The good old days. Good riddance.

First of all, there was no comfy toilet paper. To me that's the first sign.

The good old days. When everyone held hands, everyone was friendly, tolerant, neighborly and well off. When life for all looked like this:

In Reality, it was more like this:

Am I the only person who thinks that we live in excellent times? I was asked this the other day and I had to apologise for thinking life is really good right now. Not saying globally. Just as far as I can see. Western world mentality.

Here’s my logic: - infant mortality is almost null. The rate of people born for a life of pain and illness is almost null. We haven't conquered viruses, but we have tamed many bacteria. Old people live very comfortably, painlessly, hygienically and socially in nice retirement homes. Women are no longer baby factories and rape is illegal. Even in marriage or on dates. Clergy is no longer almighty and practising religious beliefs no longer serves as an excuse to torture somebody. Some prisons feel like spas. Human rights are at its best since forever, even if only recently women could be put in nuthouses just for being sexually active. Insane asylums are actually kind of pleasant. Food is absurdly abundant, so much so that we have to hold back from eating too much of good stuff. Also, now we know what proper nutrition is. It wasn’t always like this. Nobody owns only one pair of shoes anymore. Nobody. And one thick shirt that was passed from the eldest child to the youngest – that’s fairy tale material. Dentistry is effective, if still a fucking fright. Reading isn’t illegal or discouraged. Having a cunt is no longer a curse. Nobody cares about politicians and their lunacies – unlike once upon a time, when a ruler was free to rape your child and throw your parents to the dogs if he or she so felt like it. You are no longer allowed to shoot or hang people just because they looked at you funny or they looked funny to you. Money is not a cast norm – you have it, that’s nice, you don’t have it, you’ll be okay. If two people from extreme social circles go on a date, they have the same things to talk about. They won’t get burnt on a stake. Movies are allowed. EVERYBODY is educated. Everyone is tolerated. Benign drugs are allowed. Don’t remember if prostitution is, but it’s getting there. Fashion is a hobby. You can shave your hair off and nobody will notice. Gay people marry. Short people and people with Dawn's Syndrome can be movie stars, not circus freaks. Children get to play until they’re 35. Dogs live as part of the family. You can travel anywhere, everywhere on this whole planet – some even off it. Technology is available to everybody. Nobody is cold, hungry or sick. Not really. You get paid for planning to do something artistic for fuck’s sakes. People give money to art! In advance! Hello??

Ye, of course the whole planet is not Shangri La and lots of places still suck donkey balls, but not here. People are consta in desperate need and shit still happens, but if poor folk from a hundred years or a really poor part of the world saw our poor folk, they’d laugh. Twelve kids sleeping in the same bed, five under the kitchen table… My dad grew up like that and they were rich in his village! He didn’t feel particularly poor for having no shoes or a tiny blackboard instead of note books to learn on. He quite liked his childhood. By modern standards he was the worst off child ever. But no, he really wasn’t. Kekec was sent off into the highlands to watch over stock when he was, like, ten. These days fucked up spoilt brats are infallible. Kids are treated like gods. Hungry gods. 
I can think of at least one woman who's never worked a day in her life and she lives, single, horny, in an apartment the size or a palace, throwing parties and telling people how poor she is, usually in the span of a day. 
Okay, but then again such have always existed, probably even in caves.

There were times when not having money to pay for food wasn't an economical hiccough - it was a life long tune. Now we just kind of blame "the government and the bankers" and wait for it to pass so we can go back to being all fat and snobbish again.

Whenever I consider poverty - compared to the places I've been and people I've met, my country, these days, sums up to:

People will always whine.

People will always have awfully short-term memory.

There will always be exceptions, but mostly

People will never ever look at their life and think: Lucky me, I have just enough.