Probably NO ONE would trade living in 2020 for living back in the 1950 without internet, cell phones, AC, supermarkets, advancement in modern medicine (myself included) – but are we wrong?
Back in the 1950
- super glue,
- power steering,
- Video tape recorder,
- first music synth
- transistor radio.
- Teflon pan
- computer modem
- Barbie
2020 life span is 78.93 vs 68.14 in 1950
There has FOR sure been some HUGE steps in quality of life.
YET There are some STARK differences that might make us think twice about saying “life is better now”
Michael Snyder writes in the Economic Collapse Blog about the differences between America 1950 vs. America 2020.
The last startling difference is the suicide rates.
In this episode we explore what went so wrong over the past 70 years that has led to the disintegration of the moral fabric of America society and what you and I can to do preserve the integrity of our family, society, and nations.
Referenced Links:
http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/america-1950-vs-america-2020
https://www.heritage.org/welfare/commentary/married-the-welfare-state
https://www.wsj.com/articles/youth-suicide-rate-rises-56-in-decade-cdc-says-11571284861
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/05/when-did-tv-watching-peak/561464/
Until next time… Be a purpose seeker, truth lover, and own your future.
To take more steps to live a focus life to achieve your dreams and fulfill your destiny–get my book Anchored the Discipline to Stop Drifting.
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Transcript:
[00:00:00.210]
Probably no one and I mean no one would trade living in 2020 for going all the way back and living in 1950 where we didn’t have the internet no cell phone probably didn’t have AC in her house. No Amazon Prime delivery no streaming on Netflix no supermarkets. Amazing advancements in modern medicine. But this is myself included. But the question is are we wrong for choosing to rather live today that we have a choice than in 1950.
[00:00:38.010]
Hey it’s Lucas robot and you’re listening to the Lucas crow about show where we uncover a purpose pursue truth and own the future. And before we get in today’s episode 1 share a little bit about my book anchored the discipline to stop drifting. I wrote this book in a time where I was drifting everything in my life was just listing and floating and I couldn’t figure out why.
[00:01:03.680]
So I started to write this book and I found simple principles that I was able to anchor my life in to help me see the world more clearly and live more disciplined. One of these ideas was doing less. I needed to do less of the shallow work the shallow busy work that feels good and instead devote my time and devote my life to the deep meaningful hard work that actually takes so much energy and focus to give yourself to. But it’s so rewarding. And you’ve probably heard of the 80 20 rule. It is basically that the 80 20 rule we need to do that 20 percent that actually makes a difference and cut out that 80 percent of noise and busyness from our lives and that is something that in many ways we are going to be talking about today. On this episode in maybe a back door side door manner also I love getting your questions and answering them right here on the podcast. Actually if you ask a question and it gets answered on the podcast I will send you stickers a bunch of stickers from me to you as a thank you for being part of the community and asking a question right here on the show. So if you have a question please. What’s that me a plus 1 2 0 2 9 2 2 0 2 2 0. Or email me or send me a message on Instagram. You know where to find me the link is in the show notes now back to the 1950s back in the 1950s. You know what was invented super glue was invented in the decade of the 50s. Power steering the videotape recorder the first music synthesizer a transistor radios the teflon pan. The modern computer and Barbie was all invented in the nineteen fifties. I mean can you believe living in a world where you didn’t have super glue. Imagine the world that you would live in no super glue. No cell phone none of the modern trappings that we have today the modern luxuries that we have today. Another thing that you wouldn’t have way back in the 1950s is your lifespan the lifespan in America in the 1950s was sixty eight point one four years compared to the lifespan in 2020 which is seventy eight point nine three. Pretty much 79 years is the average lifespan at least in America today in 2020. So there are some clear advantages for living in the day that we do live in. Not that we have a choice to actually go back but as we will see there has been some huge changes in the world since 2020 some as we have noted are really for the better but a lot of the changes that we see across at least American society and we’re gonna be specifically talking about some things that has happened in American society over the last 70 years in that we’re not actually talking about America in this episode we’re actually not talking about American society but we’re talking about your life. We’re talking about my life the decisions that we make where we choose to put our time energy focus and attention. We are talking about our communities our workplaces are our societies are countries that we each live in realizing that we can really have an impact we really can shape the world that we live in today by our actions by the things we come into alignment with. So as we go through this there’s the differences