That Was Then, This Is Now

I notice that every single incident placed into 1967 is portrayed with a totally happy, normal ending. Oddly, that’s not the way I remember 1967 at all. People had problems then too, and many lives got wrecked… just like now… how strange.

At NZer, I must say we Britons have it equally bad, if not worse, heh.

This article has plenty of what I call “Grandma’s Forwarded E-mail Hyperbole”. It makes a somewhat decent point through an extreme situation that, if it really happened, would prompt public uproar. It drums up nostalgia and other emotions, then does absolutely nothing with those emotions other than give older folks a sense of pride in their youth and disappointment in the present.

As far as I can tell, the point is just “yesterday’s adults made better decisions than today’s adults”. This is illustrated through situations where the 1967 society made a rational decision and the 2007 society made an extreme one. In reality, the rational decision is still the popular one, and it hasn’t changed much, except that it has adapted to changing times.

Yes, sexual harassment policies, terrorism policies, drug policies, and a whole lot of other policies are completely overreactive and retarded these days. But the way you change that isn’t by returning society to a circa-1967 mindset; you change these things by educating the masses, rallying them to demand change, and moving forward.

We still have a future to pay attention to. By all means, we should use the past as a way of preventing us from repeating our own mistakes, but once we’ve done that we should leave the past alone. It’s behind us, and we need to be looking forward.

So…by 2007 ants somehow developed resistance to firecrackers?

You are a fucking idiot.

Anyway, that’s the short version. The longer version is that you’re making quite a few assumptions about causation. Namely, (1) that fighting results in friendship, (2) that corporal punishment is effective at teaching students discipline without any attendant drawbacks (3) that learning disabilities aren’t a legitimate basis for classroom behavior, (4) the “high school english” and “firecrackers” example just do not exist anywhere, and the “hugging” example is far-fetched.

ADD is way overdiagnosed, I actually met with a psychiatrist in a free consultation to see what they’d say, knowing full and well that I don’t have the disorder, and guess what? I was diagnosed with ADD and recommended to take a regimen consisting of two different pills. They make money off of writing prescriptions, and therefore hand them out to anyone who walks in the door. I’ve met about 50 young adults who’ve hidden behind the term ADD or ADHD, and yet I can say only two of them were severely impaired to the point of being unable to focus without medication. (One still takes days to study for a test or to write short papers, even on medication). The others are lazy, aren’t interested in what their teachers are saying, or are mildly spacey. A lot of them don’t realise that it takes EFFORT to pay attention to something that’s boring, and when confronted with the choice of paying attention (paying is expending something and getting something in return, it’s not given to you) or slacking, they’ll opt for the latter and then take shelter under the trendy disorder that every fucking person in the world seems to have. Everyone daydreams. Everyone gets bored. Get over yourself, have some pride and stop making excuses. You have to grow up some time, and that’s why you see children with ADD, and adults who say they USED to have ADD. They start taking responsibility for their actions, and what do you know? Cured. Not with a daily dose of amphetamines. There’s a reason why children are diagnosed with ADD, because all a shrink has to do is confirm that your child is in fact a child, and then they’ll have plenty of reasons as to why they need to be doped up in order to function in society. Yes, some people do have a severe case of ADD. But it’s rare, and it’s not just a lack of interest. It’s the inabilty to do anything, even things that they enjoy, without major interruption of their train of thought.

Look online at the symptoms of ADD. According to them, you have ADD. But the fact that you just read all of my rant clearly shows that you don’t.

So true. Great find!

Smart people today are smarter than their counterparts in 1967 Dumb people are just as dumb today as they were in 1967, the difference is, today the dumb people don’t like being dumb and pretend to act smart, hence why even the top of society is getting better, the bottom is getting lower too.

This is alright, but I don’t understand why not being allowed to strike children is seen as a bad thing. I agree Ritalin/Adderal are overprescribed, but smacking children around is not necessarily going to make someone calm down. Just talk to children. They’re smarter than you think.

I’ve seen this before but it’s been a while back. What a great post…this is so true and really a bad way to live. It’s sad to think that things will probably never be the same. Some of the other comments seem to take this post to the extreme, but things these days are just way over the top compared to yesterday.

I remember in 3rd grade noticing that when a kid scraped his knee the hot teacher on yard duty would give them a hug to make them feel better. I faked getting hurt a lot after that :D

@Johnny

Granted that a lot of the article is citing extreme examples to make the point, I have to call you out on the last three points you made in your comments. First of all, the “high-school english” and “firecrackers” examples do exist. The first one is a big issue in all the border states. Do we teach immigrant children English? Because that will only improve their education and teach them to succeed here. Back then, immigrants would take initiative and learn the language of their new land, whereas now they expect people here to speak to them only in their native tongue. Firecrackers, well, back in grade school my friends would go out into the middle of fields at night and blow up old computers. Back then, it was fun. Today, you could go to jail/be fined for public disturbance and domestic terrorism. And the hugging example isn’t hyperbole, it happens routinely. I’ve known male physical education teachers who have lost jobs because they tried to teach girls in their class how to put on a heart monitor.

