys, but some mothers manage just that. They laughed at silly things, feigned shock at some of our plans, and knew how to be invisible even though they were not.
Nature was often our special playground and we would build tree-huts, explore things, like crawl through the huge water pipes that would carry a brook underground near our grade school. That was dark, and scary, and we always imagined some sort of creatures were going to attack us. The goal was to get all the way to the end where the brook emptied out into a small pond.
No body back then was afraid of some adult molesting us and adults were expected to talk to us, and us to them. There was no "don't you be talking to any strangers". Instead it was always "you speak respectful to other adults, period." Times have certainly changed and maybe they really have to be different. It is hard to understand why it changed so much.
We have come a long way in being more tolerant and respectful to all sorts of minorities. This current young generation is far more inclusive with their circle of friends. When I am wandering around select neighborhoods in Chicago, or the suburbs I am impressed with the social diversity with groups clogging the social area streets. Any groups hanging out are no longer all white or all blk or all hispanic or all handsome or all ugly, or all athletic or all nerds etc. It is really neat to see this.
The town I grew up in was probably 25% blk. There was not a lot of open hostility or anger but there was precious little mixing either, except on athletic teams. What existed was precious little comprehension of how devastating this was to those kept 'in their place'. When blks, for example started fussing about bus seating somewhere, or segregation, I don't recall much discussion about any of this with my friends. It was more of feeling "if they don't like it here why don't they leave?" It was more like these 'other' people didn't exist more so than our parents were always saying bad things about them. There was one black kid in our neighborhood and I don't recall anyone saying not to invite him to a pick up game of some sort but neither do I recall anyone suggesting we call him. Well, we didn't have his number anyway. Just like we didn't think anything of constantly teasing each other about the ugliest girls in the class---it was just good natured teasing. It wasn't until well into adulthood that I began to think about how hard it must have been for those girls to come to school. No one talked to them, not even the other girls. And the same with certain guys. It was, in retrospect, a cruel existence for most minorities.
Today, kids are taught to be more open to others different from themselves, if not by parents, then by society in general. And when all the changes in society are being made to be more inclusive of others, it is always the older people in society who resist. Prejudices are simply hard to break. Evolution has come a long way, not just in physical changes, but in mental notions as well. Just to be safe I used to tell students the first day of class, "I don't have any prejudices, I hate everyone." It has always amazed me that there are so many religions, all preaching love, forgiveness, tolerance, the Golden Rule and so on, and yet religion is often behind the most cruel wars imaginable. As is Lincoln so oft with the best sagacious advice, he was on this point also: "When any church will inscribe over its alter, as its sole qualification for membership, the Savior's condensed statement of the substance of both law and Gospel, 'Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul and they neighbor as thyself', that church will I join with all my heart and all my soul." At one point he followed up with a wry comment that "It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues." All of us have known people who wrap themselves around the flag, wave a Bible of some sort, and consider anyone not a carbon copy of themselves some sort of heathen. There seems, in the Tea Party, to be some resurgence of this mentality.
It is certainly noteworthy that progress regarding respect for diversity really has rapidly progressed (in evolutionary time) these past 70 years.
When I was young it was near impossible to get very much even mild 'pornography'. Pornography back then was mostly nakedness and if it were porn movies of some sort everyone wore masks, it was grainy, and very vanilla. As teenagers, real sex, for most teenagers was a an endless mostly fruitless task. Today, sex to teenagers is often a lot more casual while pornography of every imaginable ilk is all over the internet. I often wonder what all this exposure to sex does to the mind of prepuberty kids. Maybe it is healthy, I just have no idea. Meeting people to date used to center almost exclusively via social events at Church, bars, school dances, those sort of things. Today it is much more likely to be over the internet via chat rooms and other such internet venues. A recent poll stated roughly 1/3 of teenagers have received cell phone pics of a fellow student naked. Any naked pics of girls in my class when I was young was a real rarity. With all these access changes to sex I doubt this generation has the same obsession with sex as mine. It is probably much more casual on the average. Of course, what probably doesn't change is the extent of opportunity for sex among young people. Those with the best looks will still have the most opportunities.
In years past the pressure to marry was much greater and living at home after graduation from high school was considered a real embarrassment. Kids today are a lot less eager to marry early for a lot of reasons including so much more financial insecurity. It is stated that a young person today can expect 35 different jobs in their lifetime. Families have greater tendency to disperse than in earlier days. But then, with modern gadgets, dispersal can be real in miles but there may be endless cell phone conversations every day in many cases. The nature of parents and siblings today is all over the place. Hard to make any generalizations. Some siblings rarely see each other or parents except on holidays and other family units rarely socialize much with anyone outside family and siblings.
The presence of gadgets, especially communication and game gadgets has proliferated exponentially. For someone my age there is no way to objectively evaluate whether this is good or bad. I simply watch today's youth with these gadgets in their ears or on their laps all day long. I read where today's youth have fewer friends but more intense contact all day long. I watch on a train, young people mostly, who frantically go through their number list to call one person after another lest they be left with any minutes to generate their own thoughts. This often changes family life too. Family values often seems to mean that some sort of nuclear family relates to each other endlessly all day long, FOREVER. The apron string is never cut, independence never achieved, and serious bonds with others limited for life. These kind of families live an interesting gated existence, quite different from most families in the past who went their own way after the formative years and reunited with parents, siblings, grandparents, uncles, aunts, etc. mostly around holidays.
