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Was the world better today or 100 years ago?

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Oldout
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24 Apr 2012, 11:29 am

My question is -- when JC returns will he be wearing a suit, blue jeans, shorts, or what?



ruveyn
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24 Apr 2012, 12:17 pm

Oldout wrote:
My question is -- when JC returns will he be wearing a suit, blue jeans, shorts, or what?


He will still have a beard.

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visagrunt
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24 Apr 2012, 2:34 pm

ruveyn wrote:
Oldout wrote:
My question is -- when JC returns will he be wearing a suit, blue jeans, shorts, or what?


He will still have a beard.

ruveyn


Whoa, whoa, whoa!

Who said JC would be coming back as a man?


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24 Apr 2012, 2:57 pm

ruveyn wrote:
TM wrote:

In all fairness they were mostly slave owners, who regularly cheated on their wives with their slaves and so on. The main difference is that the founding fathers were the intellectual giants of their day, whereas modern politicians are mostly intellectual pygmies.


Ben Franklin owned no slaves. The northern Founders were not only not slave owners, they opposed slavery on moral or ethical grounds.

ruveyn


Apparently "northern Founders" do not include George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. Virginia is just below the Mason Dixon line, but so are Maryland and Washington DC. Many of the founders did own slaves.



Last edited by Rocky on 26 Apr 2012, 3:23 am, edited 1 time in total.

Grebels
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25 Apr 2012, 2:53 pm

Quote:
no penicillin, little casual sex


That is just too funny.



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25 Apr 2012, 4:26 pm

Grebels wrote:
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no penicillin, little casual sex


That is just too funny.


actually, with the abundance of prostitution in those days, there had been plenty of casual sex, and more than enough STD's to go around. :cry:

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MotherKnowsBest
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25 Apr 2012, 4:37 pm

100 years ago average life expectancy was just 50 8O . Now it's over 80.



ruveyn
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26 Apr 2012, 9:23 am

Rocky wrote:
ruveyn wrote:
TM wrote:

In all fairness they were mostly slave owners, who regularly cheated on their wives with their slaves and so on. The main difference is that the founding fathers were the intellectual giants of their day, whereas modern politicians are mostly intellectual pygmies.


Ben Franklin owned no slaves. The northern Founders were not only not slave owners, they opposed slavery on moral or ethical grounds.

ruveyn


Apparently "northern Founders" do not include George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. Virginia is just below the Mason Dixon line, but so are Maryland and Washington DC. Many of the founders did own slaves.


Virginia is a Southern State. In fact the capital of the CSA was in Virginia.

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26 Apr 2012, 10:02 am

Today > 100 years ago, there's hardly a thing to think about with that one. The human condition has gotten exponentially better at all levels.


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ruveyn
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26 Apr 2012, 11:59 am

techstepgenr8tion wrote:
Today > 100 years ago, there's hardly a thing to think about with that one. The human condition has gotten exponentially better at all levels.


No it hasn't. If the growth were exponential our life spans would be 10,000 years.

We are now in the era of diminishing returns.

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26 Apr 2012, 3:52 pm

donnie_darko wrote:
Do you think people really got along better a century ago? People always b***h about how 'things are today', but is it really warranted or are people just uneducated?


When would you rather be alive. Now or in 1912 when life expectancy in the most advanced countries was less than sixty years, when there were no anti-biotics, when there was no air conditioning, when the fastest way of getting the news was from the afternoon newspaper. When the cities were crowed and filthy and there were no safety laws. The Triangle Shirtwaist fire occurred in 1912. One hundred and forty five women either burned alive, were overcome by smoke or jumped to their death from the tenth floor. Is that what you would prefer?

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26 Apr 2012, 7:37 pm

ruveyn wrote:
The Triangle Shirtwaist fire occurred in 1912. One hundred and forty five women either burned alive, were overcome by smoke or jumped to their death from the tenth floor. Is that what you would prefer?

ruveyn


That was 1911, not 1912. 1912 was the sinking of the Titanic.


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26 Apr 2012, 9:05 pm

LiberalJustice wrote:
ruveyn wrote:
The Triangle Shirtwaist fire occurred in 1912. One hundred and forty five women either burned alive, were overcome by smoke or jumped to their death from the tenth floor. Is that what you would prefer?

ruveyn


That was 1911, not 1912. 1912 was the sinking of the Titanic.


Great - - one years was death by fire, while the other was death by water!

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29 Apr 2012, 11:50 pm

There are so many intangibles that are lost today that were there 100 years ago. 20 minutes out from the city, and you were out of the city, and back to nature. Now most of the world lives at least an hour away from any real nature (not including the corner park). The air was clean, there was not nearly as much stress, you didn't have to carry around a cellphone 24/7. Mental Illness was much lower, even if other illnesses were higher and the treatments far less effective and far more barbaric. But just 100 years ago, we hadn't lost touch with the earth, the very thing that sustains us. Today we have.

