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I've asked this question too. My best guess goes along with the the book "The Fourth Turning"... the "mood" of a generation seems to be cyclical and depend to a great extent on the "mood" of the previous generation.
We are in the "Fourth Turning" where our civilization is in "disaster mode"; we are fully expecting doomsday and feel like everything can and probably will come crashing down at any moment.
This is an especially dangerous time, because world events that otherwise wouldn't normally go to "Defcon 5" probably will.
For example, if the Cuban Missile Crisis happened tomorrow...say, with Iran... it would almost certainly end up in nuclear war. Thankfully, it happened at the end of the 1st turning/beginning of the second which was the end of the "high" when people generally weren't quite so inclined to throw it all away. Even then it was practically a miracle the world didn't end in 1962!
Likewise, WW2 might not have happened if people weren't already in crisis mode because of the depression... America in general might not have felt so overwhelmed with our own problems and intervened early in overseas events like Japan's invasion of Manchuria or Germany's "annexation" of the Sudetenland instead of waiting for the Axis to reach full power... and attack us directly.
It's during these times that rationality and farsightedness are in short supply. People should be scared!
God lord;I was raised teh 50's. fairs had fallout shelter exhabts .we had the nuclear clsok always clicking o when the world would end'duck and cover drills.Wehad more fear of nuclear destruction which i the end might just have stopped a WWIII. Fear of commuist evry where.Anyone remmeber Johson's nuclear polical ad agisnst Goldwater.The boodie fear waqs evrywhere and congrss had the hearings to go with them.
God lord;I was raised teh 50's. fairs had fallout shelter exhabts .we had the nuclear clsok always clicking o when the world would end'duck and cover drills.Wehad more fear of nuclear destruction which i the end might just have stopped a WWIII. Fear of commuist evry where.Anyone remmeber Johson's nuclear polical ad agisnst Goldwater.The boodie fear waqs evrywhere and congrss had the hearings to go with them.
Yep, how to f*** with little johnny's mind, teach him to go to the basement in the school and assume the position to kiss his butt goodbye, cause the nukes are coming. Seems we did that drill once or twice a year.
Or show them the movies of "if you see a bright flash" dive behind a wall or into a ditch.
Of course I guess it beats having 6 year old's frisked and fondled by a government thug in an airport so they can go to Disneyland.
American's have turned into a bunch of pansy a$$ed surrender monkeys.
When I was growing up, my parents had plenty of things to be afraid of.
Fear of polio was palpable. Cars had no seat belts or air bags, and drum brakes and bias ply tires and all roads were 2-lane and there were pointy things sticking of the dashboard. Faulty furnaces set houses on fire. Blizzards could not be predicted. School sports had cardboard football pads and no batting helmets. Nut houses were minimum security, with goofy people wandering away. Every boy carried a jackknife to school.
The average number of children per year who were abducted by strangers and harmed was less than 100. But it still is. So what are you afraid of?
There was no unemployment insurance, no health insurance. People went bare. No sick pay. Food basicly uninspected, smell it first. No antibiotics. No birth control. no abortions. When your parents get old, you put them in a back room and take care of them and keep them comfortable. at your expense.
I don't understand this either. I feel that safety has become such an epidemic we are unable to live anymore.
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Originally Posted by jtur88
So, what are you so afraid of?
Losing my job and becoming disabled in a way I cannot even mention on this board, that is how terrified I am of it. That is why I am grateful every day I go to work and every day I am not disabled in the way I fear.
Other than that, what will happen will happen, and I do not give much more thought to it beyond that.
God lord;I was raised teh 50's. fairs had fallout shelter exhabts .we had the nuclear clsok always clicking o when the world would end'duck and cover drills.Wehad more fear of nuclear destruction which i the end might just have stopped a WWIII. Fear of commuist evry where.Anyone remmeber Johson's nuclear polical ad agisnst Goldwater.The boodie fear waqs evrywhere and congrss had the hearings to go with them.
I'm a child of the 80's.. "stranger danger" was the watchword and my parents were terrified someone would walk off with me, maybe to sacrifice me to the devil.
There are always fears no matter the generation, but beyond that, there is a general overiding sense of the decade... the "mood" the generation is mostly remembered for. I didn't live in the 50's but clearly we remember it as a "boom time" when life improved dramatically for the vast majority of people. I guess that's what I'm talking about, not individiual experience.
Likewise, this day and age will be remembered as "bad times" even though it really isn't that bad in grand scheme of things. Living in Tokyo or Berlin in 1945 is BAD, or the Soviet Union under Stalin, or China during the "Great Leap Forward"... and our lives don't even compare to that, nor are we likely to experience anything close.
I'm not afraid of anything. What's there to be afraid of? I think we should take a poll to see who lives with fear of any kind, and who doesn't. I don't believe fear is common, with the possible exception of people who have kids and might have some reason to worry about their safety, or people teetering on the edge of losing their homes or job.
Speaking of nuthouses, Reagan closed most of them and turned the inmates completely loose. That's when we began to see homelessness in significant numbers. So in that regard, things are worse, not better.
Birth control has been around for a very long time. There were condoms in your parents' and grandparents' day.
Agreed Ruth! Women at the turn of the century have been advocating birth control.
I like to blame a lot on Reagan when ever possible, but this did not start with him. The "Nut house" closings.
Once "chemical straight jackets" i.e. anti-psychotic drugs were introduced in 1955, the need to sequester the mentally ill was not cost effective.
Big Pharma could take care of it...
The closing of the state hospital system created many social problems. Among them, homelessness.
State hospitals were not with out there abuses, but reform would have been a better move than closing the hospitals entirely.
Talk about "throwing the baby out with the bath water."
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