Early in my freelance career I did a contract job for an electronics firm in Huntsville, and like most large organizations their break room had a bulletin board with various odd postings. I remember this particular bulletin board because of the quote that had been posted there. This was a quote from a letter written by a Roman general before the birth of Christ. In this letter he ranted and raved about how the youth were disobedient and unkempt and all the other ills we heard from our parents growing up. The grumblings of an old man about the decaying society they saw all around.

Now, while I believe we are still under Roman domination, over the period since that Roman general’s letter, one can’t help but think the world has gotten at least a little bit better, so why does this always seem to be one of the prominent themes of the older generation?

What I suggest is something I call the “Hot Dog Theory”, as an explanation of how this perception works. When I was young I thought hot dogs were just great food with interesting flavor and texture, and easy to eat. As I got older it seemed that hot dogs were not as good as they were when I was a child. I asked my father if had liked hot dogs as a child, and when he answered yes, very much, I asked if he liked them as much now…if he thought they were as good as they were when he was a child. He said no, they were not as good. We both had the same experience over a different period in time. If that were true of his father and his father before him, then at one point hot dogs were the food of the gods, to be prized over all other food, and some day hot dogs will be completely inedible. Yet we know that neither of those things is likely to happen. If anything, the hot dogs of my grandfather’s day were neither as tasty as those made today nor as safe to eat as those of today. The hot dog has certainly gotten better, but our ability to make critical judgments improves on a faster timescale than the improvements that get made in the hot dog, so as we get older the quality of the hot dog appears to degrade.

I submit that the same thing happens with our perceptions of the world in general. Our lives are slowly improving, but our critical skills are improving faster, so like the mythical “Spook Hill”  where it looks like you are going up hill when actually you are actually going down. here things are actually going up hill, but our perspective adjusts over time to make it look like things are actually going downhill.

This is a good explanation for may things. Why do marriages on average last about seven years? Because that’s about how long it takes for either or both parties to begin to view the relationship as going downhill. Once again, point of view is what it’s about.