Living in the past? - Beyond Tiki

DTG DJ Terence Gunn Member Joined: Jun 20, 2005 Posts: 250	DTG DJ Terence Gunn Posted posted on Thu, Aug 9, 2007 1:51 PM Although I am 9 years your junior (a Baby Buster), I sympathise with where you are at, as I am very much similar (apart from listening to contemporary music and collecting lots of techno gadgets). When I was a kid in the 1970s and a teenager in the early to mid-1980s, older generations took pride in their generations and the culture they came from, and had no to very little interest in contemporary pop culture. Nowadays pride in one's generation seems all but gone; Peter Pan complexes, staying hip to current trends, and deliberate ignorance or disdain of one's past abounds. To me, these people are losers. But without losers there can be no winners; and there are always more losers than winners. Men and women are a sum of their past; and their most formative make up (basically, the generation they are and come from) is the past of their childhood and teenage years. It is only natural (unless one had a very poor childhood) that one should find cultural aspects from this time predominantly appealing and comforting, and one in which one wishes to surround oneself. After all, this time period is what makes you you. Embracing nostalgia -- one's past -- is what gives one generational identity -- without which one is simply an empty shell. But it is often we link nostaglia of our past with the generation that precedes ours. On the same token, though they may have been touched by it in some way via their memories, their parents, etc., somebody in their 50s or younger isn't old enough to have been involved in the adult world of cocktail culture from the 1950s and '60s that so many of us admire and aspire to today. The same could be said regarding being into today a lot of music from those decades that is termed Lounge music or Easy Listening. But really what it comes down to is taste and wishing to surround oneself with qualities that no longer exist (and never will again). To me, the 1950s, '60s, and '70s are the Golden Age of the 20th Century. These decades hold an apex of culture and pop culture, with a quality of style, ingenuity, and character that has sadly declined since. The past is the new future. Embrace it.

Although I am 9 years your junior (a Baby Buster), I sympathise with where you are at, as I am very much similar (apart from listening to contemporary music and collecting lots of techno gadgets). When I was a kid in the 1970s and a teenager in the early to mid-1980s, older generations took pride in their generations and the culture they came from, and had no to very little interest in contemporary pop culture. Nowadays pride in one's generation seems all but gone; Peter Pan complexes, staying hip to current trends, and deliberate ignorance or disdain of one's past abounds. To me, these people are losers. But without losers there can be no winners; and there are always more losers than winners.

Men and women are a sum of their past; and their most formative make up (basically, the generation they are and come from) is the past of their childhood and teenage years. It is only natural (unless one had a very poor childhood) that one should find cultural aspects from this time predominantly appealing and comforting, and one in which one wishes to surround oneself. After all, this time period is what makes you you. Embracing nostalgia -- one's past -- is what gives one generational identity -- without which one is simply an empty shell. But it is often we link nostaglia of our past with the generation that precedes ours.

On the same token, though they may have been touched by it in some way via their memories, their parents, etc., somebody in their 50s or younger isn't old enough to have been involved in the adult world of cocktail culture from the 1950s and '60s that so many of us admire and aspire to today. The same could be said regarding being into today a lot of music from those decades that is termed Lounge music or Easy Listening.

But really what it comes down to is taste and wishing to surround oneself with qualities that no longer exist (and never will again). To me, the 1950s, '60s, and '70s are the Golden Age of the 20th Century. These decades hold an apex of culture and pop culture, with a quality of style, ingenuity, and character that has sadly declined since.

The past is the new future. Embrace it.

Post #324489 by DJ Terence Gunn on Thu, Aug 9, 2007 1:51 PM