For someone like me, too far the other way, all this seems stifling. I have always needed some space, and while I genuinely like people, and am intrigued by diversity, not turned off by it, there has to be some space. Now that I am retired, I enjoy the social freedom, and have learned to enjoy endless adventures on my own. I am an observer more than a mixer, enjoy marching to my own tune instead of seeking others to entertain me. When one gets my age, that is a blessing since it ensures that I cannot become a pest (burden) to others, especially those in their productive years, who have a busy agenda. I think being some sort of self imposed hermit generates a more relaxed stress-free environment than some sort of losing effort to maintain an intense social life. Certainly the older one gets the more futile is such an effort, as peers die or move away and younger people have a full plate with which to deal as opposed to amusing the aged.
The square footage of homes has grown dramatically for the middle class. All the homes my youthful friends grew up in are like bungalows today. It seems all the extra space just makes it more difficult for families to interact. There was only one television and a few channels, so families had to negotiate which shows to watch. Today the family members are off in their own rooms to watch their own TV's. Kids often shared rooms. I would figure that it was more exciting for a kid to meet their friends than it is today since today there is constant communication via cell phones, text messages, tweeting, and so on. When we met there was so much to talk about, but today a kid immediately communicates every little tid bit as it happens. So do adults. I can't change and am just the opposite. I have a land line phone and a computer, period. I do have a cell phone but no one has the number and it is just for emergencies when I am wandering around in nature or in Chicago. Maybe this perpetual contact is a contributing factor to such a high divorce rate. When couples today gather at the dinner table what is there to talk about? Anything important has already been covered in the endless communication all day. There is precious little chance to miss each other.
More people have a healthier diet than in my youth. Back then, if it tasted good, we ate it. Today, if it tastes real good, we probably shouldn't eat it. Good luck cooking a meal for any group these days, it is an impossible task. But then visiting other families besides your own offspring families is rather infrequent these days. Then again, maybe it hasn't really changed that much. But all these health fads, many of them just silly with no scientific basis, are a good thing. People who adopt even useless health diets almost always are eating healthier than if they didn't show any concern for what they eat.
But the above healthier living, out of harmless ignorance or scientific diligence, creates another problem---and one of no small consequence. While people tend to live much longer today, this comes with a huge increase in health costs. For more and more years a person becomes a virtual financial parasite on society. Think about it----For our formative years we are a parasite on our family or government programs. There's 18 years. If a person retires, let's say at 65 and lives to be 90, there is another 25 years. Thus for 43 years out of the 90 the person is a financial parasite on society. But that is only half the story. The longer one lives the more health costs rise in an exponential fashion. When I was young, people tended to have their heart attack, stroke, cancer---whatever---and then die rather quickly. For many persons there is no quick dying process. We have the absolutely amazing technology to keep ourselves alive today, albeit often at a great cost, both in money and quality of life. All the squawking about health care costs is a bit disingenuous. Do we expect to live long with the best (and expensive) medical treatment free of charge? And how many people realistically have hundreds of thousands of dollars available to keep themselves alive for so many years? And there is still another kicker. Those that do have that kind of wealth inevitably hide it so their wealth can be passed via inheritance to their kids instead of paying huge amounts of money to keep themselves alive. There is really no serious political discussion by any political party to address this issue. Everybody wants others to pay their medical bills, and precious few want it done collectively if some of their money is going to pay for health costs of the poorest in society. I, myself, am an excellent example of a real problem which cannot be addressed since there are now so many more elderly and we all vote. I retired like around age 56, have been retired now for like 17 years and am still going strong. I am not poor, have excellent health coverage, can ride public transportation at half price, etc. And all this even though as a group, the elderly are the wealthiest group on average compared to any other age group. Why would an elderly person financially well off be allowed to be welfare recipients for dozens of years? I pay half fare on a bus while some poor young citizen, working at McDonalds, pays full fare. My pension and social security income rises with the cost of living. The minimum wage does not. I guess us oldsters are more valuable than the young. This mentality of always favoring the rich and the elderly cannot be sustained.
Here is something that has really been a plus compared to 70 years ago. I could not possibly have written so many musings about so many topics in any remotely educated manner since getting basic facts took a lot of time consuming research in a library. Today, if I want any kind of statistic on most any subject, I simply ask google to provide the statistic. For someone like myself who likes to wander and ponder so many diverse things, this google thing is a precious tool. The only drawback is to simply be careful as to the source of the information, especially if it is an area in which one would like to be legitimately factual about something.
Not every change is monumental. When I was young and rode the school bus you were either at the bus stop or not and you got off quickly or you did not. Today, I see school buses back up traffic for blocks waiting for a child to emerge from a house or complex. How the hell do they ever get these kids to school on time? And then, when returning the kids, a bus will stop, and you might wait several minutes for all the kids to emerge. I guess it is important not to interrupt any conversations (after all how would they ever finish the conversation via cell phone?) or expect a kid to gather their belongings and be ready to emerge when their stop is reached? Well, not every change is really significant, just annoying. Blowing a car horn behind a stopped school bus is not too cool.
I will continue all this in future musings. This will be part One. I didn't realize just how many substantial changes there have been.
