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  1. #1
    Days Work Done! Norton's Avatar
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    Finding Things Tough?!

    To put Things into perspective at this moment; imagine you were born in 1900...

    When you are 14, World War I starts and ends on your 18th birthday with 22 million people killed.

    Later in the year, a Spanish Flu epidemic hits the planet and runs until you are 20. Fifty million people die from it in those two years. Yes, 50 million.

    When you're 29, the Great Depression begins. Unemployment hits 25%, global GDP drops 27%. That runs until you are 33. The country nearly collapses along with the world economy.

    When you turn 39, World War II starts. You aren’t even over the hill yet. Between your 39th and 45th birthday, 75 million people perish in the war and the Holocaust kills six million.

    At 52, the Korean War starts, and five million perish.
    Approaching your 62nd birthday you have the Cuban Missile Crisis, a tipping point in the Cold War. Life on our planet, as we know it, could well have ended. Great leaders prevented that from happening.

    At 64 the Vietnam War begins, and it doesn’t end for many years. Four million people die in that conflict. As you turn 75, the Vietnam War finally ends.

    Think of everyone on the planet born in 1900. How do you survive all of that? A kid in 1985 didn’t think their 85-year-old grandparent understood how hard school was. Yet those grandparents (and now great grandparents) survived through everything listed above.

    Perspective is an amazing art. Let’s try and keep things in perspective. Let’s be smart, help each other out, and we will get through all of this. In the history of the world, there has never been a storm that lasted. This too shall pass.
    "Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect,"

  2. #2
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    My paternal grandfather was born in 1898, got through the Somme then saw my father and his brother go off to WWII with, as you say, the Great Depression in between. Yet I only knew him as a happy Cockney chappy. I have often thought that my generation has broadly speaking seen much better times although we don't seem to be happier for all that.

  3. #3
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    On the bright side, you would have had a pretty good run between 33 and 39. Six good highly inebriated years. LOL
    The article fails to mention that between 1920 and 1933 in the US they endured all of the above without the aid of alcohol
    (Prohibition lasted from 1920 until 1933) probably a tragedy greater than any of the ones mentioned.
    The sooner you fall behind, the more time you have to catch up.

  4. #4
    Days Work Done! Norton's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Buckaroo Banzai View Post
    The article fails to mention that between 1920 and 1933 in the US they endured all of the above without the aid of alcohol
    Point taken. Note, found this on Farce book. Author unknown.

  5. #5
    Guest Member S Landreth's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Norton View Post
    Author unknown.
    Ted Bauer?
    https://www.yourvaluesourvision.com/...g-born-in-1900

  6. #6
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    My Grandad was born in 1901 and he said it was so lucky... to young for WW1 and too old for WW2 when he was an air raid warden in Bristol.

    He had a hard life for sure... a riveter in the shipyards, but he avoided the horrors of frontline warfare.

  7. #7
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    Quote Originally Posted by Norton View Post
    Point taken. Note, found this on Farce book.
    You should know better, Norts.


  8. #8
    CCBW Stumpy's Avatar
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    My grandmother was born in 1924. She passed away at 97 She saw almost all of that and used to tell me stories of the great depression as a kid and then of course all the wars and death. I used to enjoy to sit with her and hear about her stories about it all. I remember very well when my uncle died in the Vietnam war. He was a helicopter pilot and got shot down and my aunt being totally devastated by it.

    It has always amazed me what the human race is capable of doing to each other.

  9. #9
    Days Work Done! Norton's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by bsnub View Post
    You should know better, Norts.

    All true stuff. Point here is, we have it easy and this too shall pass so don't have a cardiac arrest.

  10. #10
    last farang standing
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    Quote Originally Posted by Buckaroo Banzai View Post
    On the bright side, you would have had a pretty good run between 33 and 39. Six good highly inebriated years. LOL
    The article fails to mention that between 1920 and 1933 in the US they endured all of the above without the aid of alcohol
    (Prohibition lasted from 1920 until 1933) probably a tragedy greater than any of the ones mentioned.
    Well they did have coke grass and opium to console themselves with.

  11. #11
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    Quote Originally Posted by Buckaroo Banzai View Post
    On the bright side, you would have had a pretty good run between 33 and 39. Six good highly inebriated years. LOL
    The article fails to mention that between 1920 and 1933 in the US they endured all of the above without the aid of alcohol
    (Prohibition lasted from 1920 until 1933) probably a tragedy greater than any of the ones mentioned.
    I believe that my Irish grandfather (who immigrated to the US in 1926) was mostly well behaved and rarely touched alcohol during prohibition, but my American grandfather made either whiskey or gin up in the hills above LA!

  12. #12
    Making people dance. :-)
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    Finding Things Tough?!
    Not really, no.

  13. #13
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    Quote Originally Posted by Hugh Cow View Post
    Well they did have coke grass and opium to console themselves with.
    Coca-Cola was a real thing back then, and you could get opium at every pharmacy on the corner, so ya. Also at that same pharmacy you could get "medicinal" alcohol...

