How does one who, like all of us, has only lived in one narrow slice of time assess that the time they are living in is different, particularly “much more X” for any given X, than other times? My knee-jerk old person reaction to this is that everyone wants to think their time, their circumstance is special, significant, important, dire, whatever. As at least one other person has pointed out, those of us who lived through the 60s-80s lived with the every day fear of nuclear war—not something that might happen some day if a bunch of other uncertain things happened first, but something for which all necessary elements were already in place and a trial run had already been done in the form of the Cuban missile crisis.
How does one who, like all of us, has only lived in one narrow slice of time assess that the time they are living in is different, particularly “much more X” for any given X, than other times? My knee-jerk old person reaction to this is that everyone wants to think their time, their circumstance is special, significant, important, dire, whatever. As at least one other person has pointed out, those of us who lived through the 60s-80s lived with the every day fear of nuclear war—not something that might happen some day if a bunch of other uncertain things happened first, but something for which all necessary elements were already in place and a trial run had already been done in the form of the Cuban missile crisis.