History Channel Gone Wrong

[Big J]

I think the rise of such theories has a lot to do with the fact that the 70s and 80s replaced the 20s as the Golden Age of Cynicism in America -- everybody was lying to everybody else, and making a lot of money doing it, so why *not* believe that NASA in on it too. If you want to see the origin of the modern snark-everything-all-the-time/sincerity-is-for-chumps ethos, you need look only to that period. The twenties had their share of cynical frauds in high places, but they were pikers compared to their grandchildren.

+1
(that's gonna be my excuse from now on!)

 

[Fading Fast]

I think the rise of such theories has a lot to do with the fact that the 70s and 80s replaced the 20s as the Golden Age of Cynicism in America -- everybody was lying to everybody else, and making a lot of money doing it, so why *not* believe that NASA in on it too. If you want to see the origin of the modern snark-everything-all-the-time/sincerity-is-for-chumps ethos, you need look only to that period. The twenties had their share of cynical frauds in high places, but they were pikers compared to their grandchildren.

Humans, individuals and the organizations and institutions they build, rarely live up to their highest ideals or even publicly stated principals. Got it, check.

But here's my question: was there a greater effort to do so / greater social pressure owing to being ostracized or denounced if you didn't in the GE than today?

It seems to me that from government to business to individuals at least trying to live up to a set of values - honesty, trustfulness, "your word is your bond" - was more important in the GE than today. To emphasize, scandal, perfidiousness, lying, cheating, stealing all went on in government, business and at the personal level in the GE, but was there more of an attempt to tamp down these human failings, to try to live up to a higher standard back then?

My not scientific view, based on my upbringing by GE parents, books and newspapers from the era and movies and other cultural reference points, is that there was more social pressure to try and more social punishment if you failed then than now. But I know there were tons of scandals then, so maybe I'm just given the past too much credit and our own time too little.

This ties back to Lizzie's point about today's cynicism - does it reflect a more immoral, hypocritical government, business and personal environment than in the GE?

Thoughts on this?

 

[LizzieMaine]

There was plenty of cynicism about business and political figures in the Era -- people ran into the streets to thumb their noses at Herbert Hoover, and when he appeared at the 1931 World Series he was booed by 30,000 people, the first time in anyone's memory that a sitting president had been so acknowledged. Business leaders weren't much better -- you had Richard "The White Knight Of Wall Street" Whitney going to prison in a gigantic embezzlement scandal, Ivor Kreuger the Swedish Match King committing suicide, disgraced utilities tycoon Samuel Insull trying to flee the country disguised as an old lady after robbing his company blind, etc. etc. etc.

But people considered this sort of thing to be an anomaly. People didn't jeer and boo Hoover because they believed all government to be irredeemably corrupt, they booed Hoover because they believed him to be a tool of Wall Street, and they wanted a President who would actually do something about the Depression. They believed wholeheartedly in the power of unified action to build a better society, and they wanted to be a part of that -- so yes, you're absolutely right in the sense of there being strong social pressure to behave in a manner that served the collective good. I'd even define that as the very essence of mainstream American thought in the thirties and thru the war years. The denunciation of "economic royalists," "princes of great power" and labor scabs, finks, and rats in the thirties was followed by equally harsh words for black marketeers, hoarders, goldbricks, and draft-slackers during the war.

Contrast that to the attitude today of "huh, a pox on both your houses, nothing's ever going to change, I might as well get my pile and screw everybody else." That, to me, is the very height of blind, nihilistic cynicism, and I think it's terribly corrosive to any kind of a decent human society. The 70s, the "me decade," where "Trust Nobody" was the slogan of the hour, was where that all started.