in regard to trying to keep the spirits up

It could be dejecting to think in terms of how little we managed to accomplish.

I thought for sure circa 1970 that there would no or much less in the way of mass market advertising by … the distant year of 2000. Our generation mocked it to its core. What an affront. Craven; obnoxious. Stop it.

We wouldn’t put up with it.

Not only is it still here but an argument can be made that it’s worse than ever. The main locus now is screens. When there’s advertising, the content provider will give you 80% or 60% of the screen for content and then the other 20% or 40% will be filled with flashing noisy attention-grabbers of advertising. It’s more of a nuisance than when a magazine had a page of ads between every ten pages of content or a TV show had three minutes of advertisements separating every twelve minutes of content. In regard to the latter, well, you could go to the bathroom. Now the flashing and the noise is constant as you’re trying to concentrate. It’s more of an affront, more craven, more obnoxious.

And that would be a dejecting reality if one didn’t appreciate the perspective re: social change takes a long time to effectuate.