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For those of you who have bothered to keep up with this post, http://www.threedonia.com/archives/21241
First, I apologize for the poor quality of the original post. Sincerely. I am very busy outside of threedonia lately and do not have time to edit my posts and comments. I hardly have time to think of them. It’s mainly stream of consciousness these days.
I’ve been attempting to clarify in the comments, and I’d like to use this post to, hopefully, more clearly make my point. I do think it is important for those of you in your teens, 20′s and 30′s to understand.
There are no “good old days,” and you’re kidding yourself if you think a Conservative (or Liberal) Utopia is just around the corner. “If we can just recapture Hollywood… If we can just recapture the newspapers…” It has always been thus. Here’s an excerpt from a comment on that post:
When you watch old movies look for scenes that show a newsstand. When I was a kid those things were all around Chicago. Green, wooden structures, about ten feet long, 4 feet deep and 6 feet high. They were full of trash; celebrity gossip, crime gossip, political gossip, porn. There ain’t nothing on cable that wasn’t in those newsstands. In the old days people weren’t walking around reading copies of the Constitution, Shakespeare’s sonnets and Milton’s “Paradise Lost.”
Within a few blocks of my house there was a store front that served as the meeting place for an Aryan group. They were constantly handing out pamphlets and literature promoting their organization.
I’ve said this before, but I honestly don’t think people understand the significance. Charles Lindbergh, Charles Freakin’ Lindbergh! went on a national speaking tour to sold out auditoriums in the 30’s, promoting Hitler’s cause and attacking FDR, the President of the United States. Imagine Tiger Woods pre-scandal. Lindbergh was ten times more revered in this country. Charlie Chaplin was a socialist, probably a communist. Was anyone more famous in the movies in the ’20’s than Charlie Chaplin? This is not new. It’s not old. It just is.
Also, as someone who has been in his teens, 20′s and 30′s… I think it’s human nature when you are those ages to think the world is on fire. Tom Waitts worded it well, “It’s like we’re on an ocean liner, and it’s hit an iceberg and it’s sinking. And we’re scrambling towards the lifeboats but the entire ocean is on fire.” I think Waitts said that in the mid-80′s. I know it seems like we’re on the edge of calamity, but it’s looked bad before. Real bad. Study the Great Depression. Study the Industrial Revolution. Study World War I. Study the Civil War. Study World War II. Study the 1960′s.
My parents were in their 20′s and raising two children in the 1960′s. When I look back at all that was unfolding in front of those two 20 year olds I am amazed they didn’t just give up, light our tiny little home on fire and conflagrate us and all their possessions in a mass, familial suicide.
What hope did my parents have? Race riots, rampant drug use, free love, a quagmire in Vietnam on the TV news everyday, political assasinations every, new math, you didn’t even recognize your kids text books! The economy sucked. My dad was continually losing his job. Any rational adult would assume the world was out to get their child. The popular musicians of the day were glamourising drug use and casual sex. The popular literature and movies of the day were full of apocalyptic themes. There were wars and skirmishes all over the globe. Communism was toppling nation after nation. The world was about to be demolished in a nuclear winter. Over population, famine and war were huge concerns. Yet now, when I look back on my childhood it seems rather idyllic and here I am, worrying about the world my own children will inherit.
So, when you watch the news, Kids, keep this in mind. The Left always thinks they are a few breaks away from a Utopia featuring their ideology (that’s where we were in 2007 – 2009), and the Right always thinks they are a few breaks away from a Utopia featuring their ideology (that’s where we are now) but neither ever gets their way. FDR had his Lindbergh. Bush II had his Olbermann and Obama has his Beck. Every generation has tragedy; natural and man made, and joy; natural and man made. Stay positive. Get up each day with a determined smile on your face and go out and do what you can to make your life a small, iota better, and the lives of those you love a small, iota better. Then go to bed exhausted, with the satisfaction that you gave it 100% and get up tomorrow and do it all over again.