between 1950 in America and 2020 in America. I just want you to suspend the America bit and realize that we’re using it as an object lesson for our lives today because with the connected global society what we see happening in America is and will happen to all of us across the globe if we are not careful about how we order our lives especially in the connected world through the cell phone the fact that you are listening to this just proves that we are all interconnected in culture no longer is just contained into the boundaries of a community or a country by a geographical location but it’s stretching in reaching everywhere through our cell phones through the Internet. And that has an amazing positive effects through the network effect through our connectivity through our ability to share knowledge better and faster than ever before. But it also can have some extremely extremely negative down sides. So here are some of the stark differences that might make us think twice about whether life is actually better now or if life was better. Way back when in 1950. So I read this article by Michael Snyder a couple weeks ago titled America in 1950s vs. America 2020 and I’m going to read a couple of the stats that he lays out in this article. The link to the article is in the show notes. In 1950 Michael writes The Texaco Star Theater The Lone Ranger and Hopalong Cassidy were some of the most popular TV shows that Americans watched. In 2020 Netflix filmed entitled cuties is so trashy and so disgusting that four states have sent Netflix a letter asking for it to be removed because it is quote unquote fodder for those with criminal imaginations serving to normalize the view that children are sexual beings. A lot has changed since 1950 1950. Television networks would not even show husband and wives in bed together. Twenty twenty adult Web sites get more traffic than Netflix Amazon and Twitter combined. Crazy 1950s. People would greet each other as he walked down the streets. 1920 Americans are too enamored with their cell phones to be bothered with human contact and interaction. Now a lot of this is also due to how cities have grown in the business of streets and traffic. City planning organization that plays a huge role into how we are connecting with one another 1950s chewing gum and talking in class or some of the major disciplinary problems in school. Chewing gum right. Twenty twenty kids are literally gunning down police officers and in the streets right. It’s just crazy. Gang wars in America. Just insane 1950s people make an effort to dress up and look nice when they’d go out in public 2020. Most of the population has become utter slops People of Walmart has become one of our most popular needs. You’ve seen those means people just walking around Walmart just like like they didn’t even roll out of bed like they’re still in bed just wearing the most absurd things we’ve lost the sense of self dignity and respect and and presenting ourselves in respectable manners with in to one another in 1950s. The typical woman got married for the first time at age 20 and the typical man got married for the first time at age 22. In 2020 the typical woman gets married for the first time at 27 and the typical man at twenty nine those ages. This might seem like a insignificant stat but it’s actually really quite important and the reason that this stat is quite important is that we see the extension of adolescence and this is a specific ideology a tactic that is used to make people more and more dependent on the state because if people take longer and longer and longer to grow up longer to mature seem immature in adolescence longer then they’re going to become more reliant on the state more despondent and lack of a drive in their life. So this state stat is really staggering to me to see how society is changing with just the ages that people are getting married in America today 1950 a lot of people would leave their homes and their vehicles unlocked because crime rates are so low and in some places like here in the Gulf. Still people are leaving their homes unlocked because of low crime rates. But in America in 2020 many live in urban areas that are and are deathly afraid of the civil unrest that has erupted. Gun sales have soared to an all time record high in the 1950s. Americans actually attempted to parent their children in 2020 and this one’s huge and we’re gonna talk about it in 2020.
[00:11:23.690]
We pump our kids full of mind altering drugs and we let televisions and video get video games raise our children. We have abdicated our responsibility of parenting to media to the television to screens and video games. What is that doing to our children. What is that doing to our children. In the 1950s 78 percent of all households in America contained a married couple in 2020. That figure has fallen below 50 percent 50 less than 50 percent of American households have a married couple in it. And as we are going to continue to talk about on this episode having a husband and wife having a married couple in the home is a huge indicator for success for kids and it lowers anxiety lowers depression rates and when you have a broken family those things. The poverty rate begins to skyrocket. That’s just what the stats show. So that is a startling difference between 1950 and 2020 1950 about 5 percent of all babies born in the United States were born to unmarried parents in 2020. That number is up to for the percent for zero percent of all babies will be born to on married parents.
