The Good Old Days, our Idealized past.

[Fade]

Inspired by the billiefan thread, I thought this topic deserved it's very own special thread.

So, I am sure we've almost all of us have heared the phrase "well in my day" spoken by somebody many years our elder. The fact that I can say this in confidence on a board frequented by people from all ages and cultures, to me, says something. I am of the opinion that many cultures systematically idealize their past, even if that past wasn't any more or less pleasent than the present.


That this happens isn't really a question, but it's interesting to explore the reasons for why we so idealize our past. I, for one, do not doubt for a moment that my current life, and the current state of our world is far, far better than it was when I was very young and still growing up. In fact, I dare say the world (well the western world) is at present less violent, and more tolerant. When was the last time you worried about china launching nuclear missiles at us? Thought so.

An interesting aspect of this is television in the US. This statement is what inspired this line of thought:

I wasn't around in the 50s, but did any family actually function like the Cleavers? Or are shows like that just idealistic representations of what families should be? I can't imagine a show like Leave it to Beaver actually representing the "typical" American family. The Osbournes are much closer to reality.

In the 50's, the US was dealing with immense racial problems. Blacks, and all minorities really, were treated as second class citizens (far moreso than today, thankfully). The family embodied in Leave it to Beaver was atypical, except for the fact that the divorce rate in the country was much lower (mostly because women can actually support themselves alone now. That is the single over-riding reason why divorce is higher, in my opinion). And, just as Leave it to Beaver gave us a fake, idealized version of what family life is, the Osbournes gives us a fake, over-the-top version of what family life is.

As much as many of us would love to have Ozzy in our homes day and night, he is an exaggerated character. He is a brilliant artist, in my eyes, but he does so through systematic exaggeration of every facet of his personality. It makes him successful.

In that sense, our TV, while becoming more sexual and more violent, doesn't really say anything at all about our society.

Anyway, this is very scatterbrained, so.. comments?

[Jet Grind]

My thoughts exactly, Fade. I really am sick and tired of conservatives always babbling inanely about our past and how great it was.

[Crossbow]

I have found that there are many people who tend to forget the bad things and remember the good. This tendency is especially noticable when they think of things and events that are over 20 years old or when they still had a decent amount of physical health and attraction.

Go figure!

[Samus]

Wow, I inspired a thread! :)

I think people always want to tell stories of how their (organization/life/company/country/whatever) was the greatest "back in the day", and that it's all been downhill since then. It's caused by our desire to re-live the glory days, a time when we felt better than we do right now.

I'm not sure why that is, but we have a penchant for embracing tha past. I think it's because all of the positive memories have lasted longer than the negative ones. All you remember are all the great things about "back in the day", while all the bad aspects of it have faded from memory.

The 50s are a good example. Conservatives like to hold that time up high: strong family, strong faith, good ol' Ike as president, etc. However, in a lot of ways, the 50s were a bad time to live in, especially if you happened not to be a white male.

In many ways, America is a better country now than 50 years ago. In some ways, we've taken steps backwards. I would say, however, that by and large we're a better society now.

Some of it is also due to viewing the world through more experienced eyes. You might look at situations today and think "my, what has happened to us", when in fact those same things have been going on for many years, it's just that you've never taken the time to notice them. Difficult to explain, but this definately happens.

[Nyarlathotep]

I have always thought 'The good old days' to be a myth. I think it a lot of people idealize the past. I am only in my thirties and I catch myself doing it too sometimes. Music is a good example, sometimes I listen to new music and think "What utter drek, music was so much better when I was a kid". Until I really think about it and remember that, though there were some songs I really liked in the 80's, there was a lot of utter drek back then, too.

Another good example is something I read ina book once. It was a newspaper article complaining how crime and violence were spiraling out of control and were threatening to bring down society, and how much better things were just a generation or so back. It sounde pretty much like it could have been written today, only it wasn't, it was written in the late 1800's.

[pgwenthold]

Originally posted by Nyarlathotep
Another good example is something I read ina book once. It was a newspaper article complaining how crime and violence were spiraling out of control and were threatening to bring down society, and how much better things were just a generation or so back. It sounde pretty much like it could have been written today, only it wasn't, it was written in the late 1800's.

