Most young people today are aware that almost everything in the world has been changing, and fast. But I wonder if they realize just how much, and how rapidly. Actually, you don’t have to be very young to be caught off guard on this.

I’m over 70 and often tsk-tsk at changes that amaze me (or those I don’t approve of), but even I was astounded the other day when I went back through some Beyond the Sidewalks columns from 40 years ago.

I found that when I started Countryside, in 1969, a first class stamp was 6¢. Gas was 36¢ a gallon. Of course that was leaded: unleaded gas wasn’t introduced until 1976, and ethanol wasn’t even on the horizon.

Going back further, I paid $50 for my first car: a 1937 Chev. Now it costs that much to fill a gas tank.

In recent years there has been a lot of hullabaloo about smoking. Smoking was banned on airplanes, then in restaurants, then offices and retail stores. Now you can’t even smoke in some taverns, or even cigar stores! I wonder how many people know, or remember, that back in the 1950s (when I started flying) airlines actually handed out free cigarettes to boarding passengers. How rapidly some things can change, at least when you’re there to see them and take note of them.

Most of this is like the old story of the frog: toss a frog into a pot of boiling water and it will jump right out. But put it in a pot of cold water, gradually bring up the heat, and you’ll get a boiled frog. (Now we’re told it doesn’t really work that way, but it’s still a great example.)

When seat belts were first introduced in the early 1960s, as add-on equipment, of course, I was a newspaper editor who was encouraged to promote the newfangled things. Most people hated them because they were uncomfortable to sit on. (Few people actually used them, and unlike today’s retractable shoulder harnesses, the bulky belt buckles always seemed to be in the middle of the car seat.) Then they became standard equipment. First their use was “advised.” Then (in Wisconsin, anyway) going beltless warranted a $10 fine. To assuage some of the outrage, proponents agreed that you only got the fine if you were stopped for another infraction: a cop couldn’t ticket you merely for not wearing a seat belt. Everyone knew it was only a matter of time, and it was. The frog boiled.

Now consider the Christmas Underwear Bomber. It appears that virtually anyone who has any kind of voice in the matter is smug and relieved: he was foiled, and we are winning the war on terrorism. It doesn’t seem to matter that our intelligence forces were alarmingly (even ridiculously) ineffective, the terrorist failed simply because he had a jock strap malfunction, and it was ordinary citizens who stepped in to take control of the situation. But is this “winning” the war on terrorism? In fact, have any of the plots that have been foiled and/or averted since 9/11 made us any safer… or have they furthered the enemy’s goals, without us even noticing?

Bear in mind, in this type of warfare the goal is not maximum damage in terms of death and destruction, or the taking of territory, as in a “normal” war. The main goal is to mess up the enemy’s head, along with economic slow bleeding that can lead to death. Little by little, since 9/11, we have become more and more accustomed to losses of freedoms, time, money and dignity. We have become more insecure, more messed up, closer to bankruptcy, and hardly anyone notices.

As in colonial America, a small rag-tag army couldn’t hope to compete with an established, well-trained and equipped and amply funded force — on conventional terms. But look what just a handful of operatives (most of them apparently incompetent, besides), have accomplished. Does anybody even know how many productive hours have been lost just because of airport security? How many billions of dollars expended, not only on security personnel and equipment, but on confiscated fluids and everyday pocketknives? What’s the cost of all the other areas of “homeland security”?

This is time and money that could have been spent for many, many other goods and services… things the enemy doesn’t want us to spend money on because that would improve our lives and our system, which they want to destroy. It happened, and it’s continuing to happen, even when their bombs don’t detonate.

When D. B. Cooper hijacked a Boeing 727 in 1971, he became a Robin Hood-like folk hero in some quarters. There was a ballad about him, played on popular radio stations. But copycats became a nuisance, and surveillance was increased. (That simply meant metal detectors, mostly.) When skyjackers became suicide bombers, airport security got serious. With every new attack, the ante is upped.

The Underwear Bomber brought us full-body scans — more millions of hours and dollars wasted on a largely useless endeavor — for little more than the price of a few chemicals and a one-way plane ticket. No enemy of America could have come close to that with a standing army, sophisticated weaponry, and a massive budget. It would be insane to even try. But a handful of zealous militants? That’s a different story.

Yesterday there was a news item about all the old folks whose canes have been confiscated, because they contained hidden swords the owners didn’t even know were there. Today, it’s an 8-year-old boy, who has been hassled in airports for the past six years, because his name is on the government’s list. (Michael Hicks shares that name with more than 1,600 others.) But a foreigner whose father warned authorities of his religious extremism buys a one-way ticket and boards a plane with no luggage — and flies to Detroit in December without even a coat — he gets on a plane with no problem! And “we” are “winning” the “war”?

All of this affects homesteading in a very general way. But I would suggest that the same mentality applies to most of our culture today. We are suffering from a similar colossal lack of critical thinking about food production, the use of energy and other resources, and certainly economics. In most cases it’s because we have become complacent, like the frog. But it’s also because too many people can’t see back far enough to realize how much, and how rapidly, everything has changed.

The combination blinds us to the fact that things are not as they should be, or could be. They won’t improve until enough people realize that.