h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Or is nostalgia an artefact of the human brain? do we have a natural tendancy to think that "things are getting worse" and an inability to see any changes as positive.

Or am I actually being hopelessly youthful and optimeristic?

I think I miss the easier pace and lower expectations of the past. The pressure of modern post-industrial living just seems to be building more and more. Better healthcare and other opportunities put a balance on it though. Without modern medicine I'd be blind and that's a bummer in any age.

I think you will be hard pressed to get a definative yes or no one that one Z. Whether we see change as positive tends to rely on the dividens of previous changes we have experienced and our present state of mind.

I think things are getting better slowly for everyone, but when one groups greed makes things better for them it often results in things getting worse for everyone else, if not in absolute terms, certainly in relative terms.

One of aspect of human response is that if someone likes something they will get on and enjoy it. You will only hear moaning from those that dont like a certain change, it does not mean that there may be many more who arent fussed or very happy with a change.

"I think you will be hard pressed to get a definative yes or no one that one Z" - well that was why I asked the question!

I think in the last few years we have begun to differentiate between the Standard of Living and the Quality of Life. For instance, kids now, as a rule, have far more at their disposal than kids thirty years ago. But because of their parenrs fears for their safety and peer pressure I don't think they actually enjoy themselves as much.

Whilst that is true, I find that to be limited to middle class children, working class children still seem to be allowed plenty of freedom.. at least judgeing from the bunch that are hanging around outside the shop I live above anyway.

Thats not freedom thats more likely lack of interest two very different things.

You can't say whether the past was universally better than the present. You need to pick upon individual features and see if they have improved. Personally if I could live anywhere throughout history I'd be quite happy to be born now, I can't imagine spending the day any better way than basking in the glow of my monitor

I think that when people see something they don't like there is a tendancy to think 'how could this be better' and there is normally something you can look at in the past and think 'yeah it was better then' but it doesn't mean that the problems of that time.

I'm not sure kids have more or less freedom, just different freedoms. For example I have much more freedom of information and learning than I might have done if I were born 50 years ago thanks to things like the internet. On the other hand there is no way that my parents would have let me roam the streets as (im told) was more commonly accepted back then.

There are lots of facets of life both in the "past" (yesterday? Last week? Lasat Year? When dianosaurs roamed the earth?) and the present. Things have improved in some and got worse in others.

Also the global distribution of improvements and deteriorations is uneven. Things have changed diffently in some places than they have in others. Materially things have got much better in "the West" and probably not changed a lot in sub-saharan Africa or Bangladesh. Depends on your perception too. Ask your average "Native American" or Austalian Aborigine what he thinks!

However, taking my bit of the world (ie White Lower Middle Class Britain) there is no doubt that in a material sense things are better. We have more money, we eat better (or we can!) are bigger, stronger, better educated, live longer, have more leisure and so on. People are less exploited than they were too (the poor not so downtrodden as they were), though they still are expoited in lots of subtle and not so subtle ways, by the financial services "industry" by employers, by the marketing men and spin doctors.

The reverse of the coin, of course, is that we have too many obese people, especially children, more is expected of us in terms of performance and the world is full of noise, dirt and stress.

Personal thing whether you think its worth it. I think probably, on balance, it is!

If the past were better than the present, we would be very good -presently