Why do older people think the world is getting worse?

I think very few people, young or old, understand that violent crime in the US has plummeted in the past few decades.

I don’t have a high opinion of most people’s knowledge outside their immediate experience.

People tend to forget the bad things and only remember the good ones, to the point of creating a memory that has little basis in reality.

Because they have a longer view of history. Younger people normalize the now.
There are a great many games of tug-o-war in progress in society, all with that central knot in a different place. You’re looking at certain knots, other people are looking at different knots, and all judging thereby the state of public life. For instance, my issues include the divorce and abortion rates. I’m horrified by both, but other people – some here, even – think they’re of no consequence, or flat-out wonderful, because the knot is going their direction.

Rose colored glasses. People often have a very idealized view of the past.

There were some things that were unheard of when people about 50 years back. Yes there was war and racism was abundant but people will remember what they knew of the world in their youth. I grew up in the Bronx so there was some danger in my neighborhood, but it usually seem to come from outsiders. Drugs were sold but no one seem to bother the little kids. We never heard of old people getting raped or mugged, and I even had passed out in the streets in front of some drug dealers and they actually put me on a bench and got a cool towel to put to my head. When I recovered they had actually gotten my mom who worked a block away. They thought I had a sun stroke but I was actually recovering from a bad fever.
It just seemed that there were rules among thieves and even junkies that they didn’t seem to break. Little kids and old people were off limits. Even nuns. Now there isn’t anyone that isn’t fair game.

Another issue is that, while bad things certainly happened in the past, people didn’t always know they were happening. Today, what happens halfway around the world is known almost immediately, thanks to the way news works now.

Because there memories of an earlier, less complicated reality have a rosy glow.

The 24 hour, global news cycle means we face a barrage of bad news daily. In addition, while we were once pretty much limited to print news, we now have print, radio, television and online news media. We can see graphic photographs and film footage. We have 24 hour news channels that mean when a big news event happens, say a school shooting, the news coverage is non-stop. Consequently, our understanding of how much crime is actually occuring becomes skewed. You could add to this the advertising industry with the promotion of metal screens for our doors and windows, personal alarms etc.

I think if we are going to use the last 10 or so years as the example, they may have a point this time.

@woodcutter What, objectively, has gotten worse. I am trying to think of a metric (not environmental) that older people are seeing that young people are not.

I get @Nullo. He is saying I might be missing abortions and divorce because they don’t seem so bad to me. Early abortion, whatever the woman wants, divorce, maybe better for both and the children long term, let it go. He sees them as evidence things are going downhill, where I don’t.

What are you talking about, objectively? Do you just think things are getting worse? Is it some vague feeling and you can’t put a real number to it?

@Imadethisupwithnoforethought Whats getting worse? Make a deal with you. Tell us whats getting better and we will trade ideas.

Violent crime is cut in half. Let’s start there.

Whats getting worse? Make a deal with you. Tell us whats getting better and we will trade ideas.

Dishonest way to dodge the question.

To put it kindly.

The world has been getting better for a very long time. Life was once hideously hard and you had to have children in your teens because if you lived beyond 25, you were one of the fortunate few. Slavery was perfectly acceptable. The world’s great religions even had rules for it. Rape and pillage was the way to greatness for warlord leaders. Life has been getting much better. Few countries now even have the workhouses and debtors prisons of Dickensian England, and unless we listen to the Tea Party, we won’t return to the glory of that past.

But while the world has been getting better for a very long time, old people have always complained it was getting worse. See, it depends on your perspective. When it hurts just to walk, and your nasty bits have all dried up, and you know there was so much you should have done you’ll never accomplish; the world might look pretty shitty to you even though it’s actually gotten much better in your many decades here. That’s why I exercise to keep my body in shape and spend so much time in sexual trivial pursuits. The world looks pretty darned good to me at 70. Oh, all those things I should have gotten accomplished. Hell, they’ll still be here for the next generation to do. No need to deprive them of interesting activities.

@jaytkay Let the guy respond. Mine is no different than his.

Violent crime is less right now. MMMmmmm ok but has anyone here been victimized so badly that they can really see it? I don’t think folks in Engelwood will agree with that call but keep em coming.

