Do you find life 'getting harder' and more difficult?

[Razorguns]

life rulez

r

 

[-Ariel-]

This is a great question on all levels... and I could write a whole paper on this, but will show some restraint... the thing that strikes me the most is how a sense of isolation, and loss of connection and community have increased over time, and how identity is more based on purchase rather than principles... but probably the most visible or tangible effect would be loss of meaning, community, and how much harder it is to be understood today... so many factors, which include your neck of the woods, which I have no problem with... its how you feed your family, the increased sense of isolation in all of us and loss of community go hand in hand, and people are upset that culture does not provide these things for them...

An interesting study was done on the happiest teenagers in the world in 70s, they were cuba, chile, and israel... now, all these are highly non commercial cultures, the thing is chile was remarkable IMO, because they were one of the most politically active citizens in the world, then they had a political coup and in order to destabilize the political attitude of the middle class, the government established a free market economy... currently if you visit Chile, the middle class doesn't care about politics and the teenagers are one of the most depressed in the world. Our media touted Chile's change into a free market economy as a great thing, and didn't really report the cultural fall out that had happened.

My point is that while life is getting easier in some respects through technology and the access to information, communication capability, there does appear to be cultural problems emerging such as interpersonal connection, finding meaning, and a loss of communal spirit.
However, these things may work themselves out or atleast there appears to be possibilities that they are working themselves out.

 

[billfred]

It is only more expensive because our standards are so much higher. Go look at the avg house in the 1950. They probably had 1 b&W TV along with one phone line with a shitty rotary dial, sparce furnishing, and 1 car in the garage.

No - I find it much easier today. We have many more luxuries and lots of different methods for paying form them (credit).

 

[Delinquent]

This is a great question on all levels... and I could write a whole paper on this, but will show some restraint... the thing that strikes me the most is how a sense of isolation, and loss of connection and community have increased over time, and how identity is more based on purchase rather than principles... but probably the most visible or tangible effect would be loss of meaning, community, and how much harder it is to be understood today... so many factors, which include your neck of the woods, which I have no problem with... its how you feed your family, the increased sense of isolation in all of us and loss of community go hand in hand, and people are upset that culture does not provide these things for them...

An interesting study was done on the happiest teenagers in the world in 70s, they were cuba, chile, and israel... now, all these are highly non commercial cultures, the thing is chile was remarkable IMO, because they were one of the most politically active citizens in the world, then they had a political coup and in order to destabilize the political attitude of the middle class, the government established a free market economy... currently if you visit Chile, the middle class doesn't care about politics and the teenagers are one of the most depressed in the world. Our media touted Chile's change into a free market economy as a great thing, and didn't really report the cultural fall out that had happened.

My point is that while life is getting easier in some respects through technology and the access to information, communication capability, there does appear to be cultural problems emerging such as interpersonal connection, finding meaning, and a loss of communal spirit.
However, these things may work themselves out or atleast there appears to be possibilities that they are working themselves out.

Great post and I completely agree. People seem to hold on to this belief that all these material items such as all this technology makes up happier when in fact I think it's quite the opposite. We are trained to want more of everything rather than being happy with what you have and looking to one's inner self for happy, something I admittedly haven't been able to do either so I'm definitely not up on a soap box for this statement.