And now, once your tummy starts to “show” you can broadcast pics of your baby bump on social media. Attitudes have changed.
I think with this chapter I’ll wrap things up with my posts on the good old days. In general I think we’re much better off. But I can’t help thinking that our grandparents would be disappointed and perhaps even ashamed of us. It’s not a good feeling.
Alex Good 
Better off materialistically maybe, not so much spiritually or communally.
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I think in general that’s true. Though even on the material and technological front there are counterarguments to be made. I think in the past, even the past of individual memory, we ate better food and lived in a less toxic environment. And, flipping things around, you can point to some real moral progress that’s been made.
I keep coming back to the thought of either of my grandfathers (who died more than half a century ago) being able to see the world as it is now and shaking their heads at what a mess we’d made of everything.
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I think greed and avarice have always been the root cause of everything that’s wrong with the world, there’s just more of it now.
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It’s certainly more out in the open and shameless.
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Medically, we’ve certainly come a LONG way. I’d have died at 16 when I got diabetes if I was living in the 30’s or 40’s.
But I think there’s been a cost and I don’t think most people even realize they are paying it.
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Yeah, you lose a baseline for comparison. It’s hard for me to understand young people today who have no idea that until fairly recently you didn’t carry phones around with you so that you were in contact with everyone all the time. When I grew up that would have seemed like science fiction, something from Star Trek and their flip-up “communicators.”
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Man, I’d kill for us to be able to go back to the old clamshell flip phones. There are carriers that still have them, but they are wicked expensive, it’s ridiculous…
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I never had a flip phone, but I did have a toy communicator when I was a kid. Came in a set with a phaser and a tricorder.
I’m talking about Star Trek the original series, of course.
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my first cell phone was a flip phone, which is probably why I’m “nostalgic” about them. Because texting was a horrible experience with having to use the letters on the number pad and that was it.
Did you have a dick tracy watch too?
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Amazing how quickly texting replaced email. I actually love email but it’s hardly ever used anymore.
Dick Tracy was before my time!
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Tell me about it. It’s crazy.
Was he out of style by the 70s then?
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I think so, but I did some research and apparently while he started as a comic strip in 1931 the same artist was drawing him until 1977! So I guess he was still going, even though I think he’s always been associated more with the ’30s and ’40s in the popular imagination.
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Much as you would disagree, this is only a question because Kamala lost. Had she won, we’d be toast. Another four years going down the road we were on and I really believe we’d have passed the point of a (non-violent) return to sanity. What she offered wasn’t moral progress but an entirely new morality, short on actual moral principles and rife with ideological “feels.” And we stand on the precipice still.
Yes, progress has been made, but we’ve thrown out so many babies with their bathwater that, as you say, we’re losing one of the most important elements of all: the ability to distinguish between the two. Now, in fact, we’re so polarized that neither side can see anything worth preserving in the other.
Better off? I don’t think so. We were better off (overall) a few decades ago, but that tide has turned. Maybe we’ll return to that trajectory, but the signs I’m seeing don’t look so good.
And now for something completely different (cause I don’t know when I’ll get the opportunity to ask otherwise). Living in Texas all my life, you can believe me that I’ve heard more than my share of “secession” talk. And, of course, it’s all been nonsense. Does that accurately describe this Alberta business?
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Yeah, we’d probably disagree about Kamala. My own feeling is more in line with so-called “accelerationists”: that Trump is bringing a global crisis (or the polycrisis) on faster, and doing so not even intentionally.
Alberta’s politics has long been defined by its resentment of the political dominance of Ontario (and sometimes Quebec) in our federal system. Most of their grievances, going back fifty years, have been overblown or manufactured because that sort of things plays really well everywhere. Secession is unlikely unless there were to be some enormous shock that would probably result in a broader social-political collapse. That is, a situation where everyone would be screwed anyway. Otherwise I think it’s a case of most Albertans knowing they’re much better off in Canada/they have too much to lose by leaving. Plus most people here, even on the right, find what’s happening in the U.S. to be a sort of chaos they don’t want any part of.
Speaking of Texas, how do you feel about the electoral maps being redrawn? Seems to be a big news story and you’re my eyes on the ground.
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The idea is:
1. If the Democrats regain control of the House all progress will come to a halt, and
2. Since the blue states are already mostly maxed out with their own gerrymandering, Texas, especially with a little help from other states (like Florida), can keep the government functional.
Because I absolutely believe 1 and the political gamesmanship of 2 is more or less a wash, I’m fine with it. I’m not holding my breath, but I hope it works.
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This sounds like a broken system to me. I support proportional representation models, but have given up hope on getting that here and I think it’s even less likely in the U.S.
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