    Finding Things Tough?!-jepwhiskey2-jpeg

  14. #14
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    This is clearly a western look as it fails to mention the 30 million Chinese deaths during the famine 1960-62, the untold numbers of deaths during the cultural revolution etc ad infinitum.



    Quote Originally Posted by Norton View Post
    Finding Things Tough?!
    Nope, previous generations and many other people in general have had and have it far tougher

  15. #15
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    Quote Originally Posted by panama hat View Post
    This is clearly a western look as it fails to mention the 30 million Chinese deaths during the famine 1960-62, the untold numbers of deaths during the cultural revolution etc ad infinitum.



    Nope, previous generations and many other people in general have had and have it far tougher
    Because of a guy who thought sparrows were eating all the crop and not the bugs who were actually eating the crop. (I am sure you and everyone else knows this story but important to reiterate anyway)

  16. #16
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    Considering all you mentioned Norton, I think all of us here should consider ourselves dam lucky to be alive. If my grandfather had died marching in the Polish winter to Stalag Luft lll and had chosen under the wire, I wouldn't bloody be here.

    So here's to you Grandpa Archie, for being bloody tough and smart enough to get back home.

    Finding Things Tough?!-20211130_182910-jpg

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    One should listen twice as much as one speaks

  17. #17
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    Life is still tough if you are one of the many in North Korean prison labor camps or living just about anywhere in Central Africa. Easier for us in the west, but in many other places it is just as hard as ever.

  18. #18
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    Quote Originally Posted by bsnub View Post
    Life is still tough if you are one of the many in North Korean prison labor camps or living just about anywhere in Central Africa. Easier for us in the west, but in many other places it is just as hard as ever.
    Which is why capitalism and democracy beats communism, socialism, religious intolerance, wokism and totalitarianism every time.

  19. #19
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    No, Tax, capitalism doesn’t beat those other ‘isms’, stupidity does.
    No matter the endeavour the human condition and its propensity for stupidity will always fuck up.
    Capitalism is of course subsidised by the majority for the benefit of the minority.
    The Thai are current world champions in idiocy which perhaps explains why their minuscule minority owns pretty much everything.
    In order for capitalism to flourish you need a lot of stupid folk.

  20. #20
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    Quote Originally Posted by Seekingasylum View Post
    No, Tax, capitalism doesn’t beat those other ‘isms’, stupidity does.
    No matter the endeavour the human condition and its propensity for stupidity will always fuck up.
    Capitalism is of course subsidised by the majority for the benefit of the minority.
    The Thai are current world champions in idiocy which perhaps explains why their minuscule minority owns pretty much everything.
    In order for capitalism to flourish you need a lot of stupid folk.
    I believe you are just talking about selfishness. Once humans rid themselves of this trait, we will all be a lot better.

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    Are you insane? The entire population of homo sapiens, past, present and future, is underpinned by selfishness.It is the imperative that drives us forward, there is no other force and its lingua franca is stupidity.

  22. #22
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    Its the force that drives all of nature, from an amoeba to a human. survival of the fittest.

    Fairness and equality do not come into it. The weak die out. In the past the physically weak were at the greatest disadvantage, now it is the mentally weak. Those without the brains or the ambition to compete. i.e. the stupid. Socialism helps too many of the weak and the stupid, preventing them from acquiring the skills to help themselves to survive. it goes against nature.

    For the human race is to survive and become stronger, the weak and the stupid must be eliminated, i.e. the survival of the fittest.

    Socialism makes us all weaker. It is for losers. It is one of the more unpalatable facts of life.

  23. #23
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    Quote Originally Posted by taxexile View Post
    For the human race is to survive and become stronger, the weak and the stupid must be eliminated, i.e. the survival of the fittest.
    So why are you still alive? It is well known that you are a potless pensioner taking advantage of a system that you exploit yet criticize.

  24. #24
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    So why are you still alive? It
    I am a survivor bsnub, from a long line of those who have survived against all the odds. Unlike you and your ilk, marinated in permanent victimhood, always on the lookout for someone, some organisation, something to blame for your pitiful predicament as you exist from handout to handout, I look out for myself and my family. I dont go begging for handouts, I use my nous to survive.

    Most of the poor in your country and mine are poor for a reason, and that reason is laziness coupled with a helping of stupidity and a side of entitlement.

    Born of unfit parents and condemned to a life of pain and poverty. Its not fair, but its life. Survival of the fittest bsnub. Thats what it is all about, always has been and always will.

  25. #25
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    Quote Originally Posted by taxexile View Post
    Unlike you and your ilk, marinated in permanent victimhood, always on the lookout for someone, some organisation, something to blame for your pitiful predicament as you exist from handout to handout
    You are a pitiful clown. I live in one of America's most expensive cities, I own my home and several others and work in the tech industry here and have for many years. You on the other hand life off of your pitiful pension and falsely point fingers.

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