The Golden Age

I have been really lucky. I was born half way through the 20th century. We didn't know in the 1960s and 1970s that we were living in the Golden Age.

When I was growing up it was not normal for the Mother to work. It certainly was not a financial necessity that she do so in most cases. Thus kids for the most part were raised by their own parents and grandparents, not by some day care center and/or the TV-Internet.

In my childhood the company my father worked for was a good company, but not exceptional. He had a non-union job, but even so he had fully company paid health insurance which covered the whole family, and the deductibles or co-pay were trivially small. He had a good pension plan, and the company paid for this too. The workers were expected to take their vacation each year, so that the whole family could get to see Yellowstone, Yosemite, the Painted Desert, and Disneyland. Yes, my Dad worked hard, and he was loyal to the company. In return the company treated its employees well and always fairly.

Antibiotics were readily available, and the diseases how not yet morphed into the types of bacteria which were resistant to virtually all safe antibiotics. For us teenagers of the 1960s, female birth control and the pill were readily available, and no one had ever heard of HIV/AIDS. So for a very brief interval the concept of “free love” was a reality. Even for us nerds and geeks.

Meals were cooked at home from real food, and were not highly processed or filled with various chemicals. Kids mostly walked to school with no fear of rape or kidnapping. Priests were not sexually molesting the boys in their congregations. Clean drinking water was mostly available to everyone in the developed world, as were flush toilets and sewage treatment plants. Everyone had electricity and a refrigerator, so foods did not spoil so rapidly.

There have been real improvements made in communication namely cell phones and the internet.

But there have been many areas where we have lost ground. Employers no longer have any sort of unwritten moral contract with their employees to treat them fairly and properly. It is now clear that almost all companies only care about greed and profitability. Many millions of Americans no longer have any health insurance, and most workers certainly do not have an adequate company paid retirement program. Children are raised by day care and the TV because both of their parents have to work just to get by. Much of the country's manufacturing base has moved overseas and the good jobs which allowed workers to make a living wage have mostly gone by the wayside. In much of the country it is no longer safe for kids to walk to school.

In our idealism of the late 1960s and early 1970s we had no idea that the Golden Age was relentlessly rushing to a very bad ending.

I see no sign at all that mankind is going to do the necessary to prevent severe global warming. Carbon dioxide levels continue to rise, and people keep driving their big SUVs. It is more than possible that some suicidal, religious fanatic terrorist group is eventually going to either get their hands on a nuclear weapon or a “dirty” bomb, and then actually detonate it. Capitalism and greed are making the world's economy swing through incessantly stronger boom and bust cycles as national economies become more and more unstable. What we see happening to Mexico and Greece is just a prequel to the dishonesty and corruption coming to America. Obesity is becoming the norm, and internet addiction is not uncommon. Gorillas, bonobos, dolphins, polar bears, tigers, and many other wonderful and intelligent animals are becoming extinct. The Amazon rain forest continues to be cut down to enable agribusiness to grow more soybeans for more processed foods. Coral reefs are dying around the planet as the oceans become warmer and more acidic from all the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

I feel genuinely sorry for the kids of the twenty first century. These are not just words, I really do feel sad that my son is not going to have as good a life as I had. I do not have a strong conviction that the youth of today have the moral strength to fix these problems either. My forecast for the future therefore is almost entirely negative. What a pity. It really could have been different.

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