"Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western spiral arm of the galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this, at a distance of roughly ninety million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet, whose ape descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea. This planet has, or had, a problem, which was this. Most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small, green pieces of paper, which is odd, because on the whole, it wasn't the small, green pieces of paper which were unhappy. And so the problem remained, and lots of the people were mean, and most of them were miserable, even the ones with digital watches. Many were increasingly of the opinion that they'd all made a big mistake coming down from the trees in the first place, and some said that even the trees had been a bad move, and that no-one should ever have left the oceans."
In the beginning the universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.
There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened.
Good thing you skipped over the age of the Roman Empire because they certainly never said that older times were better.
It's funny how some things never change. I was reading a collection of letters by Seneca, and in one of those, he goes on a several pages long rant about how thing use to be better. It just felt so familiar.
I remember of one Sandman's comics opened with a shot of a medieval tavern, and an old geezer complaining that chimneys was the reason "kids these days" were weak, since they no longer breathed the fresh air of burnt wood inside their homes.
Straight White boomers.
It can't be understated how much life sucked for visible minorities up until a couple decades ago if not a few years ago.
In 1960, minimum wage in the US was $1.00/hour and the cost of the average home was $11,000.
If they were born during the baby boom of WWII soldiers returning home then they would be 14 or 15. Probably about 3 years from getting married and buying their house.
We are permanently out of touch, from the moment we are born. The world moves faster than we can adapt to it, so it is a known fact that we cling to whatever memories or notions that provide comfort. Some try to keep in motion, others actively detract on whatever may be changing, even if for the better.
The best moment to be born is right now, regardless the shit hole we are going through.
Depending on the context they might be right. Like, the internet of the mid and late 2010's was pretty much better than today and we'll never go back to that peak.
It's funny you say that, cause many people my age feel the same way about the internet of the early-mid 2000s, the wild west days of the internet. We always remember the things of our youth more fondly.
Youth? I'm in my 40's. The internet being on a downward quality trend isn't to do with age of the perceiver.
We're on Lemmy. 90% of this place's users are hee because of objectively factual enshitification of one service. I can list many, many more.
Eh, certainly a lot of big sites are shitting their pants right now, but I don't think the internet as a whole is doing that bad. It's really the consolidation of internet communities in the 2010s that lead us to this point, now we've learned a hard lesson. Even as things fall apart, FOSS thrives in their wake. We're in a pretty sucky transition period, but I think the internet will be fine in the long run.
specific things in past eras have definitely been better, though oftentimes only in specific places.
a big one that's relevant nowadays is how up until after ww2 we just straight up built better cities. the USA used to have like the worlds most impressive public transport network and cities were universally so lively that modern NYC would look bleak to them.
But obviously they also had rackety as hell trams that would have fallen apart if they went speeds we would now consider hilariously slow, so like obviously the ideal is to take the parts of the past that were better and combine them with the nice things we have nowadays.
Like if i could go back to medieval times with modern medicine and a copy of the communist manifesto that'd be pretty sweet.
There was a video on youtube about field surgery during the Napoleonic era (basically amputations without anesthetic) and I recall a funny comment someone said about forwarding the video to his friend who keeps saying he was born in the wrong era; the comment ended up annoying someone into posting about how 'born in the wrong era' refers to missing out on the cultural zeitgeist or whatever other nonsense.
Problem is, being born in the so called right era comes with all the baggage of inferior medicine and living standards; it's a package deal
Not necessarily. Except for a few niche diseases and conditions, 40 years ago is probably a better time than now. Every era goes through peaks and dips in happiness.
Where is also extremely relevant as to whether things were better or not. I'd argue most South American countries weren't exactly at their peak during the 80s
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It shows how much power your parents were rich enough to get implemented in your DNA, so you can determine if the other guy is of a high enough energy class to be talking to you.
l don't wanna sound like an old man but I'm gonna say it, old times were better because you were young and free.
At some point though, isn't it likely that it's going to be a correct statement?
Older times probably were better... for some people. But if you're used to being on top, equality feels like oppression.
Apparently you don't understand the concept of infinity or the phrase "at some point"
Stop confusing future archeologist with memes of things that didn't happen(talking about that first square)
This meme promotes the capitalistic modernization theory that sees old traditions and pre-existing societies as "primitive" obstacles to overcome for economic growth, mass consumerism at the expense of the planet and anyone in it's way.
Modern conservatism says "instead of tearing a fence down maybe it's there for a reason" while relishing in the fear and seperation it creates
And many left-wing parties might say "let's tear the fence and neighborhood down to build a factory for a new gizmo to sell"
What we need is to tear down fences to rebuild strong communities and human relations.
It's a plain old simple cartoon, mocking on how people tend to romanticize previous times. Please don't overthink it.
..I don't think left wing parties are interested in tearing down the old just to sell a gizmo? Left wing parties are kinda against capitalism