Earlier this week I was visiting my grandparents. My grandpa told me a story that turned the normally sluggish hamster in my brain into a tiny, fury, adorable, four-legged Flash.
My grandpa grew up in Sebeka, Minnesota. In the month of October when my grandpa was about 15 years old (in the year 1942), he and a few classmates all within a year or two in age got a ride from one of the parents to western Minnesota to pick potatoes for farmers--this was how many kids from the area made their spending money in these times. When their work was done at this first farm, they took a bus to Fargo, North Dakota to look for more work. Upon discovering there was not much for good work in Fargo, these four young boys traveled north to Grand Forks, North Dakota to pick potatoes for the remainder of the month. During this time my grandpa was about 128 miles from home as the crow flies. My grandpa's parents had no idea of where he was or what he was doing during this time other than working. After the work was done, the boys traveled back to Fargo and took a bus to Wadena, Minnesota where they would be taken back home and return to school.
This story has since been racking the brain of one of the greatest philosophers of our time (me). It does not take a genius to point out that this would never happen in the year 2016. So this thinker poses the question "Why is it that something like this would never happen today?" Like most great philosophical questions, this question is multifaceted and probably has no answer, but I'm going to ramble on about it for a few hundred more words. Sorry.
My first potential answer is centered around the thing that many of you are probably reading this clinical example of expert critical thinking skills (or in other words this Odyssey article) on: cell phones. With the power of a cell phone a person can now be in contact with you from just about anywhere in the world. In any similar situation in 2016 my grandpa would have gotten multiple text messages a day from his mother saying something like "Where are you? How is potato picking? *french fry emoji* Are you eating enough? When will you be home? Love you *heart emoji*." He would also have been sending hella Snapchats to his friends about what he was doing, and he could have checked in with his location of Facebook. With cell phones there is almost never a time when we are disconnected from our day to day lives. However, the invention of cell phones does not account for the fact that parents would no longer allow--let alone encourage--embarking on this journey, especially during the school year.
Perhaps, the world is just a more dangerous place than it was generations ago. If one pays attention to the news they will notice that it seems creeps, cooks, and gorillas run rampant throughout this country. This certainly would not be safe for four boys too young to legally drive a car to be away from home without adult supervision. No current day parent in his or her right mind would allow a child to miss a month of school to go off unsupervised because of all the dangers in the world.
But I now run into another query in my quest to discover why the world is so different than it once was. Is the world really more dangerous today than it was in 1942? You history buffs will know that this was right in the middle of a little conflict called World War Two--arguably one of the most turbulent times in the history of the world. This is not, however, to belittle any modern day conflicts, just point out that the world was not all fairy tales and roses at this time.
Could the corporate news industry to partially to blame for the perception that the world is a much more dangerous world than it really is? "News" is no longer news; it's now just another part of the entertainment industry. Various news organizations compete to gain viewership and make more money. How do news companies do this? By covering the most exciting stories, and the most exciting stories are often times the things that make the world seem like a horribly dangerous place. Perhaps corporate news is to blame for the changing world.
There you have it. Three possible reasons the world has changed as much as it has. The answer could be any one of these three, any combination of the three or something entirely different. Like all philosophers, I do not have the answer. Maybe one of you do. So I pose the question: Why has the world changed so much in just two generations?
