Question for "Children of the 50's and 60's"

[Beebers]

D'Snowth, I meant to address your point about crime. A few factors must be remembered - first, that almost every institution which housed the mentally ill, the insane and the criminally insane was closed across the country starting in the late '70s and finishing up in the '90s. While it is true that far too many people were inappropriately institutionalized - epileptics, gay people, people who were only depressed with no other problems, etc. - on the other hand a lot of people were out of society who should have been out of society. For example, if Uncle Fester had showed excessive interest in the little girl next door, or was taking a sharp knife with him every time he went out on errands, the family would take note, quietly commit him and nothing untoward would have a chance to take place. Today, Uncle Fester just runs rampant till he is caught, tried, and imprisoned. We have enormous numbers of people running around loose in society now who never would have been 30 years ago.

The next factor is that there are simply more people in the world now than ever before. And the third is the fracture of families, it's true. Single-parent impoverished households do funnel more criminals into society than any other segment. Poverty, despair, hopelessness for the future and a glamorization of the street life all play their part.

 

[Whatever]

Every generation always looks back on previous times and thinks that they were better or simpler.
Guess what? Botticelli thought the Apocalypse was going on in 1500 CE. It didn't.
The world is always getting more complicated, but that doesn't mean that the past was necessarily better.

 

[anythingmuppet]

I was just wondering for those of you all who were children during the 1950's and 1960's, how do you feel about our current generation?

Personally, even though I'm a child of the 90's (or would it be 80's since I was technically born in 1989) I think our current generation is awful, compare to the days when you all were kids, you all seemed to live during a nice, simple, wholesome, "Beaverish" (as in Leave it to Beaver) period.

Back in the 50's and 60's it seems like just about everybody was "church-people", always family-oriented, never hear anything nasty coming from them, everyone seems to easily become friends with other people, and it also seems like criminals were virtually non-existant then.

Today, most people seem to be atheists, half of the curse words I know are now considered okay for children who are out of kindergarten, people are just so hateful and back-stabbing, crime rates seem to be increasing, and everyone seems to think everything revolves around sex.

My parents come from the first period I mentioned, and I come from the second period I metioned; personally, I wish times were more like the 50's and 60's, what do you "old codgers" think about all of this?

This is why I mentioned in the past that if each generation is more and more like our current generation, then I don't think Sesame Street will last as long as some people think.

Snowth,

I personally don't believe that the 50's and the 60's were a much better generation than what we have now. True, our modern society sucks. There's curse words flying through the air, there's more emphasization and much more obvious promotion on the "ghetto" life and now people are still discriminatory. The word gay is now meant to be an insult. It has twice lost it's meaning: the first meaning of happy, then the second meaning of homosexuality and now it means, according to the stupid kids of today, "retarded" ( or as they say, "reTARTed" ), although that last meaning is unofficial. There is also promotion of disrespect to authorities, something of which I disapprove. ( I saw this commercial picturing a mother lecturing her bored and annoyed child in an emphasized way. He then pulls a rope and some sport drink falls on her and flattens her). But still, as others had said, the 50's/60's weren't that much better. You had racial discrimination, sexual discrimination, in addition to a general frowing-upon of new ideas and uniqueness, amongst other things. And also, on another note, I don't find it fair to put atheists in the "bad list". Although you had ill-fated experiences with some "atheists" ( like Ruru said, they were probably calling themselves atheists just to be rebellious and get your goat).

 

[D'Snowth]

( like Ruru said, they were probably calling themselves atheists just to be rebellious and get your goat).

I highly doubt it, they recently made an insult against Christians when they learned that a parent complained about the Whose Line? episode featuring Richard Simmons.

 

[Ilikemuppets]

This is why I mentioned in the past that if each generation is more and more like our current generation, then I don't think Sesame Street will last as long as some people think.

Well, it has been on for like 38 years. Honestly, I love the show and everything, but how much longer could it posibly be on for. I think it has noting to do with the current or future generations. It just has to do with being on too long.

Anyway, some thing are better some things are not. I've heard Middle age people comlpain about how much harder is is today then it used to be. Then again, I've heard elderly people talk about how much eaiser thing are. I mean you dont have to go out to the river with a wash board tio whas your clothes and start a fire or shover coal into a oven to get hot water. I mean tht's hard work.

Yes a lot of thigs were better, but everthing was not as inosent as is claimed to be. There was a time when accountability and resonsibility and respect was infasized in society, but polititions and things like that have always had a bad history to them. There was a time when rebelion and disrespect for a system that wasn't al honest itself and did not live to it's promises was the fad, a theme when responsibility wasn't in style, a time when wealth and corpert greed, shallowness, and buying things and a bunch of spoiled kids was in. and then there was the 90's, which I think today's generation is a result of growing up in which was a very synical time. Kids basically geew up no really seeing the good in anything anymore. Everyone was a critic and was somewhat sarcastic and bitter and judge mental. Not to mention scepitcal.

