Have you ever thought about how prevalent certain issues are today in comparison to the past? Global pandemics and new diseases, racism, mass fraud, exponential increases in divorce rates and the sudden boom in sexual assault cases, what do you make of these?

Many will argue that the “old days” were better, money had more value and things were cheaper, people were nicer, cared more about their neighbours and married couples stayed together, it was by some accounts, a Eutopia. But was it really? Is the past better than the present?

SoToday, we’re going to answer this question, or at the very least, attempt to. Seeing as the topic is broad, we’ll be forced to limit our analysis to only a few subtopics.

Where do we begin? Let’s talk about divorce rates, I dare to make the argument that the reason more people are leaving marriages is simply because they can, people are choosing to be happy alone rather than be miserable together, I don’t believe couples face any new significantly overwhelming problems, they simply have new solutions to the same old problems. For example, a woman in a marriage isn’t dependent on her husband anymore, she has a job, she has money, she’s intelligent, she’s educated, so should this woman’s husband turn out to be abusive or cheats on her or they simply fall out of love and their relationship dies a natural death, she will leave, a divorce is her new simple solution to an old problem, whereas in the past, she’d have to brave whatever storm she was under and slave to maintain her marriage because her family wouldn’t accept her back and she had no where else to go. She was also taught that there is nothing more damning to a woman than a failed marriage and then there are these four simple words “what would people say?”.

People seem to discover that their marriages aren’t the beds of roses they envisaged and then YOLO! Rather than spend the rest of their lives on concrete, they simply leave.

My point here is that these supposedly tragic things that might be used to sustain an argument as to why the past is better, are not new or more prominent, they have always existed, they are simply more visible today. This point was made evident by the racial equality protests in America inspired by the death of George Floyd, certain issues like police brutality and violent racsim are not new or suddenly overwhelming, they only appear to be, because these events are now being recorded and shared as opposed to being swept under the rug as they would’ve in the past.

This revelation is also relevant in sexual assault cases, ask yourself, is assault more prevalent? Or are people simply more willing to speak up on these issues? If you are willing to have these conversations then you might be surprised to learn that 58 year old Mama Funke had the exact same experience in 1978 as 18 year old Amaka did in 2019, the only difference being that one of them was assaulted in a time where it’s less of a taboo to speak up about these issues.

Things might not be rosy, but the world isn’t any worse than it was before, people are still just people, good, bad or evil. Just people who refuse to ignore the problems hidden in society’s facade. We’ve always had the equations, we’re only just now beginning to simplify them, that’s why I chose the Venn diagram to represent this article but I couldn’t decide what to put in the mutual space.

Mental health and Therapists, C-sections in child birth, Nannies, Adoption etc.. I could go on forever listing and discussing things with skewed, stigmatized perceptions in Nigeria, but I won’t bore you with all of that. My intention with this article was to shatter the illusion people might have about the past and failing to achieve that, at least get you to reconsider your stance on the world and I will never even know if I succeeded.

The world is constantly evolving, people are changing and the only thing you need to arm yourself with to survive this new world, is AN OPEN MIND!