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Old 04-08-2014, 08:35 AM
 
14,989 posts, read 23,799,586 times
Reputation: 26493

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just sayin'....

The forum is starting to get flooded...
Can we at least limit the number of posts on "compare your life in 2003 to 2013"? Yeah, you can interpret it as a history topic...except that it isn't.

 
Old 04-08-2014, 09:36 AM
 
Location: Victoria TX
42,579 posts, read 86,702,293 times
Reputation: 36642
Maybe Pop Culture should be a subforum.
 
Old 04-08-2014, 09:52 AM
 
Location: Berwick, Penna.
16,214 posts, read 11,271,446 times
Reputation: 20827
Hear, hear, HEAR!!!

We are inundated by too many teenyboppers who believe civilization began with the invention of the video game and the flush toilet.
 
Old 04-08-2014, 11:24 AM
 
28,896 posts, read 54,011,888 times
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Are you kidding? History isn't all about battles you know. I find these kinds of questions rather interesting, as much as the 3,000th rehash of the Civil War or World War II. What's more, these are factors that shape history. I mean, if you read the first volume of Robert Caro's biography of Lyndon Johnson, he devotes a great deal of time to the life of dirt-poor farmers in the Texas Hill Country. Because if you can't understand the lives of people who lived in that era, you can't understand the era at all.

Last edited by cpg35223; 04-08-2014 at 12:47 PM..
 
Old 04-08-2014, 12:15 PM
 
Location: Berwick, Penna.
16,214 posts, read 11,271,446 times
Reputation: 20827
It's worth noting that as recently as 75 years ago, perhaps 1/3 of the population, and a greater percentage of those in the South, lived on farms, more often than not, without the benefits of electricity and indoor plumbing, or that, to borrow a line from singer Steve Earle, "We only came to town about twice a year." (OK, more like once a week in my Grand-Dad's day).

Popular mass-market texts such as the Oxford History of the American People, address this point, but it doesn't seem to find its way to the classroom in a manner that the average teenager can grasp.

We are constantly reminded here of the evil fruit of institutions like slavery and totalitarianism, but seldom pay attention to the daily conditions that gave rise to them or recognize the fact that, bad as many of those conditions were by "contemporary expectations", it was an improvement over what came before.
 
Old 04-08-2014, 01:10 PM
 
Location: A coal patch in Pennsyltucky
10,305 posts, read 10,553,441 times
Reputation: 12612
Quote:
Originally Posted by cpg35223 View Post
Are you kidding? History isn't all about battles you know. I find these kinds of questions rather interesting, as much as the 3,000th rehash of the Civil War or World War II. What's more, these are factors that shape history. I mean, if you read the first volume of Robert Caro's biography of Lyndon Johnson, he devotes a great deal of time to the life of dirt-poor farmers in the Texas Hill Country. Because if you can't understand the lives of people who lived in that era, you can't understand the era at all.
I agree with the OP. What was life like in 1960 is not the same asking, "What was the life of dirt-poor farmers like in the Texas Hill Country in 1960?" My life growing up in a small town outside of Pittsburgh in 1960 was very different from someone growing up on a dirt-poor farm in the Texas Hill Country in 1960.

Everyone's situation is unique and always has been. Any question like this must be more specific to be answered with any value. For example, someone might ask, what was it like growing up in a West Virginia coal company town in the 1930s? or the 1950s? or the 1970s?
 
Old 04-08-2014, 01:12 PM
 
Location: Miami, FL
8,087 posts, read 9,794,196 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by jtur88 View Post
Maybe Pop Culture should be a subforum.
An Alternative History as well.
 
Old 04-08-2014, 01:15 PM
 
Location: Parts Unknown, Northern California
48,564 posts, read 24,014,227 times
Reputation: 21237
Quote:
Originally Posted by cpg35223 View Post
Are you kidding? History isn't all about battles you know. .
Yeah, its about comparing our 2014 phones to our 2004 phones.
 
Old 04-08-2014, 01:30 PM
 
Location: Pennsylvania
5,725 posts, read 11,679,267 times
Reputation: 9828
Quote:
Originally Posted by cpg35223 View Post
Are you kidding? History isn't all about battles you know. I find these kinds of questions rather interesting, as much as the 3,000th rehash of the Civil War or World War II. What's more, these are factors that shape history. I mean, if you read the first volume of Robert Caro's biography of Lyndon Johnson, he devotes a great deal of time to the life of dirt-poor farmers in the Texas Hill Country. Because if you can't understand the lives of people who lived in that era, you can't understand the era at all.
What you cite here does indeed sound worthwhile; the problem is that the inundation the OP is talking about includes discussion of cultural gradations from only a few years apart, an almost insignificant historical time frame. Further, the focus seems not to center much on historical themes as pop cultural ones.

Quote:
Originally Posted by 2nd trick op View Post
It's worth noting that as recently as 75 years ago, perhaps 1/3 of the population, and a greater percentage of those in the South, lived on farms, more often than not, without the benefits of electricity and indoor plumbing, or that, to borrow a line from singer Steve Earle, "We only came to town about twice a year." (OK, more like once a week in my Grand-Dad's day).
Except that not everybody was brewing hooch, like Grandpa Pettimore.
 
Old 04-08-2014, 01:55 PM
 
9,961 posts, read 17,463,302 times
Reputation: 9193
The Millennial Generation is basically so self-obsessed that they were already talking about nostalgia for their 90s/early 2000-era childhoods when they were just reaching their mid-teen years. One reason is that with the rise of the internet just about every piece of pop culture from the last 40 years can be accessed immediately. But also, because there was a difference in parental nurturing styles in the 80s and 90s--kids were raised to be the center of attention and “special” as opposed to the more laissez faire approach of the 70s. Starting almost right after 9/11 and continuing through the following decade and 2008 economic crash, there was more and more kids in their teens and twenties already looking at the pop culture of their youth as being a reminder of their supposedly idyllic childhood--and with the youngest millennials this sentiment has only increased.

And I'm on the far edge/border of that generation (born in 1979) but I associate more so with the cynicism and pragmatism of Generation X in some ways(who looked back at their youth under a more sarcastic lens). Dear lord though, I don't need to read another retrospective of the 90s as written by someone born in 1993 who only remembers the decade through Nickelodeon kids shows and Pokemon.

Last edited by Deezus; 04-08-2014 at 02:24 PM..
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