The good old days

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Hillary
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Post by Hillary »

I remember having a conversation with my parents about "the good old days" and pining for way back when.

My Dad's a bit of a nostalgia man and made a comment like "you could leave your door open when you went out".

My mother said "yes you could. Well you had nothing to steal in those days, you didn't even have your own running water in the flats".

I like my Mum. :D
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Knife
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Post by Knife »

Andrew J. wrote:"The good old days" exist because life gets worse on a personal level as time goes on, and people apply that to the world in general. You're never any happier than when you're a little kid and you don't have anything to do, then you have to school, which gets progressively harder until you graduate, and then you have to work at the same stupid job for 40 years and THAT can only seem worse as time goes on, and then you retire but you're too arthritic and senile to enjoy it.

The world wasn't better when old people were young, their lives were. And they don't have any other frame of reference that would convince them otherwise.
I don't find that necessarily true. In fact, I think it's the opposite. Childhood is childhood, so I'll by pass that and go for young adulthood.

Late teens and early twentyies suck ass. You don't know shit, you don't own shit, and you don't have the necessary skills to rectify the problem.

Thirties rule, you have stuff, perhaps some nice stuff.

I'm looking forward to my forties, my kids will be more or less grown and out of the house, I'll have my present nice stuff, and the ability to have more, plus without the kids, more time to do 'me' stuff.

Don't know about fifties and so on, but I remember reading a poll some where where those who were asked about the 'best years' seemed to go backwards like me. Older=better.
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But as far as board culture in general, I do think that young male overaggression is a contributing factor to the general atmosphere of hostility. It's not SOS and the Mess throwing hand grenades all over the forum- Red
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The Spartan
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Post by The Spartan »

Yeah... my mom's told me about the "good old days." The story that particularly stand out in my memory is about her father carefully cutting a boiled egg into three pieces so he could share it with her and my uncle since they couldn't afford to eat more eggs than that.

Or when her uncle left Scotland for America(and eventually Canada) he was disgusted by the wastefulness with food. Where people would throw food out because they made too much and couldn't eat anymore. Meanwhile, his family is still on rationing left over from the war. That stayed with him until he died. He came to visit us and felt guilty leaving a restaurant because he hadn't finished the food on his plate. They had piled too many french fries on and none of us could eat all of the food we were given.

Flash forward to my life, where I've never known hunger, and I'll just roll my eyes about the "good old days."
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Post by Tsyroc »

About the only "Good Ol' Days" thing that I will cop to being nostalgic for is less traffic. There are just too many damn people in this country and they all seem to be driving. :D
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Edi
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Post by Edi »

CaptainChewbacca wrote:I found this quote:
"The young people of today love luxury. They have bad manners, they scoff at authority and lack respect for their elders. Children nowadays are really tyrants, they no longer stand up when their elders come into the room where they are sitting, they contradict their parents, chat together in the presence of adults, eat gluttonously and tyrannise their teachers. "

-Socrates, 470 BC
Nothing new under the sun.
Even if, as Kuroneko said, this turns out to be false, I can do you one better: Essentially the same complaint has been found in Sumerian or Babylonian arrow-head script on a clay tablet that was dated around 1500 or 2000 BC. It went on about the youth of the day being lazy layabouts who idled their days away at the city plaza ogling girls and disrespecting their hardworking elders and so on and so forth. Don't know where to find the quote, as I saw this in the science section of the newspaper over ten years ago, but yeah, nothing new.

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Post by wolveraptor »

Ogling girls throughout the ages. Yet another facet of the essenial nature of mankind.
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wilfulton
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Post by wilfulton »

OMFG!!!! YOUNG MEN ARE OGGLING GIRLS THROUGHOUT THE AGES!!!

THE WORLD IS ABOUT TO END!!!!



Well, at least now we know why the population keeps growing :lol:
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Post by speaker-to-trolls »

Edi wrote:
CaptainChewbacca wrote:I found this quote:
"The young people of today love luxury. They have bad manners, they scoff at authority and lack respect for their elders. Children nowadays are really tyrants, they no longer stand up when their elders come into the room where they are sitting, they contradict their parents, chat together in the presence of adults, eat gluttonously and tyrannise their teachers. "

-Socrates, 470 BC
Nothing new under the sun.
Even if, as Kuroneko said, this turns out to be false, I can do you one better: Essentially the same complaint has been found in Sumerian or Babylonian arrow-head script on a clay tablet that was dated around 1500 or 2000 BC. It went on about the youth of the day being lazy layabouts who idled their days away at the city plaza ogling girls and disrespecting their hardworking elders and so on and so forth. Don't know where to find the quote, as I saw this in the science section of the newspaper over ten years ago, but yeah, nothing new.

