Good old days
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===The Sixties=== | ===The Sixties=== | ||
| − | Woodstock? Summer of Love? The Days of Dope and Hope? No, more like [[wp:Watts Riots|race riots]], [[wp:Baltimore_riot_of_1968|other race riots]], [[wp:1967 Detroit riot|more race riots]], and of course, [[wp:1967_Newark_riots|race riots]]. | + | Woodstock? Summer of Love? The Days of Dope and Hope? No, more like [[wp:Watts Riots|race riots]], [[wp:Baltimore_riot_of_1968|other race riots]], [[wp:1967 Detroit riot|more race riots]], and of course, [[wp:1967_Newark_riots|race riots]]. And did we mention [[wp:Days of Rage|the ''non''-race riots]]? |
===The United States in the 1950s=== | ===The United States in the 1950s=== | ||
Revision as of 22:26, 26 October 2011
"Good old days" is a term that is often used in when engaging in nostalgia, remembering only the positive aspects of times past while sweeping concomitant negatives under the rug. It has also been called the "Golden Age fallacy."[1]
Selective memory
Much as one remembers one's own childhood with affection (endless summer days and playing in the winter snow), some people regard their forefather's times as almost idyllic. For example:
- They remember respect for elders, but disregard demands for mindless obedience.
- They remember respect for the law, but disregard the much higher past incidence of legal abuses.
- They remember the security offered by the church, but disregard that this was bought by burning heretics at the stake.
They also almost universally try to forget the following things about the past:
- The poor state of health, and the endless epidemics of disease that ravaged the past's unsanitary society (e.g., the Black Death).
- Very low life expectancy.
- Variations in life expectancy among different social groups. Often people forget that if they were reborn in the "good old days," they would most likely wind up a starving serf or an impoverished worker rather than a gentleman or a noble knight.
Targets of nostalgia
Some popular examples of "good old days," in reverse chronological order:
East Germany
There is a phenomenon called Ostalgie (a portmanteau of the German words for "east" and "nostalgia") current in Germany. Due partially to the manner in which the reunification of Germany was executed, which resulted in economic depression and large-scale unemployment in the former East Germany, adherents to Ostalgie remember the period of communism there fondly, thus demonstrating why it is necessary for the German government to maintain a Federal Commissioner for the Stasi Archives.
The Soviet Union under Stalin
A number of Russians today remember Joseph Stalin's Soviet Union fondly as a period of national glory, conveniently forgetting that Stalin was a dictator and a serious slimeball who deliberately murdered some millions of Soviet citizens and presided over famines that killed millions more.
The Sixties
Woodstock? Summer of Love? The Days of Dope and Hope? No, more like race riots, other race riots, more race riots, and of course, race riots. And did we mention the non-race riots?
The United States in the 1950s
The 1950s are seen by some as the archetypal American era in which men went to work while their wives happily raised the family and took care of the home. This is fueled by movies and TV shows, such as I Love Lucy, Happy Days, and Grease, that reinforce the image. Although the 1950s was a decade of growth and opportunity with America recovering from World War II, societal expectations were rigid and not everyone got to live in a perfect family setting in the suburbs. World War II sparked an increase in female participation in the workforce - this trend continuing in the 1950s, but certain roles remained the sole preserve of males.[2] It is worth noting that the 1950s saw America involved in the Korean War, and the cold war with the Soviet Union that would in the 1960s bring the world to the brink of nuclear annihilation during the Cuban missile crisis. The 1950s were good for many, but certainly not every town had an Arthur Fonzarelli to guide the "squares".
Arcadian fantasies
“”I like to say I'm more conservative than Goldwater. He just wanted to turn the clock back to when there was no income tax. I want to turn the clock back to when people lived in small villages and took care of each other.
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| —Pete Seeger |
Some people were of the opinion that the Industrial Revolution made everything rotten, rhapsodizing about the lovely agricultural or pastoral existence occurring before that, when people lived off the land, communed with nature, etc.
