What happened?

[Ijustwanttoretire]

I have recently been on a couple of seminars regarding climate change. I am pretty much ambivalent about it but am getting more interested, and i do 'do my bit' for what it's worth. ANYWAY... it got me thinking. I was born in the 60s. My mother never went shopping without a shopping bag (oh! the embarrassment of everyone seeing what she'd bought in her string bag ), if we went for a coffee we sat down and drank it, I played out all day and never died of thirst because I didn't have a bottle of water with me at all times, in fact bottles were glass and you got a deposit back on return. You get the picture. So in the last, say, 45 years we have gone from not having any of the above, to an environmental disaster. What the hell happened? I don't recall riots demanding bottled water, or plastic bags in shops? Why aren't the XR protesters targeting big businesses, who are a darn sight more to blame than your average man-in-the-street. 45 years is really not a long time in the scheme of things, so how did this happen so fast?

We got lazy.

Everything has been geared toward convenience and we've got lazy as a result.

Big business, advertising, communication, business is there to make a profit, not for our benefit. People are greedy, and most don't know or care about the effects on the environment or others, as long as their service is quicker, easier etc.

Everything has been geared toward convenience and we've got lazy as a result.

Only because we have built a life for ourselves that means we all have to work like hamsters on the wheel to keep a family housed and fed. It would simply be impossible to live a 60s lifestyle on 2010s income.

Like many of my friends families, my DM was able to stay at home on my DFs wages so we didn't need (and couldn't afford) a freezer. That meant a trip to the local shops every other day (which of course kept the high street in business ...).

There are of course a myriad ways to address the situation. But until they are even discussed (because none are at the moment) it's fair to assume there's a total lack of interest in really doing something. Well beyond some smug facebook posts that is.

Progress happened. And any change comes with it's pros and cons. The problem is you can't go back. People don't want to! So not sure what the answer is. The world is overpopulated. Not much we can do about that really!

The problem is you can't go back.

A casual trawl through history suggests you certainly can. And like rolling back down a hill, a lot faster than you went up.

Probably better not to teach history (looks around) oh - we've already done that.

It didn’t happen that fast. We only noticed it as things are getting critical and it certainly has accelerated as more people means more factories more cars more air travel more haulage more rubbish. Consumers are the end users - if no demand then no supply.

Everything is about cost. Cost to companies, cost to families, cost of time. I Don’t have time or money to go to the butchers and then the greengrocers (that is only open until 3pm and 1pm on Saturdays) as I have to go to work.
In a lot of cases, we don’t have much choice. I am choosing to reduce plastic in many ways. Some things are beyond me right now.

People always say that it wouldn't be possible to have that lifestyle now. Was talking to my Mum about this. I was born in 1960 and she brought up 3 children at home while Dad went out to work. Our lifestyle was so much more frugal than people's now. It wasn't that a better lifestyle wasn't available, we didn't have it because they couldn't afford it on Dad's wages.
3 meals a day, no snacking unless on apples. Sweets once or twice a week. They never went out and only drank alcohol on special occasions. Portions were adequate, but not large enough for food to be wasted. Mum cooked everything. Dad grew veg. Heating was only on when essential. Clothes and baby stuff - handed down. If we went on holiday it was to stay with Gran and Grandad who fortunately were a bus ride from Margate. Where the highlight of the day was fish n chips on the beach.
When I was in 6th Form, where we could choose what to wear, I basically had one pair of shoes, two pairs of trousers, 5 blouses and jumper for school wear.
I think a lot of families could afford the 60's/70's lifestyle on one income, but if they did they would be considered to be living a very tough life, possibly on the verge of poverty.

"A casual trawl through history suggests you certainly can. And like rolling back down a hill, a lot faster than you went up."

Example?

Example?

What of ? Declined civilisations ? Well it wasn't exactly a barrel of laughs when the Romans collapsed. Nor any of the civilisations before them. Although I admit, they didn't have Facebook, so should have seen it coming.

More recently, of course, the reversal of Venezuelan fortunes should serve as a warning to all.

I don't really mean that though. I mean people won't go back to not using mobile phones/not using conveniences like washing machines etc. When it comes to overpopulation people aren't going to say "Well I'm 75 now so I'll refuse treatment for cancer so there aren't so many people living much longer lives" etc. So it's all a bit academic really. We can try our best to improve what we're doing but we'll never go back to the days like the OP is talking about. We progressed quickly for lots of reasons.

