PYF Historical Curmudgeons: kids these days, 500 years ago

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Wanamingo: Feb 22, 2008; by FactsAreUseless

Our sires' age was worse than our grandsires'. We, their sons, are more worthless than they; so in our turn we shall give the world a progeny yet more corrupt.

- The Roman poet Horace, from book 3 of Odes, circa 23 BC

For as long as society has existed, there have been people decrying its slide into moral degeneracy. Sometimes we can look back and see that the same complaints we're hearing today have been in use for thousands of years, and other times we can see that the things we take for granted today once meant the downfall of civilization. Let's see what we can come up with to show just how far we've fallen from those halcyon days of the first millennia.

Before anybody says it, the quote from Socrates about children being tyrants is apocryphal. Now, let's get started.

wikipedia posted:

With ships sailing directly to the Malabar coast, black pepper was now travelling a shorter trade route than long pepper, and the prices reflected it. Pliny the Elder's Natural History tells us the prices in Rome around 77 CE: "Long pepper ... is fifteen denarii per pound, while that of white pepper is seven, and of black, four." Pliny also complains "there is no year in which India does not drain the Roman Empire of fifty million sesterces," and further moralizes on pepper:

quote:
It is quite surprising that the use of pepper has come so much into fashion, seeing that in other substances which we use, it is sometimes their sweetness, and sometimes their appearance that has attracted our notice; whereas, pepper has nothing in it that can plead as a recommendation to either fruit or berry, its only desirable quality being a certain pungency; and yet it is for this that we import it all the way from India! Who was the first to make trial of it as an article of food? and who, I wonder, was the man that was not content to prepare himself by hunger only for the satisfying of a greedy appetite? (N.H. 12.14)[24]

Plato, 370 BC posted:

If men learn this, it will implant forgetfulness in their souls; they will cease to exercise memory because they rely on that which is written, calling things to remembrance no longer from within themselves, but by means of external marks. What you have discovered is a recipe not for memory, but for reminder. And it is no true wisdom that you offer your disciples, but only its semblance, for by telling them of many things without teaching them you will make them seem to know much, while for the most part they know nothing, and as men filled, not with wisdom, but with the conceit of wisdom, they will be a burden to their fellows.

http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/phaedrus.html

Scientific American, 1859 posted:

DESCENT INTO CHESS� �A pernicious excitement to learn and play chess has spread all over the country, and numerous clubs for practicing this game have been formed in cities and villages. Why should we regret this? It may be asked. We answer, chess is a mere amusement of a very inferior character, which robs the mind of valuable time that might be devoted to nobler acquirements, while it affords no benefit whatever to the body. Chess has acquired a high reputation as being a means to discipline the mind, but persons engaged in sedentary occupations should never practice this cheerless game; they require out-door exercises�not this sort of mental gladiatorship.�

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/100-years-ago-baseballs/

Robert Louis Stevenson, author of Treasure Island, 1894 posted:

A mendacious umbrella is a sign of great moral degradation. Hypocrisy naturally shelters itself below a silk; while the fast youth goes to visit his religious friends armed with the decent and reputable gingham. May it not be said of the bearers of these inappropriate umbrellas that they go about the streets �with a lie in their right hand�?

http://essays.quotidiana.org/stevenson/philosophy_of_umbrellas/

A Little Book for Children and Youth, 1695 posted:

The reason why I write these instructions for little Children is because I find by sad Experience how the Towns and Streets are filled with lewd wicked Children, and many Children as they have played about the Streets have been heard to curse and swear and call one another Nick-names, and it would grieve ones Heart to hear what bawdy and filthy Communications proceeds from the Mouths of such. And the little ones they learn of the bigger, and so soon as they go or speak they are running fast to Hell. But my dear Child, thou that hast this little book in thine hand to read, I hope thou wilt not learn of the naughty Children to swear and lye and call thy Play-fellows Nick-names, and profane the Sabbath as they do. If thou do as they do, thou shalt be burned with them in Hell Fire, for they are the Devil�s Children.

http://www.shakespearesengland.co.uk/2011/02/27/thou-shalt-be-burned-with-them-in-hell-fire/

Unknown publication, circa 1915

Woe to Drunkards by Samuel Warde, circa the mid 1620s

Everett True, American newspaper comic which ran from 1905 to 1927

The entirety of Everett True belongs here, but in the interest of brevity I'll just post this one about manspreading.

# ? Dec 21, 2015 08:24

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# ? Apr 27, 2024 01:23

CommissarMega: Nov 18, 2008; THUNDERDOME LOSER

The difference being that Everett True is the only publication there that's right :colbert:

# ? Dec 22, 2015 03:39

Tiggum: Oct 24, 2007; Your life and your quest end here.

CommissarMega posted:

The difference being that Everett True is the only publication there that's right

I dunno, I'm pretty worried about these people using the wrong types of umbrellas. Also, this one

is fine so long as you don't read it as ironic.

# ? Dec 22, 2015 04:54

Wanamingo: Feb 22, 2008; by FactsAreUseless

It fits in with all the other anti-suffragette stuff from the time. The whole argument basically boiled down to the idea that women would go around acting like men.