yeah, and you don't have to go back that far

last night my wife and I were watching the first episode of a TV show Deadwood (set in the Dakotas in late 1800s), and my wife commented "I could never have lived then; I would have just killed myself immediately". The irony of course is that she would have been fine had she been born in that era as it would have appeared as "normal" to her then as the world today appears to us (ok things aren't normal right now, but I mean comparatively speaking), and "better" than 100 years earlier.