The “good old days” were not good – Joel Mokyr, Economic Historian

“Dad, is that what life was like in the olden days?” The cheek of my kids.

In my mind, the “olden days” were not when I was kid, more like when my parents were kids.

Either way, it seemed like a simpler time when I was growing up. Everyone was happier, more relaxed, better off and no one was worried about what was going on in the world.

Except that none of those things are true. I just wasn’t aware of what was going on.

The world doesn’t shrug off a shock and move on. Trauma from a war, a recession, a pandemic gets passed on from one generation to the next, shaping how people think and behave long after the event is over.

Before I was born the shadows of two world wars and Vietnam were still shaping global events, just as those wars had been shaped by the conflicts that came before. As a species, we learn something from each challenge we face (sometimes it’s the wrong thing) and we carry that into whatever comes next.

From Vietnam we went to Iran in ’79. Then explosive growth through the 80s. The crash of ’87. Iraq in the early 90s. An Australian recession. Iraq again in the early 2000s. The GFC in ’07–08. A pandemic. Ukraine. Iran, again.

Tell me, where exactly are the good old days in that?

I had no control over any of it, but these events shaped part of my life and my experience in this world, and most of it wasn’t good.

The truth is that each and every day is a mixture of good and bad, joy and grief, peace and war, ups and downs. Some seasons are more of a challenge than others, but if we can intentionally seek out the good, the joy, the peace and the ups, while still making room for the bad, the grief, the war and the downs, then we can be living in the good old days now.

Next time my kids ask about the ‘olden days’, I’ll remember that these are the ‘olden days’ for them, and I get to shape that on purpose.