There were a particularly large number of such people active during the 1960s, when they were known variously as "hippies" and "flower children." They flocked to "the land" in droves, only to learn that farm life is not all about ingesting LSD and engaging in Socratic dialogue, in consequence of which most of them ran back for the city.
Victorian Britain
The economy was booming, the workers didn't whine about 16-hour six-day work weeks (and neither did their children), and the darkies knew their place. Also, the "Empire"[3] provided a handy source of raw materials from which to create even more wealth. Good times, indeed.
North America in the late 19th century
See below, except replace "gentleman farmer" with robber baron "captain of industry," and "writing constitutions" with "making big piles of money."
North America in the late 18th century
Everyone was a gentleman farmer, and the best of the public spent their spare time writing constitutions. Many libertarians in the US dream of living in such bucolic times, assuming they would live the life of the richest property and slave owners, as opposed to farming dirt to eke out a living.
The Age of Chivalry
There are few people who can recall a childhood spent growing up in the Middle Ages, so nostalgia for this period is based primarily on modern-day popular media depictions of the time period.[4] Pertaining to this era would be the notion of chivalry and knights on horseback riding around doing great deeds, and this is most commonly expressed in movies and Renaissance fairs. In reality it was a period of feudal wars and disease, in which most people were subsistence farmers rather than lance-wavers, and the lance-wavers that did exist were far from the Arthurian ideal. Renaissance fair fans are perhaps not keen to hear that knights would commonly soil themselves in battle, due to the impracticality of removing one's armour to go relieve oneself.[5]
The Dark Ages Early Middle Ages
While most people who are at least halfway sane would not see this part of history as coming anywhere close to the general definition of "good", there has been a significant effort by some Christian apologists (Catholic apologists in particular, though other Creationists have been known to jump on board this bandwagon if it means discrediting "Secular Science") to attempt to repaint this as such. They see it as a time when when Science, Economy, and the Arts were blooming all thanks to the Catholic Church, until the eeeeevvilll enlightenment secularists came along and ruined it and then spawned the dark ages myth because they hated the Poor, totally not guily of mass murder and genocide Catholic Church. Such viewpoints are especially heavily promoted by Rodney Starke in most of his books (for example: The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Lead to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success) [6] as well as Thomas Wood's How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization[7], just to name a few. This in turn had lead to the creation of a small, generally disliked Catholic Fundamentalist cult that seems to think that we'd all be better off if we were to be governed by a "Catholic State"[8]
While admittedly the so-called "Dark Ages" were not quite as "Dark" as is popularly believed (In fact, Historians have since abandoned the title "Dark Ages" when referring to this point in time for just this reason, preferring to call them the "Early Middle Ages"), and while the "Enlightenment" wasn't as "enlightened" as one would believe either (the 17th century saw extensive religious warfare and witch-hunt crazes), one could hardly call the Dark Ages Early Middle Ages a "Golden Age of freedom and Great scientific progress."
Athens, the cradle of democracy
In ancient Athens, everyone could vote, as long as they were male property owners. Property, of course, in those days included slaves plundered from neighboring cities. Keep in mind, this city poisoned the "father of philosophy" on the pretext that he attempted to convert them to different philosophical views (Socrates was, in fact, killed because of his association with the unpopular Spartan created government of the thirty tyrants: he could not be executed because his association with the tyrants was protected by Athens' amnesty with Sparta, so another excuse was found).
While to some degree, Athens fostered old men sitting around in the shadow of olive groves discussing the meaning of life with young boys, which was a good thing — oops, wait, old men sitting around discussing the meaning of life is good, but the "young boys" part might not be so — it was also a city that reigned over the surrounding countryside due to the lucky proximity of silver mines, and of course, the aforementioned slaves won in battles with their next-door neighbors.
Savage times
Some people, instead of merely waxing nostalgic for the Arcadian way of life, want to quit civilization altogether. These people, who share many motivations with the Arcadian crowd, often adhere to the much-criticized romantic notion of the "noble savage," according to which people are innately well-behaved but have been corrupted by civilization, so if people were removed from civilization they would behave well.
