What is your idea of "the good old days"?

submitted by [deleted] from self.AskSaidIt

sorted by:
top
newinsightfulfun
you are viewing a single comment's thread.

view the rest of the comments →

[–]spacedolphin 7 insightful - 1 fun7 insightful - 0 fun8 insightful - 1 fun -  (6 children)

Anything September 10th 2001 or earlier really, but I think 1986 was peak America. Maybe I was just a blissfully ignorant kid, but I'm happy to have been that age at that time. You had to be smart to get on the internet, dialup BBS. Cars couldn't lock you out if you missed a payment. You had to remember phone numbers and actually talk to people on the phone. Women cared about being fit, and good mothers still. The only tranny propaganda was glam rock. You had to actually be able to play the instrument and sing. I didn't know how much shit was in my food, so I didn't feel guilty eating it. Etc.

[–]jet199 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

The nineties were ok lifestyle and politics wise.

However there were quite a few recessions. One of the reasons lifestyle was good is because people didn't buy loads of unnecessary crap and rents were low because people didn't have the money to afford more. Lots of loft living and businesses being set up in empty warehouses because it was dirt cheap as many businesses had gone under or moved out. Good if you had disposable cash but ordinary people were suffering.

Most media at that time was already derivative but it was still better than the crap now. Even the music 3 years ago was leagues ahead of the stuff released at the moment.

[–]Vulptex 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

All media is derivative, I don't know why everyone has this idea that it shouldn't be. In fact the trend-setters trying too hard to do something new is arguably one of the reasons modern media is so bad. Everyone knows modern Simpsons sucks and should just go back to being itself. And it was inspired the the Flintstones.

It does become a problem when everything wants to do the same thing. Like how every single TV show is trying to be Family Guy. But that doesn't make inspiration in itself bad.

[–]Alienhunter 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

We have the benefit of hindsight with old media. We get the sampled pick of the best of the best. Most of the crap is forgotten. There's more crap now than there was before. But that doesn't mean in 50 years our media era won't be remembered for the few gems.

Everyone tries to copy the successful show and you see it happen. Cartoons all try to copy family guy. Action movies all try to copy marvel. In the past everyone tried to copy star wars. Before that there was the great disaster movie tsunami of the 1970's of which we more or less only have the brilliant satire "Airplane" which has endured in the cultural consciousness. And even much of that the references are lost to the modern viewer. (Though most are timeless enough to be funny).

[–]Vulptex 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

You're right. One of the movies was even erased from history (Shazaam).

[–]Vulptex 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Some of those things are literally negatives. A lot of it is nostalgia, and I think if you were sent back to that time you'd come to appreciate all the advancements made since then. The downside is that we're now on the brink of one of the two political parties turning America into a communist or fascist dictatorship, which would indeed make us much worse off, but it isn't over yet. And if that does happen, hopefully then people will remember again how horrific those regimes really are.

[–]Alienhunter 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I think a lot of it has to do with being a blissfully ignorant kid. And I think a lot of the problems we see today is people grew up but remained blissfully ignorant.

There's loads of problems and frankly the old refrain reads true "there's nothing new under the sun" things change, the biggest recent development was social media, but that basically just exasperated social problems that already existed. Society just hasn't moved about to figure out how to deal with it yet. There's wars drugs corruption crime and it goes in cycles.

The epic cycle. The young men have passion, they go to war, they die, the survivors are strong but understand the folly of war, they build a peaceful world and they have the knowledge of the horror that man can inflict on man and have no desire to inflict that horror on others.

The next generation grows up in a wonderful era of peace and comfort, spared from the ravages of of war and the true depravities of human strife, but then just as assuredly as the older generation dies, they miss out on the hard earned wisdom about life and what really matters that comes to them only when they are sitting in a foxhole covered in shit and blood and death.

These people are smarter, they're more open minded, they have a creative spirit not crushed by the evils of the world, but they lack the perspective of time, they create a nicer world that is better than the ones their parents left them, but they fail to deal with the growing resentment of the youth, they lack the normal human experience, one of strife, and war, and they yearn for it just as a dog yearns to chase a squirrel. Eventually the older generation will allow for frivolous and pointless concerns to take the way of what really matters, whether that is one generation or two depends, usually the generation after the war understands at least on some level the horrors of it, but the last people who truly understand are dying now, Vietnam was perhaps one of the last truly terrible wars to hit the public consciousness at a scale large enough to make a difference, but even that effect is dwindling.

Another big war will happen as they always have and the cycle will repeat again. Humans will build something. Fight with other humans. Destroy what they build. And build again.