It wasn't long ago that I saw a reference to someone longing for the good old days. I don't remember who wrote it, on what social media site, or under what circumstances in general. But, I do remember that there was no shortage of responses that seemed to indicate we are in a much better place now than we were then. The poster was excoriated for making such a statement, and accused of being one with too much privilege.
As I am now on the cusp of officially being a senior citizen, I too long for the good old days, and given the negative responses I saw on that previous post, I would like to explain myself. First of all, I would like to peg the period of the good old days to the seventies and eighties. I think of my teens as the good old days; the ones that I look back on with the most nostalgia. Obviously, the "good old days" mean different things to different people. I could easily just say they were the good old days because I was a teenager with nary a worry in the world... well, no real worries anyway. I was a good student without trying too hard, and I was in great physical health though not a star athlete. I was closer to ugly than handsome on a scale, but I wasn't obsessed either. I could say they were the good old days because I was healthy and fit and invincible. But I won't stop there, because that would make my definition of "the good old days" extremely subjective.
I want to explain why they were the good old days for more objective reasons. First of all, the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War ended in 1973. From then until 1991, we largely enjoyed a peacetime America. I remember the Falklands and The Iran Hostage situation, but not much else other than the cold war. Also, though the fuel crisis of the early 70s influenced - in the most negative way - the cars that were manufactured through the 70s into the early 80s, the muscle cars of the 60s were still around and easy to buy. People were still able to retire in their late 50s and early 60s on pensions that took them to their natural end, and a person could live on their wages in general. The nuclear family was not an anomaly and everyone spent time at home eating dinner and watching TV together. College and medical care was still affordable, and one could make money on interest-bearing bank accounts. You could even send your kid to college without breaking the bank... life was good. Even politically, the left and the right weren't that far apart. Bill Clinton who didn't enter office until 1993 wasn't so far to the left that average Americans couldn't relate on some level with each other. By today's standards, Bill Clinton would have been right of a modern moderate-right politician.
So let's compare that to today. We have been at war for over two decades. Granted, no one has been drafted, but generations of soldiers have been affected by our involvement in Southwest Asia. The very same technology that allows us to work better has led to the loss of the nuclear family. Everyone is tied to their phone or their playstation or their whatever-technology-they-are-addicted-to. You see people on dates with their eyes glued to their phones, and people off work still working... on their phones. You see kids who can't separate homework from socializing because it's all on their computer. I have seen the advent of email kill the planning process. All of a sudden, people who have no idea what is going on can send an email to the group with the most ridiculous suggestion and fuck up a perfectly good plan in a New York second. We work in a society that I have to see what pronouns someone uses before I can address them, and I can't tell someone that they suck at their job without being censured. Don't get me wrong, I don't care who or what you identify as, I just don't want to have to think about it. If I'm not dating - and I'm not - your gender and sexual preference is immaterial to me. People say that we are racially woke, or working in that direction, but I remember dealing with people of color much the same way I do today, with mutual respect and cordiality; oddly enough, because I was taught from the earliest of age to do unto others as I would have them do unto me. I rarely get addressed as sir, though my responses as a youth to someone older than me were always suffixed with a sir or a ma'am.
You can say I grew up privileged, but I didn't really. Sure, I had my skin color, but it didn't get me in college. Dad had a good job, but Mom didn't work. We lived in a decent neighborhood, but by no means was it well-to-do. I would place us in lower-middle-class in retrospect, though no one really cared. It wasn't until my teens that we had a microwave, and a CD player. I had no idea what an LCD TV was... VCRs were a new thing. My generation made cassette tapes from the radio, and knew that rewind-was-kind when returning tapes to the Blockbuster. I remember our first house with air conditioning, too. Looking back, though, what I liked best about my youth is that I could make a mistake, or do something stupid, and it wouldn't be recorded by some asshole and put on Tik Tok or YouTube for the world to see. Adults could have a bad day and treat someone badly, and have a chance to find that person and apologize before getting doxxed. Or, worst case, not apologize and everyone knew that "some people are just assholes" and leave it at that.
Yep, there were good old days. No doubt about it. We didn't have the things we have now, but we made do. And, we were happy... at least most of us were. Just my opinion, I suppose.
