I chose to interview my mother for this assignment and she
has given me a lot of examples of how life has changed compared with my
grandmother’s. The examples clearly proof that life is better now than the
past.
The first thing is education. People in the past, especially
women, are satisfied with high school level education. However, in my mother’s
generation, education is noted essential for judging someone. High school level
education is not as adequate as a bachelor degree in order to get respect from
society and to get reliable jobs.
The second example is transportation. In my grandmother’s
generation, people need to use boats in order to get in or out of the city. There
were not BTS, MRT, or whatsoever available now to us. Life was pretty tough
back then, since if you want to go somewhere, you need to walk or ride on the
boat, which will takes ages.
The third is medicine. My mother said that she never had
chicken pox before because vaccines are already available back in her time. On
the other hand, my grandmother experienced chicken pox because vaccines have
not yet been invented. This also goes
with other medicines, vaccinations, and antibiotics. Technological advances
bolster human lives and increase our rate of survival.
The fourth example is clothing. My grandmother is adept at
sewing and making things associated with fabric. Why? As a matter of fact, back
in her time processed clothing was very hard to find, very pricey, and sizing was poorly constructed. Most antediluvian people bought their own fabric and made
clothes or bags by themselves. Years later, my mother’s generation provided
more supply of clothing (but of course, not millions of brands like we have now),
in which makes our lives easier.
The last thing is the internet. There was no internet back
in my grandmother’s days and also my mother’s when she was a student. The
public library was like Wikipeida (but reliable) of that time, life was pretty
tough for students back then since they need to travel to the library and
wasted time finding the right books.
Overall, I agree with my mother that life is getting better. Despite our
loss of ability to steer boats, stronger ankles, our instructed immunity,
ability to sew, and determination of finding stuffs (replaced my laziness and
stronger fingers for typing). I still strongly agree that what we gain clearly
canceled out what we lost.
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