I got collared by one of the elder members of our community recently; a lovely old woman who just loves to talk. A lot. She usually collars the Washingqueen but she was out so I got my ear bent instead. Now I don’t have much patience when it comes to small talk but as I half listened to her stories of ‘the good old days’ and her complaints about the pace of life today, the other half of my mind got wondering whether she might actually have a point, if I could only be bothered to listen.
I mean who said more, faster, cheaper, is progress? That growth, economic development, increased prosperity, new technology are good, necessary, the way forward? Why can’t progress mean going backwards? Perhaps that’s the kind of progress we need right now. But it does seem to go against the grain, in fact it goes against everything I’ve ever been subconsciously indoctrinated with in our society.
It’s easy to dismiss ‘oldies’ fond recollections of the good old days as the rose tinted musings of dinosaurs, technophobes or others unable to adapt to the demands of modern living. But perhaps they’re right; perhaps things were better back then. When people couldn’t afford a car, shopped locally, walked to work, grew their own veg, holidayed in Blackpool, heated just one room, bathed once a week, owned less, consumed less, made do and mended.
When you get down to looking at the make-up of your great big environmental footprint, it doesn’t take more than a degree in common sense to realise that actually many of the good old days good old ways are actually green old ways. Maybe we really do need to go back to the future.
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