Is The World Getting Better or Worse?

This topic came from a writing prompt in a book. I was going to say the world is getting better based on some messed up things in the past. Generation X in the Northeast were exposed to real grime. There was cancer causing lead in automotive gasoline till the mid-1970s. There was lead in paint. There was corruption in government. A President got away with aiding and abetting a crime by agreeing to go away for awhile. Was that a real consequence?

I wrote a few blogs about Manhattan in the 1970s. It wasn’t pretty, actually down right gross.

I thought I would say that the world would be better, but those things are still there. Homelessness is still there, but we hide that from 42nd St. There is still drug use. It’s not 1980s flashy cocaine or dirty 1970s heroin, we still have drug issues. Perhaps making cannabis legal removes the mystique and black market danger.

There is still porn. The porn theater is gone, but it’s easy to find on the web.

There weren’t shooter drills in the 1980s. There were stabbings or brutal fights in some schools. I knew someone that went to school where he said cars were stolen from the parking lot on a normal basis.

I grew up in a multiracial area which meant by the time I was 8 or 9 years old, I heard every swear word and I knew them in multiple languages. I never heard those words in music or daytime television. There were always swear words and teens used them on a normal basis. There was decorum. Was the rating system for music that tells me where are the profane songs on ITunes are an improvement for anyone? Songwriters who used to find metaphors and sound to be raunchy can now just say it. Party records (albums of profane yet comical songs) were out there, but difficult to find. Not now.

Decades ago, we didn’t talk about these things. We hid homeless or racism from kids, that knew better. Today we know it’s there and it may be right in front of us. Perhaps knowing what is out there is an improvement. Being more savvy to know that swear words in music is not being real, but being unimaginative.

Has the world improved? I now can answer that writing prompt. Some things stayed the same. How we view it may have changed. How we handle things changed. There is a phrase, the more things change the more they stay the same. The world stayed the same.