The Past Sucked - Here’s The Truth No One Wants to Admit - FutureIQ

4,290 views Wait, is this logic right? • Nov 14, 2025

Slog Reference: The Past Sucked

Description

Everyone has that one uncle who swears life was perfect “back in the day.” Appliances never broke, marriages never failed, music was pure magic, food was straight from nature, teachers were gods, and doctors knew everything. Sounds amazing… except it’s mostly nonsense. In this episode of FutureIQ, we travel back in time not to the fantasy version, but the real one. A world where life expectancy crawled at 32, half of all children didn’t survive, famines were normal, and your ‘durable’ fridge cost you half a year’s salary. We remember the hits, forget the misery, and call it nostalgia.
So why does the past look golden while the present feels chaotic? Why does every generation believe the world is falling apart, even when things are getting undeniably better? And why do our parents’ memories sound like a fairy tale that somehow skips all the poverty, danger, and randomness of life back then?
Join us as we unpack the myths, the selective memories, the psychological tricks, and the strange reason why progress often feels like decline. By the end of this episode, you might just realize one shocking truth: the world today isn’t perfect but the past sucked way more.

💬 Join Our WhatsApp Community: http://tapthe.link/futureiqwa

Videos you may like / referenced in today’s episode:
Why We Only Hear About The Winners?: https://youtu.be/QjDXyuBJ0UY
You're Eating GARBAGE - Is Healthy Food Actually Healthy?: https://youtu.be/cIQcK1r6bLY
Progress Is Making Us Unhappy - Here’s How: https://youtu.be/tcerwW2VxZ0
Science Says: Pollution Makes You Dumb: https://youtu.be/ANvfe_pPg-Q

Do hit us up on Twitter:
@ngkabra http://twitter.com/ngkabra
@shrikant https://twitter.com/shrikant

Chapters:
00:00 Introduction
01:06 Why You Think Appliances Lasted Longer In Early Times
03:13 Why Gadgets Today Don't Last Longer!
04:41 Music Was Definitely Better or Was It?
06:37 Why Old Movies & Songs Were Better?
08:25 Was The Food Better In The Old Days?
10:12 Doctors In Early Days Were More Knowledgable?
12:29 Were The Teachers Back In The Day Better?
14:52 Travel Was Fun Back In The Day?
16:28 Jobs In The Old Days Were Better?
18:55 The Past Feels Better Because Of Your Brain!
19:57 There Are A Few Things Which Were Better In The Older Times.

Listen it on the podcast provider of your choice: https://tapthe.link/FutureIQRSS
Follow FutureIQ on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thefutureiq/

Source / References:
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/VC.IHR.PSRC.P5?locations=IN
https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/ind/india/life-expectancy
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2025/05/has-clothing-declined-in-quality.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/home/2025/06/05/i-tried-homesteading/
https://st.indiarailinfo.com/kjfdsuiemjvcya22/0/6/1/5/4865615/0/summerysheetannualreportenglish201920241966.pdf
https://ourworldindata.org/employment-in-agriculture
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/gdp-per-capita-worldbank-constant-usd?mapSelect=~IND
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_in_India
https://ourworldindata.org/famines

#futureiq #olddays #nostalgia

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The Past Sucked

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Transcript

- Have you heard people say things like how the past everything was so much better? Like marriages were stronger, appliances were more sturdy and durable, clothes were just, you know, clothes could last forever. And we have already established the world is getting better. Now you're saying the past was better. Now I'm confused because what you're saying also makes sense because the songs were better, the movies were better, the food was better. In fact, even if you had a problem because of food or whatever, the doctors were also better. They were nicer. They were more knowledgeable.

0m 33s Ah, and also teachers were more knowledgeable and more passionate. And uh my teachers were lovely. I travel was so much better and we lived closer to nature. Yeah. What are we doing, Navin? It is all false. Okay. The past sucked. Living closer to nature sucks. And let's take a look at why. Everything in the list that we talked about was better was not actually better. Okay. But okay, marriages were better. We will come to that later. It's a more complex issue. But let's take the simpler ones first. Okay.

1m 06s Okay. Appliances were more sturdy. They were durable. They were clothes used to last forever. They did. Right. People say this, right? And there have been studies. Somebody went and took did a study of clothes in those days versus clothes now which last longer. And you are right. Clothes in those days used to last a little longer. A little little. Okay. Not a whole lot. But there is a reason. Okay. Okay. People only poor people want to wear the same thing for such a long time. Okay. Once you have money, you want to change. You get bored of it after a little while. Okay.