That’s what we do. Human life is full of ”sound and fury, signifying nothing.” Have a dream. By all means dream, and dream big! But don’t place your dream in a hope for Utopia. It ain’t comin’. I write a post long ago about John Mayer’s hit song, “Waitin’ on the world to change.” It’s one of the most unintentionally funny songs I’ve heard in a long time. The world ain’t gon’na change the way you think it is, and it’s gon’na change in ways none of us can imagine. Gam zeh ya’avor. Affect what you have control over. Get the little stuff right; your family, your work, your health, your soul… Don’t let the media distract you. They’ll always be there. They’ve been saying the same things for thousands of years. Despite what they’ll tell you, the good old days are right now. All that’s needed is you, making them good.
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Well done, Rufus.
Very nicely put indeed, Rufus! Little Westerberg as musical accompaniment for ya…
Right on brother Rufus. There are only days… some are good some are bad and many are a mixture of both. Sometimes we string a few of them in a row.
MY only caveat is that I do think it is harder — on avergae — for kids today. and that we are not as free as we were BUT the whole tide of human history is oppression, authoritarianism, and violence. It’s still a great time to be alive.
“it is harder — on avergae — for kids today”
I don’t know. My kids don’t spend too much time worrying that they’ll contract polio. We are less free, yes, but let’s be honest, how many moms would accept more head injuries in lieu of bike helmets, accept more traffic fatalities in lieu of car seats? How many of us would sacrifice our worker’s comp and unemployment insurance for a more mobile workforce? We are less free, but we are our own jailers. We forge the chains we wear.
We have to be careful; safety and security also have negative costs, often in liberty. We have better technology, but does that mean we have changed? What mom in the 1960′s wouldn’t have strapped her kid in a car seat if they were available, and as inexpensive as they are now?
By harder I meant there’s a lot more temptation and and things… drug use is less actually, but they are (especially weed) is more available and potent, more pron, etc. due to the Internet. My kids do not have as much fun as I did as a kid and the school definitely teaches them to be more sheep-like than when I was a kid. Now… their standard of living is a LOT higher than mine was, they go on more trips, I would’ve killed for a PS3 and the accoutrement my kids have (and don’t appreciate), etc. Is different better? I don’t know. All one has to do is look at Jacob Riis’ How the Other Half Lives and the pics of kids in tenement buildings or urban life for most in the 19th century to see what a world with very little safety net can do to the most vulnerable.
I think my Mom wouldn’t have strapped me in a car seat, but only because she wanted me dead — for good reason.
I think my mom would have gladly strapped me and my sister in car seats, up through the age of 14, simply to get some peace and quiet. I think sometimes we confuse technological evolution with cultural evolution. What turn of the century mom wouldn’t trade places with a 2010 mom?
We only know what we know, and when we look back on the past we almost never see the full picture. Somebody (Veruckt?) wrote about optimism. I don’t remember my parents being optimistic. I don’t remember them ever having a whole lot of confidence they could swing the next month’s rent or mortgage payment. I also don’t remember them complaining a lot. I do know they thought the world was going to hell in a handbasket in the 60′s. I imagine there was a time when my mom would have admitted to having regrets at bringing children into that world; two Kennedys assasinated, MLK, Jr. assasinated, Woodstock, Vietnam, kids dying of drug overdoses, the threat of nuclear annihilation, the Bay of Pigs…
Yet my sister and I look back on it and it seems like a walk in the park compared to today. Only it wasn’t as good as we remember and today isn’t as bad as it seems.
