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Overall, I think the best years to live would have been 1940 something to today. This is the generation that did practically everything to help themselves and did nothing to help others, and now the future generations are going to deal with the effects of that.
Except for the Cuban Missile Crisis (though nuclear war is still possible) and civil rights, I would say they had it the best and the easiest.
I think my generation is somewhere in the middle... but I worry about babies being born today. They're going to have to deal with the fallout from climate change, the transfer of wealth from the developed to the developing world, etc... and I'm not completely sure they'll have the tools they need to deal with it.
I can easily see capitalism in general hitting the wall within a decade or so and that's when serious, expensive and potentially risky changes will have to be made.
They're your halcyon years...you SHOULD look very fondly on them. Makes sense. Our youth should be the apotheosis of carefree living. You're healthy, unencumbered, naive, and curious. And hopefully, you weren't jaded or cynical. I know i wasn't.
Sure, inequality existed, but it's not as if YOU created that inequality. It was just an existential problem but i'm sure that it wasn't a part of your world as you knew it. Most people when they're young are oblivious to injustice going on around them.
The people i don't understand are the people that didn't live in those years and have the benefit of historical hindsight...they should know better.
In any case, there's no time better than the present to me.
Nope! Absolutely not jaded or cynical and just beginning to understand such unfortunate truths as my parents' alcoholism, the prejudices of the day and other less than idyllic issues. Received my first lesson in racism in Alabama when my mother forbade me to play with the children my age from the black (then "Negro") family that lived some way behind us in what could only be described of as a shack. At the time I only knew that for some reason it could harm my father's military career for the son of an officer to have such friends. Didn't make sense to me then or in the years to come.
Years later, in 1983, my then wife was shunned by fellow officers' wives because her best friend when we were stationed at Ft. Know was black; the wife of a fellow officer who also happened to be black. They'd get dirty looks wherever they went together on or off base. Seems the country hadn't come very far in 32 years.
It really was a pretty crappy time in our history. I can't figure out for the life of me why someone would pick those particular years. Folks forget how tumultuous they were because they spend too much time watching Happy Days and The Donna Reed Show.
Let's be real here. The ones who want to go back to that time are white males. Any woman with half a brain wouldn't want to, no black man, no gay man. It's only lily white males that think back so fondly on those glory days.
Nope! Absolutely not jaded or cynical and just beginning to understand such unfortunate truths as my parents' alcoholism, the prejudices of the day and other less than idyllic issues. Received my first lesson in racism in Alabama when my mother forbade me to play with the children my age from the black (then "Negro") family that lived some way behind us in what could only be described of as a shack. At the time I only knew that for some reason it could harm my father's military career for the son of an officer to have such friends. Didn't make sense to me then or in the years to come.
Years later, in 1983, my then wife was shunned by fellow officers' wives because her best friend when we were stationed at Ft. Know was black; the wife of a fellow officer who also happened to be black. They'd get dirty looks wherever they went together on or off base. Seems the country hadn't come very far in 32 years.
We've come quite a long ways since 1983 though. At least from what i can see.
In my 49 years, i've experienced very little if any real discrimination. Yeah, there's the occasional butthole, but nothing that i can't handle on my own. My father and grandfather would've loved to have had my life as i know it with the same opportunities they've created for me.
It really was a pretty crappy time in our history. I can't figure out for the life of me why someone would pick those particular years. Folks forget how tumultuous they were because they spend too much time watching Happy Days and The Donna Reed Show.
Not watching them. Living them, or so we thought. And don't forget Leave it to Beaver, Father Knows Best, Life of Riley, Ozzie and Harriet and many, many more. And wasn't everyone's doctor a Kildare or better yet, Marcus Welby. My pediatrician lived a block away and made house calls.
"Would you rather live the rest of your life in a perpetual cycle of 1946-1964 or continue now into the future?"
Just like now, there were good things and bad things in that time period. I was just a kid in the late 50's and early 60's, so it's hard to say. I do remember less sprawl and less traffic, that was nice. Anybody could find a job and college was cheap, another plus. Kids could play unsupervised all day long outside, that was awesome. However, the medical advances we have experienced make me pick now and into the future. Besides, I can now ***** about stuff on the internet.
Not watching them. Living them, or so we thought. And don't forget Leave it to Beaver, Father Knows Best, Life of Riley, Ozzie and Harriet and many, many more. And wasn't everyone's doctor a Kildare or better yet, Marcus Welby. My pediatrician lived a block away and made house calls.
LOL..i don't think the OP was living them though. I think he's just nostalgic based on an unrealistic perception of life at the time.
That's not to say that 46-64 didn't have their moments of glory. The United States in particular was unchallenged as a powerful country (the Soviets despite what people think didn't come close to matching up), but that also led to a lot of bad behavior on our country's part. Behavior that we're paying dearly for right now.
But like i said before, if you were young during that time, obviously you yearn for a time when life was much simpler. I don't think it's really a yearning for the times more than a yearning to live those youthful memories again.
I'm a 70's-early 80's kid, and there are things about that time that i miss dearly. But that has a lot more to do with the fact that i had an incredible childhood with great parents and extended family. I also feel as if i lived in the best place in the whole world for a kid to grow up in. Spent my school year with my dad in Arizona and summers in Michigan with my mom. I got to go to college right down the street from my home. Life was great.
But i can remember Vietnam, Watergate, gas crisis, inflation, decline of the manufacturing base and huge loss of jobs, busing riots, and the Reagan attempted assassination. My uncle came back from Vietnam so unstable and traumatized that he jumped out of his crane at work and shattered both of his legs and hips. Wheelchair bound for life.
But that's the nature of humans when we look back. We tend to block out the bad things.
I agree. I'd like to move ahead 10 more years to 2025 and hopefully experience a world much kinder to minorities. The future will be exciting and I can't wait to experience it.
This. Progressivism historically wins out over conservatism, so if anything, I'd like to set course for the future.
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