That is startling. In 1950 we actually had high standards for our elected officials.
[00:13:11.360]
And people actually did the research on candidates before they cast their votes. In 2020 more than 4000 people in one county in New Hampshire voted for a quote unquote transsexual Satanist anarchist in the Republican primary. How does it see carnage. Anarchist get elected or even any votes. It’s beyond me. In 1950 children would go outside and play when they got home from school in 2020. Where are our kids. They are not in parks or playgrounds. Those are empty. Instead we have the highest childhood obesity rate in the industrialized world. America has the highest childhood obesity rates in the world because they’re not going outside and playing and that a large reason for that happened in the 80s where we we began to become more fearful of the outside we began to protect our children more playgrounds became unsafe places and so we moved our kids from the front yards and from the streets playing to our backyards and then they migrated to the basements or the living rooms and they’re not as active today and we are paying the consequences for it. In 1950 front porches were the community gathering areas and people would regularly have neighbors over for dinner. In 2020 many of us do not know our neighbors at all. Now a large reason for this is because when streets become more busy and you start having two lane streets the amount of traffic that goes back and forth from houses significantly drops because just that the business of our streets and as societies move to big cities. We move from our front porch to our back porch because of the privacy. So that is a big change. And if we do not know who we live next to. If we do not know the community that we live in that will breed dis trust in the community. In 1950s the very first credit card was issued in the United States in 2020 Americans owe more than nine hundred and thirty billion dollars on their credit card. Nineteen fifty one income could support entire middle class household. In 2020 tens of millions have lost their jobs. Filed for unemployment and more than half of the households in some of our largest cities are currently facing serious financial problems. And here’s the last one. In 1950 most Americans were generally happy with their lives. In 2020 the suicide rate is at a all time record high and has been rising every year since two thousand and seven. Americans. Are generally but it by many of these metrics we could say that they are despondent they’re unhappy with their life. Suicide rates are through the roof in America. What is going on and what caused America to get to this point. Well as I said this isn’t about America right now. This is just an object lesson we’re using America as an object lesson so that we can learn what mistakes and what choices not to make and how to order our lives so that we’re making wise decisions for ourselves and for our families. So we’re going to take a 30000 foot perspective in some not all of the things that happened from 1950 to 2020. Again not all but what were some of the things that happened that led to these changes of American culture and what caused us as Americans to drift away from our original intent and design from health into this place of of of chaos and unhealthy that we see today before we can go and talk about what happened after 1950. We need to have an understanding of what happens before 1950 which really sets the stage for all of the changes that happened in America post 1950. And if we go back to nineteen twenty seven we find one big idea that really untethered Americans and America from truth and living around sound principles. And it was this idea that was put forth by Paul Mazur of the Lehman Brothers he was a banker and he wrote this. He said we must shift America from a needs to a desires culture. People must be trained to desire to want new things even before the old has been entirely consumed we must shape a new mentality in America. Man’s desire must overshadow his need. That was in nineteen twenty seven and that is a brief synopsis of everything that is going to follow from 1950 on as society began to throw off their fetters in re strengths to move away from being tethered to truth sound doctrine to the wise ways of living their life and essentially saying no whatever I desire whatever I want whatever my heart yearns for I should be able to have it and I should be able to have it now. So war were to end in 1945 and there is a massive push of industrialization to take all these jobs. All these people who have been fighting a war for a decade plus factories that were solely dedicated to servicing and giving resources to the war. Now they’re all sitting idle. What do we need to do to get this machine up and rolling to get people and the economy stimulated. Well this idea by Paul we need to move from a need to a desire culture. So that the media industrial complex began chugging away and we trained Americans to say. Go and chase what you desire. Forget about your needs forget about your responsibilities pursue your desires. Do what makes you happy and all the marketing all the messaging all the media was around that creating this sense of anxiety and lack saying you are missing out. You don’t have enough. It’s the whole keeping up with the Joneses. And as that began to take root in America we moved away from taking care of our responsibilities to being riddled with anxiety trying to keep up with the image that we saw. The image that was being shown to us through media through television through not just advertisements but programming through the news articles that we read through pop culture all of a sudden we start seeing I don’t have enough. I need more. I envy. I lost after I want I desire all these things. I want this lifestyle of freedom. I don’t want to be chained down.