You know, I never thought about it before, but for those of you who like evolution, this makes evolutionary sense. Part of game theory and psychology deal with hits and misses. Some of you may remember a psychic who had a TV show, John Edwards. His show was a brilliant example of this. If you have a chance, watch it and study it. He’s dealing with a group of people who all want to contact a deceased relative or friend. First, he starts with a large audience and pares it down. I’ll ignore that, but that’s also a cool aspect to his scam. But once he gets to an individual he throws out an idea, “I’m getting an indication about the chest. Something about the chest.” Well a lot of people die of heart attacks. Lung cancer also fits. He’s probably covered about 60% of adults who have died in the last century with that guess. But even if he’s wrong, the “victim” will lead him to an accurate guess; “well, my father was in the war and had a purple heart that he wore on his chest every year in a Veteran’s Day parade.” “Well, my mom played accordion.” “My Uncle umpired Little League and wore an umpire’s foam pad when he ump’ed. He loved doing that!” And now Edwards has some specific information he can start riffing off of. Spiraling closer and closer. The victim wants him to be right, so they lead him to guesses that make sense, and they help make sense of his guesses that do not.
Everyonce in awhile he’ll say something that has no connection. Even though he always starts out open-ended, every once in awhile the “victim” can’t think of a single associatin with what he’s suggested. So, John will quickly cover it up, “Does this mean something to anyone in the audience nearby?” Well, yes, the woman two seats over has a father who died of a heart attack. “Oh,” says John, “your father is also trying to reach me and his message got mixed with her Uncle’s,” etc.
Well, the reason it works when John does this is because of hits and misses and human psychology. When we want something to work, something to be right, we notice the hits. When we don’t we notice the misses. If I sit you down with no prior knowledge of John and show you a video tape of his show and preface it with, “This guy is an amazing psychic. I watch his show weekly and it is incredible how accurate he is!” You’ll notice hits as you view the program. If I preface it with, “This guy is such a charlatan. It amazes me how rarely the audience members fail to notice how often he is wrong, or how often he uses vague language,” you’ll count misses. I do a card trick that never fails to amaze folks yet it simply uses this principle. I’ve never failed to fool people, regardless of intelligence, and all it involves is getting them to count hits and ignore misses.
So, what I just realized, from an evolutionary stand-point it’s good to pay attention to “hits” regarding the future. People overy cautious about the future are more likely to survive. They’ll worry about germs. They’ll worry about crime. They’ll worry about fire. They’ll worry about terrorism. They’ll worry about traffic accidents. They’ll worry about head injuries riding bikes. So, the more folks naturally panic about the future, focus on the “hits,” the more likely they’ll live to breed and pass on their worrying genes.
So that tells us why so many of us fail to recognize that we live in the Good Old Days, while we’re living in them. But why do we think the good old days have passed? What if we focus on misses regarding our own personal pasts. When I think about my childhood I don’t remember weeks quarantined in a tiny room with scarlet fever. I remember sunny days running outside. I don’t remember being hungry, I remember my grandfather giving me a quarter to buy ice cream! So those of us who ignore the misses in our pasts feel better, and are more likely to be positive, and keep moving forward.
In other words, I wonder if evolution tricks us into ignoring misses in the past and intensifying potential hits in the future?
Rufus, if you spent a day in an average first grade class today, you’d be shocked at the decline of respect for authortiy. Even more so as you go through the higher grades. It’s nothing like it used to be when we were in elementary and, class clowns aside, were respectful. Parenting is at it’s all time worse, which doesn’t make me too optimistic about the future. This is also refelected in the declining grade averages thoughout the country. So, with that as a measuring stick there were “Good Old Days” and this ain’t it.
This will be a tough (maybe impossible) thing to overcome because it’s a problem that is embedded within our culture, not just something we can petition or vote against. It’s embedded so deep because we’ve been weened as a society to accept things in small doses until we’ve built up an immunity to recognizing that our values have stretched to accept those things. Had we been confronted by these things in one large dose, our convictions would most likely have nipped them in the bud. But we’ve unconsciously allowed things to slip through to the point that we don’t even think about whether something is immoral or not, or care. Compare 50s TV to today’s (ethics and content) and the expansive difference you see is the same measuring stick that you can use all across our cultural board. The same gap you see reflects the equivalent between the behavior/attitude of today’s kids to that of our own, at their age. It’s that dramatic. Since our culture is only going to continue to widen the morality gap, I don’t see it being fixed. How do we realistically change our culture?
