I loathe today's world

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It wasn’t all that great back then, either.

Especially for people with disorders and differences.

I digress but I think it was better even for those with disabilities and disorders in some ways. Especially financially and being able to find employment. The world operated less complex back then. Sometimes I even feel as far as to wonder if some of we on the spectrum were better off without knowing the terms autism or asperger's labeling us.

I would say at least some are probably better off not knowing their "labels."

I would agree with that.

I watched a movie yesterday initially set in 1920's that followed the main character to 1950. After seeing the movie, I strongly wished to had lived in this small town setting. I think this desire to live in a past era comes from seeing so much in this world today that contradicts what I consider to be normal. My unprofessional opinion - minimizing exposure to things, situations and people I find offensive in the present may reduce nostalgia for past. I think I try to create and live in a controlled environment that matches my values and pretend in a kind way that everyone who holds contrary values doesn't exist.

I’m fond of a simple life.

It was pretty complicated in the old days, too.

You couldn’t look out the window of a railroad train in the 1800s because, then, your face would be sooty.

There is no community spirit in today's dog-eat-dog survival of the fittest. The modern world is over populated, the environment in ruined and there is not much hope for the future for future generations. I envy the generations of the past, they had far easier lives, more job opportunities, sense of community spirit and a bright future.

It’s not quite the way you described. Only in some places.

What they are talking about, Twi, is the ability to get a decent job without a college education and the massive debt available to us at present. Nothing like getting a $40,000 debt just to get a $15-hr job.

The Internet brings us convenience for certain things, such as the community for people on the spectrum. But 100-200 years ago, people on the spectrum blended right in. Nikola Tesla and Thomas Edison were known as rival inventors and scientific geniuses, not two Aspergers patients. And today Tesla is considered a massive genius, and Edison was a genius at marketing and old-time Yankee ingenuity and made stuff you can still use today. (I still have not one but two Edison cylinder phonographs and plenty of original cylinder records, wax and celluloid. After a quick restoration they sound wonderful.)

Crackpots have always been marginalized. But there is a different sort of crackpot than the Henry Darger working on bizarre outsider art (The Realms of the Unreal) in his tiny apartment, and the work of Werner von Braun on the liquid-fueled rocket, or the Wright Brothers flying a homemade plane (which even carried a homemade 4-cylinder gas engine!)

Quite honestly if I could fit into my regular community it wouldn't be so bad. I wouldn't be so worried about catching up with a community of fellow autistics just to share the latest news or listen to people fighting in PPR or all that. (Hey, they don't air boxing matches on the radio here, so I have to go there for something.)

It had perks, according to people back then, but I think most people now do not know what it would have been like. Telephone calls cost a lot of money, guidebooks were everywhere.

I got a lift once in a stock 1936 Ford "De Luxe." We had to shift gears a couple times to get it to 25 mph. This is with a V8 flathead engine. The radio in the dash was AM only, and had to warm its tubes up before it would play. The car sounded like agricultural equipment more than a car, and smelled like gasoline spilled on an old tweed suit (the interior was original, and it was all woolen cloth.) Every bump the thing hit was immediately felt in the kidneys, the brakes didn't work right away, and it accelerated more like an icebreaker in the Arctic than a nice streamlined sedan. There was even a hole in the front to hand-crank it if the starter broke.
Rough, slow, noisy, smelly--and this was considered a car in beautiful near-mint condition! (I would totally drive one. I don't mind that kind of stuff, and prefer it to the 2014 Ford I used to fall asleep driving.)

Old-school living called for tough people. Depends on your sensory sensitivities whether it would have worked. I'm rambling.

I like living in the present time period. We have excellent access to healthcare, vaccines, comfy clothes, more equality for women, Civil Rights, gay rights, better welfare systems..

The list is nearly endless.

People look back on times in the past with nostalgia but there’s always a degree of untruth to it because they are just remembering the good stuff.

For me, to be honest, things are much easier these days.

I tend to lose things. In the old days, you couldn’t just up and pay for a $15 birth certificate, and pick it up the same day. You had to go through a bunch of bureaucratic red tape, and wait weeks.

If you ran out of money on Saturday, you were out of luck until Monday in the days before ATMs.

If you were late for something, you couldn’t just text someone. You would have had to find a phone booth to call someone where there is a phone. Or the other person would have just had to wait before people carried cell phones.

You would be SOL in lots of situations where there would be a quick solution nowadays.

If you were late on a bill, you couldn’t just pay over the Internet. You had to send it through the mail. And it might not get there.

I like the present better. I thought about it and this is the conclusion that I came to. There are more rights for LGBTQ people and as a trans person, I appreciate that. The technology is better. I have CDs and YouTube. Any time I want to enjoy The Kinks, these two things are right at my fingertips. I also like the new tech gadgets that have been showcased on YouTube over the past 4 years. Those gadgets weren't even around in the 80s and 90s. There are even smart TVs that you can browse the Internet on. There are also organizations and job coaches that will help me find employment. None of that was around in the 50s through the 80s.

I hate modern society because of the great difficulty of obtaining employment and young people are forced to study for years with little hope of finding a job at the end of it.

The older generations had less education because they did not need education for most of the jobs available and they did not have to waste time and money studying for nothing. Life in the 1950s and 1960s: houses and cars were cheap, they had more jobs, life was bliss. Simple easier, better lives with less stress and less worries. Life was bearable if you had little or no money when everything was cheap and affordable.

In todays's society there are more qualified people competing for limited job opportunities. There are not enough jobs being created to keep up with population growth. Technology has replaced many low skilled jobs and unemployment rates are increasing. It is hard to get out of the position of never having a job but need a job + experience to gain employment. Employers do not need to train up workers because they can employ job ready workers and bring them in from anywhere around the globe.

College/university is a waste of our time. Why even bother with 3 or 4+ years of study for no job and debt? Marketing continuously pushes the myth that college education leads to better employment prospects. It is a complete lie. International graduates with years of experience are competing with local graduates makes it hard to obtain a job relevant to what you studied at college. The chances of obtaining a job are remote. College is a complete waste of time and should be avoided. Why go into debt and have no job at the end of it?

Many shops/retail have gone out of business. Everything is online now and that means fewer job opportunities. I have seen more people begging on streets than ever before. The lack of jobs available create this problem. There are not enough jobs. Government and employers are not working hard enough to fix this problem of not enough jobs.

I have applied for retail jobs, call centre, dish washer, factory, etc but not once have I been offered a job. It is a lie that low skilled jobs are easier to obtain. There are more people applying for those jobs and not many of them available. I have been unemployed for 10 years now since graduating from college and I have applied for thousands of jobs and not once have I ever secured employment.

The old days anyone could walk in off the street and get work that day. Modern employers make it so hard for job seekers. Employers know there are not many jobs available and get hundreds or thousands applying for low paying job positions.