Paraphrasing a line from a movie i watched last night, If you are hungry, naked and in a forest with no shelter, water, food, clothing etc. You are not happy. But if you were taken to a small log cabin, with a fire on the hearth, a stew bubbling away in the pot, a warm bed and a full set of clothes, then you would be made happy. Over the past 100 years (well, even just the past 60) we have been led to believe that if what I just said is true, than by having twice as much "stuff" we should be twice as happy, and if we have 10 times as much stuff we should be 10 times more happy. Today, the only thing there is anymore is this unending quest to acquire more things, to get a higher score in this new video game we call life. And each time we get more points, we lose sight of the fact that we are no more happier than before, and instead just keep on trying to get more.

That said, I'd still pick today to live in over 100 years ago... But that's because if i was born 100 years earlier, i wouldn't have the pleasure to witness humanity destroy itself like I will have the privilege of because of when i was born.



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30 Apr 2012, 12:16 am

Exclavius wrote:
There are so many intangibles that are lost today that were there 100 years ago. 20 minutes out from the city, and you were out of the city, and back to nature. Now most of the world lives at least an hour away from any real nature (not including the corner park). The air was clean, there was not nearly as much stress, you didn't have to carry around a cellphone 24/7. Mental Illness was much lower, even if other illnesses were higher and the treatments far less effective and far more barbaric. But just 100 years ago, we hadn't lost touch with the earth, the very thing that sustains us. Today we have.

Paraphrasing a line from a movie i watched last night, If you are hungry, naked and in a forest with no shelter, water, food, clothing etc. You are not happy. But if you were taken to a small log cabin, with a fire on the hearth, a stew bubbling away in the pot, a warm bed and a full set of clothes, then you would be made happy. Over the past 100 years (well, even just the past 60) we have been led to believe that if what I just said is true, than by having twice as much "stuff" we should be twice as happy, and if we have 10 times as much stuff we should be 10 times more happy. Today, the only thing there is anymore is this unending quest to acquire more things, to get a higher score in this new video game we call life. And each time we get more points, we lose sight of the fact that we are no more happier than before, and instead just keep on trying to get more.

That said, I'd still pick today to live in over 100 years ago... But that's because if i was born 100 years earlier, i wouldn't have the pleasure to witness humanity destroy itself like I will have the privilege of because of when i was born.


A hundred years ago, industrialization was well under way, factories were spewing poisoned smoke into the sky, and there were hardly any regulations protecting consumers or workers yet. Working conditions and pay were atrocious, and organized labor were seen as radical and Un-American. The world back then was hardly a piece of cake.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer



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30 Apr 2012, 12:26 am

Kraichgauer wrote:
Exclavius wrote:
There are so many intangibles that are lost today that were there 100 years ago. 20 minutes out from the city, and you were out of the city, and back to nature. Now most of the world lives at least an hour away from any real nature (not including the corner park). The air was clean, there was not nearly as much stress, you didn't have to carry around a cellphone 24/7. Mental Illness was much lower, even if other illnesses were higher and the treatments far less effective and far more barbaric. But just 100 years ago, we hadn't lost touch with the earth, the very thing that sustains us. Today we have.

Paraphrasing a line from a movie i watched last night, If you are hungry, naked and in a forest with no shelter, water, food, clothing etc. You are not happy. But if you were taken to a small log cabin, with a fire on the hearth, a stew bubbling away in the pot, a warm bed and a full set of clothes, then you would be made happy. Over the past 100 years (well, even just the past 60) we have been led to believe that if what I just said is true, than by having twice as much "stuff" we should be twice as happy, and if we have 10 times as much stuff we should be 10 times more happy. Today, the only thing there is anymore is this unending quest to acquire more things, to get a higher score in this new video game we call life. And each time we get more points, we lose sight of the fact that we are no more happier than before, and instead just keep on trying to get more.

That said, I'd still pick today to live in over 100 years ago... But that's because if i was born 100 years earlier, i wouldn't have the pleasure to witness humanity destroy itself like I will have the privilege of because of when i was born.


A hundred years ago, industrialization was well under way, factories were spewing poisoned smoke into the sky, and there were hardly any regulations protecting consumers or workers yet. Working conditions and pay were atrocious, and organized labor were seen as radical and Un-American. The world back then was hardly a piece of cake.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer


Yeah and to thank that a 100 years ago you could get away with crimes like Rape because back then it was not a crime to rape your wife.