I heard some former, defected soviet intelligence officer on some show say that the soviets infiltrated our culture with the intention to influence our culture exactly the way it’s gone for the last 50 years. Maybe he was telling the truth.
Much truth here, but I’m not sure I entirely agree. There’s a ratchet effect going–liberal victories gain ground, while conservative victories just consist of temporary stops to liberal advances. The cumulative effect, it seems to me, is downhill, resulting inevitably in the collapse of the system, after which the tough and self-disciplined take over (usually with a certain amount of brutality), and the whole process begins again. A proper balance between discipline and freedom only exists (if at all) somewhere around the middle of the sequence.
Or so it seems to me.
I would like to take the opportunity to take credit for this post. My young punk-ness inspired this observation by Rufus.
But I also don’t think I was making my points clear enough in the Back to the Future thread. I am surfing ten different web pages, watching Fox News on mute, and listening to Brand New at an ear-splitting volume, so stream of consciousness was all I was pulling off in my posts as well. Let me clarify by numerating.
1. I wasn’t pining for the good old days. I am well aware that every generation has its problems, its triumphs, its FDR’s, its Carters, its Obama. My point was a simple observation about the nature of the media in the past compared to now. Yes, there was the same amount of sleaze, filth, and gossip in the past as there is now. Charlie Chaplin was a communist, Frank Capra made movie vilifying corporations, and celebrities were promiscuous, petty, and self-destructive to the same extent that they were now. I wasn’t saying that things were so much better in the past and that we could make them that way again if only we could _________. I was simply observing a difference in the way the entertainment media manifested itself in the culture. I don’t think I’m going out on a limb by saying that every facet of the media is more political now. Maybe not much more, but at least more organized toward a pushing a leftist worldview. TV shows, movies, songs, plays, whatever, have long pushed leftist world views. But nowadays, more so than in the past, they are designed to specifically push those world views. When Capra vilified a greedy corporation he did so to tell a great story. When Clooney picks a role, most likely he is thinking about whether it is going to say the right things and please the right people. More stars today are political animals, using every chance they get to reinforce a belief, whether it is out of genuine devotion to a cause or getting a seat at the cool kids table. Again, I am not pining for the good old days, just making an observation.
2. I think the entertainment culture has a more firm grip on people today then it did in the past. Again, I’m a young punk, and my friends are all in their 20′s, so I’m sure my experience is not necessarily universal. People absorb information through hour long dramas, SNL, the Daily Show, and the like, and because the large majority of those shows push a leftist world view it is much more likely that someone my age will either be influenced by it or allow it to reinforce beliefs and assumptions they already have. Further, the fact that every story seems to be twisted into fitting the chosen narrative of the day, or the decade. A story that would have just been a story in the past is now used to advance whatever leftist cause is popular at the time. I’m not saying that didn’t happen in the past, I’m just saying that with the rise of 24 hour cable news and the internet it has more opportunities to creep into the culture. Leftists can grab the culture from so many fronts now that it is changing the way they operate. In the 40′s and 50′s they couldn’t reach into every household through the TV and the internet, now they can.
3. This whole discussion started because I said “People nowadays are more likely to be influenced by a song or a TV show because of the grip the left has on the entertainment culture” (or something like that). Have you met people my age? They’re morons, and I’ll count myself among them from time to time. I love talking politics and have engaged in some healthy debates in my time but I’m much more likely to get into a heated debate with someone over the various ways that Coldplay sucks like no band has ever sucked before than I am over the intricacies of campaign finance reform. That is not out of a disinterest in politics, but a lack of people around me who are as interested in those things as I am. Combine that with the barrage of leftist values streaming through every media outlet and it makes for some impressionable people absorbing one value system 10 times more than another. I’m not saying that kids my age were all smart and discerning in the past (I’ve read all about the 60′s), I am aware that people my age have always been stupid. I’m just saying that their idiocy is triggered by different mechanics, and the assault from the left is coming on more and different fronts.
