Really?
I'm sure most of us posting here are way under 80 years old, yet what is it about people that they always want to think that the times in which they live are, "the worst it's ever been"?
Here is some perspective for those who are interested:
"Our earth is degenerate in these latter days. There are signs that the world is speedily coming to an end. Bribery and corruption are common. Children no longer obey their parents. Every man wants to write a book, and the end of the world is evidently approaching." -- From an inscription on a tablet about 4800 years ago (2800 BC) now in the Municipal Museum at Istanbul.
"We are living in a decadent and dying age. Youth is corrupt, lacking in respect for elders, impatient of restraint. Age-old truth is doubted and the teaching of the fathers is questioned. The signs of the time forecast the destruction of the world at an early date." -- From an inscription in an Egyptian tomb ten centuries BC
"In the good old days every man's son born in wedlock was brought up, not in the chamber of some hired nurse, but in his mother's lap and at her knee, and that mother could have no higher praise than that she managed the house and gave herself to her children. Nowadays, on the other hand, our children are handed over at birth to some silly little servant maid with a male slave, who may be anyone, to help her, quite frequently the most worthless member of the whole establishment, incompetent for any serious service. Yes, and the parents themselves make no effort to train their little ones in goodness and self-control. They grow up in an atmosphere of laxness and pertness in which they come gradually to lose all sense of shame and all respect, both for themselves and other people. Again, there are the peculiar and characteristic vices of this metropolis of ours taken on, as it seems to me, almost in the mother's womb, the passion for play actors and the mind for gladiatorial shows and horse racing. When the mind is engrossed in such occupations, what room is left for higher pursuits?" -- By the historian Tacitus (d. 117 A.D.)
Dr. Will Durant, describing the period following World War I, said: "Hope faded away; the generation which had lived through the war could no longer believe anything; a wave of apathy and cynicism engulfed all but the youngest and least experienced souls. The idea of progress seemed now to be one of the shallowest delusions that has ever mocked man's misery, or lifted him up to a vain idealism and a monstrous futility." (Harper's, Nov. 1926).
Centuries before Christ, Solomon advised, "Say not, `Why were the former days better than these?' For it is not from wisdom that you ask this" (Ecc. 7:10).
He also reminds us or the endless, repetitious cycle of history: "What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done; and there is nothing new under the sun. Is there a thing of which it is said, `See, this is new?' It has been already, in the ages before us/i> (Ecc. 1:9-11).
Being centered on the present, we are forgetful of the corruption of former ages and we idealize them as the good old days.
Solomon was not writing of inventions but of the general cycle of nature and of man's efforts to gain satisfaction in it. Has the morality of mankind or his pursuit of happiness changed throughout his existence on this earth?
As each individual has been whirled in his brief spin in the cycle of time, his circumstance of locale, race, culture, and age might have differed from others, but universally the conditions have been similar.
We seem to have an inherent self-centeredness that makes us feel that this universe will not outlast us. Times past are the "good old days", and mankind has lost its innocence in whatever age we might live.
Bible believers have tended to support these perceptions by Biblical prooftexting and have interpreted all sorts of natural disasters and social and political upheavals in their generation and locale as being evidence that a catastrophic end is impending.
How many books, radio and TV programmes have raised the alarm in this generation?
And whether it's a hundred or several thousand years from now, twentieth century criers of doom may seem as amusing as those of the second century A.D. or 2800 B.C. are to us.