CONDON’S CORNER
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| A watermelon bought in Crozet, VA, does not resemble the watermelons of the author’s youth, decades ago. Back then, no one ever cut open a store-bought watermelon that wasn’t almost fully red inside. (© Marlene A. Condon) |
I was once married to a man
who didn’t believe “the good ole days” ever existed. When I would comment that
things really were better when I was growing up, he’d insist they weren’t. He
believed people’s minds fooled them.
According to some scientists—who
agree with my ex—“‘Things aren’t what they used to be’ because we are suffering
from psychological biases.” Or so claims Nick Chater, Professor of Behavioural
Science who says that “our belief [that] things were better in the past is
because of loss aversion and our ‘rose-tinted’ memory.” https://www.wbs.ac.uk/news/why-we-think-life-was-better-in-the-good-old-days/
But perhaps how one views the
past depends upon what exactly one is considering for his valuation of it.
Professor Chater speaks of
big events, such as the two world wars, as if they are things that no one will
ever possibly experience again. He sounds as if he believes the future is going
to be all “Sunshine, Lollipops and Rainbows”—the title of a song by sixties
singer Lesley Gore.
I would contend, however,
that such things could very well repeat themselves in the future of mankind,
and shouldn’t be how one gauges the quality of life. As individuals, we are
hard-pressed to exert any control over such significant occurrences. Therefore,
we should examine things from the past that were quite impactful at a personal
level.
Very meaningful facts from bygone
days do exist to support my own contention that many things in the past were
decidedly superior to what they are now. Consider our food supply.
As we need to eat every day
of our lives to remain healthy and strong, we need to enjoy the food that we
put into our mouths. If you don’t like the taste of food, it’s darned difficult
to want to consume it.
Look at the photo that
accompanies this commentary. It shows a watermelon bought in July 2025 at a
local grocery store. When I was a child, or even a young adult, decades ago, I
never saw a watermelon like the one pictured here. And, sad to say, this
watermelon is not the only one I’ve ever bought in more recent years that
consists of a fair bit of inedible white rind. Worse yet, it’s not the only
kind of food that has deteriorated in quality.
Strawberries went downhill long
ago in the same manner as the watermelon. These fruits might look as red as
you’d expect, but nowadays that red color is usually only skin-deep. The moment
you bite into or slice your strawberry, what are you likely to find? Just as
with the watermelon, much inedible white flesh rather than a fully red fruit as
it ought to be. So much for superbly luscious flavor.
It can even be difficult to
get a fully ripe strawberry from a farm. Years ago, I appeared on PBS’ Virginia
Homegrown. A separate segment was about a farmer. He was wonderfully
thoughtful and brought strawberries for everyone. Even those fruits were not
fully red inside.
Have you bought a green
pepper or a cucumber lately? Many of these particular veggies are absolutely
tasteless most of the time when bought from a store. What drives the act of
consuming food? Taste. If food doesn’t taste good, what is going to compel
you to continue eating it? Only starvation.
For decades, I grew my own
fruits and veggies and consequently ate well and healthfully. But with the
passing years, my rheumatoid arthritis has taken evermore of a toll so that now
I need to purchase almost all the food that goes into my mouth.
When I first started buying
fresh fruits and vegetables, the store-bought produce was fine to eat. Sadly,
for at least the past decade or so, that has no longer been the case.
Luckily, you can find some kinds
of fresh fruits and vegetables (particularly leafy ones, such as spinach) in
the produce section that are in good condition and taste okay, and produce that
freezes well can be found in the frozen food section. But, it can be darned
hard to find decent-quality fresh produce these days from a store.
The problem, of course, is
that feeding the many humans on the planet today requires bringing in food from
long distances. Sometimes these foods are picked before they ripen and thus
never can ripen adequately. Others are selected to be grown for how well they
can travel and less so for their flavor.
It's not only foods that are problematic,
but also flowering plants. Roses are small and do not exhibit the heavenly
fragrance they once did, and many grocery stores sell flowers that are so
perfectly formed that they look artificial! Why bother growing them if they
don’t even look alive?
Returning to the British
Professor Chater, he says that, “The idea that everything is getting worse -
declinism - is an old one. Even ancient Athens saw itself as having declined
from a former, mythical golden age. So perhaps our minds are tricking us into
thinking things are getting worse.”
He goes on to say that, “In
particular our memory tends to forget about the bad events in our past and we
have a tendency to rehearse and dwell on the good things that happened in the
past, we retell them a lot more often, so we reinforce the good memories. We
tend to remember the great songs or cars or football players from the ‘old
days’ and forget all the bad ones.”
Balderdash! Surely everyone
realizes that when bad things happen to us, they are usually far more impactful
upon us than good things. Yes, we may want to forget the bad things, but bad circumstances
have consequences, which is what makes them so bad—and thus we DO remember
them. We may prefer to push them out of our minds as much as possible, but they
will always reappear now and again.
So, no, I don’t believe it’s
just our imagination that some things were better long ago. They really were
better.
