> in context of current problems/challenges
People have been saying nonsense like this for as long as we have recorded history of people saying anything.
People have been saying nonsense like this for as long as we have recorded history of people saying anything.
It's easy to take for granted the things which got better before you knew about them and to overemphasize things which are getting worse now. There is always something, there always has been something, always will be. And always there have been people insisting that the modern problems are the real serious ones compared to the past.
Doom sells. Lots of people buy it.
False, we have vast amounts of records of everyday correspondence, written speeches, graffiti, works of fiction, etc. from Romans 2000 years ago, long before scientific method (which I guess is usually attributed to Newton?, anyway approximately contemporary)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ages_of_Man
Hesiod 2700 years ago wrote about the degradation of society from the Golden Age where people lived among the Gods with a garden of eden vibe down through silver, bronze to "present" iron where life was toil and misery and people were awful and immoral. Ovid said the same 2000 years ago.
"Everything is going to shit, things aren't as good as they used to be and they're getting worse now more than ever" is literally a meme as old as human history.
--Abraham Lincoln
What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun. - Ecclesiastes 1:9