Unfortunately, the more technology humans develop the more they throw biodiversity and ecology out of balance. When I look around the world at the changes or even just look at California where I have lived since I was 4 it makes me sort of horrified at the changes.
When I was young I believe there were only about 2 1/2 billion people on earth just after World War II when I was born. By 1950 I could stand up on the back seat of my father's 41 Buick that his dead brother left to him after World War II when he went missing. And even though I fell down going around corners sometimes at age 2 or 3 I learned not to cry when my head hit a door knob or window winder handle (there really weren't electric windows much yet then until the mid 1950s in new cars) because I was supposed to be macho and not acknowledge pain like my father. Later, when I was 6 my mother was learning to drive (there were no seat belts then) my face hit the front window or dashboard and I tried not to cry as my mother ran over a mailbox in her attempts to drive a column shift 3 speed stick shift, (a 1941 Century Buick) then in 1954 when I was in first grade.
Life was very different then. It was crazier than now in a different way than now. People were more pragmatic because people died a lot more and a lot younger then. It was normal then for people to be dying of whooping cough even though I didn't and from Polio (I never got that but my best friend I met at 10 had had it and recovered okay).
But, as I grew up with really bad smog in Los Angeles I experienced in summers not being able to see more than a block often in Los Angeles. And if you started crying from the sulphur smog in the air from all the cars and you were outside you couldn't stop crying on a really hot smoggy day in Los Angeles. Also, in the 1950s cars didn't have air conditioning much yet. I think it was maybe 1960 or 1965 when we got our first car with air conditioning. So, when it got 100 or 110 or 115 with smog in Los angeles you just got a headache and brought out a fan with a bowl of ice or something. Or if you didn't have the means you just died in the heat if you were older or infirm.
Like I said people died a lot more younger then, both as children and adults of all ages. I remember people in my church dying like flies at all ages. But most of them didn't have to die they just didn't believe in Western Medicine and chose to die rather than go through doctors to cure their ailments.
So, I watched many beautiful people die. I always thought they were kind of stupid not to go to doctors, even though my parents didn't really believe in doctors except for broken arms or legs either.
I guess what I'm saying is people have always been pretty ignorant, but people were more common sensical and practical in general than they are now.
It's much easier to be unrealistic now than when I grew up. If you were unrealistic when I grew up you usually died before your time and were gone by 20 to 30 years of age. People seemed grown up often by 12 to 15 years of age. 15 year old girls often went to live with men 20 to 45 years of age then. This was actually pretty normal for girls who didn't plan to go to college or finish high school. I saw a lot of this even though I didn't think it was right it was what people did then in the early 1960s and late 1950s.
This kind of went in a direction I didn't expect and so you sort of see what I saw in the 1950s and early 1960s instead mostly in Glendale in the Los Angeles area.
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