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Sense of Life

Longing for The Good Old Days
by Francois Tremblay

Ah, the Good Old Days, before capitalism and greedy industrialists ruined everything. The wonderful world of Little House on the Prairie. Let's see just how much better things were back in the Good Old Days.

People lived to be forty years old. Who wants to live longer anyway? I mean, at forty you've about seen it all, right?

Medicine was much more down to earth. If you had a broken leg, Uncle Willy would pop it back into place, and then he'd tie a board to your leg. You might walk a little funny for the rest of your life, but it would allow you a new nickname, and it was all natural.

Blood-letting builds character. Homespun remedies may not work, but they do improve your risk-taking capacities. Back in the Good Old Days, medical treatment was bloody, risky, and extremely painful. Today we give people pills. Please: that's just cheap.

No riches and no luxuries, either, except for the nobility. Prosperity weakens people, and poverty builds character. Just look at Africans today: plenty of character and culture.

No household technology, or electricity. But women could do wondrous things like bake bread on stoves that they themselves filled with freshly cut wood. Everyone knows that the greatest satisfaction is in making things you worked on yourself, unlike, say, those modern microwave ovens tht can cause cancer.

People were much healthier from that good healthy wood-smoke from their stoves, and later, smokestacks from dirty industries. They also knit their own clothes, blankets and quilts on those quaint sewing "machines" thay they had to operate using their own feet. Even better, they'd often spin wool by hand. Hey, that's natural.

There were no communications, either, except for letters. Kids today just don't need grammar anymore. Besides, who needs to get the news every day? Without the news, men have more time to chop wood and fill the holes in the roof with mud.

Working on farms all day is an idyllic life. People back then knew how to work hard--well, they had no choice, really. The food was all natural, too--everything was natural. And we all know that natural means healthy. When you starved to death back in the Good Old Days, you starved naturally, and therefore healthily.

No need for a police force to take care of problems. Lynch mobs are much less expensive, and improve social cohesion too. None of this "innocent until proven guilty" nonsense, either.

If crops fail in a freezing cold winter, and the family huddles together around the stove, firm in its faith in God, why, you have all the makings of a character-building experience. Burying your own offal is character-building, as is washing clothes by hand, and chopping your own wood.

What better spiritual experience than burying your own baby, in your own backyard, with a coffin that Papa built himself from a cedar he split himself? Talk about being in touch with nature and the circle of life. Also: no need for birth control when half your babies die young.

It was so comforting to know that your destiny was determined by your social class, from your birth to your death. No need for all that sissy soul-searching and social mobility.

Filling your own bed with straw and goose feathers, and filling the holes in the roof with mud and grass, makes for a much more down-to-earth home.

They really appreciated Christmas back in the Good Old Days, when oranges were extraordinary gifts. I bet they were much tastier, too. People appreciated simple things much more. Today's luxury-minded youngsters just don't appreciate anything.

There were no diversions like the Internet, video games, television, or radio. Everyone had back-breaking work taking up all their time, and the Bible by candle-light, of course.

Women didn't have to bother with silly little things like voting. Neither did anyone else, for that matter.

Divorce? What's that? If your husband was a wife-beater, at least you could console yourself with the realization that he only beat you when he was sober. Just keep that still going...

They knew what real romance was. Like writing ads in newspapers to have brides sent to a gold mine in California. Women were used for civilizing men. Today, women are used by the media for little more than sexual titillation, and they get paid for it, too.

Prostitutes were much more colorful and charming. The absence of contraception ensured that prostitution was a really exciting occupation, like Russian Roulette. So was patronizing a prostitute. You learn that actions have consequences when you receive syphilis, let me tell you. Back then, you would die: now, you just get antibiotics, which doesn't build character at all.

Homosexuality was just so appreciated. So were minorities. And Indians.

Children often had polio, but it was a good learning experience. Even an American president had childhood polio, so it can't have been that bad.

As for the rights of children: a child should be seen and not heard. And child labor is great. Today's children and teens just don't appreciate the luxury of not having to work until sundown. They knew how to raise children back then, too, and teachers wouldn't take any of the nonsense they do today. When they hit you with that ruler, you bled. Discipline.

Cod liver oil beats sissy colored vitamins any day.

Finally, retards could hold high positions as village idiots or bell-ringers, instead of enduring the silly "treatments" we give them today.

We could have all of this, and, in the Good Old Days, we once did--and without the Industrial Revolution, we still would.

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