At the same time life becoming eaiser has only made it more complcated with the choises and thing like that. Senes moses was traviling in the desert, people have always done wrong. I have to agree with Vic becaus the biggest difference between now and then is that people get away with less. with the internet and satilites that can follow a persons ever move and camaras on ever street corner, 24 hour news, people can't get away with what they used to. Where now just finding about all stuff that happend all through history that somtimes we'd rather not know about.

You can get away with saying things on tv that you could not get away with 25 years ago, but at the same time, you could get away with thing that you can't say now. But times being more PC these days have a lot to do with that. I mean thay call the boomers the me generation, the WW2 the giving of their time and their selves. I mean were the kids of the me generation, so we somehow feel some kind on entitelment to everything they worked for and think we don't have to work for it. We walk around with our phones and Ipod's and notebooks and that our parents probably paied for any way and think we just deserve it. I mean there was a time when this stuff did not eve exist not long ago at all. I think I'll quite rembaling on now, LOL!

 

[CensoredAlso]

I don't think Atheism is a problem. You can be an athiest and still be a good person. The problem is that people who are Religious are given such a hard time. We can disagree with each other, but we really do have very little tolerance.

 

[D'Snowth]

I don't think Atheism is a problem. You can be an athiest and still be a good person. The problem is that people who are Religious are given such a hard time. We can disagree with each other, but we really do have very little tolerance.

And that was one of the reasons why I was given such a hard time at another forum; once they found out I was a religious person, that gave them something else to constantly harrass me about. Even if I made sort of an edgy "out there" joke, they'd be like "uh oh, that's against his religion, looks like he's going to **** after all!"

 

[Beebers]

Every generation always looks back on previous times and thinks that they were better or simpler.

There's some truth to that but I certainly don't look back with an unbalanced fondness for it. The '50s and '60s were not better than now in terms of the times we were living through, not by a long shot. By 1964 this country was going to **** in a handbasket from within. We had homegrown terrorists blowing up cops, for crying out loud, along with everything else that was going on. We had the Federal mandate to desegregate public schools nationally, which led to riot and death in the streets. All the awful paroxysms and convulsions we passed through as a society at that time had to happen in order to make this a better place. But it was miserable, and it was long. This idea that all was wonderful is just not accurate.

During the Civil Rights movement young white men were murdered for helping black people register to vote. Lynchings were still going on. Little black girls were blown to smithereens while they were in CHURCH. The Pulitzer Prize in photography was given, the year of the school segregation mandate, for a photo of a young white man in the streets of Boston attempting to impale a black boy with the pole of an American flag. EVERY young boy and man knew that the moment their 18th birthday came they would be drafted into the endless war in VietNam. Turning 18 became an automatic possible death sentence, for many years. No, these were necessary times of change, but they were awful and no one could say with any certainty that we'd survive to the other side.

When the '70s came along and feminism got heavy and women went off to work, and society bought the notion of Superwoman and I Can Have/Do It All, that's when families started to really fracture. Because chasing a full-time career means your family and children lose out. Dedicate yourself to family, your own aspirations and career suffer. There is no way to Have It All. But the bill of goods was sold, people bought it, and divorce, lonely latchkey kids and a sort of benign family neglect became the order of the day.

Kids in their hearts of hearts would still rather come home to SOMEONE in the house, and the days of homemade cookies just out of the oven and real suppers sure did beat an empty house and dinner from a box or takeout brought home by parents too worn out to cook. Lots of kids today don't even know what it is to have somebody in the house every day baking or cooking or just plain available anymore.

We've lost some and we've gained some, as every era and every generation does. Standards generally are much lower - school and college standards, standards of behavior and conduct; expectations and requirements of kids today are lower. Kids and young people will in fact rise to the expectations and standards that are set around them, but little of that is done nowadays and when they are set they're very low by comparison to any previous time.

The 1920s were actually the decade of real decadence and lost values, interestingly enough. The staid and restrictive Victorian era was finally rebelled against, the country was swimming in money, and people got pretty crazy. They make us in 2006 look pretty tame by comparison all in all. The stock market crash of 1929 put an end to all that and the entire decade of the 1930s was the mire of the Great Depression. That was the mother of all reality checks.

 

[DanDanStrawberry]

I've gotta say, not having been alive in the 50s or 60s, I really love the era we're in at the minute. I love all the computers and music and fashions and shops and crowds and...general culture. That's just me though

 

[Ilikemuppets]

There's nothing wrong with that dan, but it's knid of boring and tamer in comparission to other decades depending how you look at it. And noways id is a result of everyting that happend, but were probably the most stuck in an 80's frame of mind where shallowness and commercialism rule the day.

What scares me is that now generations have grown up with that whole divorse, entitalment, me stuff. That's like the downfall of socity like nothing else. Once families fall apart, then society falls apart. And some people act like this is alright or an okay thing.