I suppose it would be mostly practical skills, cooking, fixing things. Usually had to be done by people themselves.
Maybe also mental things like navigating (with or without paper map) and remembering their daily and weekly agendas.
What other things would be a big difference with the people today?
Apparently recognizing and handling fascists.
1975 is a weird place for that, actually. During and right after WWII motivations for fighting it were mixed. Obviously most white Southerners shipping off to Europe weren’t anti-racist. Obviously Einstein was. The sanitised, mythologised version that people think back to today really got going in the 80’s.
I remember last rememberance day in Canada, our public broadcaster did a live interview with a veteran. He was an actor involved in recruiting, and just casually mentioned it was a blackface act.
Meeting up with people, no phone. You arrange a place and a time, and you show up, if the other person isn’t there… You wait.
It was super important not to leave people hanging
Recently I have started having to ask hours before a plan is meant to execute, whether the other parties are still attending. Three times out of four I’ve been cancelled on - forgot, too busy, whatever the reasons were.
When was I meant to find out? When I called you asking how far away you are, only to find you’re not coming at all?
Basically, those people were not going with you. I wouldn’t consider them your friends. Friends would at least tell you they are bailing so you don’t go
Uhh… not that I’m any good at it, but tying knots.
Bowline is a very cool and useful knot
I only know some basic knots.
What I do know are some shoelace knots, like this fastest shoe knot. (this website in general has a lot of interesting information on shoelacing)That might be fast, but it doesn’t look very secure… the surgeon’s knot seems better for actually staying up.
It actually holds up perfectly fine. Have been using it for more than 20 years, no issues.
Good to know!
Here’s how to tie another one:
Well, now I know what I’m going to do during the weekend :)
Social Skills. Navigation. Do it yourself. Touching Grass.
If you consider them to be inversely proportional to social disorder, social skills would be at a nadir in 1975. But, there’s other ways to look at it, of course.
Navigation. You used to remember the way to all these places. Now it’s just on the phone.
Navigating a paper map.
You want to drive to a suburb of a big city. You have an address. The internet doesn’t exist.
How do you get there? Well. You use a map. Almost every glove box would have a local and state map, if not a full map book like a Thomas brothers.
Even more scarce is the ability to navigate a city by simply understanding it’s road system. Give me an address in my home city (a labyrinthine nightmare to visitors) and I can just drive there without looking at a map. It’s practically a party trick now that I can tell where people live by just hearing their address. Which sounds absurd until you realize they no one ever needs to do that anymore.
You should become a cabbie in London. They all have to memorise 320 routes, 25,000 streets and 20,000 places of interest, e.g. hotels, stations, tourist attractions and so on. It’s called The Knowledge. There’s some evidence that mastering The Knowledge actually alters the structure of the brain!
Road networks in most cities in my country are like someone just dropped a pot of spaghetti. The oldest urban areas here are at most 150 years old too, so it’s not like we can blame the Romans.
I was so confused by this comment until I remembered that US-american streets are planned and numbered. Because while I grew up in a village in the 90s, I wouldn’t be able to tell you where the “Primrosestreet” or the “Blackbird street” is unless I had friends who lived there.
I used to do this when I delivered pizza.bMy phone wasn’t playing well with the GPS because I had put a custom ROM on it that happened to be too much for the thing, plus aging, but the ROM was too good in every other aspect. So I just studied the map on the same computer we clicked through orders on, remembered my route, and in a couple of weeks I didn’t even need to look at the map before going around our zone.
Still helps me navigate cities to this day, even now that I don’t drive at all.
Although living in a post-Soviet country helps with city/road design, making it rather predictable in ways lol
I wonder if it took quite a bit longer for people to reach their destination. Because not everyone would be as good at reading maps (compared to simply following gps instructions) Maybe that made it more common for people to arrive at different times. or plan longer trips because the driving would take up a bigger part of it.
Also, when driving alone, I can’t imagine holding your map. So you would still have to stop from time to time for long trips. And actually memorize the big lines of how to get to your destination.
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Reading analog clocks
I grew up reading analog clocks and it only clicked in the last year what top (the hour) and bottom (half hour) of the hour meant.
Mending clothing, basic auto repair and woodworking.
Using a rotary phone. looking up a book in a card catalog. The ability to solve your own problems.
The ability to solve your own problems.
IMO, critical thinking is the single most important skill a human can learn. Teach a man to fish and all that.
They don’t/cant learn that in today’s world. They have abandoned learning and switched it out with answers to everything.