1m 46s So the industry creates things which can be changed faster and is cheaper as a result. because that's what people want. Okay? Uh even now things that last a very long time, they do exist. They cost much more. Nobody buys them, right? Because nobody wants a thing that lasts longer except when they are, you know, whining and complaining on Twitter. Okay. So, okay. Fine. Other thing, appliances. Oh, they lasted a longer. They did. Naven I have I my childhood used to you used to repair the same thing over and over again and it would be like chalu and it was just you know the problem there was not that the appliance was much better okay it was

2m 31s worse but the thing is that repairing was cheaper because repairmen were cheaper because everybody was poor in those days okay today you can't afford to pay for the repairs because that person can go and earn much more somewhere else. Okay. It's called Bom's cause disease. Look it up. Yeah. Yeah. We actually have to do a episode on BML's cause disease, but you know what? We bought a fridge for an amount that was actually quite expensive back in the day and it lasted us about 15 years and the next fridge we bought we had to change in three, five, whatever number of years. Definitely not 15.

3m 09s Yeah. First of all, just let's do a calculation, right? that in 1985 a entry-level color TV cost 8,000 rupees because it was quite new at the time. Yes. An average Indian in those days would have to work 2 and a half years to make that much money. Okay. Yeah. 8,000 was a lot of money. 4K LED TV which is like way better cost 30,000. An average Indian can make this in 2 months. Oh, okay. Right. So things are much much much cheaper. I mean, you know, if you're willing to pay that much, you can actually buy 10 TVs and those will last longer than your TV that, you know, just lasted so much, but you have to keep

3m 50s repairing it over and over. You remember the repairs? I do remember the repairs. I' I've gone to get some of those repairs done. I've gone to get the TV repaired. There is also one more thing there which is that if you make a TV which can be repaired it will cost that much right the reason TVs are so cheap these days is because of integrated circuits and things like that which can't be repaired right so there is a trade-off and we want this you make a TV which can be which lasts a very long time and can be repaired and all that nobody will buy it because it'll be that expensive and that uh difficult to because they'll

4m 30s also have to keep making uh spare parts, OEM parts for that and all of that comes into everything becomes more expensive. Fair enough. Appliances, things that we use. Understood. Yeah. But music was definitely better. Movies were definitely better. This I can definitely tell you. Yes, there is an episode we have done on this. It is called Survivor Bias. Okay. You remember all the good stuff and you have forgotten the really bad stuff that happened. Okay. I mean you know you take a list look at Jendra movies of those days. I mean this all was still good.

5m 06s Not all of them. You don't know some of the bad ones. Okay. The other problem there is that there is nostalgia. Okay. I'll give you a unrelated example. Uh when I was in college, okay, the mess food was really bad and in campus there was nothing else. There was one Chinese shop, Chinese food place where you could buy veg fried rice for 7 rupees, chicken fried rice for 9 rupees. And for us because the mess food was so bad because of compared to what that was like the best food ever, right? So even like 10 years later if we went back we would go and eat there. Okay? because it was the best food ever. And once I took my

5m 49s brother there and he was aghast, it was like this is terrible food. Why did you bring me here, the food was bad, but I thought it was awesome? Because of nostalgia, because of the emotions associated with it, right? So, a lot of the movies and songs from your childhood you love because of the nostalgia. Right? People my age here, some of you, I'm sure, would have tried showing some of your favorite movies or songs to your kids and they hated it. Okay, listen. Every generation has different tastes. And I wish I wish to put this on record. DP, Sher's monies, all three had great food. I will stand by it even if my kid doesn't like it. Even if my kids

6m 35s kids don't like it. There is one more reason why things in those days were like you know so good because making anything right making a movie making a song was so expensive that only people who are really really good got a chance to do it right I mean the people who are funding it if it costs 100 times more or thousand times more they're not just going to fund anybody right so on an average only much higher quality stuff got made but The big downside of that was that there was this entire industry of gatekeepers who would just not fund it if there was any chance that it is not you know proven or something like that.

7m 17s I I I only have an opposition on the fact that they were more expensive back at the back in the day because right now the kind of budgets that go into movies are much higher. But I go on how much is a budget that goes into a real that you upload. That's exactly what I was coming to that now a lot of different kinds of movies are getting produced which is no longer the gatekeep kind of movies that you're talking about. But yes, there is democratization. What that means is that much much much much more crap gets produced but that also means that things some amazing things do get created which would never ever have

7m 59s gotten a chance in those days right plus you know 30 years from now when you have forgotten all the crap and only remember the gems I'm sure the gems of this age will be better than the gems from earlier yeah the signal to noise ratio is high and also the quantity ity of the entire signal with the noise is also quite high. Okay, I sense that I am fighting a losing battle here, but I'll still battle on and I will bring up the food example that you said, food was definitely better. Do not otherwise your parents and my parents and everybody who fed us is going to come at our throats. The food was better.

8m 38s Yes, for the people who got food, there were people who didn't get food, lots of them, and they would die. Okay. And if you look at the graphs for under nutrition, for starvation, all those graphs are falling like this, right? What it means is that in those days, food was better, but it was also expensive. Not compared to today, but compared to what people in those days could afford. And as a result, I mean this is a common theme that you will see that something is high quality because we didn't know how to create lower quality, cheaper stuff which everyone else can afford.