Edi
Sumeria?, seriously?, christ. I knew this attitude was as old as the hills, but Sumeria?. I'm starting to wonder if there ever actually was a period when youngsters did listen to there elders, didn't ogle girls and did a decent days work. And if not, why does everyone claim that there was some kind of Ur-time when this was the case?.
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wolveraptor
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Post by wolveraptor »

Be serious man, horniness far older than civilization. And it was a lot easier to satisfy back then, seeing as how women were sold like livestock. So in a sick, twisted way, the old days were good, if you're a perverse bastard.
"If one needed proof that a guitar was more than wood and string, that a song was more than notes and words, and that a man could be more than a name and a few faded pictures, then Robert Johnson’s recordings were all one could ask for."

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Xuenay
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Post by Xuenay »

Andrew J. wrote:"The good old days" exist because life gets worse on a personal level as time goes on, and people apply that to the world in general. You're never any happier than when you're a little kid and you don't have anything to do, then you have to school, which gets progressively harder until you graduate, and then you have to work at the same stupid job for 40 years and THAT can only seem worse as time goes on, and then you retire but you're too arthritic and senile to enjoy it.

The world wasn't better when old people were young, their lives were. And they don't have any other frame of reference that would convince them otherwise
Huh?

When I was a little kid, my parents told me when to go to bed and what I could do or not do. If I didn't want to do something my parents wanted me to do, too bad. Anything I wanted to get was restricted by the amount of money my parents were will to spend, not how much I could earn myself. Very few people were online, so I had to spend my time with those people who were geographically near, not the more rare ones I truly connected with. School was something that I went to because I had to, not because I viewed it as a valuable goal in getting a real job - even the things we were taught were so basic and seemingly pointless there was no true joy of learning. It being the first years of school, conformity was the rule - deviate in the slightest and get picked on. I couldn't have a serious relationship or have sex - hell, I didn't even really know what sex or relationships really were like.

Talk about yourself, but I sure as heck wouldn't want to go back to being a little kid. It didn't feel too bad back then, when you didn't know what you were missing, but going back to being a kid seems like a worse and worse idea by each year that passes (and I'm only 18).
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Post by Adrian Laguna »

Edi wrote:The same complaint has been found in Sumerian or Babylonian arrow-head script on a clay tablet that was dated around 1500 or 2000 BC. It went on about the youth of the day being lazy layabouts who idled their days away at the city plaza ogling girls and disrespecting their hardworking elders and so on and so forth. Don't know where to find the quote, as I saw this in the science section of the newspaper over ten years ago, but yeah, nothing new.

Edi
Reminds me of Railroad Tycoon 3. Periodically you get newspaper reports of important stuff that happens (companies merging, economing going up/down, stock splits, historical events, etc). Besides the very descriptive headline (Union Pacific stock splits 3 for 1!) you see mini-headlines about unimportant stuff. There is one specific one that appears periodically from the earliest scenarios in the early 1800s to the end of the latest scenarios in ~2020. It is this: "Are today's youth more rebellious than ever?"
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Post by wolveraptor »

You even wanted to have sex and a relationship as a little kid? You even wanted to rebel against your parents as a little kid? You even wanted to go on intellectual forums as a little kid?

You must've been 18 your entire life. :roll:

Btw, school doesn't go away once you grow up. Well, it does, but something just as tedious and boring will replace it, whether it be taxes, house maintanence, paying the rent, or whatever. In fact, some of the aforementioned things are more stressful.
"If one needed proof that a guitar was more than wood and string, that a song was more than notes and words, and that a man could be more than a name and a few faded pictures, then Robert Johnson’s recordings were all one could ask for."

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Post by Xuenay »

wolveraptor wrote:You even wanted to have sex and a relationship as a little kid? You even wanted to rebel against your parents as a little kid? You even wanted to go on intellectual forums as a little kid?
Read my post again. It didn't feel too bad back then, when you didn't know what you were missing, but...
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wolveraptor
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Post by wolveraptor »

Wasn't reading :banghead:
"If one needed proof that a guitar was more than wood and string, that a song was more than notes and words, and that a man could be more than a name and a few faded pictures, then Robert Johnson’s recordings were all one could ask for."

- Herb Bowie, Reason to Rock
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