Our society has lost a good deal of its willingness to take risks over the years. Examples include: Removing most playground that’s any fun; Requiring bicycle riders to wear helmets; Children don’t play outside, unsupervised anymore; Children get driven every where and don’t ride their bicycles; Cars have “passive restraints;” and We locked down society over what amounted, at worst, to be a bad flu. The costs of this excessive caution cannot be overestimated. When I was growing up, where I played, how I played, how I got to leisure activities and the like were parental decisions. When I started bicycling at age seven, my range was restricted to my six-block “neighborhood” bounded by a secondary road. Later, when that road got a sidewalk, I was allowed to go about ½ mile to the boundary of another secondary road. Later, I could go outside those boundaries but only with another child. “Pickup” baseball games started in late March, and soccer was the rule in the fall. Sledding and ice skating was the rule in winter. In fact, on December 2, 1967 I did fall through the ice, and was treading deep water. I was rescued, taken to the hospital and I’m still alive. I survived monkey bars and see-saws at a younger age. These days, my older son was one of the few that took the initiative to bike around, sometimes going about ten miles to one of his sets of grandparents. There was only one fall with a few scrapes. Turning to adult pastimes, cars have been increasingly been put out of reach of mere mortals by “passive restraints” such as airbags, and other equipment that costs more than its worth to the average person. When it comes to the recent Covid “pandemic” society was locked down to no net benefit and egregious costs. The moneys saved could and should have been used to allow the vulnerable to be excused from work and having to go out. Now, the government is getting ready to make heating and air conditioning, as well as travel more cumbersome. We live in a democratic society. Is this what we want? I’m not saying we should have no rules or regulations. But, some cost-benefit analysis please.
When I was a kid we stayed out until dark and swam in natural bodies of water ( in Florida, which of course means alligators and water moccasins ) we tried to have contest to see who could climb up into a tallest trees, God forbid we drink well water out of a garden hose...... About the only rule was be home at dark. Get your butt out of the house shortly after breakfast maybe 10:00 possibly come home for lunch.... But other than that go out in the woods and play with your friends. When we got a bit older, in our teenage years..... We rode ATVs and played with guns. Nowadays there are so many men who are terrified of guns and have never ridden a motorcycle or a four wheeler and instead of smoking Marlboro reds or filterless Lucky strikes, they vape things like strawberry cheesecake. We are not the same. This generation is growing up extremely soft and their work ethic is just as cushiony. They routinely show up late to work and act like they are doing everyone a favor to be there and then they spend most of their time on their phone and do a half ass job at half of their job and then expect their co-workers to come in and finish the other half of their undone job
Kids still play outside in my neighborhood, but part of that phenomenon you cited really is because of video games and electronics, not laws. They would rather be inside googling "boobies" than have a neighborhood mudbowl football game.
I could write a book about the adventures I had growing up. At age four me and my 6-year-old brother would attend a movie and walk home in the dark. At age 5 and my brother age 7 we would walk down a RR track, skinny-dipping in a pond near the tracks, and our parents never knew. The pond was over my head and I didn't know how to swim. But I went in and held on to the bank. We built tree houses and made tree swings. Tarzan had nothing on me. We raced cars in high school and I rolled my dad's car. So many memories -- how did I make it to 84?
We didn't have a playground. But we did have a muck-filled lake surrounded by green belt, burned out cars and broken whiskey bottles. Man I loved that place. Such places today are filled with drug addicts and the criminally insane living in tents and vans, and I wouldn't let my kids play there either.
Don't forget all the gun control laws, and in a growing number of areas people being too afraid of taking matters into their own hands because they know local prosecutors will have little respect for the right to self defense. You can see this in public schools, it's become commonplace for both students to be suspended or expelled when a child fights back against their bully. There's also been almost a war going on against fireworks - of course in progressive areas. In New Jersey there was a story of a man being handcuffed and carted away by police after he had been stabbed in the neck by his angry wife. The man's crime? When police had responded to the home due to a domestic violence call, they found 4 containers of gun powder in the home's basement. They were only allowed to have one.
You going to the store nowadays and see 3-year-olds sitting there playing on the internet on the phone. And a lot of ways the internet has made life better but in a lot of ways it hasn't. Kids these days are being cheated out of a genuine childhood. The first time I ever saw the internet was probably 94 because my grandfather was a computer geek. I remember being amazed because he said you could ask it anything and I think I asked it something about skateboards. Lol
That's another thing. I remember all kinds of really fun (but a little bit dangerous) playground equipment from my childhood. It was as if a group of men with big imaginations and carpentry skills got together to make their fantastical vision into reality. But that all seems to be gone now. I've gone back to many of the locations and they have ripped the old playground equipment out and put in things that are really mundane, safe and boring. Like some prefabricated design that was ordered from a company. Nothing that was custom designed on site.
A lot of this was killed by lawsuits. I was growing up in a time period when I was about 12 or 13 years old was when they started requiring people wear helmets on bicycles. I refused so no more bike riding it went from if you get a skinned knee and then you go home and scrub it out and lesson learned to if you dare leave the house without this goofy contraption strap your head you face legal problems. The monkey bars and the jungle Jim's are taken out because any community that had them got sued.
