It's a shame everything had to change
I guess we'll disagree my friend.
I often see that line of thinking on the music game thread too, that the best music has all been made and it's over, that today's music sucks. It's the same petrified thinking our own parents had.
If things never changed we wouldn't have vaping, and we'd still be killing ourselves, or dead already, from nasty cigarettes. Even though big computers came out in the 1930's (?) or 40's, or earlier, I'm really not sure, if that science hadn't progressed we wouldn't have personal computers and the internet, which led to our circle of friends right here at VU. Because of pc's and internet we can get information and entertainment from almost anywhere in the world. The "information era" has made it harder for politicians to get away with lying and propagandizing us, though many sheeple have been shown the water but have refused to drink.
I can agree that some things didn't ever need to move forward. We need to back up agriculture and health care by about 100 years, to the time before the petroleum based crop chemicals and pharmaceuticals, maybe even to before petroleum based transportation. If the petro demon never moved forward we wouldn't all be living in fear at what's going on in the world today. To me that's the whole meaning of the title of your wonderful thread idea, thinking of what once seemed hard but now looks good. When you, yourself Jimi, turned neglected soil into a cherished garden where your soul lives and works, you took control of time.
If we ever realize it's up to us to direct how time rolls out, we can make the passage of time something to celebrate rather than regret. I remember hearing recently of a ring road proposal in the Canterbury district of England, where planners want to restrict automobile traffic through five adjoining neighborhoods, allowing only in/out car traffic for those who live there, otherwise only foot traffic, bicycles, golf carts, between these five neighborhoods. A ring road approach was proposed so that residents can go in and out of their own neighborhoods without driving through any of the others. People immediately had the knee-jerk reaction of griping about government interference in our lives, but I thought hold on, isn't this what we want? We pay the bureaucrats to tax us to death while making rules to make life miserable while doing nothing about poor planning, pollution, noise. My beef with the so called green new deal is that it's about restricting us and taking things away, without giving much thought to real alternative plans for more pedestrian zones, expanded green belt, alternate car traffic grid plans so that people can travel on their bicycles or kids can walk to school, moms can push prams and people can jog or walk their pets without being choked by air pollution or mowed down by 2,000 lb. petroleum powered weapons. But the Canterbury controversy was something I heard about only once on one guy's podcast, though it is real and can be looked up online. Our news organizations are not set up for any real discussion or debate. We're told what we'll have and even what we'll want, and on the whole we accept that setup.
A few years ago I read a wonderful book, "Planet Walker" by John Francis. After an oil spill off the California coast resulted in the decimation of aquatic and coastal wildlife, very visibly and horribly ugly, his heart was broken. He vowed never again to board a petroleum dependent vehicle. He began walking everywhere, even from town to town when he had to be somewhere. In his book he reminisced about visiting relatives in the country as a child, where his train was met by the relatives being visited, and all of them walked a mile to the homestead. Nobody though it was unusual or difficult.
We have adjusted our lives to convenience, not the other way around.
Oh how I'm wasting peoples time with my always excessive writing. With the progress of time, fast fingers have replaced the big mouth, but if someone is yelling on the street corner, it's harder to ignore than closing a browser window and escaping my happy fingers obnox.
