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How do you respond to platitudes such as 'people don't have as much time for each other as they used to', 'folks were more caring back in the old days' 'young people had more respect' etc.? Concede that such sentiments may contain a measure of truth - never mind the brutalities of the past, the fact that people have been uttering similar sentiments for thousands of years (the law of diminishing returns). Do you see these things as cyclical? Attribute these observations to rose tinted glasses?
Case-by-case. Define your terms (I say this to the hypothetical person directing these platitudes to/at me). Internet is not really amenable to such discussions, because of groupthink, lazy generalizations, etc. I've done much better getting into debates like these in real life (and I'm in Buffalo, a less stereotypically cerebral part of the country than yours). No one time period is identical to another, so to me it's endlessly fascinating to talk about differences of time and place. Saying "your father's father said the same thing about you" doesn't do justice to the ever-unpredictable happenstance of intergenerational change...or just moment-to-moment change.
Bottom line is that one can either dismiss all of history as essentially cyclical (not to mention deterministic, if you take the materialist perspective that I ultimately would), or you can take the time to engage other people about the momentary realities of their existence. I (for now) stave off suffocating existential despair by doing the latter.
Last edited by Matt Marcinkiewicz; 05-28-2014 at 12:22 AM..
Speaking for myself, I can remember with nostalgia all the times growing up in the 40s and 50s sitting around with my friends, my parents and my extended family talking and, in some cases, solving the mysteries of the universe (or so we thought). Without being plugged in and isolated by the media, we were interacting with other human beings and I wonder what young people today will be able to look back on when they get older. In my observations, society is getting less and less social and inept one-on-one with each other because being tuned-in to media practically 24/7 doesn't give them a chance to grow in that department before they are adults and set in their ways.
As for the brutalities of past---wars, violent weather that destroyed communities, etc---have always been cyclical. But what nostalgia does for you is gives you the ability to focus on the recovery and strenght of character you gained from having lived through those tough times instead of focusng on the hardships and stress themselves, which when happening in real time you must face.
Wayland Woman, I don't doubt what you say - certainly people wouldn't have been 'plugged in and isolated by the media' in the same way as today ... the demands of radio and television were very different. But wouldn't people of a certain age have been voicing similar sentiments then? If so, what does that imply ... that every earlier generation is somehow 'more human' than the next?
People in my peer age group do voice similar sentiments in person and in our web communities. But I don't think it's about a concern that earlier generations are "somehow more human" which I don't believe for a mind. I think we voice these observations more as a sad observation (and maybe a warning bell) that society is about to lose something important. People will always have the same set of emotions---love, hate, fear, etc., etc.---no matter what century we're born in.
But to your question about people of a certain age voicing similar sentiments back when radio and television first came out. Sure they did. Churches even had preachers that preached against the evils of TV and their members would hide their antennas in the attic so they church families wouldn't know they bought one. That went on at least 10 years of hiding antennas. Now, the churches that preached against TV have their own broadcasting studios.
You mention "the demands of radio and television were different." I'll give you an example of how the age of TV was different than the age of computers. I can remember when the first person in my social circles got a TV. I remember because every Sunday night my family and several others would all go to that house and watch it. It took several years before these families all got TVs of their own. Although, in many ways TV has changed from those days TV can still bring people together for one-on-one interaction. I see it happen every weekend in my neighborhood when there is a televised sports event. Cars are lining the street, cheering is coming from my neighbor's house. Computers bring people together online but it's not the same as face-to-face interaction.
People don't have as much time for each other now, in my opinion because we want so much stuff now days and we have to work harder and longer to get that stuff. Too many young people want new houses with all new stuff starting out, for example, and that was unheard of in my and my parent's generation. Keeping up with the Jones is alive and well only the Jones live in the media and have more money than the average, non-movie star person can make.
Many thanks for the response. TV can be a unifying experience (notwithstanding the old criticism that people were glued to the screen - much like computers) Your comment about online being no substitute for direct interaction, holds true, though with the advent of say, Skype, friends, family can now communicate across distance - almost as though in the same room. The line between objective or matter of fact observation and 'generational bias' is a thin one. I happen to have been born in the mid fifties e.g '60s music is best' etc. It's a given that 19 year olds of today will be lamenting some aspects of contemporary culture in 40 or 50 years, 'In my day, people didn't need to walk around with a hard drive in their heads' - or whatever.
I like this question. I see nostalgia as a purely subjective interpretation of someone's individual past. By that, I mean it is probably a truthful interpretation of their past but a very particular and subjective one.
For example, I'm not picking on anyone, but a poster commented about their experience in the forties and fifties with fond nostalgia. However, objectively speaking someone who was black probably would not relate to that nostalgia i.e. the realities of jim crow, racism, and everything else in that age. Another example, so that it is not interpreted that I'm just being race based in this case, a white person in Manhattan, or the steel mills, or the coal mines, or the rail road company probably would not relate to that nostalgia either. To better reinforce my argument Steinbeck, Fitzgerald, Heminway would probably not relate to that nostalgia. Again, I'm not indicating it's untrue. No. It's that one individual's truth.
Now, the problem I sometimes have with contemporary media is creating a false sense of nostalgia. I have never watched the series but I loath it on principle alone. I'm writing about Mad Men. It purports to take place in the sixties and the sort of weird sense I get from men who watch it is that the time was a better place for men. A false nostalgia. Any time I hear that, I always ask the guy to have a long conversation with their grandfather. Chances are he didn't work on Wall Street or what have you. The truth is there are systemic reasons who was not on Wall Street. I would appreciate a show like that only if it showed the reality of everyone's experience at the time without a Derk Draper or whatever that guy is called. Because chances are if you were on Wall Street, you didn't look like him.
As an Aside: I went to college in Manhattan during the time Friends was on there. I never watched Friends really except for a few episodes. And I remember thinking it took place in something like Seattle until a friend corrected me and indicated that it took place in Manhattan. Having lived in Manhattan it didn't make any sense to me how a group of men without high paying jobs could afford two bedroom apartment and how three women without high paying jobs can afford would could probably pass as a penthouse. I also was boggled by the fact that were no Puerto Ricans, Black People, Chinese People, Russians, Italians, Jewish People and a lot of other glaring elements of New York in the Vanilla world they created.
Artifice, I think you're right to a large extend that nostalgia is different for different people as backgrounds, social/income levels, education and stations in life all factor in to our life experiences. As time passes, though, those individual concepts of nostalgia do lose their details and take on a more stereotypical view because documentarians and writers are using broad brush strokes to describe what times were like in any given decade.
BUT stereotypes like in Mad Man became stereotypes for a reason and that reason is that a large body of people---not everyone, of course---can relate who grew up in the same time frame. For example, I never lived in a large city like New York but the working-in-an-office experience that is portrayed in Mad Men was exactly the same for me in Little Town USA during the sixties---the way men treated women as total sex objects and you had no recourse.
I do get frustrated with people who have selective memories when it comes to naming the 50s as Mayberry and Father Knows best perfect for everyone when there was just as much (or more) child abuse, spousal abuse, bad marriages, etc. (And you already covered the race thing.) I think some people who've lived through certain decades tend to buy into the everyone-was-happy stereotypes just because it's human nature to remember the best things from the past and come to terms with the bad things and not want to relive them in memory again. And there again, I'm stereotyping because some people go through some horrendous things that can't be forgotten no matter how they try.
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