But this itself has to do with attitudes in society. If someone tried to bring forward the type of lawsuits that have become normalized today in the 1950s, they would have gotten laughed at. Rather than just a legal obligation for a company not to hurt other people, a legal obligation has informally been created for a company to do everything possible to prevent other people from accidentally hurting themselves. Grossly excessive payouts of money are also a problem, but again that also has a little bit to do with an attitude change in society, with many people looking for any excuse to have "free money" paid out, if it's coming from a large organization or government. And I think a lot of this has to do with shifting attitudes, away from individual responsibility towards a more socialized mentality, with more institutional obligations and shared costs. Everything is connected.
I agree but it is partly the legal system to blame, companies and schools etc have to come up with these crazy rules because if they didn't and something adverse happened they'd be sued for millions, you can't blame them.
I think there's some safety precautions that are probably not a bad thing. Like seat belts in cars I don't see why that makes Americans voices and more of them survive car accidents. But yeah a lot of people are real so happy with a lot of things rather than realizing when they sue something like this school they're only taking money away from themselves because that's what your property taxes go to.
Blame the lawyers and the insurance companies. They are why people aren't allowed to be responsible for anything anymore.
One of the Navy Seals who was in on the Bin Laden mission was asked, "What's wrong with America". He answered, "What's wrong with America is that not enough is wrong with America". What he meant by that is that America has been so successful in creating a safe no stress environment that our citizens have stopped pushing their personal limits. And we see that daily. The app "Nextdoor" is a great source of amusement for me. It is intended to provide a "Community network" so we can talk with our neighbors about the issues of the day. I never get on the app without the "trending" post being about something totally ignorant. Today it was that the local pizza joint provided our victim with a cold, "not round" pizza that (GASP!!) did not have the expected amount of peperoni on it. He gravely informed the neighbors that he had challenged the clerk about the quality of the pizza etc. and was only offered to have to wait while they made him a new one. That was it. No compensation for his hurt or his time. I thought the poor victim was going to stroke out, explaining the hurt and disappointment he was suffering from. What was even more fun was the comments; according to many of the comments this "mis ordering" has become common with this pizza joint, because they only hire the juvenile delinquents from the local high school and pay them nothing, and the manager has been neglecting his business and WHY DOESN'T SOMEONE DO SOMETHING!! Now, I try to be polite. I do. I don't like to be the troll in the conversation. But, I couldn't restrain myself. I had to comment that it was wonderful that we lived in a country where the biggest challenge of the day was a poorly filled pizza order. The administrator yanked my comment after several neighbors alerted him to my lack of feeling and empathy for my neighbors. The thing is, many of us "older 'muricans" remember the days when we didn't have a phone in our pocket, and just getting from point A to point B could offer up challenges that required some intelligence and spirit. Now, does that mean we put the monkey bars back in the playground, cut the seat belts out of our cars, and store our bike helmets? Don't be ridiculous. But say, just for grins, how about shutting down the phone and finding that address without the map application? You know, leave some extra time for rerouting.
Let's see. Everyone is a wuss who: -Rides their car back and forth to work with heated and cooled seats, AC... -Walks less than 3,000 steps a day -Has central air and heat at home -Doesn't chop their own fire wood -Doesn't hunt for food -Takes prescription medicine And the list goes on and on. Now, if you want to go down that rabbit hole, 99.99% of the US population are wussified.
There was a time when we were challenged just to keep our families fed, clothed, and sheltered. Times improved and then we were challenged to get rich and get a promotion at work. All along we could join the military and accept that challenge. Now the challenges seem to be graduate college or join the military and see if you have what it takes to become a Navy Seal, etc. But only a few takes either challenge while many are happy to take a menial job, have an Xbox, and live with their parents. And some are content to live in a tent on the sidewalk. Those who accept challenges are what made the USA great and are keeping the country running.
Well, your extreme examples to prove your point are amusing but yes, you understand. 99.99%of the US population are "wussified". And I count myself in that group. I recently caught myself firing up the map program to drive to the doctors office, a place I can find without any phone app help. God knows I'm there more than I want to be. Cause, you know, getting old is pigeon poop. I shut it down and "dead reckoned" a new route. Added time to the trip it did! But, along the way I discovered new neighborhoods and scenes. Very satisfying. And I only got stopped once as a suspicous vehicle! I used to be a river guide. We didn't have helmets or wet suits. We didn't have sat phones to call for help if we got into trouble. When John Wesley Powell made his first run from Green river wyoming through and beyond the grand canyon they didn't have life jackets, enough food, sleeping bags or tents and did you know Powell only had one arm? And routinely climbed the side canyons and generally explored what he wanted? We never had even a serious injury in the 10 years I was a guide and we carried thousands. Powell lost three men, who abandoned the expedition after they got through the grand canyon and climbed out to the plateu. They were killed by renegade comanches. Are you getting the point? A bit of self imposed hardship/risk is a good thing. Course, we seem to have solved the renegade Comanche thing, but thats a good thing (unless you happen to be a renegade of course).
