Why does it only seem like things were better eons ago? Scott Behson breaks it down.
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Everybody seems to think that things were better before, like when they were younger.
Every time I hear what passes as popular music today, I start to agree with that sentiment. However, in all other aspects of society, things are WAY better today than they were before.
A few examples:
In baseball, if you asked people to pick the best player at each position of all time, the list would include: Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Honus Wagner, Walter Johnson, Ty Cobb, et al. All of whom played about 100 years ago.
That’s just stupid. Players today are waaaaaaaaay better than they were 100 years ago.
Remember little league, when 1-2 kids who hit puberty early absolutely dominated- they threw 80mph and the other kids had no chance, or they would hit .800. That’s what happens when the talent pool isn’t very deep- the best players REALLY stand out.
When there is more talent and competition, there’s less domination and fewer outliers. Fewer Babe Ruths hitting 60 home runs when the #2 guy “Home Run” Baker hits 13.
Today, baseball players come in all colors and from many countries. They train better and harder. Jose Reyes would kick Honus Wagner’s ass. There’s no legitimate argument that baseball players aren’t waaaaaaay better than those who came before, but because sooooooooo many of today’s players are better, it doesn’t seem that way.
Same thing goes for so many walks of life:
Jackie Gleason seemed like a genius because there were 5 other tv shows at the time and the rest stunk. Today, there are thousands of unbelievably funny and talented people on youtube—most of whom are funnier than Gleason. It just doesn’t seem that way.
Ben Franklin seems like an inventing genius. But seriously, his stuff was very low-hanging fruit—bifocals, a stick to get books from a high shelf, and moving the wood-burning stove to the middle of the room!!!!!!!! Seriously (although, if you ever had surgery, you should give him your eternal gratitude for inventing the flexible catheter). The researchers working today on human genome projects and stuff are way better, but don’t get the publicity.
Ok, Homer’s Illiad is the worst book ever written, and almost turned me off reading forever during freshman year of high school (thank goodness Of Mice and Men came next). But who else wrote books back then? No one. Plus, ooooh, it’s super-old so it MUST be genius.
Bull. There are thousands of authors looking for a book deal who could write rings around freakin’ Homer. But the Illiad was a long time ago, so he’s better than Stephen King.
So, the next time someone tells you about the good old days, and how things were so much better then, resist the urge to punch them in the face.
Instead, just chuckle, shake your head and then sit in your air-conditioned room, open a beer imported from Belgium, make a free video call with people halfway around the world over the internet, and watch someone run a 9 second 100-meter dash on your 80 inch HDTV.
I get the sense there is a lot of whistling in the dark behind this piece, which is stranger because you’re a prof at FDU. – Back when I graduated college, it was easy to get a decent paying job and begin living an adult life after graduation. – The only kids who actually moved back in with their parents were those with mental health issues. – Almost no one entered adulthood carrying an immense burden of college debt. – The middle class was broader and deeper, with much less divide between the haves and the have nots. Today, the… Read more »
I think a part of the fondness for the past comes from what I guess you could call the Pioneer Effect. In baseball, if you asked people to pick the best player at each position of all time, the list would include: Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Honus Wagner, Walter Johnson, Ty Cobb, et al. All of whom played about 100 years ago. Guys like this were some of the very first stars of major league baseball. And you also didn’t have to worry about a scandal over performance enhancing substances breaking out every other season. Jackie Gleason seemed like a… Read more »
Please send me links to the dozens of Mozarts who must be onYouTube somewhere.
I’m having a bitching case of writer’s block.
Could the “good old days” be more of a reference to people and their attitudes then life in general appearing to be better? I laugh when I hear young people talk about Woodstock … it was crazy and something that can’t be done in modern times. It can’t be done simply because people are different now. So Woodstock for some would be “the good old days” … it was more then the event, it was an attitude, a feeling of freedom which was breaking away from societal norms. Babe Ruth was great because the sport was an institution, an American… Read more »
There is also a fallacy here, which is akin to the Egg of Columbus (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egg_of_Columbus). Yes, many of Ben Franklin’s inventions seem obvious in retrospect, but that’s only because we’ve had bifocals for three hundred years. What matters is how different someone was from the surrounding environment they thrived in. An average baseball player today has access to training methods nobody would have dreamed of back when athletes were barely even professionals. Of course the early novels were nowhere near as well written as today’s — the judgement of their historical value is that they broke the mold. The first… Read more »
There’s a couple of heuristic mistakes I think that people make when they look back at a supposed golden age; one is we are more aware of the crap of today than the crap of the past, because the crap of today is current and still has a high profile; no DJ is going to play a song that stunk in 1968, but he will play a song that stinks right now because it’s current, and he will play good songs from all eras because he happens to like them; same goes for programmes repeated on TV, films you watch… Read more »