I miss the old America

Every time period has their issues. Every time period has their progress. The fact of the matter is that in a lot of ways now is the best time to be alive (COVID notwithstanding). Does that mean that now is perfect? Of course not. Does that mean that there aren't dips (like COVID)? Of course not. You have to realize that an upward trajectory does not happen in a linear fashion, and that despite the upward trajectory there are still always going to be issues.

What this kind of nostalgic mindset entails is a focus on present issues and a disregard for present benefits, and a focus on past benefits and a disregard for past issues. Essentially, you're so focused on how life currently sucks that you're idealizing another time period as a means of escapism. This exact escapism is what led you to become addicted to pornography in the first place. Stop escaping your issues and actually work on your self and life. Feel gratitude for the blessings in your life, and stop wasting mental energy longing for a time period that only exists in your imagination and never actually existed. That's right. Your conceptions of what your ideal time period were like are absolutely nothing like the reality. You have no idea what it was actually like living in those times and you never will.

Some great information for understanding this:

1. Steven Pinker - Enlightenment Now (book)
2. Actualized.org - Spiral Dynamics Series (multiple youtube videos)

Understand how societal progress works and you'll understand why past nostalgia is blind and a waste of time. Focus on making yourself and your present as good as you possibly can and you'll never wish to be anywhere else other than your present.

 

I hate the idea that things are continuously getting worse and worse.

In reality life on the macro scale gets better and better. Think about the 60's and such: PC's didn't exist, you couldn't go on the internet and talk to people like your doing right now, paying people back was a paid before sites like venmo, if you couldn't understand your HW you were screwed, medicine was a lot worse, more people were in poverty, jobs were more dangerous, most jobs were labor oriented, you could get drafted into a war you didn't like, etc. Yes, some people would rather go back to a certain time, but as a whole life gets better and better. It's easy to see how everything is just not as good as it use to be, but in reality its the opposite.

 

Yes, I don't live in the US. It's hard to pick anytime before WW2 because of so much racism.

 

And I expect they'd be people growing up in the 50s or 80s that wishes they grew up in a different time. Really it's just silly to say such things since every time period had it's own problems.

You can't look to the past and say those people were better than us. There's never a golden age of anything, there's always a different form of conflict going on. - Joanne B. Freeman

 

No one said that one decade was better than the next. I just think that a lot of people would feel more comfortable in past decades where things were much less complex.

 

I find it funny people fantasize about living in some perfect time. I find it funny because I know that no such time ever existed and I also find it funny that people try to find reasons to assume the worst of those people and project problems onto them.

That being said I’m guilty of all of the above myself. I also fantasize about living in some ideal time without all that negative stuff, just the good stuff. As the saying goes “having my cake and eating it too”

 

I think the years 90s were the best. When the hiphop culture was in the truth sense. I wish to would born in 70. Daamn.

 

wow you sound very smart

 

Thanks for starting this cool thread. I’m curious what would be the one thing you would really miss from doing on the computer?

Regarding cell phones, I honestly would be OK with just the old flip phones + google maps. That would by my ideal lol.

 

Same, good point on the music, I do like instant music and my habit/task app - Tick Tick. So revised list to instant music, maps, Tick Tick and calls/text. Kind of how I have my phone set up. Streaming apps etc I honestly prefer to just have from the TV.