Keeping Prespective

cjandme

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“Imagine you were born in 1900. On your 14th birthday, World War I starts, and ends on your 18th birthday. 22 million people perish in that war. Later in the year, a Spanish Flu epidemic hits the planet and runs until your 20th birthday. 50 million people die from it in those two years. Yes, 50 million. On your 29th birthday, the Great Depression begins. Unemployment hits 25%, the World GDP drops 27%. That runs until you are 33. The country nearly collapses along with the world economy. When you turn 39, World War II starts. You aren’t even over the hill yet. And don’t try to catch your breath. On your 41st birthday, the United States is fully pulled into WWII. Between your 39th and 45th birthday, 75 million people perish in the war. At 50, the Korean War starts. 5 million perish. At 55 the Vietnam War begins and doesn’t end for 20 years. 4 million people perish in that conflict. On your 62nd birthday you have the Cuban Missile Crisis, a tipping point in the Cold War. Life on our planet, as we know it, should have ended. Great leaders prevented that from happening. When you turn 75, the Vietnam War finally ends. Think of everyone on the planet born in 1900. How do you survive all of that? When you were a kid in 1985 and didn’t think your 85 year old grandparent understood how hard school was. And how mean that kid in your class was. Yet they survived through everything listed above. Perspective is an amazing art, refined as time goes on, and enlightening like you wouldn’t believe. Let’s try and keep things in perspective."

Author unknown
 
Yeah, my grandparents were born on 1909, and i have oftern thought about those things. And electricity, plumbing, cars, radios, televisions, airplanes, moon landings, and Commandos.

Prior to 1921, diabetes was 100% fatal within 6 months and more feared than cancer. I would have been dead. Smallpox, Polio, Measles, AIDS...

An incredible 20th century, really.
 
A good post CJ. But written from an American perspective. If you want a REAL hardship story about the 20th century, write it from the perspective of growing up in Soviet Russia or Communist China...

In the name of social equality those guys killed more of their own people than the combined total in CJs post...

How the f**k does that work ?!?
 
Was the thread title a deliberate hook to catch those who DO sweat the small stuff???
(Just asking)
 
Put your mask on all of you. You are trying to kill me. I've been triggered. You have no idea how close the world is to ending.
Ask Greta. Run, all is lost...!
I think every generation thinks the worst at some point. As for me I just look at The Calamitous Fourteenth Century.
Today is a cakewalk.
 
Staytite said:
Luckily they have found water on the moon so we Norton owners are saved

Best get a large order in for pies to increase the effect of gravity

And does anybody know which jets and slides I need for Amals on the mood?
Click to expand...
Not sure but apparently the ‘stay up’ floats work well...
 
Both my parents folks were born in 1800’s , my Nanny told me once she married my Grand dad because he had the best team of horses in town .... they lived through it all ,he passed in’72 my Nanny lived well into the 90’s ... we very much behind the times here I grew up with lots of friends who got running water indoors in mid 70’s ..... I was lucky that was one thing we did have , just no car until after I was in grade school ....
 
My parents were born in 1914 and 1927. (My Father it seems was somewhat economical with his age at courtship)

My fathers father knew WW1, my father WWII, (Pacific) he lost both his parents before the age of 10.
My mothers father (Grandparents) bought a 1000 acre farm I guess after the depression, there was no power in those days being far from any grid, I remember going there at Christmas, power by then and (iirc) the chugging of the Lister in the milking shed, the old Essex under the pine tree's, riding on the David Brown with my cousins.
I remember my mother telling me of her younger brother being found floating face down in a run off in one of the road building camps during the depression . (My Grandfather being a bullock driver and cook)
That generation were from another time which is gone and dare I say somewhat forgotten.

I have worked with people who complain about getting only $4000 per week.
 
This is in danger of getting like the Monty Python 'Four Yorkshiremen' sketch
Things ought to have improved a bit since the Black Death.

Look at this graph for COVID-19 today (John Hopkins University of Medicine https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/mortality) and if you live in the UK weep.
(Please feel free to weep elsewhere).

Keeping Prespective


Our incompetent Government (paid for by us), useless government-employed public health 'experts' (that's paid for by us) and years of austerity have led us to this.
We are beyond piss-poor. But international comparisons are so dangerous!
Andy
 
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The guvmint made me go and play outside when it was Coviding.

Tell that to the generation of early 1940.
 
My first boss trail cutting for a sawmill told me he quit school when he was twelve to work in woods , back then they stayed in camps deep in woods as winter travel was almost impossible , he told me they had Sundays off only and he would take up a collection and walk all day to nearest place he could buy Tobacco and candy , then back to work Monday yarding logs out with a horse ....
 
DevonNorton said:
This is in danger of getting like the Monty Python 'Four Yorkshiremen' sketch
Things ought to have improved a bit since the Black Death.

Look at this graph for COVID-19 today (John Hopkins University of Medicine https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/mortality) and if you live in the UK weep.
(Please feel free to weep elsewhere).

View attachment 19795

Our incompetent Government (paid for by us), useless government-employed public health 'experts' (that's paid for by us) and years of austerity have led us to this.
We are beyond piss-poor. But international comparisons are so dangerous!
Andy
Click to expand...


As we’ve discussed before, the statistics are bad, not least becasue of their unreliability !

We were told we’d be seeing 4000 covid deaths per day by now. Now we’re being told it’s 500. If you look at excess deaths on the ONS records it’s at around 1000 per week, or 143 per day. For perspective, remember than 1650 per day is normal.

Interesting you mention austerity... there’s gonna be a LOT more of that post covid than there was before (as we’ve debated before).

Leaving us rather broke and frighteningly vulnerable for the next pandemic (as I’ve argued already).
 
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One of my grandfathers, after being involved at end of WW1, got Spanish flu, and was put in a hospital section labelled ‘ not expected to survive’.....
but obviously did....
 
'The good old days' never were that. When I was a kid we used to live in a hole in the road with sheets of corrugated iron for blankets. But we were not indoctrinated.
I have 5 young grand-daughters. Life for them will probably be tougher than it ever was. We are accustomed to having it good and so are they. It is unwise to extrapolate the present and expect the future to be better. We have a global population explosion which might tum the world into one big termite mound. The potential for a mass extinction has never been greater.
I was talking to a farmer a few days ago. He put this problem in terms of overstocking a farm. But did not see himself as part of the problem. As with any prediction, nothing is immutable. Our future is in our own hands.
 
Our problem might be that we all believe each others' bullshit and cannot rise above it ? If you wanted the world to be perfect, can you imagine what it would look like if it was sustainable ?
 
acotrel said:
We have a global population explosion which might tum the world into one big termite mound. The potential for a mass extinction has never been greater.
Click to expand...


"By 1985 enough millions will have died to reduce the earth's population to some acceptable level, like 1.5 billion people." ~ Paul R. Ehrlich

"In ten years [i.e., 1980] all important animal life in the sea will be extinct. Large areas of coastline will have to be evacuated because of the stench of dead fish." ~ Paul R. Ehrlich

"I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000." ~ Paul R. Ehrlich

"Actually, the problem in the world is that there are too many rich people." ~ Paul R. Ehrlich

"People have not made the connection that the more of us there are, the more greenhouse gases go into the atmosphere. The Chinese have. They, unlike us, have a population policy. The right wingers just don't understand that the country they're in is probably the most overpopulated in the world, the one doing most of the destruction, and the one with horrendously bad leadership." ~ Paul R. Ehrlich

World Population today 7.8 Billion.
We produce more food more efficiently than ever.
 
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