to think modern life is rubbish

[maryjolisalondon]

Working full time, paying huge amounts of rent / mortgage just to have two days off a week. Only getting a few weeks holiday a year. Traffic and getting to work and school then making food often only leaves an hour or two a day free. Then if you get sick more and more companies only pay SSP. For people under 40 its also looking like retiring even in your 70s won't be possible for the average Joe.

I agree with you op.
I think we live in a world were we work, work, work.

Women carry on working until their babies are born, years ago no pregnant woman worked after 6 months.

I've read on here about woman who start their commute at 6.30am after waking and dressing the baby at 6.00am, drive an hour to nursery, drop the baby, carry to work and do the reverse in the evening arriving home at 7.30pm.
Modern life can be sheer drudgery and IMO not to be aspired to.

The physical and mental strain must be enormous.

Better food, any classic book available for free, podcasts, netflix, gay marriage, things like abuse, mental health and bullying taken more seriously (although there is obviously progress to be made), no more bright orange kagouls, wool hats no longer itchy, indoor toilets standard, access to education on the internet, many illnesses now curable, eradicated or manageable.

I could go on, but I am quite glad to live now.

If someone asks if they are being unreasonable, they're going to get responses from both sides. If they just want a moan, post in chat and say so.

Sheesh can't people just reply to an AIBU with YABU these days

Women carry on working until their babies are born, years ago no pregnant woman worked after 6 months.

And many, many women are very happy to work. I'm not saying everybody has to be happy about working, but I'm very happy that I neither caused a scandal by having 'a child out of wedlock' nor was sacked when I later got married.

I love that album

I hate threads like these. Just the fact that we can post a message like this and instantly get replies (sympathetic or not) from all over the world proves that modern life is NOT rubbish. This is the first time in history that that's possible!

I really do understand what you mean. I think that we have been sold the idea that material things will bring us happiness.
When I was younger, we thought society would move forward, there would be less unemployment as people shared jobs, leaving individuals free to fulfil their dreams, to contribute in so many ways to community and to society.
Instead, global corporations see us all as mere cogs in the machine, only worthwhile if we can exchange our labour for money, and they will pay as little as they can get away with.
I know that I am incredibly lucky to have been born into the Welfare State, my health and social needs met "from cradle to grave".
(Though maybe not until the grave as the NHS is being made ready to be sold of to more faceless corporations when TTIP is introduced.)
I am lucky to have all the resources of power, water etc.
However, these resources don't belong to ''me" and my fellow citizens do they? They are commodities to be bought and sold, to make profits for a few.

This country isn't the forward- thinking, creative, open-hearted place it could so easily be.
I am scared of the future, worried for my children and grandchildren.

Sounds like you are really fed up of the grind OP and you have got a point. Most of the women I know are working fit to bust to try and keep up with servicing debt. That does feel like madness. What would you like to change most about your life? Is it possible for you to make that or any other changes which might help?

I feel a bit like that occasionally. Not sure if it's to do with the era or just the daily grind of life/work etc. Sometimes you do think "bloody hell...how many more years!" I don't think people really will be working beyond their 70s. I hope not!

Otoh I am mostly very happy and cheerful and certainly thankful for all the good people and things in my life.

I hate these whiny posts. Oh my big modern house full of luxuries is sooo expensive, we both need to work!

Which golden halcyon days would you like to go back to? The 1950's, when you weren't allowed to work after your marriage and couldn't access contraceptives, and your housework took all day? Maybe further back, when you couldn't vote or have any rights and you were out working from the age of 8 unless you were moneyed and couldn't get an education because you were a girl, and half your children would die before they were 5? r

It's all nonsense anyway. You both only have to work because of the choices you yourself have made, and you don't appreciate the luxury of having those choices in the first place.
So your life isn't perfect, make some changes. But you live in relative luxury in one of the most comfortable and wealthy countries in the world. You have so much to be thankful for.

