Things were slower. Well, at least from what I know of my own country through my parents and grandparents.
Speed limits were lower; the only people driving around like Max Verstappen were young kids having fun (for better or for worse), not because they were psychologically tweaking out over getting to somewhere they actually needed to be.
For the longest time there wasn't even a "fax" machine; now we have instant text message, email, facetime. With perhaps the exception of emergency services and doctors (idk for sure), you could not be expected to be on call at all times by your boss. It was harder to get a hold of people anyway. It was more understandable to not be able to get immediate hold of someone because there were. no. cell. phones; now we have location trackers and software on computers at the office that report you if your mouse doesn't move for 15 seconds. It was normal for various business transactions or other interactions / services / communications to take two or three days. Places of employment were properly staffed, not running on skeleton crews to maximize the profits of some rich fuckwad. This is anathema to people now, who feel entitled to immediate answers and solutions even if it's their fault for waiting until the last second.
The expectation for everything was slower. You'd receive mail slower. You'd receive news slower. You'd get answers slower. People weren't tweaking out about how their one-day delivery wasn't able to make it.
Society is now constantly on figurative meth. That's the pace of life today. Everything is now now now now now. This is all the price of "convenience." Does it seem worth it? Not to me. Squeeze more out of every day, gotta squeeze more, because I'm being squeezed, so to compensate I need to squeeze others, and they need to squeeze, we all need to squeeze. Everyone is a sponge squeezed so tightly that all of its life, all of its water has been fucking wrung from it.
Instant gratification around every corner. Quick hits available everywhere. Fiending for that next dopamine hit. Everything precariously balanced on the mind of people who are strung-out. Advertisements forcefully gaping you from every orifice, your eyeballs, your ears, people constantly trying to get your attention, fighting for your attention, more content being uploaded to YouTube alone every single day than you could watch in a lifetime, a thousand streaming services, movies, books, games, a barrage of negative news, just a neverending assault on your mental bandwidth.
People are strung the fuck out even if they're sober. The treadmill of life has been put on fast-forward. Unless you're David Goggins, you will burnout, or tire and fall behind, or injure yourself. Or all it takes is one simple trip. One little thing to not go right and it's catastrophic.
So much of this stupid bullshit can wait. Should wait. Not unreasonably long, mind you. But a lot of things can wait. So much of this stress and pressure is completely unnecessary when you take a step back and look at it all. Too many deadlines are comedically arbitrary. The ridiculous things people file complaints about and speak-to-the-manager about. I was waiting in the drive thru for 10 minutes, unacceptable! This is outrageous! You should be ashamed! Who's in charge here! What's the corporate number!
At times, it is indistinguishable from someone on crack. I've heard it said that young people are zombified by their phones, but 28 Days Later seems like a much more accurate metaphor if we're speaking of societal critique. Everyone's rushing about like manic drug fiends.