@woodcutter Which guy? I think Nullo said I might not see it the same way he does, because he opposes abortion and divorce. I am thinking, yeah, if I thought those were bad things, I might worry.

You just made completely unfactual shit up to make your unreality true in your head. Do you as an older person really want to believe that the world is not safer? Is that why you bring up this crap?

@woodcutter

I understand you have no personal experience with Englewood, and no personal knowledge of people who live in Englewood.

You “know” about Chicago’s Englewood neighborhood thanks to Google.

And Englewood’s violent crime rate has dropped immensely over the decades, like the rest of the city and every other big city in the US.

You are dishonest and not very good at it.

To put it kindly.

@woodcutter Violent crime has gone down even over the last decade. See the crime rates shown here.

Look guys nobody knows more than I do that violent crime is lower. Its a given. But going in the spirit of the question, we still do that here, right? It is based on perception…all of it. Not stats and figures from think tanks. But what people feel are changing for the worse. Big difference. Now we all know that perception is reality when it comes to forming opinions. So we should all put the crime stats one to bed, just for now because frankly it just don’t count for this question.

@jaytkay So let me understand you right. Doing an internet search when I do one is being dishonest but when you pull something up, its all on the up and up? Have I about pegged you bud? This report is still hot.Dig it man. http://crime.chicagotribune.com/chicago/community/englewood

So what you mean is people don’t get to notice bad things about other places unless they have walked the walk?Or actually been there? Remember we are talking perception. Remember crime is and has been dropping but that is on average. This means it is going down in most, staying the same in others and rising in a few. This still means it’s getting better out there on average which isn’t bad but don’t be fooled into believing its dropping everywhere. Still the crime rate falling only means something to people who have been in an area where it was bad and markedly improved before their eyes. If you werent living in a crime haven to start with learning that crime is lower someplace else is not going to make much of an impression.

Lets do more I’m having fun.

That’s not correct @woodcutter. @Imadethisupwithnoforethought clearly mentioned the disparity between some older people’s perception of crime and the evidence presented through objective data such as statistical information.

He said ”How is it that old people come to reject objective facts about the trends of history? Why does the reality that things are getting better not feel “truthy” to them?”

However, rather than explaining why older people might dismiss the information provided by statisticians etc., you said ”I think if we are going to use the last 10 or so years as the example, they may have a point this time.” suggesting you yourself believe things are worse. You haven’t yet provided any evidence to show why you believe this.

The question is about why their perception is off, in light of the objective facts. You seemed to be disputing the objective facts.

I warned you guys about this crime stats thing and you pushed. so here it comes.

It’s hard if not impossible to have things both ways. On one side we have people who just swear if we could have tighter firearms restrictions crime would be lower. Well here we have falling crime stats but very little if any new crime packages that include gun restrictions. And, if we have been following the state capitals as I have we would have also noticed an almost liberalizing of gun freedoms in all but a few states.You all thinking what I’m thinking? If gun laws have gotten so lax while at the same time people have been blaming their abundant availability on crime, then how does this square? Violent crime and gun homicides down? What gives? All those millions of weapons just sitting around not killing anyone, hmmm Just something to chew on .

I really don’t think older people have been lamenting about crime one way or another. I really don’t. They might be glad that it is getting better but for the most part they don’t care, unless they are living in an urban shithole with gunshots ringing out to notice the difference. I think it has been the younger people who have been all about crime. Young progressive leaners at that. What else is getting better from the point of view of seniors? They worry when medicare is going to be cut.
Older people are worried about their pensions and how they will get along later. They are paying special mind to the national debt. They may be worried about the demise of the petro dollar, and the US dollar as the world currency being replaced by something else. Ole fogies know the US’s rating S&P has been lowered for the first time they can remember. Shit like that worries old people.

All the wars we have been in since 911 and no end in sight and particularly where they are happening. They see religious wars as a thing that never will end. They see Russia is getting involved Old folks remember these same people as the USSR. They don’t like Putin. They dont like the fed printing millions, billions? of new currency that is helping pay down the debt. If the dollar is replaced as the worlds standard currency then they worry that all that new crisp money will be worthless, to anyone. Inflation is a bitch and old people are always a country’s (This country’s) most vulnerable if there is another recession or worse. These are some of the things of substance that make old people think things are getting worse but not all because I haven’t spoken to as many as I would like.

