I had a birthday and became Social Security eligible this week. I never thought that would happen, not because I thought anything untoward would happen, it’s just that I could never envision aging even though it was constantly happening. I remember when I thought 40 was old, now I read the obituaries and see a 75 year old has passed and think, “Oh so young!”
When I was a kid camping was camping. It was in tents in the Great Outdoors. There was no air conditioning, no indoor plumbing, no running water, no television – color or satellite – and certainly no Internet or Wi-Fi. Camping was blazing heat during the day, sometimes blistering cold at night and bugs all of the time. When people tell me today that they’re nuts about camping, I think they’re just plain nuts. Of course they’re not really camping, they have a motel on wheels that they tool around to various places with hook-ups for sewage, running water and television access etc.
When I was a kid everybody was “gay” most of the time. That’s because “gay” meant “happy” and “homosexual” meant “mental illness”. It wasn’t until the early to mid 1970’s that homosexuality was delisted from the American Psychiatric Association’s list of mental illnesses. Now being gay is no big deal and gay parents don’t raise an eyebrow. I’m not complaining, I applaud the progress but it is a huge change from the 1950’s and the Eisenhower Administration, when I was born.
The change in the status of gay people makes me wonder what will happen in the areas of meat consumption and pet ownership. We’re seeing with the “Me Too Movement” that behavior that was “acceptable” decades ago is now considered boorish or worse and is being called out. I wonder if the same will happen with pet ownership and meat eating. We’re already seeing the rise of “Un” foods that mimic the taste and texture of meat but are plant based. PETA has campaigned for years against the livestock industry and in response to public pressure “free range” production has now become more of the rule than the exception. I wonder if people will be “canceled” in the future for having eaten meat in the past or having been livestock producers or for “imprisoning” animals (read owning pets etc.) in the future. You may scoff, but if you had told me back when I was in middle school that in my lifetime homosexuality would be normalized, gay parenting would be routine and the lifestyle widely accepted I’d have thought you were high on something. It’s so hard to know what behaviors which make a person a pariah today will, with time, be accepted at a later date or what actions that are perfectly run of the mill now will get you canceled sometime in the distant future.
Neighbors used to know and socialize with each other. When I was a kid it was normal for other adults to parent and discipline kids who weren’t even theirs. Back in the day if a child were out of line or just rambunctious, somebody noticed and somebody said something; heaven help the kid who got in trouble with an adult who wasn’t their parent because then your folks gave you a good thrashing too. That’s when spanking was considered a normal part of bringing up a child and not automatically child abuse. Now “neighbors” are strangers who live door next to one another and a “neighborhood” is just a collection of isolated islands that happen to be located on the same street.
Politics used to be divided into two seasons, campaigning and governing. Now it’s just campaigning all the time and the only goal of “governing” is to make sure the other side can’t get anything done. Adversaries are now automatically “enemies” with compromise, vital to governing, now equated with capitulation and failure instead of progress and achievement. It’s why nothing gets done in Washington D.C. and why we hate each other automatically these days when we find out someone is a Democrat or a Republican. Its’ no way to run a democracy and threatens the very foundations of our society.
Volunteers used to do things for free out of a sense of community and an obligation to other people. Now it seems like “volunteers” are paid or compensated in some non-monetary way. We are all so busy and assume someone else will do it. That’s why great events disappear when the original volunteers die or get tired of doing it (Madrigal Feast, Tannenbaum Festival, Arts in the Park etc.)
We’ve redefined “patriotism” to mean, “I’m right all the time and you’re wrong about everything so get lost”. Free-range kids are now somehow victims of “neglect”. “Community” means only what you agree with and are interested in so everything is just about “you” instead of “us” and the greater good.
People ask me how long I’d like to live. I’d like to live to meet my, as of now nonexistent, grandkids. I’d like to live to see the Vikings win a Super Bowl (I may have to settle for them just going again to the Super Bowl, the last time they did was 1977 – I was a senior in high school and they lost again – for the fourth time). I’d like to live as long as I have my mental faculties and am ambulatory. However, one can live too long and having lived during a time when Americans pulled together, were more tolerant of differing political opinions and didn’t routinely resort to protest and violence every time they disagreed about anything, I’m left tremendously disappointed by what’s going on in American society today as I enter the twilight of my life.