I want to be free and once we began to buy into that lie. And when we began to throw off.
[00:21:13.080]
Our needs and our responsibilities to our relationships to our family to sound way of living we slowly began a decline leading us to the point that we see today. One of the big things that happened in the nineteen sixties that really further incentivized the breaking down of the family unit because a lot of this that we see what’s happening today is because of the breakdown of the family unit because we have lost family because we have lost mom dad kids healthy relationships healthy family unit the losing of that has created so many of the issues that we see today. In 1960s we had President Johnson and he did what was called The Great Society any declared a War on Poverty.
[00:22:09.630]
Now I probably like you but that sounds great. Who likes poverty. I don’t like poverty. You don’t like poverty. Let’s have a war on poverty. So what did they do. What was the way of having a war on poverty. Well they created a bunch of wealth for their programs and they created government education. They began to incentivize government education and they begin to incentivize divorce and single parenting. Now the idea was well we’re going to help single parents. We’re going to help single moms. We’re going to help kids in school so we’re going to provide finances for these things. But it actually had the reverse effect and we’ve talked about this before on the show how socialism how communism their goal was to disrupt the normative family unit and the way they did that was by financially incentivizing people to not get married. As one of the stats we’ve talked about earlier in this episode was that before in 1950 five percent of the kids were born to unmarried couples. But now it’s 40 percent in 1950s 78 percent of all households contained a married couple. Today that number has fallen beneath 50 percent. So here’s a passage from Robert Rector who is a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation and is a leading authority on poverty welfare programs and immigration in the United States. He writes this in the Herald on the Heritage Foundation Web site a major reason for the nation’s lack of success for the last half century has been the collapse of marriage. Marriage is a powerful force in reducing poverty. A single mother with children is four times more likely to be poor than a similar mother who is married. More than two thirds of all poor families with children in the United States are headed by single parents. But since the beginning of the war on poverty which was started by Johnson and the great society marriage has declined sharply. In 1964 seven percent of all U.S. children were born outside of marriage. Today the number is 41 percent. Society is dividing into two castes the top half. Children are raised by married couples with college degrees in the bottom. Children are raised by single mothers with a high school degree or less when compared to children in intact married homes. Children raised by single parents are more likely to have emotional and behavioral problems be physically abused smoke drink use drugs be aggressive and engage in violent delinquency and criminal behaviors. Have poor school performance be expelled from school and drop out of high school. Given the effectiveness of marriage in reducing poverty and other social problems you would think that strengthening marriage would be the top priority for the welfare state. Wrong. The welfare system does the opposite. Welfare actively penalizes marriage by reducing benefits when low income couples do marry. For example a single mother with two children earns fifteen thousand dollars per year won’t receive generally around five thousand two hundred dollars per year from the food stamp program. How if she marries a father with the same earnings her food stamp would be cut to zero. A single mother receiving public housing benefits would receive a subsidy worth on average around of eleven thousand dollars per year if she was not employed but if she marries a man earning twenty thousand dollars per year. These benefits would be nearly cut in half. The federal government runs more than 80 welfare aid programs. Nearly all of them provide very real financial incentives for couples to remain separated and unmarried. Now. If they’re remaining separated and unmarried. What’s happening to their kids. Well as Robert points out. If you have a separated unmarried household the kids are going to have behavioral problems emotional problems. Going to have much more likely to fall into drugs in criminal behavior they’re much more likely to have emotional instability. What’s driving depression and anxiety and suicide. Well it looks like right here we can see one major factor which is the brokenness of families across America the brokenness of family units.
