Modern Times

[Optimistic Paranoid]

Two stories in the New York Daily News caught my attention this morning.

There's a manhunt under way in five states for a guy who killed a 74 year old stranger, filmed it, and posted it on Facebook Live:

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nat...ntinues-whereabouts-unknown-article-1.3064594

There's a man suing a gay/bisexual dating app because an ex-boyfriend has been posting on it as him.  More than 1100 men, as many as 16 a day, have been showing up at his home and work and "aggressively demanding sex."

http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york...-100-men-show-expecting-sex-article-1.3061531

Somehow, I find myself becoming more and more nostalgic about the days of "Leave it to Beaver" and "Father knows Best" . . .

 

[ArtW]

bad stuff happened back then, too, it just wasn't shoved in your face every hour of every day

 

[slynne]

Not me! I think technology is improving our lives. Trust me, there were murderers and wronged ex boyfriends in Leave it to Beaver times too.

 

[Queen]

Problem is, those days never really existed, kids still got molested, people still killed for fun, and domestic violence was just as common, but no one really talked about it, and the whole world wouldn't know about it in a heartbeat. People haven't changed much, we just get bombarded with ugliness now because we live in a social media/internet world.

Best thing we can do is limit our exposure to it, try to be kind to the people we know to ameliorate the ugly, and try to add something good whenever we can.

 

[djkeev]

Agree! ^^
The 1960's were a "great time" in this Nation!

We were killing Presidents and Presidential Candidates, we were killing Civil Rights leaders, we were terrorizing non-white minorities, we were shooting students on college campuses, we were involved in an ugly Asian "conflict" that no one supported and we mistreated our soldiers when they came home!
Yeah...... good ole' Beaver.......

But.....

The music was beyond compare!!!

Dave

 

[slynne]

If anything things have changed for the better, especially for everyone who identifies as female or who has dark skin or who isn't a Christian, etc.

 

[LeeRevell]

Back then it took a major news story to show up in the paper or on TV news. Nowadays, even poor folks in the Third World have internet access, so their local events get online immediately. We saw live video as it happened from 2004's tsunami disaster. In the 1960s, that would have been a one paragraph blurb deep in the C or D section of the local news, about six months later.
These days, we shluld be seeing clear photo/video evidence of Bigfoot and spacemen. But so far, nope.

 

[Gary68]

" It has been calculated that approximately 5% of the world's population were killed during Turco-Mongol invasions or in their immediate aftermath. If these calculations are accurate, this would make the events the hitherto deadliest acts of mass killings in human history."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destruction_under_the_Mongol_Empire

and there are countless more i could post,today is the mellowest humans have ever been

 

[slynne]

" It has been calculated that approximately 5% of the world's population were killed during Turco-Mongol invasions or in their immediate aftermath. If these calculations are accurate, this would make the events the hitherto deadliest acts of mass killings in human history."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destruction_under_the_Mongol_Empire

and there are countless more i could post,today is the mellowest humans have ever been

IF you haven't already read it, I highly recommend The Better Angels of Our Nature by Steven Pinker. He has all kinds of evidence that we are indeed living in the most peaceful time of human history (that we know of)

 

[IanC]

Talking with an old barber in Brady, Texas about this same thing. He said "no one better tell me about the good old days - we didn't have heat in the house and wind blew through the cracks and had to work 15 hours a day on the farm to keep food on the table"

All the worst stories of child abuse are those coming to light from the 'good old days'. Both my parents suffered the kind of abuse that would make headlines today, but they just referred to their parents as 'strict'. Seems every other child was getting knocked around back then either at school, home or both, ditto animals, wives and employees and mentally ill. I bet rape and incest was wholesale back then but no one spoke about it. Yes, we've come a long way -things still happen but they're seen for what they are and not the norm. Can you imagine that things like what happened in the 'Magdeline Laundries' in Ireland were considered normal back then - and that wasn't that long ago.

 

[OutdoorFT]

Problem I have is entitlement. Because of past history events, entitlements should be given. Not only just that, but rich kids. Daddy will just buy them for life.

Sickening.

 

[IanC]

Best thing we can do is limit our exposure to it, try to be kind to the people we know to ameliorate the ugly, and try to add something good whenever we can.

Yes, Queen, that is the only thing we have absolute control over, isn't it? How we, ourselves treat others around us.

 

[Every Road Leads Home]

I saw the facebook live video, pretty messed up. The guy jumped out of his car, said a few words to an innocent old man walking down the street then shot him. The camera was moving all over the place so it wasn't a great quality video but it showed more than anyone needs to see and a psycho path in action.

 

[minimotos95]

It's all part of the demoralization and destabilization that has been a steady work in progress for many decades in this great nation(and world) of ours.
... I'll refrain from my full rant but just leave it at that rather than just biting my tongue and deleting what I had typed like with other controversial threads in the past.

 

[Thirsty Boots Nomad]

These days, we shluld be seeing clear photo/video evidence of Bigfoot and spacemen.  But so far, nope.

Nope, our current technology is just reverse-engineered from what was found in crashed ufo's (driven probably by "teenage" aliens on a joyride no doubt); so the original inventors have moved on with inclusions of "blocking" apps for the older tech.  As far as Bigfoot; ... the aliens most likely have their own pets too ....

 

[TMG51]

29 second clip from True Detective, and perspective on the world getting worse:

 

[TrainChaser]

And then there was the Holocaust...

 

[TrainChaser]

In the 13th century, it was estimated that there were 360-450 million people   Five percent of the lower end would be 18 million.

In the deaths associated with WW2, the total number of deaths has been estimated as being between 60 and 80 million (this includes the 18.3 million killed by the Germans in the Holocaust, the 20 million combat deaths, and the civilian deaths, including the deaths from famine and disease.  The population in the 1940s was estimated to be about 230,000,000.  I think that would be about 3.5%.

But it's not like we're improving in the killing fields -- we can do it from a distance, whereas the Mongols had to do it by hand, one at a time.  We think we're more 'civilized', but it's just a matter of more technology that a few clever people have come up with.  For the rest of us, we're just as mean and nasty and ruthless as we were back in the caves.

As Konrad Lorenz said, "I have found the missing link between the ape and civilized Man -- it is we."

 

[IanC]

In the deaths associated with WW2, the total number of deaths has been estimated as being between 60 and 80 million (this includes the 18.3 million killed by the Germans in the Holocaust, the 20 million combat deaths, and the civilian deaths, including the deaths from famine and disease.  The population in the 1940s was estimated to be about 230,000,000.  I think that would be about 3.5%.

I read a statistic that said without the major catasprophes - Plague, Spanish Flu, AIDS, Stalin, WW2 (and the generations the dead could have produced) the earth's population would now be over double what it is. Add in the 'smaller' wars, famines and epidemics, we'd probably be looking at a world population of 20 billion. Which, of course would produce famines, wars and epidemics of such a massive scale........

 

[TrainChaser]

Probably true. It sounds like the human race should be controlling itself in many ways.