Post #213027 by mbonga on Mon, Feb 6, 2006 3:44 PM

My gut feel is that our desire to put our headspace in a semi-fictional idea of the past is nothing unique to our generation.

I agree that reminiscence is not unique to the current generation, but is it becoming more pervasive than before? In the 1980s I read the results of a newspaper survey that said America's favorite decade was the 1950s. That sounds about right to me, since it was a very stable decade with known social norms, clear-cut enemies, combined with improving science and technology and personal freedoms (e.g., Playboy and its philosophy was becoming acceptable), America was physically expanding (Alaska & Hawaii), all of which leads to things like optimism, patriotism, stable jobs, less relocation, better buying power, and more recreational time. Unfortunately, I can't find any such survey online at the moment.

The '60s and early '70s had lots of freedom and had the most creative music and art (Beatles era, 1964 World's Fair, Jackson Pollock, etc.), but the Viet Nam war was escalating, which was tearing the country apart.

The late '70s experienced a decline in freedoms worldwide, for both liberals (e.g., pot smokers) and conservatives (e.g., gun collectors), roughly coinciding with disco music and a revival in simplistic country music, and there was declining interest in colonizing space or the oceans anymore. Theme parks "dumbed down" and thrill rides began to replace educational rides.

The '80s had good growth in technology (e.g., PCs, videos, personal rocket jets), and popular music had reached a peak of skill and technology, but people no longer stuck together like before, money became God (yuppie era), there was a stock market collapse, the nation's wealth became extremely skewed, coral reefs began dying off around the world, job security declined with the demise of monopolies, social security funds were raided by government, undeclared wars occurred every 1-2 years for political reasons, songwriting ability went downhill as technical and technological proficiency increased, universities became politically correct and increasingly restrictive whereas before they had been homes to creativity and outspokenness and progressiveness, and management decisions and public attitudes became based on the most superficial appearances and statistics, leading to a trend of movie stars getting into government positions.

The '90s saw the rise of rap music, inspiring and skilled progressive rock turned into simplistic and depressing grunge rock, Disney parks began declining, the government had to actually shut down a few times due to economic problems, and there were even worse political abuses and even more lost freedoms.

The '00s saw major terrorist attacks, and even more attacks on personal freedoms.

Just listen to the extremely angry, foul music that is pervasive now, look at the plethora of horror movies of extreme violence that now probably outnumber movies of any other genre, the extreme grossness of recent adult movies, the low quality souvenirs at theme parks, the restrictions on everything (e.g., scuba diving, spearfishing, shell collecting), the decline of quality and maintenance at Disney parks, the widespread failure of marriage and stable families, the dishonesty of business and government at every level, the monitoring and intrusion of business and government in everything from Internet to office conversations, security cameras in nearly every store and street, and it's easy to see something fundamental is very wrong. I don't want to get into politics or philosophy here, so I'll omit detailed opinions about cause-and-effect.

So although the '50s weren't personally my favorite decade, I have to agree that, overall, things were provably better back then, at least in the things that mattered, which led to more optimism and personal fulfillment for a larger percentage of people. Therefore, as we drift further from those better decades, there are logical reasons to see an increase in reminiscence!

[ Edited by: mbonga 2006-02-06 16:20 ]