Provide a 6 pages analysis while answering the following question: We Live in a Better World Today. Prepare this assignment according to the guidelines found in the APA Style Guide. An abstract is required. If you paused any time at all to listen in on the fairly fascinating conversation you were certain to hear someone longing for the good ‘ole days. Just about everything costs a nickel, folks left their doors and windows unlocked (apparently because the Lone Ranger, Superman and Batman were easily summoned) and they drove muscle cars built by American workers. It was utopia. Except it wasn’t. I walked away from the cluster of assorted aunts, uncles, older cousins and people, like me, standing around the perimeter who laughed at appropriate times along with the group but are not part of the conversation. The next couple of hours were spent an enduring brief, superficial chats but my mind stayed on the good ole days topic.
Were people happier and friendlier a half-century ago? Was life generally easier with less stress and fewer major concerns? While contemplating these questions as I pretended to listen to relative x, y or z, a long list of comparisons evolved. I became incredulous then strangely agitated at the suggestion life was somehow better in the 1960s than today. It was preposterous and the people who lived it should understand this better than anyone. Apparently, I felt compelled to vent this unnecessary outrage so I revisited, unprompted and without segue, the subject with a relative involved in the “remember when” conversation ensuring others involved also heard my enlightening, truthful, reality-based list of observations.
Yeah, it was better in the 60s unless you were a woman, minority, gay or a soldier. Phones came with long-distance service and a six-foot cord. Cars were faster but few had seatbelts. How in the world can the good ole days be better? Comparing 2014 with 1964 is like comparing an I-pod with AM radio or a laptop with a slide-rule. Sure, if you’re a white male life was better than all others but how many of them would willingly surrender their wireless remote? The nostalgia displayed by the women in the conversation was surprising. They must have forgotten that it was legal to refuse a woman for a credit card simply because she was a woman. It wasn’t until the mid-70s that this practice was abolished by law. Women seldom served on juries. The movie 12 Angry Men illustrates the point. Jury duty was a man’s job. Women’s responsibility was keeping the home, raising children and ensuring her husband’s happiness.
