Quote Originally Posted by dunfiddlin View Post
No, you don't! Society wasn't any better or worse a decade or a decade of decades, or a decade of decades of decades ago. You'll find complaints about how people don't socialise any more, how everything's about sex or fads or hero worship, and generally how everything's going to Hell in a handcart in the literature of every era since writing began. I once gathered together quotes on the state of society from writers from the 400 BC to the present day, modernised the language so that any clues to age were removed, and asked a bunch of people to identify what periods were being talked about. Needless to say, there guesses had no more accuracy than random!

Memory is an unashamed liar. It is to be trusted no further than you can jump wearing a lead suit! What you remember is a comforting illusion designed specifically for the purpose of obscuring the sheer tedium, frustration, pointlessness and misery of real life! We are predisposed to believe that all that went before was better than it was and thus better than it is.
There is a lot of truth to that and that was my point about my "youth of today" post. But...we aren't publicly burning witches anymore. That's a plus