Wasn't it Aristotle who said something like, "Kids today have no respect for their elders"?

Someone once wrote

"The good old days weren't always good
And tomorrow ain't as bad as it seems"

The same person also wrote

"I thought I was the Duke of Earl
When I made it with a redhead girl
in a Cheverolet"

and a really great song about a Catholic girl named Virginia. but that is not important here.

[Lord Emsworth]

Originally posted by Fade So, I am sure we've almost all of us have heared the phrase "well in my day" spoken by somebody many years our elder.

Whenever I hear the phrase "The good old days" I start instantly thinking of my mother. No, not the way you think.

"The good old days?" I hear her ask contemptuously. "Good old days my left eyeball. Nowadays," she goes on "everything is better than in the alleged good old days."

See? Not every person idealizes the past.

[Martin]

Originally posted by Nyarlathotep
Another good example is something I read in a book once. It was a newspaper article complaining how crime and violence were spiraling out of control and were threatening to bring down society, and how much better things were just a generation or so back. It sounde pretty much like it could have been written today, only it wasn't, it was written in the late 1800'sIsn't there a similar document that is thousands of years old? I've been trying to find something like that recently.

[arcticpenguin]

The 'good old days'? Nonsense!

Things were tough when I was young. Why we had to walk five miles each way to school, barefoot in the snow, uphill both ways...

[Denise]

As a side note, as reading this thread, two people have brought forth that Conservatives believe that the fifties were a better time. I personally think that a wide cross section of society thinks this and it certainly isn't a Conservative phenomenon.

[Nyarlathotep]

Originally posted by Martinm
Isn't there a similar document that is thousands of years old? I've been trying to find something like that recently.

I think so. The book I found where I found what I was talking about is called "Legends, Lies, and Cherished Myths of American History", it has a whole chapter on "The Good Old Days" and I think it mentions the document you're talking about.

I however am at work and do not have the book handy to give you the authors name or anything more specific, though, sorry.

[Yahzi]

"The idle chatterer is the sort who says that people nowadays are much more wicked than they used to be."

Theophrastus, circa 0 BC

I got this out of

http://www.bapho.net/baphonet/bbs/l-drive/topicx/files/metaphysical/text/1995/met95026.txt

But I have seen it before.

[Fade]

Wow, I inspired a thread!


Don't sell yourself short DWB! I have always admired your writing.

[Khalid01]

Well I know the good ole' days were great for me, back in the '90's! Clinton was in office, environmentalism was burgeoning, everyone was wearing garishly bright clothing, gas prices were low. I can't complain about the 90's! Of course, back then I was a wholly ignorant child! But it felt good! Now, at the same economic bracket, I feel my family is teetering on debt, my father's job is endangered; gas prices are high, freedom of speech threatened, it must be the fault of the conservatives!:D

What does Billie have to say about this social and economic depression the conservatives have brought about?;)

[Melissa Johnson]

Memories seen through rose-colored glasses...

My folks went through the Great Depression (the one that makes the current recession look a bit like Paradise). Nothing but nothing could shake their belief that everything was better when you had nothing but stale saltines to eat and nobody wore shoes in the summer and only in the winter if you happened to be lucky. Feh. The only thing I'll say is there are a lot more people now than there used to be and we have instantaneous information. Of course it seems worse than it was in 1933, when all you had was a crackly radio for news (or newsreels). They also had Stalin, Hitler, and the Tuskegee experiments (as someone mentioned in another thread)--people still did bad things. Now we can do more bad things faster to more people, but at least we have modern dentistry. Long live nitrous oxide!:cool:

[jimmygun]

Would anyone seriously like to hear about the ****** times someone had way back when? The worst of times still saw some good. The depression gave rise to people helping people, the war saw stories of humour and pathos as well as the horror.

When I look back on my life I share memories of what made me laugh, not cry. I think the bad things happen to all of us, it is a common thread linking us to our humanity. The good stuff, the funny stuff, all that, is more individual and a hell of a lot more entertaining.

That being said, to simply gloss over or ignore completely the negatives of a particular time is dangerous when politically taken. To return to times of forced family values, forced religion and the North American caste system that so many fundies espouse is dangerous to say the least.