9m 16s Right now again there is survivor bias here because our parents were the kinds who managed to afford it and do well in life. That is why here we are sitting and talking about how good our life was uh when a much much larger fraction of people it sucked objectively. Yeah. I mean I'm getting a reality check on my privilege all these years and the good food that you're talking about the food from those days that kind of food it is still available. Okay. It's called organic food. It costs much more and even you don't buy it Sri Kant.

9m 50s So yeah. Yeah. I I I don't buy organic food. I do agree. I'm not a psychopath. And if you want to know why, uh just go through our channel and look for that specific uh thing I'm talking about. Anyway, so fair food uh good food is still available, expensive because organic whatnot. But then uh I'm thinking of doctors now because the doctors I had were very kind, very considerate, very knowledgeable. They knew uh I same as the food, right? You had doctors because you were well off, right? Most people in didn't have doctors. They were forced to either use like random juty booty that their grandmother's sister told them or go to some baba who will

10m 36s give them again some powder and ultimately they would just die. Okay. Life expectancy in India was 32 around independence. It is 72 now. So don't tell me doctors in those days were better. Okay. What has happened? Child mortality used to be 50% 100 years ago which means half the children died. It was went down to 25% around the time when I was born and now it is 4%. Right? 96% of the children are living because of these doctors who are not knowledgeable and who are not nice and who are like so commercial and only interested in money. they are keeping you far more alive and far more healthy than the doctors used to do in those

11m 21s days. Okay. So take a pick. Part of that is also advancements in medical knowledge that have happened over time. So I would want to make that absolutely clear. Yeah. And I genuinely probably subjective but I do feel that doctors back in the day had a little more time to spend with the patients. Maybe because like you said there weren't enough patients that could have access to their services. That's possible. But I do feel like there is a loss of kindness happening between the doctor patient relationship on both ends. The patients are also not kind towards the doctors. The doctors also probably trying to get to as many patients as they can.

11m 59s Very simple. The average doctor then used to see much fewer patients which is why she had time to sit with you and make you feel good about yourself. Today the doctor sees far more patients has less time to make you feel good about yourself and has more time to give you the medicine which will actually keep you healthy. Right? So this is still better and then there is that entire conversation to be had about uh the medical insurance industry and how that plays a role into all of that etc etc. But now you know what? I think I have uh an example that will close this conversation or at least bring it to a point

12m 37s which is teachers. Yes, teachers back in the day were definitely more dedicated. Yes. And I say that because I do teach some students in in in some college that I go to where I do have that passion and that passion is also because I had passionate teachers like that. Were any of them rich your teachers? Uh I don't think so. They were And they were not doing it for the money. Yeah. Well, the problem is that the good people could be teachers in those days because there was nothing else for them to do.

13m 08s Okay. Employment options were so low that you know anyway you're not getting money here or you're not getting money there, might as well become a teacher and do something that actually is a nice good thing, right? Whereas as soon as you create an industry here which pays 10 times more even the good people are going to there. So they are all going into now software and IT and so on. Um you know it's called again bomul's cost disease because they're now working in finance the good people.

13m 40s Yeah. And yeah and because we have let the difference between pay of the teachers now versus uh uh the finance guy people now is so vast that it's like really difficult for a smart person to justify being here. We really need to do an episode on Burma's cause disease especially because this point about the teachers you mentioned is is absolutely valid. The kind of money teachers are paid these days is really bad. Yeah. is a very also also there is a survivors bias here because you remember great teachers because you had good teachers that's why you are sitting here the people who had good who did not have good teachers are not on Twitter and they're not watching

14m 24s YouTube at at least not watching this kind of channels so yeah I am getting so much of a reality check on my privilege right now but it's a good reality check and I I do recognize this priv privilege. Uh but at the same time there there is also a bit of nostalgia playing there and whatn not but I do want to be a good teacher. Pay me money. Yeah. Uh what else? What else? You spoke about travel. You spoke about travel. Travel back then was so much more fun. I mean I remember going in railways and watching out of the window and the middle birth and the upper birth and the side births.

15m 06s It was so much more fun. Naven it was so much more it was so much better because most people couldn't afford railways. Okay, it was very cheap but even then they couldn't afford it. Right. So in 1950 railways made 1.3 billion trips. people made 1.3 billion trips against a population of 361 million right so that is 3.6 trips per person today our population is like four times more and still railways have 8.4 4 billion trips. So even though the population has become 4x the number of trips per person has doubled. Okay.