4. Rufus, you’re a smart guy. And I can tell by your posts that you have much more of an evolved set of political and social values than me. You know what you believe, why you believe it, and how to defend those beliefs. I’m still in my 20′s, and I’m still figuring stuff out. I can’t disagree with anything in this post. It’s all true, and well said. But I hope you see that I am not some kid who believed my grandfather when he talked about how much better things were “back in the day” and can’t wait to use all that piss and vinegar I’ve saved up to go out and change things back to the Golden Age when there were no problems. I was just observing a difference in how the leftists use the media to engage people based on my experience as a 20 something and my interactions over the years with people my age.
Sorry for the long posts, but I decided I had to try to make myself more clear than I was before.
Agree on Coldplay. Wow, they suck!
>>Sorry for the long posts, but I decided I had to try to make myself more clear than I was before.>>
Whew, it is you, blackhawk. For a second, I thought David Marcoe was borrowing your sign-on.
I may have broken his record with that post. Well…maybe not.
Blackhawk,
Regarding #4, that’s kind of my point. I don’t think you and your peers want us to turn the clock back, but I also hope you understand that 20 years from now you’ll probably look back on this time and realize it’s much different than it looks to you now.
“Rosebud.”
So you’re saying you agree with the point that started off “Rufus, you’re a smart guy…” I’m shocked
But really, you’re probably right. In fact it probably won’t take 20 years. It might be next week. But I wanted to make sure that you knew my approach to the issue was a little more nuanced than “Man it sucks out there.”
And it does suck out there. And there’s some sunshine too. “Into each life a little rain must fall.” When it’s your life and you’re the one getting wet things can seem bleak.
I was talking to a friend whose Uncle was born in the early part of the century. When he retired the government sent him a social security check. When he started working there was no social security and when it was introduced he saw it as a “widows and survivor’s benefit.” He sent the check back to Uncle Sam, uncashed, with a letter, “he didn’t need any help from the government.” He was a little insulted. I don’t know how many more years he lived but he never once cashed a single one of those checks. That was not unusual at the beginning of the program. Now nobody thinks twice about taking the money.
There is no question our government keeps expanding, and with that expansion we continue to lose freedom and responsibility. I don’t like that. My friend’s Uncle didn’t like it either. I think that expansion is inevitable. I think our founders did too. So, if you’re worried about that aspect of the future, I share your concern, and you and your peers are right, that part of life is worse. But is the end near? I don’t know. I do know people have felt that for over 200 years, and the flag is still flying. I sincerely hope we can figure out how to reverse some of it, maybe your generation will be the ones to do that! Either way, don’t despair. Believe it or not, 99.999% of the folks who have ever walked this planet would trade places with any of us in a heartbeat!
Rufus,
The primary difference between now and the “good old days” is one word. Optimism.
While since time began it’s always seemed like the world was about to end there has always been a “better days are ahead” attitude. Hell America was founded on just such an optimism and that rugged individualism and undefeatable optimism took this country to places the world had never been brave enough to conceive. That has really been America’s role in the world. We’re the light at the end of the tunnel. The shining city on the hill. The world looks to us as the brighter day that they’re dreaming of.
Even in our toughest days our chins were high, our chest out, and our shoulders back because we were America and we would not bow to anyone or anything. That was the power of American exceptionalism and it affected the whole world. We were the Joneses that everyone wanted to keep up with. Leftism could not succeed so long as we believed in our own exceptionalism, afterall why would we embrace their lunacy when we were living the high life? No amount of bombs or bullets would break us. But Leftism is crafty and it knew it couldn’t win in a fight against free men because free men have too much to lose and will fight until the end. With this in mind Leftism knew it had to attack the culture, change our minds, make us believe we weren’t different than anyone else, we weren’t exceptional and to do this they went after our media and our schools so they could educate our young this way. They wouldn’t have to break us because we’d just tear ourselves apart. After more than 60 years of indoctrination and media saturation they have convinced us that we aren’t exceptional. As a matter of fact they’ve convinced us that we’re everything that is wrong with world and should be ashamed of our success. They have killed our optimism.