[00:27:27.430]
So what does that tell us. What is the object lesson that we should take away just from that little fact. Well it’s we need to protect our families. We need to be focused on the responsibility of our families to protect our marriages to care for our children because the that the connectivity the safeguard of having a family where both mom and dad are married they’re staying together greatly improves the livelihoods and the emotional stability of our kids and of our society. And that is not something that you can go over to your neighbors and force them to work it out. That’s something that we have to stand up and take responsibility for in our life. So after this began in the 1960s we begin to see this domino effect into the late 60s and 70s and 80s starting with the cultural sexual revolution in America. And a lot of that was was pushed by marketing and this feminist movement now you might say well it wouldn’t fit feminism is good. Yes women having the freedom to go out and get a job to have equal pay 100 percent. It’s good women having the freedom to vote their right to vote. A hundred percent women’s suffrage is yes I’m 100 percent with you. Like anything else in my mind just seems absurd but that’s not what was happening in this sexual revolution it was actually a marketing push so that women would enter the workforce not stayed married and spend their expendable income on buying more goods and services. Now this is a lot of times people say well this is you know the reason that capitalism is so bad this isn’t capitalism we’re talking about this is consumerism and there’s a big difference between free market capitalism and consumerism and creating a culture where we are we are trained and taught and conditioned to consume more and more and more. This all leads to the legalization of abortion. Roe v. Wade. Where now we can freely just get rid of our kids. There’s no responsibility we’re throwing off those fetters are saying I want to do what feels good to me right now in the moment during all this time America is involved in the Vietnam War where our young men are coming back from the Vietnam War addicted to opiates causing drug rates to soar across America. Suicide rates overdose rates to soar unemployment rates to soar the Vietnam War extremely destructive all of this is wrapped up into this furthering snowball effect leaving it to more pot poverty leading to more depression leading to more suicide and more broken families all around this narrative of do what makes you feel good. Narrative which is only further pushing the brokenness of families and is all connected back to the media complex. So if you look at TV consumption in America from the 1950s to 2010 2020 we see that in 1950 the average family watched 4.5 hours of television day 1960 that rose to five hours 1970 that rose to six point to five hours. 1984 were up to seven hours of television a day two thousand were up to seven point five hours of TV a day. And it peaks at 2010 at eight point nine hours of TV a day.
And in Broken families where both mom and dad are working we’re now raising our kids. And it’s not even um broken families and in any family.
[00:31:40.340]
Where Mom and Dad are exceedingly busy with work exceedingly busy chasing their own ambition chasing their own desires instead of us parenting our children or putting our children in front of the screen and that screen is telling them what is valuable. It’s saying you do not have enough not just the advertisement but the entire production. We’re watching TV shows like Friends like like the Simpsons like Murray. We’re watching all these shows that tell us this is what you should pursue. This is what’s ok you don’t need to stay married you don’t need to get married. You can just enjoy your life do what makes you feel good. And as we start to do that we actually gain more and more anxiety in our life because we’re trapped in this cycle where the more that we tried to do what makes us feel good the more that we realize it doesn’t make us feel good so we do more of it. And we get into this addictive cycle and it all comes back to the question of what are we beholding. You know I used to think and sometimes I still do that like well what we think about the creation of the world what we think about our origin and what we think about our value who we are who were created to be that that greatly affects the way that we are going to walk out life that we’re going to live out life. That the disciplines that we set up but more than that it’s what we behold what we set our eyes on what we fix our attention on that essentially becomes are guiding North Star and if we are beholding social media right at 2010 the numbers of TV consumptions drops to about eight hours a day by 2017. Why. Well we’re trading TV for social media and social media is specifically designed to have addictive behaviors baked into it. So with every Buzz we have a dopamine rush and doping the effects of that. The endless infinite scroll on Facebook and Instagram and on Snapchat and on on tick tock that infinite scroll we can never catch up with there’s never enough we can never we can never finish it and it produces anxiety and it causes us to every moment that we have an idle moment we pick up the phone and start scrolling again and we’re seeing image after image messaging after messaging. If I’m missing out I’m not connected.
I need more.
