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I also felt like I would have liked to be an young adult right after World War ll. I hate the way the world is now; especially the way people behave. We used to be a polite society or at least pretend to be.
I also felt like I would have liked to be an young adult right after World War ll. I hate the way the world is now; especially the way people behave. We used to be a polite society or at least pretend to be.
That was exactly the situation my parents found themselves in after World War II.
Every era has its good and bad. The bad during that era included a huge housing shortage (newly married couples had nowhere to live), inflation that followed the end of the war, and shortages of retail goods ranging from automobiles to washing machines. Unions were constantly on strike and Congress finally enacted the Taft Hartley law to decrease the number of labor walkouts. Education was cheap and actually free to returning veterans under the GI Bill. However, the downside was that classes were absolutely jammed with students and colleges were rushing to build new buildings and expand facilities.
There's an old t.v. series that lasted about two years that's called the "Best Years of Our Lives" that portrays people in this generation. The series is actually based on an academy award winning movie that was produced shortly after the war with the same title. Occasionally, this movie is still shown on some of the odd channels on satellite television.
I suppose the good side though was the optimism. America was a more innocent country than. Veterans who had survived the war and had returned faced a future that they felt would be better--in every way--than both the past and the present. My mother is still alive and remembers the era well. After the poverty of the Great Depression and the fear and the killing during World War II, she felt things had to get a lot better. They did too. Both my mother and father, by any measure, lived the American Dream.
I think I'd like to live in a restored Victorian with modern conveniences. We had live gas jets in the ceiling in our house and I was tempted to put in gas lights again. We didn't because of the inconvenience and safety issue. Our house looks amazing by candle light and I could be happy with that look once in awhile. We even have old wind up phonographs that we frequently play. Hmmmm I see a party in the summer with no modern conveniences, dinner by candle light, one hundred year old music playing, and a good card game in our future. After it's over then I want my cable TV and a dish washer
Think about the medical care.
That one seems to bring back people to their senses.
I myself feel that I should have been an adult in the 80's vs being a kid,but then I think about the internet and the advances in medical care.
I agree with that part. What I would love would be a combination of the technology of now and the social graces of then.
I actually embrace much of what you see now, especially involving technology. I love smartphones and eschew this nonsense that somehow we're such awful people for having a smartphone on us and using it (so long as we're not talking about "delicately quiet" places like the library etc). I tell people critiquing selfies and such "what's it to you, maybe you should mind your own business." I love reading Wikipedia much the same as I used to like reading the hardback encyclopedias. I love posting in forums under an alias and having those discussions. I love it that we can get around in cars, so long as the cars aren't so EXPENSIVE and so repair-prone (hint: buy a Toyota Corolla or a Honda Civic, you can't miss).
What I hate: fearfulness, social isolation (not always due to smartphones either), helicopter parenting (especially if you're "free range" as I am and other people want to call CPS on free-range parents), and many fashion trends (I as a man like wearing shorts that are not below the knee, tattoos on women, women wearing "boy shorts," and yes I realize that's not any of my business). People are frightened over EVERYTHING to where I know people who live on 100 acres and freak out if a single door is unlocked or a single window doesn't have the shades pulled.
I hate how people nowadays are bad about not returning phone calls or texts, to me if you can't return a phone call or text in a reasonable amount of time you ought to have your phone taken away from you because it's rude, I DON'T CARE if it's "my phone." People acting like stopping by if you haven't made an appointment with their secretary first is an "intrusion," I look at the hospitality displayed on TV shows like "Little House on the Prairie" and how if you were "in the neighborhood" and you stopped by in the middle of dinner you weren't scolded for "intruding on a family moment," you were invited in and welcomed right on in. True, they didn't have phones then, but growing up in the 70s and 80s we had phones and yes if you stopped by you were invited instead of being scolded, even in the middle of dinner, so to me the mentality and thinking are what's different.
I also much prefer the lack of political correctness, shows like "Sanford and Son" could NEVER be made today. I get tired of hearing comedians apologizing "for anyone I might have offended," I want them to go "full blast" and not hold back because of PC nonsense. Laws, I can't stand modern laws that are borderline Communist like seat-belt use laws and laws at lakes etc banning people from diving into the water because they're so concerned about lawsuits.
If we could somehow have the 70s or 90s but with smartphones and the Internet and digital cameras, so you'd have people who actually RETURNED A PHONE CALL once in a blue moon and didn't act like visiting them at their home without making an appointment with their secretary first was a federal crime yet you still had the goodies toy-wise, I'd be all in on that.
From age 38 to 45 I lived in a one-room cabin with no plumbing or electricity, or traveling on horseback camping. I truly felt it was the most satisfying time of my life. Our own efforts provided everything we needed, directly, instead of the indirect route of modern life. Carrying water from a spring, outhouses (didn't relish THAT part) picking berries, hunting venison, drying/canning meat, gathering wood to cook (and heat) on a wood stove, riding horses to the mailbox....it was quite a life. I felt I had "found myself".
But, that was for a person of "relative youth". I could never do that now (age 61). I'm so glad I did it then, though. I feel like I know what that era was like, sort of. I can identify with that era.
But, as I said in another post, I'd be dead 6 times over if I really lived in the 1800's.
I do dislike this era of smartphones and selfies and FB. I can't relate to any of it. Yet here I am on my laptop, communicating via internet. The irony does not escape me!
As a child I spent the summer on my Grandparents dairy farm... it had been in the family for generations...
My grandmother still baked all the bread on her Wedgewood Wood Stove... the farm house had radiant heating from a wood fired basement boiler... they did not have a trash can... table scraps went to the farm animals and only bought staples in town... she made her own clothes and didn't even own a can opener... she put up her preserves on mason jars...
The farm house was very nice with lots of flowers... warm in the coldest winters and always a fire going in the kitchen stove...
My grandparents never owned a car... they used their old 1946 tractor for moving materials or walked...
Shyguy - maybe that's what I feel I missed out on: the "innocence and sense of hope" after WWll. I'm a baby boomer and things started to seem a lot more complicated in the 60's: Assassination of JFK, Vietnam protests (Kent State), civil rights unrest, MLK Assassination, then RFK. I feel sorry for people having babies right now with everything going on in the world.
I am reading this girls blog This*Victorian Life - Home
her and her husband live completely like Victorians and even have an icebox instead of a fridge.Its quite obvious they are some sort of old souls who ended up here.
I have always been really old fashioned and antiquated,I too use to buy antique clothes (more white chemises and things you wouldn't notice) and and wear them mixed with modern clothes and collect antiques.I also really only watch historical programs.
I also feel I have more of the nature of a 19th century woman.I really have to will myself to be interested in a career and would much prefer domestic duties,babies,baking,quilting and prefer to sew my own clothes,make everything by hand.I indentity much more strongly with Victorian and Edwardian women who appear so feminine and gentle to me,than I do modern women.I love tradition.
Does anyone else feel a bit lost in this era of smartphones,nightclubs,malls,corporate climbing,leave your babies with indifferent strangers,order a pizza,ec etc.
I have some reasoning behind why I'm like this, I had three past life dreams,one was in the Victorian era,and the other two were in the Edwardian era.Maybe some remnants of those lives is still with me.
Anyone else feel they are from another era or have had past life dreams,that maybe explain that love of history.
...is whether one would want a "way back machine" or be able to travel into the future. Is the poster asking what you would be willing to give up? If you wouldn't also receive a memory wipe, it would be difficult to watch a child in an iron lung suffering from polio. I think the further back in time one travels the more brutal and harsh life becomes.
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No. The real issue ..
