One saying that urks me a lot is 'What is the world coming too?' sure in our day and ages things are bad, but I think it's nothing compared to what we've seen in history, so I've been wondering; are people who say this just say so because they want to forget what's happened before them or have they really no idea that things have been much worst?
I think people don't really understand how bad things really were or the severity of the incidents in the past. Most people learned about these things through books or history classes, through those things, it's easy for some people to overlook how horrible it must have been to be in a time like that. It's one thing to read about wars, battles, and slavery, and another to actually experience them. Some people can't really relate to what they know about the past, because they can't imagine how it might have felt to be there, and feel what the people in the past must've have felt.
Yes, outside of our societies and our daily lives, which is why the quality of life today is extremely better in on our terms than in the past, when we were like many other modern foreign nations. The blessings of the west as it were. The statement itself is not exactly close minded, it's quite complex depending on context. But I'm guessing the type of context you're putting it in is the kind of derogatory observation of change, and seeing certain new change as negative compared to what they viewed in the past. I don't think it's close minded, exactly, I think it's more a traditional view versus more liberal views of the modern era. Not all open minded people think changes are good, only want they want to see changed.
"We may not be strong enough to live in the present. But to be disappointed in it! To identify with a better past! No, no!" ~ Saul Bellow "There were never any good old days // They are today, they are tomorrow // It's a stupid thing we say // Cursing tomorrow with sorrow." ~ Gogol Bordello Yeah, you may be able to tell where am I on this topic. It infuriates me when my elders curse my generation. We're supposed to be looking to them for guidance, and they're telling us we're doomed? They're trying to build over us, trample us with their words, make us the scapegoat for all their problems? It's practically criminal. No one should enter this world with a debt; you couldn't beat that belief out of me. There are all these people who hear on the news about these terrible tragedies, and these horrible things people are doing to other people, like locking them up in a basement for decades... and they say, "Back in my day, it wasn't like that. Back in my day, it was safe to let your kids play outside. Back in my day, you could leave your doors open without fear of your neighbors." I'd love to live in your world, you delusional old fart. Wouldn't some of these people have first been locked up back in your day? Did you ever stop to think we started shutting those doors because people from your day were abducting those kids? People think cruelty just started yesterday, that if they haven't heard of it, it never happened. It's the most asinine garbage I've ever heard a mouth speak. If you cared a lick about it, you wouldn't be sitting around complaining so long after the fact. What's more, I really can't take seriously anyone who says the words "What's the world coming to," because I imagine they had a glowing childhood and nothing ever went wrong in their early lives. Without even resorting to the greatly inflated counter-examples of slavery in the history of many countries, starving children across the globe, and the horrors that no doubt took place every day they lived... I can say my own childhood was a mess. My first father was abusive, and I often catch myself fearing that his actions have ruined I and my mother for life. I'm exceptionally dependent at an age where I feel I shouldn't be because of a stigma placed on my and many others' shoulders by the older generations. And I have no essential skills to get me employed, so I'll probably be that way for some time yet. I constantly feel as if my past is weighing me down. Making me sad and apathetic. Holding me in place with depression and anxiety 'til Daddy Death comes 'round to claim me. Compared to that, the present is peaches and f██king cream, and the future seems like a paradise. I'd give anything to be able to enjoy them, and be the person I know I can be. But everyone else has lost hope in the now, much less the later, so why bother? So next time somebody says "What's the world coming to," do me a favor: Punch them in the mouth and tell them they don't have to come along with it if they're gonna be a downer the whole way.
I'm not saying they don't exist today. Yes they still exist, but they aren't as common as they used to be. In the past, there were huge wars like world war I and II, but today there are still wars between countries, or civil wars within a country, but they're not as big as the wars back then. These things still exist, but in most first world countries these things seem more distant to the people there. They don't directly see or hear about these things, so some people end up not noticing them.
