To think that many older people look at the past through rose tinted glasses

[Mammylamb]

I’m on a lot of local chat groups on Facebook, many of which are really interesting.

But every week or so, there will be a post lamenting the good old days when supposedly everything was great and people were just better, men were men, kids were well behaved and women looked after the home(although they had less money)

Every time I see these posts I just get intensely irritated; kids and young people today are not worse behaved than in the past (many young folk seem to have better manners than older people). And the old days were not perfect, child abuse and domestic violence were rife. Men were legally able to rape their wife.

Aibu to get irritated by this

I’m thinking of people born in the late 40s / early 60s

@HappydaysArehere. Agreed with nearly everything you said there

The 90s were an optimistic time and I don't think the particular flavour of Westminster government has all that much to do with it. The cold war had ended, apartheid had ended, peace talks were moving things forward in Northern Ireland and Israel/Palestine. There were horrors too, in the Balkans and Rwanda, and Afghanistan but it seemed a time when the world was slowly moving in the right direction. Can't say as I feel the same about the noughties with the destabalisation of 9/11 and subsequent actions and the banking crash.

Emoji they were just elected in 1997

I believed in Tony Blair, fool that I was. A lot of the great stuff I think we had was wrecked by him.

I do wonder if it's more about the direction things are going than individual governments. I'm not a "committed x voter" - have voted Labour and Conservative.

The Gravediggers strike was one area of the country for 10 days in 1979, not the entire 70s.

I suspect that, when you are their age, @Mammylamb, you'll do the same.

I'm in my mid-50s now, and I am starting to feel the effects of encroaching old age - I'm less mobile, new technology takes longer to master (and no sooner have I mastered something, but the next version comes out, and my knowledge is obselete), the pace of society seems so much faster than it did when I was a child, or even when I was a young adult - basically, I feel out of step and behind the times.

I'm sure this is a normal part of getting older - and I can see how that would lead people my age and older to look back to when they were young, vigorous, and full of health and vitality, and think that life was better than it is now - and from there, it is a short step to investing everything about that time with a rosy glow.

I bloody hate the ‘good old days’ nonsense, even though it’s totally human nature. We are wired to notice the bad, and nowadays there is much more information telling us about bad.

Never mind that the evidence objectively shows that things were not better back in the day. They were different. My mil declared that we ‘don’t have summers like we used to’. Never mind that the evidence shows hottest summers of the last 100 years are in the last decade.

I had a nice childhood but I have not forgotten what my big Northern city was like in the eighties. It was pretty bleak.

It seems like such a self defeating narrative, too. Why look back to a past that objectively didn’t exist? Would it not enhance wellbeing to enjoy what’s good in life now?

reet are you the ghost of my dad? That's exactly what he said!

@SDTGisAnEvilWolefGenius my parents are in their sixties and seeking out new technologies. My mum especially - she says she would probably have taken a different career path had consumer technology been as available as it is now. I’m not sure it’s age alone, maybe how you feel about aging and I would imagine health plays a part on it.

@AutumnRose1 :D haha great minds ;)

@reetgood I think some people of any age find technologies easier and some find them harder. But it does get harder to learn new things as you get older. I have studied and passed qualifications, but it takes longer than it used to.

my mum didn't know how to use the internet till she hit 70 and thought she ought to learn. I don't think it's age related. She has a much better brain than I do! I take forever to learn bloody anything.

she's currently trying to explain music theory to me - she's now 81 - and I just feel a right plum because I don't get any of it.

My dad would tell you the 80s were infinitely worse than the 70s were he alive to do so. He was one of the millions upon millions who lost his job and never found anything beyond low paid temporary work again. He wasn't even 40, younger than I am now.

London may have had yuppies and loads of money. We had mass unemployment, devastated communities, depopulation and heroin addiction.

There was the Light programme, which became Radio 2/4, so one channel with music and news

Not true. Radio 4 was the Home Service.

@reetgood - I take your point about technology not always being a problem for older people.

I guess what I was trying to say was that, when I look back at my 20s and 30s, I feel I was able to cope so much better with life then than I do now - basically because I had more energy, I suppose - and that is why it seems like a better time for me than now.

@AutumnRose1 Your mum may learn things faster than you, but it does take longer to learn things the older you get. Ageing does have an impact.

Simple solution then OP...at 60 we should all have our FB turned off and any happy memories from our youth wiped from our minds so we’ll never speak of it again. That should help solve your irritation issues....until it’s your turn.

If people want to look at their lives through rose tinted glasses then why does that trouble you?

Ageism is still an ..ism, it’s just becoming more and more acceptable these days.

I'm in my early forties and I don't feel at all sentimental about my younger years (yet).

