Ok, so some things in the golden era were not too cool...

[V.C. Brunswick]

I'm offended that everything I see for sale in my friendly hometown big-box store is made by slave labor in Bangladesh, Malaysia, and China while Americans flip burgers for a living.

Sad to say, that's not even true anymore -- at least not out here. Immigrants now do that.

 

[Marc Chevalier]

Sad to say, that's not even true anymore -- at least not out here. Immigrants now do that.

Then again, immigrants have always taken the lowest-paying jobs.

 

[LizzieMaine]

The only immigrants we have here are the ones from New York and Massachusetts, and the only thing they'll flip is real estate.

 

[Lady Day]

We also have an American youth culture who for a large sector dont want to, or think they have to start at the bottom/beginning of anything. They *want* to start in the middle and possible work up from that. "'Paying your dues'?, Isn't that what school is for?"

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

Then they're bitter because they've been there eight months and they're not CEO yet. :rofl:
and real CEOs don't call people "dude", Sunshine

 

[Blackjack]

The motto of today's youth (and I include my kids) is It's all about me and I want it for free...

 

[Tango Yankee]

It was especially shocking for me upon returning home after living abroad for seven years (1998-2005): the America I came back to seemed radically different from the America I'd left -- and not just because of 9/11. I didn't recognize my homeland anymore, and still don't.

Marc, I understand completely. I went overseas at the end of December, 1990. I was stationed in Germany, Guam, and England and returned stateside at the end of June, 2002 (though I did take leave stateside from time to time.) Several things stood out for me: first, was just how large the general population seemed to have become (and sadly, since my retirement, I've joined them... still need to work on that); second was just how nasty and polarized people had become regarding politics. The third (and perhaps it's an offshoot of the second) was how intolerant we seemed to have become compared to where I thought we were headed when I was growing up.

There are those here who have claimed that there is enforced tolerance; I suppose they're refering to anti-hate laws and social pressure and the so-called "political correctness." But people haven't changed, they just target another group that is still safe to hate publically.

Of course, politics has been pretty nasty in our country's past. There are plenty of examples of that! This may just be a swing of the pendulum in that regard, and I think that it is driven by a general underlying fear. But I sure do miss being able to have a civil discussion about the political topics of the day and the challenges our nation is facing.

Regards,
Tom

 

[Tango Yankee]

The motto of today's youth (and I include my kids) is It's all about me and I want it for free...

I don't think that's limited to just today's youth...

 

[Tango Yankee]

We also have an American youth culture who for a large sector dont want to, or think they have to start at the bottom/beginning of anything. They *want* to start in the middle and possible work up from that. "'Paying your dues'?, Isn't that what school is for?"

My wife watched Oprah's interview with Steven Tyler of Aerosmith. One thing that struck her was his comment that a lot of the people who are selected to go on American Idol are better than he and Aerosmith were when they were starting out, but that most won't win and they won't be willing to do what they did, working the small gigs and learning the craft and getting better and better--"paying your dues" as you say. They want to be rich and famous right now.

Cheers,
Tom

 

[amador]

The reason IMHO that they're called the Good Old Days is because we have forgotten the Bad Stuff from then and only the Good Stuff is desirable. So the past will be remembered as The Good Old Days. No Antibiotics, have pneumonia, it was Adios Amigo.
Racial issues. Well I have seen racism within families. Same parents, hispanic, one child SLIGHTLY darker than his siblings and he is subjected to all sorts of racial slurs BY HIS SIBLINGS! Same for a child lighter that his sibs. Unbelievable but true.
Things are starting to clear up, I need another drink.

 

[rue]

I've been stewing on this thread quite a bit....

A lot of people seem to think that someone like me thinks that life back then was all roses and happy days, but I know it wasn't. My grandmother was an abusive alcoholic and my great grandmother lost her daughter at the age of three, for two examples. BUT if you were able to ask my grandfather (born in 1908) if he would want to live today or back then he would have said back then (and did when he was alive), because it was a simpler time, even with all the troubles and issues that were part of his life and even with all the medical advances we have now. A great deal of the issues that existed back then still exist today. If you think racism is better go to the southern US or talk to someone in AZ or California about the Mexican border issues and you will still see it. If you think alcoholism has changed then you don't know one. If you think the drug problems are better, hang out at a high school. If you think you are free from losing a child to death then you don't know anyone that has lost a child. People are just better at pretending the problems don't exist.

Those things haven't changed. What has changed is the self respect and respect for others that people once had.


My apologies if I didn't make a lot of sense, but I'm angry and sick and tired of hearing that I'm foolish to think it was better then and that I would be shocked if I actually had my wish. No, no I wouldn't be.

 

[O2BSwank]

Rue, I certainly don't think you are foolish. There are things we should cherish and hopefully sustain within ourselves and those we love.

 

[Deco-Doll-1928]

I don't think you are foolish either Rue. What you said makes perfect sense. Like I told my mom before I wrote my comment on this thread, the same problems that plague us today, plagued the past too. It's just that people brushed those topics under the rug.