15m 48s Which means that we the railways our railways is able to serve many many many more people. 8x the number of people it is able to serve. Right? So in return if the travel has become a little more of a hassle I think it is completely okay. Right? The past was great for people who could afford it, but that's only like 12%. Okay, that's actually a great line. The past was good for people who could afford it. And we are the people who could afford it, which is why we are speaking from a very privilege colored lens here.

16m 24s I do agree. Uh what else? Uh jobs, careers. I mean people back then had a very clear career path. Right now you don't know what to do. Right now there is no assurance or even possibility of a job happening to you after finishing education. Yeah. Right. I mean so you're talking about the fact that people joined a company and then they worked for that company their entire life maybe changed one job. Uh right and kind of well it's not so much well they treated you well. They treated you like family.

16m 56s Yeah. They didn't pay you. Okay. A 30 year old today is three to four times richer than their parents. Okay. And by richer I mean richer in terms of the things they can buy. Yeah. Okay. Not not I in terms of actual just rupees they're god knows how many times richer. Right. Uh they are five to eight times richer than their grandparents. Okay. Now in return for that if you have some u you know uncertainty in your career that's fine. I mean you you you can get a career that you can be in the same career for your entire life and they'll treat you like family. You'll have to take onetenth the money. Are you

17m 42s willing to do that? Listen uh at this stage also also coming back to your privilege right at that time. Okay. In 1991 63% of the people were in agriculture. Before that, you know, at some point it was 75%, before that it was 90%. Today it's closer to 43%. Okay. So, yeah, you you're talking about people who worked for a company all their life. Most people were not that people. Most people were working in the fields. Okay. Fair. Those people are not complaining that in the past things were so much better.

18m 20s Fair. Fair. I hear I hear where you're coming from. Um and I also understand that a lot of it also has to do with the fact that the market opened up and a lot of opportunities opened up. A lot of money came flowing in, purchasing power increased which is why objectively in terms of pure money numbers, people right now at 30 are far richer and also have greater purchasing power than what their parents and grandparents used to have. So I I get where you're coming from. Um, and I understand why you say that the past sucked and and I understand why the present is much better.

18m 56s But why does everything in the present feel worse than back then even though things have gotten better? Yeah. Well, we just recently did an episode on this on a concept called the tokavil effect, right? That our brain is weird. Okay. When things are very bad, we just give up and we don't complain about anything. But as soon as things start getting better then of the remaining small number of things that are not so good we complain more. Okay. So the basic effect the tokavville effect is that because things are so much better now that's why we complain more and we think things are worse. Right? Take a look at the whole episode. But that's the idea. Essentially, the closer

19m 42s we get to perfection, the more disappointed we are that we don't reach there. Absolutely. The last mile always takes the most time. It's the hardest. The last mile is the hardest. Then there is also that bit of nostalgia that plays in our minds and all of that. So then is everything better now? Are we really living the best life we can? No, there were some things that were really better in the days, right? So there are some things today which are objectively worse. Pollution is definitely worse.

20m 13s Yes. And it is bad for you. We've done an episode on that. Right. Community connect is much worse. Right. The US uh has exported the individual culture all over the world and families are much more nuclear and individual level. uh everything is like me me and that is probably objectively worse for most people. Some people might be better off but it's worse for most people. Polarization is worse right? I mean we are angrier at each other and fighting with each other and you know on religion on ideology on race uh it's just things are worse definitely another surprising and interesting thing is that children are no longer free okay I mean you know growing up uh we I mean

21m 06s we got out of the house there were no cell phones no nothing parents had no clue where we are until we showed up back home 3 hours later right and on Saturday and Sunday we would leave home and just you know disappear for the entire day and we crossed roads we went like kilometers away we walk to school none of this is possible in the cities today right like everything is you can't go beyond outside your society's gate and you can't cross roads by yourself and anywhere you go you need a vehicle and it's just I think life is a little worse in some ways for children.

21m 46s This I completely agree and to some extent. I also understand the parents who are like but we can't really let our children out of sight. It's not it's not the parents fault. The world this part of the world has gotten worse. I think objectively worse. Yeah. But the point of this episode is okay sure a few things are worse but most things are not only better but much much better. And all the nostalgia you feel for how good things were in the past, most of them they were not good.

22m 18s Okay, the past sucked. The world is much better today. Be happy with it. All right. Uh you are free to absolutely help me in countering this man here by posting in the comments or joining our WhatsApp community which we've recently started. The QR code is up on your screen and we'll put a link in the description. Also, while I understand where he's coming from, while I understand that progress has made a lot of things more affordable to a larger percentage of the world population and not just um in a way that it is gatekept by the privileged uh so I do understand where he's coming from, but I still think that there is some bit of the past

23m 01s that was better and not just the objective ones that he's talking about. Happy to have more of a conversation on that here in the comments or on the WhatsApp community. Do join us and if you've already joined us, thank you for joining us. We enjoy having you there. Sri Kant Naven, Future IQ.