@grok can u explane wat bro sed in inglish plees
Look a perfect example.
I wish I was better at solving my own problems. But also depends on what you consider solving your own problems is, exactly.
I learned early not to rely on other people, so I tended to look up everything I need in books and online.But some problems are not solved with research, or suggestions from others online.
Some problems are only solved by giving yourself time to process them yourself.This is something I’m still lacking in, perhaps because I always searched outside of myself for solutions.
I’m amazed by the solutions some people can come up with without having access to information from books/online.It sounds like you are better at it than most kids these days. I look up solutions all the time. No sense reinventing the wheel. I’ve also spent days on some problem without looking elsewhere for a solution. The dopamine from solving a problem myself is excellent.
Was with you untill the solve your own probles thing. I know of way many people who did not solve their own problems 50 yrs ago, passing their problems to their children instead.
When I was very young around 50 years ago I built a small flashlight using a plastic tick tack box, paper clips,a flashlight bulb and two AAA batteries. No one showed me how I just figured it out. So just because you couldn’t see the problem solvers among you doesn’t mean they were not there.
Yep, and that is still true. I was thinking more of the what to make of your life, family and mental health problems solving though.
I don’t know if you are asking a question about my life choices but I see a therapist regularly. My children answer the phone when I call and when something breaks people come to me for a fix. I’m fine, better than most.
Oh, I meant it in general, wasn’t talking about you specifically, I can see how my use of “you” could lead to confusion though. Anyway, it’s nice to hear you’re doing well :)
Want to say general automotive competency. As in you had to deal with carburetors on cold days so you had to adjust intake, spray starting fluid into it, know about oil pressure and warming it up, etc. Some people are barely able to conceptualize putting gas into the thing now.
Knowing the prices of typical appliances and such. Example, modern The Price is Right compared to the 80s and before. 50 years ago, people were more likely to know the prices for a multitude of reasons, one being there were more home owners in those generations who might be looking at replacements or upgrades. Now, home ownership is less and I couldn’t begin to tell you the price of a washing machine being a renter.
Also, there were like 3 washing machines on sale. Now you have 50/manufacturer.
Reading card files in libraries.
Servicing and repairing many things in the house, but devices were far more easily diagnosed and repairable due to not being computerized. Really the “it’s broke and I gotta fix it” ability across age groups has really dried up. Doesn’t matter if it’s changing a tire on a car, or a kid having to fix a punctured tube on a bike tire to get to their friend’s house. They don’t ride anywhere for that matter. Changing brake pads. Changing the air filter in the home HVAC. People don’t do this stuff anymore.
Being bored.
Reading newspapers, books, magazines, etc. I don’t think people read as much anymore.
Hobbies. I think they’ve kinda died off, at least the physical ones. Model planes, trains, building stuff in your garage, cars, etc. Some of it’s been priced out of range or has gotten too technological for some, like cars, but manually creating something as a pastime has really disappeared.
Remembering a lot of phone numbers in your head.
I’m sure I’ll think of more, but it’s been a while since I was a kid and thought about pre-modern tech society.
I’m going to have to look up this card index thing.
Reading newspapers, books, magazines, etc. I don’t think people read as much anymore.
Depends, are you excluding reading on a screen? The hard numbers are that people do way, way more in text now, and are better readers and writers as a result.
Not OP, but I believe there is a big difference between reading a book or longform article vs 3 paragraphs in a Fediverse thread. I certainly feel it when I sit down to read longform (but i still often read longform).
Ooh I just changed my air filter for the house the other day!
Maintenance in general does seem to be something lacking in an age of disposable and easily replaceable items. Often times it is less expensive to replace vs repair, which is an upside down paradigm for sustainability…unless the retired item is recycled or repurposed.
There is no significant loss in total skill with each newer generation. The paradigm is constantly shifting. Humans have always adapted and learned to manage whatever is readily available to them and how to maintain it. Your parents complain you don’t know their vintage skills. You complain they aren’t learning new skills. You complain younger people don’t know your “necessary” (vintage) skills.
“The children now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise” - some guy in 1907 summarizing Greek beliefs.
The generation that can navigate whatever it is kids navigate (flipper zero?) can’t modify an OS. The generation that can modify an OS probably can’t tune a carburetor. The generation that can tune a carburetor probably can’t change a horse shoe. Your skills are based on what you have to do every day. As technology removes the need to manage those things, the skill is lost and new skills replace it.
If you knew how to drive, you most likely knew how to use a manual transmission.
Using a card catalog at the library to look up books.
Idling away the time, being bored.