One example of "noble savages" commonly cited by this group of nostalgics is the pre-Columbian society of Indians in North America, as romanticized by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's epic poem The Song of Hiawatha.[9] Ironically, the real Hiawatha was an orator who convinced six nations to stop warring with each other and band together in the Iroquois League.
Also, it is needless to say that most of the people promoting these notions are not American Indians.
Politics of the nostalgics
Right-wingers are particularly known for this sort of nostalgia, since it forms a cornerstone of many right-wing political programs (e.g., smaller government, lower taxes, family values). However, as mentioned, it is also to be found among left-wingers, although not in such a central role. Notable exceptions are the hard green crew and anarcho-primitivists, who focus on the evils of civilization; unionists, who now spend most of their time fondly recalling the days when there were a lot of angry workers and/or a lot of unionized workers; and people who are so opposed to capitalism as to lament the demise of what came before it. Karl Marx, for example, in his Communist Manifesto, did not have much good to say about the "centralization of the means of production" that capitalism had brought.
Suggested reading
Some books[10] on the subject:
- The Good Old Days -- They Were Terrible! by Otto L. Bettmann. (ISBN: 0-394-70941-1)
Bettmann, founder of the Bettmann Archive,[11] used antique photographs and engravings from his extensive collection to illustrate the forgotten perils of American life between the end of the Civil War and the beginning of World War II. Brief descriptions of the chapters will illustrate the theme of the book:
1. "Air": Pigs roamed Broadway in New York City, pollution from horse-drawn carts and industry, wind-borne pollutants, the smoky air of Chicago and Pittsburgh.
2. "Traffic": Risks placed upon pedestrians and public transit passengers when profit, not safety, was the only concern.
3. "Housing": Tenements, boarding houses, lack of proper ventilation, fire hazards, overcrowding and slum children.
4. "Rural life": Drudgery, isolation and loneliness, flies and other gifts from nature, violent drifters.
5. "Work": Accidents, sweatshops, child labor.
6. "Crime": Street crime, juvenile delinquents, cops on the take, abusive cops, graft, prostitution.
7. "Food and Drink": Adulterated food and milk, downer cows, atrocious eating habits, and the Western diet which relied on pork and corn in abundance.
8. "Health": More epidemics of more now-"dead" diseases than Americans today can imagine, frontier health and the drunken ignoramuses who called themselves doctors, overdrugging, surgery that was more like butchery, the mistreatment of the mentally ill.
9. "Education": Country teachers, corporal punishment, minority education, rote education.
10. "Travel": Steerage, emigrant trains, dangers of rail travel, Pullman cars, railroad food.
11. "Leisure": Gambling, hunting, spectator sports fraud, the deadly violence of college football, "fun with a gun," polluted parks and seashores.
See also
Footnotes
- ↑ Midnight in Paris. Woody Allen.
- ↑ Lifestyles in the 1950s
- ↑ Most of the rest of the world
- ↑ Some people also assign blame for this to histories written in the medieval period. These people have not actually read the histories in question.
- ↑ The charming job of the arming squire There is some debate as to whether or not armour would have allowed a knight to stop for a toilet break. Dehydration caused by the strain of wearing armour in combat would certainly reduce the need to evacuate oneself behind a tree.
- ↑ The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Lead to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success on Amazon
- ↑ How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization on Amazon
- ↑ Just one example of one such "Catholic State" Peddler. Note the overwhelming amounts of dislikes and negative comments
- ↑ Due to the limited amount of information to which Longfellow had access, his character of "Hiawatha" corresponds to an Ojibway mythic figure whose actual name is Manabozho, entirely unconnected to the historical Hiawatha.
- ↑ That's right, actual books.
- ↑ One of the world's great picture research libraries, which provided free access to all. In 1995, it was sold to Bill Gates, who promised to continue the policy of free access. After Bettmann died in 1998, Gates changed the archive's name to Corbis, buried the collection in a limestone cave, and started charging for access as a way to fund the "maintenance" of the archive.