 

[Flicka]

I'm not sure what we're discussing. Life where and for who? If you would compare how often what we now consider basic human rights were breached then and now, then numbers would indicate that we're better off now than in an era which saw race laws, genocide and mass expropriation. As for tolerance and being able to walk everywhere safely, that might have been true to a certain degree, but not if you were a dark-skinned person trying to enter a whites-only establishment. Nor was it true for the elderly female professor of physics I met who was not allowed in the lab during day time in her youth because she might distract her male colleagues, thus having to conduct her experiments in night time. And it wasn't true for the thousands of people with Down's Syndrome who were locked up in institutions all around the Western world under appalling conditions. I used to know an elderly gay man (now dead) who compared life for himself in the 90s and when he was young and potentially could be jailed for his 'offence'. There are many, many different experiences of the past and some things have undoubtably improved very much. It is preferable to have someone mumble things under their breath than to be persecuted, jailed and physically abused, after all. Not ideal, but preferable.

However, along with those bad things, we also tossed out many good things. I think there was a slowness to life then that I would like back. People walked, rode bicycles and talked to each other. Mindfulness and 'slow food' were just built into the fabric of society. If you compare the time families spent together - even if it was spent working together - then and now, there's a huge difference.. I read somewhere that there are stastics that show that people laughed more. In many ways, I think that life corresponded better with our basic human needs.

But most of all, what I think we have lost is hope. People then genuinely believed life would get better. They saw a bright future, whereas we have a very dystopian outlook. Most people today think that future generations will have it worse than we do today.. I genuinly think that by that sort of thinking, we shape a darker future for ourselves.

Like someone said, no matter what we think of the past, we can't bring it back. But we have a choice in how we live, and I think to dismiss either the good things about life then or now based on an idea that they're sort of mutually exclusive seems counterproductive to me. I would very much like to bring back the feeling that the future is shaped by us and that it can be a future that is friendlier, warmer and slower than the world we live in.

I suppose I should like less cynicism and maybe a little more hope and innocence. And many more hats.

 

[Blackjack]

We were talking about juggling babies on top of skyscrapers Flicka! It is a tradeoff, modern medicine/technology/convenience, vs. a simpler, slower life.

 

[scotrace]

There are many, many trade-offs. When I was a child, there were few fresh vegetables to choose among at the local grocery store (in small town Ohio). Certainly no fresh fish. Now I can get exotic vegetables year-round (though the quality is usually iffy), and there's always a case of decent seafood (freshness is dependent on the day you choose to shop).
I've quoted my grandfather (1898-1992) before: "'Good Old Days' my foot. We worked like dogs for peanuts. Then we got home from work and worked like dogs again, keeping the furnace fed, the garden tended, the car running. You can have it."

I like to think that we here at The Fedora Lounge are keeping alive the best of that time, passing along the good, letting the bad RIP.

 

[LizzieMaine]

" We worked like dogs for peanuts. Then we got home from work and worked like dogs again, keeping the furnace fed, the garden tended, the car running."

To be perfectly honest, I don't know anyone in my own circle of acquaintances for whom this isn't still true -- I myself have to work three jobs to keep a roof over my head, and am very often so tired at the end of the day that I'm seeing double. I have close friends who can't afford all this highly-vaunted Advanced Medical Care I keep hearing about, who have been bluntly discriminated against because of disability and have received no help whatever from the bureaucrats who supposedly prevent such things, who have been evicted from their homes because of predatory financial practices, who can't afford to go to college and get this Advanced Education that's supposed to be so easily available, and who don't have a lot of chance of things getting any better soon. But I guess we're still very very good at brushing things under the rug -- for an awful lot of people today, as long as the system works *for them,* they couldn't care less what happens to those for whom it doesn't. Which, really, makes them no better and no more advanced, and most certainly no more entitled to pass judgment, than the people who didn't pay any mind to the various unpleasant things of the past.

 

[Blackjack]

There are many, many trade-offs. When I was a child, there were few fresh vegetables to choose among at the local grocery store (in small town Ohio). Certainly no fresh fish. Now I can get exotic vegetables year-round (though the quality is usually iffy), and there's always a case of decent seafood (freshness is dependent on the day you choose to shop).
I've quoted my grandfather (1898-1992) before: "'Good Old Days' my foot. We worked like dogs for peanuts. Then we got home from work and worked like dogs again, keeping the furnace fed, the garden tended, the car running. You can have it."

I like to think that we here at The Fedora Lounge are keeping alive the best of that time, passing along the good, letting the bad RIP.

Clearly there's good and bad in every timeframe, you'd have to weigh whats important to you in your life. For me, and obviously Lizzie, Rue, we'd get along just fine in 1935. I don't quite understand on how a forum such as this there's so many people who are quick to say "Oh you wouldn't like it if you had to live back then, it was sooo this and that." I can only go by MY parents and Grandparents who all said times were much nicer to live in back then. I've never been afraid of hard work so that doesn't scare me and being a musician living in that time period would be a dream come true musically speaking...

 

[Feraud]

I don't quite understand on how a forum such as this there's so many people who are quick to say "Oh you wouldn't like it if you had to live back then, it was sooo this and that." I can only go by MY parents and Grandparents who all said times were much nicer to live in back then.

Maybe those people are going by the opinion of what THEIR parents and grandparents said.
Most of us are not historians (I find us lucky to have a few who are) and we view and comment on the past through limited and subjective sources. How many times have you read a comment along the lines of, "They did so-and-so in the 40s, I saw it in a movie.."? I see it all the time around here.
I don't think the issue comes down to being afraid of hard work. With the current economy in the dumpster like it is, I can say my wife and I are working as hard as our parents and not reaping as many benefits.

 

[Flat Foot Floey]

I don't quite understand on how a forum such as this there's so many people who are quick to say "Oh you wouldn't like it if you had to live back then, it was sooo this and that." .

Maybe because some people just like the fashion/music? I don't think "it's fine to live now" people are more aggressive.