When was that?
Possibly 4 billion people ago?
When mobility was harder and times were tougher.
Now communities are so large people can’t know each other and communication is easy. The bet you hope for is virtual communities.
Frankly by the 1970s Dad was discussing with me the holes he was poking in Ph.D studies.
Imagine medicine in the 1970s compared to today.
Dad had all the scientific language. He boiled down his terms to English language for his patients. In the process of doubting the research and boiling down the terms, the data drops out for all practical purposes. Yet Dad remained committed to honesty.
None of that matters. Diagnostics was the heart of it.
We have an economy to diagnose and a prognosis to deliver. It ain’t good.
Why do people lie? Maybe because they are wrong and do not know it. Is it all lying?
No, it still existed with great strength when I was growing up in the 50s and 60s in a dense WWII single family residential Los Angeles neighborhood, and my husband in NYC dense coop high rise in the 60’s.
I knew every single person, dog, cat, on our block. There were a few old old women who kept constant watch on everything, especially as kids playing ball in the street. Social isolation was extremely rare.
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I think you need to go back further than that.
The world population reached 4 billion around 1974, with some sources pointing to mid-1974 or April 1974
And most people left a house key with a neighbor in case they locked themselves out or the kids came home from school early. Try that nowadays.
And what’s with the 4 billion people ago thing? “Communities’ doesn’t mean the whole world. I grew up in Philadelphia and we had a neighborhood where the most of the neighbors knew almost everybody else. Most big cities are like that. You don’t deal with the 6 or 7 figures of people in Philly or Denver or Cleveland. You deal with the people in your neighborhood aka “community.”
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Growing up in the 50s and 60s…my parents NEVER locked the house doors unless gone on vacation. We were living in California’s Central Valley.
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Remember how the “No Kings and billionnaires” demonstrations were mostly paid for by billionaires? Don’t you think that internet posts can be paid for by political organizations of various kinds, especially NGOs? The internet is swarming with paid influencers that account for a lot of the lies and distortions they are swamping us with through all media. For instance anthropogenic global warming, the Russian (Putin) Threat, Covid alarmism, asbestos danger, TDS were all well supported and distorted online although I have never been able to find any factual proof of any of them. Many of the spread lies are still around.
Ed.
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Correction: Some asbestos types can be dangerous to your health if breathed in large quantities for years. I don’t dispute this.
Ed.
Article today saying that AI influencers are now out performing the human kind.
intercst
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Not to belabor my point but you made me think of this. When I was a boy my father would park the car on the street in the Summertime and leave the windows down AND the keys in the ignition.
I told him “Dad you left the windows down.” He said “Yeah it’s hot out.” I said “But you left the keys inside.” he said “I might want to go out later.” I said “Aren’t you afraid somebody will steal it.” He says in that incredulous voice “Ooh, nobody’s gonna steal it.”
This was in one of those working class row houses for miles around type East Coast city neighborhoods, not The Ritz. My father was a cop. He wasn’t too worried about crime in that neighborhood. Leave the keys in the car with the windows down on the street. Nowadays even in places where you maybe could get away with that, most people will still think you’re nuts
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Yep, that was standard practice in our small town. Seemed pretty safe and we never had any problem.
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Big Los Angeles city boy here. When I was 7 a neighbor boy (about 9) taught me how to hot wire a car. In those days it was so so easy. Dad laughed when I told him, and said such knowledge was always useful, and then gave me a very complicated long staring look….
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Not about honesty, but things like drinking and driving…Dad, “You get arrested, I am not bailing you out”. There was that side of dads. You get in trouble you are in trouble. That has disappeared.
It’s the school’s job now to scare kids. The driving videos reportedly have many kids afraid of getting behind the wheel.
Does everyone really lie?
I guess some will do so constantly.
Would that be considered a contrary indicator?
EVERYBODY predicts a rally? The pessimists have been wrong for too long?
It would be considered cowpies.
Very few people post obvious lies. And many of those “people” aren’t really people at all, they are operations set up by enemies of the free countries of the world. And some are simply moneymakers because they attract lots of eyeballs (see below why).
But VERY many people are stupid. And the lies are not all obvious to them. Furthermore, the lies are often crafted in a way that attracts them (the “stupid” people). So they repeat/repost/etc the lies. That’s why we see so much of it.
Common sense is not as common as it should be.
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@MarkR, very true, add that our journalists have lowered their standards dramatically with clickbait. Worried they might not get read otherwise.
It used to be that clickbait was only at the supermarket checkout line.
The better press used a different form of headlines. Now they compete online for eyeballs.
The NYT is somewhat insulated from using clickbait because their management understood that online they were selling an app. Hugely profitable, the rest are trying desparately to catch up with the times.
I get the times online for $1/week.
I guess you do not believe actual earth temperature measurements, actual CO2 concentration measurements, actual sea level rise measurements, and actual glacier melting measurements because you do not read scientific material on the internet which prove anthropogenic global warming.
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Been watching Fox News again? Rubbish.
It is rubbish because such a claim purposely used to dismiss the no kings march is bull. We need much higher taxes in this country. It is no surprise the billionaires would know that in spades.
The country is being trashed right now.
Billionaires know better.
The “No Kings” marches were funded by a combination of progressive foundations, labor unions, and individual donors. The primary organizers and funders included:
- Progressive Foundations: A significant source of funding came from organizations such as the Open Society Foundations (founded by George Soros) and the Tides Foundation, which channeled grants through “dark-money” pass-through entities like the Sixteen Thirty Fund. The Open Society Foundations confirmed a multi-million dollar grant to the main organizing body, the Indivisible Project, to support its general social welfare activities, though not specifically earmarking it for the “No Kings” protests.
- Organizing Groups: The demonstrations were led by a coalition of over 200 organizations, including:
- Indivisible
- The ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union)
- MoveOn
- The 50501 Movement
- Labor Unions: Major labor unions, specifically the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), provided financial and logistical support for local events, such as transportation and security.
- Individual Donors: Billionaire Walmart heiress Christy Walton publicly promoted the June 2025 protests by paying for full-page advertisements in national newspapers, such as the New York Times, to encourage civic engagement.
- Grassroots Donors: Organizers stated that a portion of the funding also came from small, individual grassroots donations.
Critics on the right argued that the heavy involvement of major foundations and “dark money” networks made the movement an “AstroTurf” operation (artificially created rather than spontaneous grassroots activism), designed to influence public opinion without timely financial disclosure. Organizers, however, maintained it was a genuine, non-violent movement of the people protesting what they perceived as the Trump administration’s authoritarian actions.
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