As an additional example: Billy wants to go play with friends. 1967: Billy says bye to mom in Friday morning, runs off with Jimmy for three days, checks in with folks at dinner time every day, and comes back Tuesday afternoon caked in mud. 2007: Parents allow Billy out once a day to run down to the street corner and back, and only when mom is watching. Scrapes require hydrogen peroxide and gauze. Blood requires a trip to the emergency room.

@Pogs Rule

I concur.

Can you really call it satire though? Sadly, things have actually come to this state. If not, very very close.

Hi, I’m from Europe, I just realized reading the comments that, in your culture, a) you find it normal to go to school with a shotgun in your truck b) you find it normal to put children on psychotic drugs Boy, how pervert your culture is when it comes to this kind of things. I’m glad I always turned off all job offers I received from there.

I work for a police department and I will never, ever be alone with a child other than my own. I think that anyone who volunteers to be a Big Brother, Big Sister, or Scout Leader is a fool. I have seen spoiled children ruin the lives of respectable, innocent adults by saying just three words: “He touched me.” For this type of thing, in 2008, you are automatically presumed guilty, and even if the accuser admits to fabricating the story, you’ll still be on record as a charged sex suspect. God help our society.

slippery slope?

That dose of reality guy is bull. hes just saying that so that he can get his own, That Was Then, This Is Now story

Wow, these are all pretty good representations.

About the ADD thing. . . it looks like there’s a lot of misunderstanding here.

a) Giving kids a bunch of Ritalin won’t help them unless they have ADD. They’ll be going off-the-wall.

b) Everyone’s saying that medical professionals are just giving out diagnoses of ADD. . . that may be true for some but definitely not all of them. Some doctors jump to conclusions, but there are others that do testing and take their time making a diagnosis.

There are people that genuinely have ADD. Not all are misdiagnoses or excuses. Some are, sure, but still a lot are genuine.

It’s important to realize that simply being hyper, getting distracted, being bored in class, etc. are NORMAL. It’s the frequency of these things that shows possibility of ADD. It’s also important to realize that there is no “magic pill” for people who truly do have ADD. Ritalin, Concerta, and the like all help give you the power/energy to concentrate, but it still takes some work on your own part.

There are people who can get through it without the pill, too – it depends on the severity of the symptoms and also what you want to do in life. If you want to do something that doesn’t require you to sit there and focus for a long time (ie be a snowboarding instructor) then you’d probably do just fine without the pill. If you want to do something that requires you to sit there, focus, study, take tests, etc. then if you actually have ADD, you’re going to need the pill.

I think someone above me said that people get “cured” of ADD. It does happen. Most of the time, though, people with ADD have it until they’re 45+, at least – and many have it until they die. Also, a lot of times people don’t get “cured” of ADD but rather learn “workarounds” if you will to help them out. They develop habits and routines that help them out, and eventually these become second-nature and the person does them without thinking until it gets to the point where they have learned so many tricks to help out their ADD that they don’t need the pills anymore. That’s not to say that people with ADD have simply learned bad habits or can be simply “forced out of it” – each individual needs to come up with their own system that works for them, and a person with ADD can’t just start taking more diligent notes or something and be cured.

I have ADD myself, and I know the pill helps me out a ton. It’s hard to really put into words what it’s like having ADD – before I took notes, I listened in class, etc. but things just wouldn’t click like they do now. I’d go to write something down, and while I’m writing it I’d either miss out on what the professor’s saying while I’m writing, or I’d listen to the professor and just simply forget what I was going to write. Or I’d read a paragraph of my book, and then forget what I just read. I didn’t know how people could handle it! Even with things not school-related – I’d forget appointments, I’d read whole pages of books and then forget them, I’d learn guitar tabs only to forget them a day later. . . But now with the pill, it’s so much easier to multitask, to focus, to remember. . .

This reminds me of: I see no hope for the future of our people if they are dependent on frivolous youth of today, for certainly all youth are reckless beyond words… When I was young, we were taught to be discreet and respectful of elders, but the present youth are exceedingly disrespectful and impatient of restraint.

Hesiod, 700 BC

People get bent out of shape over a satirical writing. Sad.

I’m sorry, I know this is an old article and please forgive my spelling and grammar mistakes, but no one seems to be pointing out the obvious. Back in 1967 people actually read books and newspapers. They weren’t fed their daily news by a distracting scroll at the bottom of an entirely different newscast. They actually had ATTENTION SPANS, because, they had time; and took the time to pay attention! They read an entire book, without 5 min. commercial breaks set in to kick in at every 7 mins!! No wonder kids have no attention spans…..when you babysit your child with a T.V.!! I haven’t heard too much about the big Amish Invasion of ADD!?!?! Your television is not a babysitter. It takes human interaction to get human results!

But that’s just my opinion.

P.S. I also find it ironic that so many people with “ADD-ADHD) can actually sit down and have a FOCUSED idea about something so boring.

Tell me how great Dora the Explorer is at letting you have peace and quiet.

2007 – Who gives a shit