How times have changed in half a century

NorthJersey.com ^ | 02.18.07 | Sid Tanenbaum

[Little Ray]

Socrates soldiered in the Peloponnesian War (431-404 BC), where Athens was defeated by Sparta and her allies. Athens was stripped of her walls, her fleet, and all of her overseas possessions. Before Athens fully recovered, all of Greece was conquered by the Macedonians.
Socrates knew what he was talking about.

[Strategerist]

A highly dubious assertion requiring Rose-colored glasses about the past.

[Bon mots]

"The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers."

~ Attributed to Socrates by Plato

WOW! Very cool quote!

I'm a big fan of Macchiavelli, but I thought this was written yesterday - and it predates Macchiavelli by at least 1500 years!

[Coleus]

To All The Kids Who Survived The 1930's 40's, 50's, 60's And 70's 

To All The Kids Who Survived The 1930's 40's, 50's, 60's And 70's !! (Cute Email)

How Did We Survive Childhood

" Here's To Us"

[Centurion2000]

To top it off, not a single person I knew had ever been told that they were from a dysfunctional family. How could we possibly have know that we needed to get into group therapy and anger management classes? We were obviously so duped by so many societal ills, that we didn't even notice that the entire country wasn't taking Prozac!

Back then it wasn't dysfunctional, it was called white trash.

[highnoon]

Astroturf

[dagogo redux]

Great post! Thanks for the memories. Besides spending huge parts of my childhood climbing an old quarry and catching snakes and such in the swamp at its feet, my friends and I used to immensely enjoy a game we called "Harmon Killebrew Slides Again": we would get a running start on a plateau in my back yard, then, at the edge we would leap out into space, landing somewhere down the 45 degree incline that lay below. Winning was based on the longest distance airborne and the farthest controlled slide down the hill. Great fun, and great memories: lots of scrapes and bruises, and torn clothes that required a whooping, but not a single serious injury at that game or any other rough and tumble play we ever engaged in.

[Rumplemeyer]

No, it wasn't perfect, but it was less in your face and base.

The day after 9/11 I thought, "people are behaving differently, the tenor had come down a few octaves, I wonder how long this will last, it feels like 1973 again, simple common courtesies abound" the answer was two weeks.

[Young Werther]

But Superbowls played in the rain!

[karatemom]

I will agree that our movie stars and sports figures today are generally reprobates. But I don't worry about getting lost because of our GPS. If I am late, I have a handy little cell phone to alert my family. My dad will celebrate 74 years next Monday thanks to the stents put it last year. I am glad I grew up in the 70's, but I sure love sleeping with the AC in the sweltering summer months.

[Senator_Blutarski]

Lex clavatoris designati rescindenda est.

The designated hitter rule has got to go. (From the "Handy Latin Phrases" post from a few years ago...)

[Revelation 911]

My dad will celebrate 74 years next Monday thanks to the stents put it last year.

I do miss one thing though......

The Gong Show

[trumandogz]

Who can forget the Good 'Ol Days, when racial segregation was the norm of life expectancy was at least ten years what it is today?


Happy those days are gone forever!

[Bender2]

When football player started wearing helments with face guards...

It all went to hell!

{;^(

[jwparkerjr]

Just curious, were you there for those days or are you hearing about them from the articles? It was indeed a different life, so much so that it strains the imagination sometimes to remember that there really were some 'good' things about the good ol' days. But it's also true there were some not-so-good, in fact downright awful and horrible, things about those days too. Like the 'colored' drinking fountains and the blacks in the back of the bus. What a shame we couldn't fix the bad things without destroying the good things too.

[truth_seeker]

"(And keep in mind the media actively covered up a lot of stuff back then that is front page news today.)"

Yeah, that is right. And in a whole lot more of life than just sports.

Like the fact FDR used a wheel chair.

[nascarnation]

Daily I drank Cuyahoga River water and breathed air downwind of Republic Steel and the Sohio Refinery. And I spent my teenage years pumping leaded gas - probably thousands of gallons worth.

[karatemom]

The Gong show! Oh, my! Or The Brady bunch before we knew the dad was gay. Or Hollywood squares when we did know Paul Lynde was gay!

[Continental Soldier]

Times change and they don't always change for the better. Every generation likes to believe that it lives in the best of times, but any student of history sees the falsity of that.

[Mr_Moonlight]

And helmets in hockey

Ditto that