[00:34:31.949]
In 2007 the smart phone was born and interestingly enough the suicide rates among those aged 10 to 24 increased nearly 60 percent between 2007 and 2009 18 according to a report released by the Center of Disease Control and Prevention. The rise occurred in most states with 42 experiencing significant increases of 42 states experienced and significant increase. Nearly 60 percent the suicide rate increased from six point eight per 100000 in 2007 to ten point one per 100000 in 2018 the report compared three year averages of suicide rates for 2007 to 2009 in 2016 to 2018. The Wall Street Journal writes this. Some medical health experts suggest that social media use among teens might be fueling the increase in mental health conditions and leading to greater suicide risks. And some early studies have linked smartphone use to anxiety depression sleep deprivation among adolescents. The recent visibility of suicide in the media what we behold and online might also increase the suicide rates. Now how much are we on our phones well the majority of Genzyme smartphone users say that 64 percent are constantly connected online with 57 percent admitting that they feel insecure without their mobile phone generation Z spends an average of four hours and 15 minutes per day on their mobile phone with 95 percent of them owning a smartphone. Seventy eight percent consider their mobile device the most important device to go online compared with 74 percent of millennials. That phone is connected to us at all times and we are on it at all times with every Buzz we are picking it up how many times you pick up your phone a day. These social media platforms are designed are engaged to trigger our minds just like being addicted to gambling or cigarettes or opiates. It does the same thing to our minds and it leads us to high levels of dissatisfaction. Where we’re living in this virtual reality world. And it does not crowd us. It does not connect us it does not satisfy our relational needs even though it feels like it should and we keep on searching more and more for it. So we scroll more and more but end up being more and more dis connected so what can we learn. Well first what we behold we become. And second what we incentivize we produce. And third we cannot change the world around us as much as we think that we might like to. As much as we tell ourselves that we’re able to as much as society tells us those that we should. But what we can do is take responsibility. Well we can do. Is realize that we need to become individuals that are rooted in grounded in love and truth seeing the world rightly. And walking out our purposes in the earth. Walking out with hi felt fidelity to our relationships to our spouses to our children’s to our loved ones to walking with integrity and uprightness in the midst of an a day where everyone is just pursuing their own desires by doing the hard work that matters rather than chasing the shiny things we need to learn that it’s dying to our desires and not trusting our hearts because they’re just so deceitful they just deceive us all the time our desires deceive us. Instead we need to commit to do what we ought to do not what we desire to do which takes time and energy. Time and energy to build those boundaries and disciplines in our life not only for ourselves but our relationships and for our children’s and for our communities so it might final charge to you is whatever is true noble whatever is right whatever is pure whatever is a lovely and admirable if anything is excellent or praiseworthy. Think about such things for what we behold. We become what we behold.
We become so what are you beholding on social media.
[00:39:43.940]
What are you beholding by your ears and what you’re listening to what music are you beholding what values are they exulting. Are you beholding within the confines of your home area your marriage. What are you beholding within the confines of your community. What are you laughing at. What are you accepting. What are you normalizing.
Are you are you valuing your relationships.
[00:40:14.100]
Are you valuing if you’re married are you valuing placing a value on staying married knowing that that’s going to have a huge impact on your children or when you’re going into marriage. Are you saying you know what I’m going to do. We divorce is not in our vocabulary we are if we’re getting married we’re staying married and we’re gonna have kids with inside that marriage because we know that that is going to set our kids up for success not just worldly success not just having a great job or a great education which will help but having emotional homeless and solid ness. When we look back to what life was like in the 1950s to 2020 and the changes that have taken place that fast changes we can see that it’s the moral fabric of our American society that has deteriorated so much and that has happened through ones and twos individuals here and there making choices of what is OK what is not OK. What they will normalize and accept and what they will totally refuse any you and I have that same responsibility for our families for our communities and for our nation so that we can not only not fall into that but so that we can build up our communities into a place of health and homeless. And that starts with us. So thank you for listening to the show to the podcast.
[00:41:41.000]
If you have any questions I would love to hear from you and I will answer them right here on the show and you ask the question and gets answered I will send you free stickers so you can. What’s that mean a plus 1 2 0 2 9 2 2 0 2 2 0. I will love to hear from you. That’s all for today Remember. You are a truth seeker who lives out your purpose. So go out this week and own your future.