@Imadethisupwithnoforethought “Which guy”?

You. I was referring to you in that statement. While I was responding to @jaytkay calling me dishonest, Because I said ” Let the guy respond. Mine is no different than his”.you were in the process of answering me. Things were really flying in the thread so its easy to get out of sequence with each other.

@jaytkay was simply trying to insert an opinion of me that was not needed at time you and I were with each other.

Nostalgia, a crippling medical condition affecting the mind.
Can be traced right back to neanderthal times when sufferers complained of the lavish lifestyle enjoyed by “the youth of today” as they frolicked in their tailor made loincloths.

@ETpro: I want to be you when I grow up sir.

The “world getting better” (or worse) depends on perception and what is included. I do not think it’s just about crime rates. Science is getting better but also has its downfalls… the same with technology. Food is more available but what about the quality of it? Cheaper/faster production of products for the consumer may be nice for many of us. However, the environment and poorer societies are being exploited. The easier/better our lives get, the worse and more dangerous it can be as well (like a side effect we won’t be able to come back from). Perhaps that is what is meant when older people say the world is getting worse.

Perhaps you’re just talking to the wrong older people. Talk to more of them – perhaps in different places and different situations than the ones you’ve been finding.

In any case, it’s not a “genetic” predisposition if it relates to aging, is it?

Most of the starting responses to this question are clearly correct in their ways; I don’t think that I would dispute many of those responses.

In many cases and in many ways things were better “in the olden days”. Kids played outside more, and with less supervision, and it wasn’t necessary for them to have guardians every minute of the day. In fact, here’s something: Things were better in the olden days because I was a kid then.

In your example on crime, for example, it’s very rare for a child to be the victim of a mugging, and very few children in the 1960s-80s were mugged. Mugging victims are more likely to be adults, and these days, more likely to be elderly adults. So despite the validity of statistics showing that muggings and other crimes are declining, the fact is that elderly people today are more likely to be victims of that kind of crime than they were as children. So in their eyes things have gotten objectively worse, despite your statistical evidence to the contrary.

In so many other ways as people age things get objectively worse: their friends die off faster; their own health declines; their eyesight and hearing decline; their memories worsen. You can name all of the other various age-related things that will happen to a person that will degrade the quality of his or her own life. It’s hard for people to control for these things when they compare “now” to “then”.

You must make allowances for where people are in their own lives when you ask such questions, and make allowance for their response, too.

@CWOTUS off topic argument… Menopause is a genetic predisposition and something that is directly tied to age range, no?

They think the younger generation has declined in more ways than one. Maybe every generation of seniors think that. They see them not doing as well as they did. Which is true mostly. Of course the economy stinks, that one is true also. Jobs going overseas and the young people have few opportunities. They might believe that one because they may have at least one generation maybe two living under their roof at a time. All it takes is one of their friends going through the same thing and it feels like its everywhere. Are young people more rude now? I don’t know if they are more rude than in past generations but they are pretty damn rude now. Or maybe more dismissive ,same thing I guess.
Old people think the school systems are bad now. They think that students are being let out barely able to read and do math. It ties most of the problems they think 20 somethings suffer with, together. They think young people are lazy and unmotivated. And that they complain too much. They’re basically going to hell in a hand basket. They might ask, ”this is an example of who is going to be in charge of things in the future?”

Reading this thread again, I think @Bellatrix answered the question best. Most people think “the world” is what they see on TV.

@Bellatrix We have 24 hour news channels that mean when a big news event happens, say a school shooting, the news coverage is non-stop. Consequently, our understanding of how much crime is actually occuring becomes skewed.

I still don’t know if the pay channel, 24 hr news coverage has done anything good or bad for shaping opinion in this country. Mixed blessing at best.

@woodcutter

“3 Murders Today!!” gets airtime.

“Murder Rate Halved in Past 20 Years” does not.

I live in an area that is rotten with ol folk and not one time did I here them fret over how dangerous they think it is. Maybe they have had the frenzied activist grown out of them and are watching other things.

^rotten with ol folk Nice~