You and I agree 100% that there will never be a utopia to the left or right, though a utopia on the left would I suppose be North Korea, I do disagree that there weren’t “good old days”. The old days of American optimism, barring another Reagan type leader, our behind us and it’s mostly from the all out cutlural assault and media bombardment from the Left who are masters of propaganda.
Didn’t Wilson and FDR pass all their craptastic, Great Society, Liberal legislation back in those days when you said everyone was so optimistic?
I’m not arguing that there aren’t those on the Left trying to dominate our institutions, but there are those on the Right doing the same. And there are even more in the middle, trying to keep politics out of text books and entertainment. And it has always been thus.
I am optimistic. You are optimistic. This country is filled with optimistic people. Remember that “Boss” clip Floyd recently posted? There are millions of foreigners who want a shot at the American Dream. Have you heard of “The Grapes of Wrath?” “The Jungle?” Socialist tracts couched in popular literature, written long before Michael Moore came on the scene. How optimistic were Upton Sinclair and John Steinbeck? What did they think of the American dream?
In the neighborhood I grew up in most men lived quiet lives of desperation. That’s how it was for my father. That’s how it was for his father. That’s how it was for his father. Men drank a lot, and they had a lot of reasons to need to drink a lot. If you got injured (even while at work), you lost your job. Infant mortality rates were high. Mothers lived in fear of their children dying of infectious diseases. There was a whole lot of pessimism in this country before the 1970′s, Brother. Jimmy Carter didn’t invent malaise.
As I wrote; keep fighting the good fight. Don’t ever stop. But I disagree that we live in a different time and I think it’s a fallacy to assume there is something about the media or culture that we are going to fix.
There are points in each life, a point when our minds are open to the possibilities abounding, a point when we are conscious of the dangers looming. It is a bad idea to confuse our experience of these points as evidencing broad trends. We old coots tend to idealize the past primarily because one effect of youth is to glory in possibilities (another effect can best be described by reference to Holden Caulfield.) The primary benefit of the study of History by the young is to provide the kind of perspective that derives from learning the long arc of History, that recognizes the ways in which Man advances and the ways in which He remains constant — we’re still engaging in the same political arguments the Romans had, and a day doesn’t pass when I don’t give thanks I live in an era of air conditioning, antibacterials and indoor plumbing.
Progress is typically taken for granted while what is “lost” is keenly felt. Yet when I consider the tales I will tell my grandkids I am amused:
When I was YOUR age we only had three channels of television, there was nothing on between 1 and 6 AM and when we wanted to change the channel by gum we had to GET UP and WALK ACROSS THE ROOM! Computers didn’t even have hard drives, CPU clock speeds were glacial and we had to make do without GUI interfaces! We programmed on punched paper tape, not even punch cards, and we did it in machine code! And we didn’t have word processors, either: we had TYPEWRITERS, and if we made a mistake there we had to retype the ENTIRE thing!
We live in an age of miracles and we grouse that _humans_ aren’t better? Pfui. Every era had its born cannon fodder and every era will, but we don’t have to join their ranks.
When I was YOUR age we only had three channels of television, there was nothing on between 1 and 6 AM and when we wanted to change the channel by gum we had to GET UP and WALK ACROSS THE ROOM!
“And if the President came on, your night was shot to hell. ‘He’s on every channel! We’re gonna miss Flipper!’” — Jeff Foxworthy
Of course, not much has changed since then — it still spoils somebody’s day every time the President goes on TV.
After reading all these posts all I can say is I hear my Dad saying: None of you (meaning me and my siblings) know what its like to really be poor. We complain but we aren’t starving. My Dad used to chase trains down the tracks to pick up the coal dumped there by the firemen because they felt bad for the poor people who couldn’t heat their homes. My grandparents were some of those poor people. Speak all we want about FDR (I am not a hater by the way..unlike O FDR was a patriot.) that stuff happened regardless of what he did or what congress passed. The Depression ended because a funny little man with a wierd mustasche invaded a little country called Poland.