Things Were Worse When I Was Young

This 1970s-era poster captures how many in my generation viewed the prospect of nuclear annihilation. Make sure you read the last line.

January 15, 2024. I have friends who will find this column annoyingly upbeat, even Pinker-esque. I’m nonetheless writing it for young people, like my students, who feel despair as they contemplate threats like climate change. I’m hoping I can cheer them up by pointing out things that were worse when I was young. We’ve made progress, we can make more. Examples:

NUCLEAR ANNIHILATION

I don’t remember when I first learned that bombs could fall from the sky at any moment and kill us all. Certainly by the late 1950s, when my grade-school teachers taught us to look away from the window and duck under our desks if we saw a flash outside.

Another reminder of death from above: sonic booms, which occasionally slapped my house in suburban Connecticut like a giant hand. These were U.S. military jets, which only quit breaking the sound barrier over civilian populations in the 60s after public complaints.

The risk of nuclear annihilation has receded since the end of the Cold War. Global arsenals peaked in the mid-1980s at over 70,000 nuclear warheads, according to Our World in Data. Today, nine nations possess fewer than 10,000 warheads.

That’s still 10,000 warheads too many. And some experts, like my Stevens Institute colleague Alex Wellerstein, an historian specializing in nuclear weapons, think the public needs to be reminded about the nuclear threat.

But we’re headed in the right direction. My students say they’ve never had nightmares, as I did as a child, in which they wander through a charred landscape searching for their mom and dad. Progress.

VIETNAM AND THE DRAFT

I had to register with the Selective Service System when I turned 18 in 1971. The Vietnam war was winding down by then, so I was never drafted into the armed forces. The Vietnam draft nonetheless radicalized me and others in my generation. How can a supposedly free country force young men to fight in a dubious war far, far away?

Over the course of the Vietnam war, which lasted from the mid-1950s until 1973, the U.S. sent more than 3 million U.S. troops to Vietnam, 58,279 of whom lost their lives.

The U.S. is still extremely warlike. Since 9/11, the U.S. has waged war in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Syria and other countries. Just over 15,000 American soldiers and contractors have died in these wars, according to Brown University’s Cost of War project.

But the U.S. hasn’t drafted anyone since 1973 (although the Selective Service System remains in place). So fewer Americans have died in post-9/11 wars than in Vietnam, and they served voluntarily. That’s progress, sort of. [See Postscript.]

RACISM

As a boy, I visited my grandparents in Beaufort, South Carolina, where, as I recall, some stores displayed “WHITES ONLY” signs. At that time, circa 1960, businesses could refuse to serve black customers. Many public facilities in the south, such as bathrooms, buses and schools, were segregated.

The 1964 Civil Rights Act outlawed discrimination on the basis of race. Some states nonetheless banned miscegenation (sexual relations or marriage between people of different races) until 1967, when the Supreme Court ruled that anti-miscegenation laws were unconstitutional.

Yes, racism and segregation persist at unacceptable levels. But it was inconceivable, when I was growing up, that someday Americans would elect a black man President. And then re-elect him! That’s progress.

SEXISM

When I was growing up in Connecticut, if a girl in my hometown got pregnant she had to have the baby or get an illegal abortion. Abortion was prohibited in most states (except when pregnancy posed a mortal risk) until the Roe v. Wade decision of 1973.

In the 1960s, moreover, women were excluded from many professions. The engineering school where I teach, Stevens Institute of Technology, started admitting women in 1971; 19 of that year’s incoming class were female. Now almost 30 percent of the undergraduates are female.

Yes, sexism endures, and the Supreme Court overturned Roe V. Wade in 2022, in a shocking set-back for women’s rights. But many states, including Connecticut, have passed laws to ensure that abortion remains legal. Also, remember that a woman got the most votes in the 2016 Presidential election. Progress, right?

HOMOPHOBIA

When I was a kid, the Internet didn’t exist, so I wasn’t sure how ordinary, procreative sex worked, let alone homosexuality. No one talked about homosexuality, not in my home, anyway. Homosexuality wasn’t just taboo, it was illegal. Until 1962, you could be imprisoned for sodomy, meaning oral and anal sex, in every state.

Gradually states eased restrictions on same-sex activity, and the Supreme Court outlawed anti-sodomy laws once and for all in 2003. The Supreme Court eliminated state prohibitions against same-sex marriage in 2015. Openly gay men and women run for office, and win. Come on! That’s progress!

POLLUTION

There were only 200 million Americans in 1970 versus 340 million today, and yet pollution was much worse when I was young. When I lived in Denver, Colorado, in the 1970s, the smog was often so thick that it cloaked the Rocky Mountains and made my eyes and throat itch. Pollution began declining after passage of the Clean Air Act in 1970 and Clean Water Act in 1972.

Yes, fossil-fuel emissions continue to rise, threatening us with catastrophic climate change, but government regulations have helped make our environment cleaner. When I moved from Denver to New York City in 1980, you could see turds and toilet paper floating on the Hudson River. Gross! Now people kayak and even swim in the Hudson without risking their lives. That’s progress.

VIOLENT CRIME

In 1964, Kitty Genovese was raped and stabbed to death in New York City. The murder was especially big news in New Canaan, Connecticut, where my family had just moved. Kitty Genovese’s parents lived in New Canaan and buried their daughter there.

The Genovese murder, together with the assassinations of Martin Luther King and John and Robert Kennedy, drew attention to surging rates of violence in the U.S. Between 1962 and 1980, annual U.S. homicide rates more than doubled to 10.2 people per 100,000 people. Rates remained high through the early 1990s before gradually declining.

Annual homicide rates ticked up during the covid pandemic, but they reportedly dropped last year to just over 5 per 100,000. This rate is still embarrassingly high compared to, say, Japan (0.6)  or France (0.8). But still, the U.S., including New York City, is much less violent than when I was in my twenties.

Yes, climate change is scary. So are Trumpers’ anti-democratic fanaticism, and out-of-control tech bros, and wars erupting around the world…

I know all that! I’m scared too! I just want to point out that not everything is getting worse. Some things have gotten better, objectively, over the course of my life. That gives me hope in these dark times.

Postscript: Fewer Americans have died in recent wars than died in Vietnam, but more non-Americans have died. Estimates of Vietnamese deaths resulting from the U.S. war in Vietnam range between 1.1 and 3.2 million. If you count indirect deaths, stemming from lack of food, housing and health care, post-9/11 U.S. military operations in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere have resulted in more than 4 million deaths, according to the Costs of War project. That’s not progress, it’s sickening.

Further Reading:

I try to balance realism and optimism in my free online books Mind-Body Problems and My Quantum Experiment.

See also these columns on war, our biggest problem:

Is Killing Children Ever Justified?

Dear Feminists, Please Help End War!

You’re Not Free If You’re Dead: The Case Against Giving Ukraine F-16s