Example?

• The fall of the Roman Empire
• Dark Ages - quite a period of time where Historians believe life was worse than it had been previously or at least less 'civilised' - (believed by some to be due to the fall of the Roman Empire)

- The Ottoman Empire

• Islamic golden age
• Mayan civilisation

-The Incas

• The Aztecs
• Babylonians
• Ancient Egyptians

So So many fallen civilisations. I would imagine, the living standards of the average person would have fallen during/after each one:

So So many fallen civilisations. I would imagine, the living standards of the average person would have fallen during/after each one

Indeed. All civilisations in history have fallen. There isn't a single extant one. And the gaps in between aren't exactly ClubMed styles of living.

My unpopular view: Television. Simply that above all. It created generations who all wanted the fake lives they saw depicted in their favourite soaps, bolstered up by the clever advertising that guilt tripped into buying x,y or z A whole new lifestyle was pictured on screen in your living room and dissatisfaction grew apace with it.

That was the start in my eyes. An unrealistic idea of life.

The juggernaut of capitalism has gathered pace.

DH and I have been talking about this lately in terms of the waste that comes with having a baby. We use cloth nappies and wipes because we don’t want them to contribute to the endless tons of disposables ending up in landfill, and have been pleasantly surprised by how much better they are - the cloth nappies contain so much more than the disposables, one cloth wipe does the job of 5 disposables. And yet our friends with babies won’t consider them because washing them is ‘too much work’. Similarly I use reusable sanpro, but loads of my friends won’t because it’s ‘gross’. People have become unsustainably wedded to the idea of throwing away anything that’s seen as ‘dirty’. The truth of the matter is that a bit of baby poo or menstrual blood won’t kill you, whereas constant use of disposables will kill the planet, but people will ignore this basic fact for their convenience.

My childhood in the 60s.
Dad worked fulltime, mum had a part-time (low paid) job in a school that have her the holidays off. It was not at my school so a few holidays didn't quite coincide with mine so on those days I stayed at home alone for probably about 6 hours alone, I was aged from about 9 onwards.
We had no telephone, no central heating. In the winter you washed downstairs in the morning because the kitchen had a paraffin heater lit. Weekend fun was going for a walk as a family . Meals out very very occasional ,maybe 3/4 a year . In the summer we would go after school to an outside swimming pool. I was around 10 when my Dad got a car, mother never learnt to drive .
From that age holidays were camping, only about 50-70 miles from home.
I was loved, fed and never went hungry.Food would have been basic, but always made from scratch, hardly any convenience good around from memory . Whatever I was given I was expected to eat and not leave anything on the plate .
I don't remember a household full of gadgets . A tin of beeswax for polishing , thin bleach for the toilet. Old clothes were used as cloths and washed for re-use . Your clothes were fixed, buttons, zips, let down etc. It was very much make do and mend.

It is capitalism. Loads of effort/money is put into making more money and what is better for making money than things you buy, throw away and buy again? What's better for making money than creating the desire for something more expensive just because it's more expensive? Loads of effort and money is put into making people want to buy things and have things and look a certain way so that money keeps sloshing around. The only way to stop it is for us to stop behaving in a way that treats the movement of money as central to everything. I would love to know how to do that and I don't -nbut I don't think it starts with individuals who are a product of all that effort and money spent. I mean it could, but that's not going to be that effective - it starts with the puppet masters - the owners of big corporations etc who are made the richest from this system.

Even when I got married in 1983 and we brought out first home... we'd saved and saved for 3 years. Hardly ever going out. Picnics in the countryside at weekends. We moved in with borrowed furniture, mattress on the floor, someone's Nan's old black and white telly... I get it in the neck if I say this to my family, but they "can't afford" their own place because they haven't saved hard enough. Living at home for 6 years on minimal contributions they could have a deposit by now but instead, they go out all the time, have holidays abroad several times a year, all the latest in phones and other toys. It is a different world, where people expect so much consumer stuff and aren't prepared to compromise.

Remember when everyone got an old banger for their first car and quickly had to learn how to maintain it?

It is capitalism. Loads of effort/money is put into making more money and what is better for making money than things you buy, throw away and buy again?
Absolutely this.

@Izzabellasasperella I also agree. I believe the only way we can make a significant collective difference is to stop consuming and when we do buy only buy sensibly.