“Great observation. The social glue of the 1930s is long gone.”
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Not only the social glue but the knowledge of how to survive on a shoestring is gone. I was born in 1944 five days before D-Day. We lived on forty acres in South Carolina a mile off the nearest blacktop road . My parents knew how to survive with nearly nothing because they had reached adulthood on farms during the depression. Some on FR seem to think they can just go back and live that way if they find it necessary but it is not that simple. I can still remember how to do a lot of what I learned growing up but I realize that I never learned much of what they knew. Most people now cannot even imagine how people lived back then. You could hand the average young person a fine sharp axe now and they would collapse from exhaustion before they cut through a small tree branch.
I don’t mean this to sound critical, it is simply the facts. Most people have no more understanding of how to live that way than my father had of how to use a computer. A computer was simply a word that he learned before he died and that kind of living is simply words to most people, they have no idea of the reality behind the words. There are exceptions of course but they are a small minority.
it is simply the facts. Most people have no more understanding of how to live that way
There was a great short story by George O. Smith,titled Lost Art, published in 1943, and reprinted in A Treasury of Great Science Fiction that deals with this exact subject. It matches your observations.
I strongly suggest you buy A Treasury of Great Science Fiction ( 2 volumes) online.
It is very inexpensive on Ebay or online booksellers and contains many great short Stories including The Weapon Shops of Isher which neatly sums up the moral argument for the 2nd amendment.
Absolutely. My mom grew up in the Depression in a 2 bedroom house with a dirt floor, an outhouse, and a hand pump well (in west Texas). They did pretty good because they had chickens and a cow and grandma knew how to live off the land.
I doubt I know half of what my mom knows, and maybe 1% of what my grandmam knew.