My DM definitely does, she's in her seventies now and it was a strong factor in her voting to leave in the referendum. I think it's a natural and understandable phenomenon but when I listened to my highly educated, professionally employed (now retired), clever mother reject logical arguments on Brexit and vote leave because she missed the Britain of the 1960's and 70's (her words) it was somewhat frustrating. My DM was young and just staring out in life during that period, the economic and political conditions were not good at all and the IRA was actively bombing pubs in Birmingham where she lived - she even barely missed one bombing by a matter of one hour, but she was young and optimistic and that's what she is really missing IMO.

Here's the thing, we'll all experience this nostalgia at some point. The shitty past will seem golden to us. As someone nowhere near that point yet, I can clearly see and appreciate how much harder life has become for people in their twenties compared to my generation even - tuition fees, austerity, house prices, stagnant salaries... It's not rocket science to admit that some of the most important facets of our society have been broken, if not destroyed and future upward mobility and prosperity for most people is a dream they won't get to enjoy.

I’m not really a nostalgic person, however, I genuinely believe that the 90s were the sweet spot for the UK and this was for the majority not just a few people like in the 60s. The late 90s were an optimistic time.

It’s started the slide downhill after 9/11. People started to become more fearful and mistrustful especially with the invention of 24 hour news and social media (I know I’m currently on it). This has mainly been a negative influence which allows dysfunctional people to find each other in order to engage in crazy talk and thinking. You only have to look at the current royal family threads to see the sickness in action. People wishing divorce on people etc. Previously people kept their strange thoughts to themselves which I think is better for the health of society especially as now the news seems to be driven by craziness on Twitter.

If you're old and life has lost a lot of it's pleasures because you can't get around or you're in constant pain, or just not ageing well then of course you're going to look back on the years when you were young and see them as better.

A great many old people are on loads of medication that can make them feel tired or depressed. Getting old can be pretty shitty.

I'm 7. I'm lucky. So far I've managed to keep healthy, apart from high blood pressure. I enjoy my life. I'm opened to new ideas, take an interest in life, I'm active, have hobbies I enjoy and don't look or feel my age.

I don't look back and talk about the 'good old days' because I'm fine as I am now. Although, I would love to feel that I have my life ahead of me instead of behind me.

Life is not easy for old people if they're finding life hard. I'm sure that a lot of people who find the 'good old days' thing irritating will be saying the same thing when they're old.

Tellmetruth4 I think we all have times when our lives were at their best. For me it was the late 60s and most of the 70s. That's when I had most fun.

Some things have got worse, some things have got better. But what I see much more is what rainbunny talks about. Thinking things were better in the past in a wave of nostalgia, while denying it is nostalgia.

So university fees now exist. And the numbers of young people going into university or further education has soared. There are pros and cons.

House prices have increased, but more people than ever before are living alone. The number of households has exploded.

Austerity and stagnant wages affects all of us, older and younger people. The economy goes up and down. I lived through the previous recession with very high unemployment. It is shit and hard. It also happens cyclically.

I’m not nostalgic at all. Growing up in the 60s - 70s for me was hard, cold and miserable. The overt racism as an ethnic minority was awful and reflected in tv programmes of the era. As children we were bullied at school, there was no help if you fell behind in lessons and school in general was a sink or swim environment for many children. There wasn’t even the concept of SEN unless a child had severe impairment or disability in which case they often boarded at special schools and were not part of their own community.

There were strikes nationally and globally huge unrest and distrust peaking with the Cuban Missile Crisis where we were within a hairs width of nuclear war.

I prefer the present day warts and all. There will always be plenty personal, National and global strife but the past was not a better place.

To be fair, I do it myself. I was only talking to my partner last night saying I wish I could go back to high school, as I loved doing the work and learning things, and spending time with my friends .. but the more I think about it, the more of the hideous bullying starts to come back to me, and I think maybe I'm better off as I am now ..

Tellmetruth4 - I completely agree with you! I think the 90's to even the early 2000's was a time of economic growth and general optimism and importantly the internet and 24hr news hadn't caught on yet!

I think the effects of 9/11 were greatly amplified worldwide by a burgeoning internet and the spread of 24 hour news beyond CNN (the original creator of endless news coverage). We are now simultaneously numb to the constant news backdrop but subconsciously stressed by it I believe.

I'm a terrible example of this, first thing I do in the morning is turn my phone alarm off and check all the (mostly depressing) news updates. Consciously we think we shrug off the news, fires in Australia - that's far away, Trump being crazy again - that's far enough away etc. But it all adds up to a constant background of bad things happening all around us and making the world a scary place. Psychologically speaking it rather explains the Brexit vote in some ways.