60 years of cultural changes

People might say to you, "Things are better now than they were in the 1950s." Well, having actually lived through the 1950s the REAL answer is both "Yes!" and "NO!".

In regard to men and women getting along things are both much better and much worse simultaneously. In regard to one man being able to support 4 or more people things are much worse! In regard to women's liberation and rights things are generally much better for women but also in other ways worse. And in regard to men things are also both better and worse.

For example, a woman is less likely to marry a man only for money and destroy his life simply because she generally now has much more access to both money and education and jobs. Also, a man who has gay relationships is much less like to marry a woman without telling her about them because of the increasing openness in our society of such things. Also, he is more likely to tell her because he might bring her AIDS and kill her indirectly if he cares about her at all when he marries her. So, these are very good things. Also, if a woman really hates men now she is more likely to live alone and men who hate women are more likely to live alone and not destroy the lives of those they marry for a variety of reasons.

However, in some ways things were much better for many people in the 1950s. It was safer in general then and there was a much more feeling of order because vigilantism was much more common in actuality. However, this also caused many problems in many segments of society. Though law is obeyed more now in general, all people then enforced the law to both better and worse ends. Just like in the 1800s people took law into their own hands more in the 1950s and before.

Now, it has drastically changed and there are only now, hardened criminals and gangs and generally law abiding people. This has created more of a police state "Big Brother" mentality and polarized people now in extreme ways. This kind of polarization did not really exist in the 1950s, at least not in the same way as now. I would say the world now is about 100 times scarier culturally than it was in the 1950s if one eliminated the constant threat of world nuclear annihilation that one experienced 24 hours a day from about 1950 until 1989.

The problems with Russia and China now don't take us completely back to threats of world nuclear annihilation. However, the likelihood of small countries like Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and possibly India or Israel or Iran becoming nuclear craters has increased.