Friday 18 April 2008

The 70s



My apologies but I have had to implement the word verification on comments, due to spam commenters. Do you think that is someones job, do they tell other people that is their job, 'Hi I'm a spam commenter' or is that commentator? Anyway, the 70s.............

I was born in 1976, so I did not live in very much of the 70s, but memories I have a plenty, and I can easily start singing that Sandi Thom song about how things were different and better, how as we have advanced, we have killed off so much good.

I am told that in Bhutan they no longer measure the wealth of their country in terms of financial wealth (GDP) but in happiness ( GNH), and one of my brothers tells me that they measured the gross national happiness of the UK on the same scale as the Bhutanese, over the last 50 years and found that peoples happiness increased up to the year 1976 and from then it has decreased. Now it is easy to say that once I was born the world became a sadder place, but I think there is more to it than that.

Did we suddenly reach a point, where our priorities changed. I watched a film over Easter, the Bad News Bears. The kids in it were ugly, badly dressed delinquents, one was an immigrant, the others had all sorts of family issues. I don't think it mattered, it was an enjoyable family film, cheesy, pretty crap, badly acted and simple. The type of film that just would not be made today, or at least with a better looking, better dressed, politically correst cast. How we have complicated things. My son asked me the other day, are hand me downs an American thing?

We need to get back to simpler things, like hand me downs and community, its ok to be ugly and badly dressed, its ok to be poor, its ok to have 'issues'. Where else are we heading?

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