Gok - I think most of us will, I've just started a new career at 56, so has my DH .

Agree with countess - many people have so many 'luxuries' that these things become 'essential'. Don't get me started on the ipads for 3 year olds and all the Christmas present threads .

So because we now have iPads we are not allowed to be saddened by the decreasing social mobility and declining quality of life?

Modern life is good-ish.

It got a second series, so it must be true!

Decreasing since when? Declining since when, and compared to what?
Just because you think its all going to hell in a handbasket doesn't mean it actual is.

Real wages have been going down for decades, its just the invention of debt thats kept these at bay. Debt just makes people modern slaves.

The UK did peak some time ago for quality of life. With the eye watering debt we can now look forward to increasing taxes and reduced public services.

Because we have iPads we can download Dickens and be pretty cheerful about comparative social mobility and quality of life.

Of course there may be specific reasons for sadness, but on balance I think modern life in the UK is pretty good.

Yanbu in some ways. Life can seem like a big competition and so many people are unhappy. many things are not valued as they should be and the cost of living has shot up. I am lucky we have a small mortgage but we do have a fairly tiny house and i really wanted to be a sahm which i have been for 16 yrs. i would have been miserable in ft work. However am starting pt soon.

"The invention of debt"?! I don't think it's a new thing...

If you sold your ipad, plus your car, dishwasher, washing machine, etc, and mad your own clothes and food, kept animals to slaughter, kept chickens, had your shoes repaired instead of replaced and downsized to live in yor parents' house (all like in the olden days), you could afford to quit your rat-race job. So do that! If you're really so nostalgic for how we used to live.

I get where you are coming from op.

There is loads about modern life that is a massive improvement but I'm not convinced the population is happier now than they were decades gone by.

The beauty of modern life is the freedom of choice. Some of us have more freedom to choose certain things than others do, but we ALL, to a certain extent have a choice. . .sounds like you need to make some changes.

Just to put things in perspective, would you prefer to be a preened housewife of the 1950's, where the days revolved around the needs & wants of your husband, children, housework, having sex on demand, no contraception options, no real freedom to work if you wanted to (if married). . .yes sometimes modern life is a struggle but look how far we have come!! Would you really want to go backwards?!

Threads like these actually prove just how privileged our life is today. If you've got time to be unhappy about having work, kids, a car, food, and someone to pay you money if you get ill, you've really got nothing to moan about.

I've read that people are happiest in war time. Threads like this make me believe it! But well done for finding an excuse to feel unhappy even when you've got so much.

Personal debt sure is.

All those things are more costly anyway. Dishwasher and washing machine save money as they are a++ and water is expensive. Also meat is much cheaper from supermarkets than it would be making your own. Try again.

If you've got time to be unhappy you've got nothing to moan about

Invention of debt? Yep, that new fangled thing, is not like those lovely times was a time where you would starve to death in debtors prison when you couldn't pay what you owed. Or when you had to put your children in the workhouse because you couldn't pay back the pawnbroker/money lender for those pennies you borrowed to feed said children.

Things are so much worse now.

The UK did peak some time ago for quality of life.

I don't think YABU entirely. Definitely there is more equality and better healthcare outcomes, for example, and better laws protecting people. It's a marketing myth that we have been sold and consumerism and chasing after a nonexistent lifestyle where yes, you really can have it all. But some people seem to like it. Not for me and dh. He has gone back to uni and I am a sahm after having tried and failed to follow the supposed prescribed path that was sold to us girls at school. Get good gradeds, go to uni, get job, get career ladder, meet man, have kids, go back to work and all the time trying to service an impossible life. Interestingly out of a class of 25 girls only two ended up on that conventional path (we were told it was conventional anyway). And the commuting from London was hell. DH used to spend 4 hours a day for nothing much of a job looking back. What's the point in spending half your week on the Metropolitan Line?

That said, only you've got the power to change it. If you don't like it do something about it. There's always a different way.