Comparing Memories to Current Observations

Posts often appear on Facebook and elsewhere about the good old days. Remember when we used to play outside with the neighborhood kids, even though who was a friend and who a foe alternated frequently? We ran and climbed trees and built forts from sticks or snow—whichever was at hand. We didn’t talk about exercise; we couldn’t avoid doing it because we walked everywhere. We didn’t know the word diversity, but our groups were as diverse as our neighborhood population. Unlike in school sports, we couldn’t be too fussy about who we chose for our teams. We welcomed whomever happened to be home at the time.

Today, we blame electronics for gluing kids indoors and exposing them to online predators. But parents have reasons for not objecting. Rarely are children caught in the crossfire of automatic weapons when they’re at home. Unless the parents are unforgivably careless with their firearms, the weapons of choice of most children are made of pixels instead of plastic. Their greatest danger of physical harm lies in schools, concerts, and movie theaters where they may be targeted for being alive. Their emotional maturity remains at risk due to limited socialization, and why not?

Can you imagine having a teacher given tenure or appointed superintendent in your old school—someone who had been convicted of sexual misconduct, grossly unethical business practices, failure to pay employees, public ridicule of women, and active advocacy of replacing our democracy with a dictatorship, among other misdeeds? ARE YOU KIDDING? I’m shocked that the families of those who’ve fought for our freedoms over the years are so quiet when their sacrifices may be negated. My straight-laced parents would’ve removed me from that school district immediately while others would’ve initiated honest lawsuits. At the very least, parents would have lost confidence in education and stopped supporting it. Of course, they have. Who can believe in an educational system that rewrites history to suit local prejudices and bans books that make young people think about and discuss their values? What’s the general goal of education now if not merely to prepare a workforce? (No wonder BRAVE NEW WORLD is one of the targeted novels.)

What do I miss about the good old days? I miss buying something and paying and that’s that instead of being forced to utilize a morass of secret words and expensive anti-spyware that never seems to be quite up to the job. I recently spent an hour trying to update my credit card on a single site (after the previous card was compromised somewhere). I miss trusting that when I answer the phone or heed an alarm on my computer, the message is valid—not an attempt to steal identity because my husband and I are old people and too trusting.

I know in the past, mining towns, among others, suffered horrific contaminations of both air and water as well as destruction of swaths of nature. Employees were used—not like animals (who were often prized as meat), but like toilet paper or cannon fodder. Now pollution is everywhere—including contaminated oceans. People can still fish in a stream or lake like Andy Griffith and little Opie—for a fee, of course, but they shouldn’t eat too many of the fish they catch for fear of being poisoned by mercury or other rogue chemicals. It’s not even safe to drink tap water in many places—if there’s access to water in the first place.

I hope for a future in which more people feel responsible for one another and the life around us, when more adults act like grown-ups instead of tyrants. I hope employees will no longer be paid as little as possible, bearing the weight of the profits the stockholders demand. I hope people will become worried about the final consequences of both our declining life spans and dwindling cognition. (Do you suppose there’s a link between our toxins, our lies, and our declining quality of life?) We’re told we the people are in charge. We can be if we recall the values we once professed and what they should look like now. It won’t be easy to face down the giants, but it’s time.