Do you find parents/other older relatives depressingly negative about The World?

[UnquietDad]

Spun off from MistressMaker's "clashing" thread so as to avoid going off-topic there.

My mother is 80. She is depressingly negative towards the 21st century. She sees any post-1970s innovation as contributing to the decline of society - even though she has patently benefited from modern medicine and labour-saving devices, and enjoys the added value of a home computer (which she is terrfied to use unaided) Sky box, washing machine, home grocery delivery, modern car with power steering, etc.

Things were "so much better" back "then". I'm not sure when "then" was, but by the sound of it everbody was living in somewhere very like Thrush Green as written by Miss fucking Read. And everyone was white, obviously.

Is this sounding familiar to anyone?...

We get a lot of "I just don't know what the world is coming to" and "I fear, really FEAR, for the future" and "This is not our country any more. It really isn't."

So I end up defending the world we live in despite what I know to be its shortcomings. I even find myself defending things I myself have not been totally happy with, like over-reliance on the internet and over-use of fossil fuels. I just don't want the DCs to come away from visiting grandma with such a negative vibe about the world they are growing up in!...

Yes, We have four in their 90s and five in their seventies. They all do it. It is starting to worry me. Are they right ?

I start to think like that too. "What if they're right?"

Well I guess they were young "then" & had their life ahead of them.

They do have a lot of experience after all. However, I think we are exposed to more doom and gloom info these days that is probably most of it.

My mother is 68, and has been banging on about how fab the 60s have been since forever.
In the last 10 yrs she has become more and more negative about the present, actually, she is scared by how much the world have changed in the last 20 yrs.

I agree with diddl, it is mostly because they were young.

My mother grew up during very optimistic times. We are Italian and Italy knew a huge economic boom in the late 1950/60s.

I think it's also that, when they were young and carefree, there wasn't the availability of all this doom and gloom news. There isn't more of it now, it's just more easily accessible.

Exactly dogfish. My mother has surprisingly good memories of the ww2 (she was tiny) and of the post war yrs, still she seems to be thinking that the present is just unbearable

This, in a nutshell, is the paradox. They spend a lot of time telling us how fortunate we are, how much more we have than they have, how lucky we are to have central heating, not to be dying of rickets and not to have had to fight a major war. They spend the rest of the time telling us how wonderful everything was in the 1950s before all those nasty hippy types came along and women got the Pill and everything went to pot, and how much harder and harsher the world is to live in today.

Forgive me for seeming dim, but both views can't be right.

Or is it that the world is harsher but only for them?

Well my mother think that the 1960s, the Beatles and rock and roll were the best.
I think they find the world harsh for them, and difficult to understand. They have fears. I have fears too, but that's another story.

I think, imho, its a life stage for quite a lot of people, its a stage of ageing and not being very happy about it.

My parents are so cyncial - everyone is up to no good and can't be trusted.

My Dad was berating me for leaving the plumber in the lounge on his own whilst I was upstairs MNing working. Never mind that he's a mate of DH's and we've nothing worth pinching. I should be watching him like a hawk because 'you can't trust anyone these days'

My mum is like that too, potplant. It is quite shocking how she mistrusts even the people who are helping her out. When we were selling our last house and showing to viewers, she repeatedly exhorted us "don't let any of them out of your sight".

My mother, also 80, is barking and also comes out with some real shockers. Unlike yours, OP, she's neither a technophobe nor a bigot - but makes up for it with her many bizarre ideas. And everyone in her tiny, remote village is convinced the world's criminal community wants to get into their back gardens

Mind you, I'm 'older people' on here and haven't yet been overcome with cynicism. I fully intend to get madder & madder as I age, though! When I am an old woman I shall wear purple, with a red hat that doesn't go

My dad is an angry ranter of the disappointed-socialist variety, although strangely spouting more and more conservative lines as he grows older (nobody reads anymore, people have no morals, that kind of thing).

To be fair to my dad though, the last thirty years have been massively disappointing to socialists. He has also lost a son, an ex-wife/dear friend (my mum) and been tormented by his shitehawk of a sperm donor father even in death, so ranting at the state of the world is a less emotionally dangerous way of venting his spleen.

the last thirty years have been massively disappointing to socialists

Indeed they have. And to women.

Oh yes. No doubt if my mum had lived she would be ranting away as well.

My mum thinks our generation have it much harder than hers and I'm far more pessimistic than she is about the world.

If your mum is 80, she's been through the war. I think the wartime/immediately post-war generations might possibly have a tendency to feel like this, out of fear, mainly. I often wonder if a lot of psychological trauma was caused, not individually but collectively.

(I'm 38 and haven't been through the war, and I think some people nowadays are completely pathetic in terms of what they feel entitled to and how they compare themselves with others and find themselves wanting and are just bitter or bloody needy. But that's not the same thing.)

I do feel you're right about the effects of war, iso. I could go on about it for ages ... but won't.

There was still rationing through the first ten years of my life, 'displaced persons' were a regular feature and the streets still looked like rows of broken teeth, with the insides of bombed houses pathetically rotting in the rain. Then things changed - very fast - for the better. We weren't unaware of wider problems but, for us, I think there was a collective feeling of "Phew! It's all over!" Life seemed good. And it all turned out to be so shaky; so much optimism & hard work invested in a fragile bubble.

Things really have improved - a lot - but, once you've been through (at least one) war, the social upheaval that followed and two boom/bust cycles, I should imagine your golden dreams look a little tarnished. And you would be cynical!

I just realised I said 'not individually' but there must have been some people who were desperately, desperately traumatised.

My Dad is only 66, but I have to steel myself to visit him. Can't go if I'm feeling a bit down, becuase it's so depressing to listen to him.

Everything is wrong with the world and it always seems to be my fault!!

you're right about the effects of war, iso unprune sorry!

I don't know I find even young people seem to be so cynical about the world now which annoys me a bit. Everyone seems to see progress as being a negative thing. Actually everyone seems very negative nowadays. It pisses me off a bit.