Enough of the cliches and back to the topic.
Our growth and expansion has created expectations that are simply not realistic. We expect the power to always be on, that gas will always be cheap, food will always be on grocery shelves, and to own the latest techno gizmo. People born in the 80's and 90's simply have no clue about how hard things can really be for the world, country, or individual. This is especially true if they have never travelled outside of the US. So when the economy takes a dip or gas goes up by $2.00, we of course think the world is about to end. It breaks the mold and challenges our expectations.
So let's put things in perspective to illustrate the point. Take a look at the table below as it describes how long it has taken for 1/2 of the US population to adopt new technologies.
So 100 or so years ago, it took 71 very long years for the telephone to be adopted by 1/2 of the country! Stop and think about that for a minute. Seventy one years -- that is a life time. IPODs are on the other end of the spectrum -- they were adopted in 4 short years.
Chew on this for a while. Come back to it and chew some more.
We live in a time of instant gratification that feeds the "me too" mentality. Don't get me wrong, we should be proud of these achievements and I am not advocating we return to the horse and buggy. But let's re-adjust our outlook on things and not be lemmings and buy into mass hysteria about the first thing we hear about the state of affairs...