I lived through the 50's and 60's. I saw all that was wrong with the old system. I welcomed the freedom from those days that came with the sexual revolution.

Almost all the things in the 50's were forced. If you had sex and got pregnant you were forced to marry. If you were a native youngster you were forced away from your family and heritage. If you were mentally handicapped you were forcebly sterilized. If you were the least bit eccentric you could be forced into a mental institution.

I certainly would not like to return to that time.

[Barkhorn1x]

When reading the Iliad I was struck by how the old sage Nestor would berate the heroes of his day as a bunch of sissies compared to the "real men" of the good old days. He called them selfish and unworthy.

You hear echo's of this sentiment down the ages due to sort of collective amnesia about all the bad stuff and a yearning for a past that never was.

After 9/11 didn't that a** Pat Robertson state that God had "turned away" from the United States because we are now just a bunch of sinners??

People don't change - circumstances do.

Barkhorn.

[justsaygnosis]

I reserve my utmost contempt for the notion that it has been modernization that has destroyed the idyllic past.
That was allegedly a time when ALL food was organic and people NEVER got cancer and everyone lived to 90 etc.!
We have proof that's a fairy tale.
That proof is the third world.
Those were the good old days.

[JesFine]

Nice. I was going to post the bold part of this quote in this thread. (http://www.randi.org/vbulletin/showthread.php?s=&threadid=21318) Well, I still will, but I will post more of it here too. I just came across it today in a book I was reading -- Julian Barnes "Flaubert's Parrot":
Does life improve? On television the other night I watched the Poet Laureate asked that question. 'The only thing I think is very good today is dentistry,' he replied; nothing else came to mind. Mere antiquarian prejudice? I don't think so. When you are young, you think that the old lament the deterioration of life because this makes it easier for them to die without regret. When you are old, you become impatient with the way in which the young applaud the most insignificant improvements -- the invention of some new valve or sprocket -- while remaining heedless of the world's barbarism. I don't say things have got worse; I merely say the young wouldn't notice if they had. The old times were good because then we were young, and ignorant of how ignorant the young can be.

[Dancing David]

Thank You Fade:
I was a young man in the sixties and it was wierd and scary at times.

The Good Old days-
when I would be dead because there was no antibiotics
when I would be dead because there were no transfusions
when you wiped you butt with a corn cob
when black people were hanged for sport
when children tortured animals

etc., etc.

[Darwin]

This reminds me of recent (neuroscience) studies that talk for older folk remembering more positive than negative things,and vice versa.

[triadboy]

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Fade
The family embodied in Leave it to Beaver was atypical,

Well, I WAS alive in the 50's and I distinctly remember my mother saying "Ward, weren't you a little hard on the beaver last night?"

[AmateurScientist]

Oh yeah, Ozzie Osbourne is representative of fathers in the U.S. Every night my friends with kids have the cops at their houses and have to explain why they were throwing all kinds of crap into the neighbors' yards, and how the music wasn't really that loud at 3:00 a.m. on a Wednesday.

That happens every day in my neighborhood.

:rolleyes:

AS

[AmateurScientist]

T-shirt:

"The older I get, the better I was."

AS

[UnrepentantSinner]

I scrolled this thread quickly, so I might have missed it, but there are references to children out of control and social decay going back to ancient Greece. The good old days were apparently the 450s B.C.

I for one will gladly forgo Polio and Smallpox...

..well, perhaps not Smallpox and SARS, Ebola, Marburg, AIDS, etc. might not be a bad trade off for Polio.

Hmmm...

[bjornart]

Originally posted by Crossbow
I have found that there are many people who tend to forget the bad things and remember the good. This tendency is especially noticable when they think of things and events that are over 20 years old or when they still had a decent amount of physical health and attraction.

Go figure!

Also there is the benefit of hindsight. The bad things of yesterday can't have been all that bad, because we're all still here.
World War II? Well my grandparents lived through it alright, can't have been that bad.
No anti-biotics? Again, my ancestors survived (at least until giving birth to the next generation), can't have been all that bad.
The threat of global thermo-nuclear war? Oh, come on, it ended, and look at all the positive competition it lead to.

The good things get better and better. The bad things are either forgotten, or they get better and better as well.

"Someday we'll laugh at this."