Things Were Better Back Then

[sleigh]

I’m now in my sixth decade of life. I’m a “person of age.” I get solicitations from AARP all the time (no, I haven’t joined…) On the whole, I don’t mind being being 60-something so much, though I do sometimes wish my body was more the one I had in my 30s or even 40s. But I’ve noticed a tendency in people of my age that bothers me.

That’s the tendency to look at the past as a Golden Age when things were better. Most of the time when I hear that, I want to respond “Are you insane?”

I love history. I’d love to be a time traveler who could go back, visit other times and see them as they really were. The writer in me would love to be able to take the experience and use it in my writing to bring those times to vivid life on the page. I’m intensely interested in how society works in past times, in how people interacted, in how one coped.

But I’ve no interest in actually living there. I much prefer here and now, even with all its problems. Realistically, I might feel differently if I weren’t lucky enough to be living in a relatively stable, relatively well-off country, and be safely middle-class (and white, and male) myself. I enjoy a fair amount of privilege that others don’t, and it behooves me to keep that in mind. If I lived in a war-torn country, I might legitimately look back at the time before war and think “Things were better then.”

But usually, when I hear someone grumbling about how things were better then, I just shake my head. I don’t know where this nostalgia for the 1940s or 1950s or 1960s comes from. If you were gay back then, you’d better not even say that aloud -- it’s somewhat better now for you. If you were a person of color, you’d be confronting blatant prejudice and laws designed to keep certain privileges from you -- again, it’s somewhat better now, but we’re still working on racial issues. If you were female, there were jobs you simply couldn’t do, expectations as to your limitations, and heaven forbid you try to make it on your own -- yes, things are better now, but we still see “glass ceilings” and still see inequalities in treatment. If you fell in love with a person of another race, in some places and times you couldn’t even legally be married, and even if you could, you were going to face harsh prejudice -- better now, yes, but you’ll still be looked at and have to be vigilant about prejudice.

Back then, if you became ill, your options were far more limited. Back then, if you wanted information, you’d have to hit the library. Back then, you wouldn’t be carrying your phone around with you -- and your phone wouldn’t also be able to connect to the internet or take a picture or video. Back then, your options for travel were limited. Back then, the air wasn’t nearly as clean in the cities. Back then, dentistry was barbaric. Back then… I could go on and on.

Those were the Good Old Days? No, things aren't perfect now, but on the whole, I'd say we're in a better place.

I’m sorry, people of age, there was no golden time in your recent past when everything was Good and Right and Better. That’s an illusion, a chimera. Stop sounding like some curmudgeon. Yes, things have changed and you don’t agree with some of those changes. Some of the changes mean that it’s not as easy for you to keep doing things the way you always did. Some of the changes mean that you have to learn new tricks or technologies. Some of the changes may even make things a little harder for you. Well, deal with it. If nothing else, learning new stuff might keep your mind sharp and agile.

“Things were better back then.” People have been saying that since we invented language. I can imagine some Cro-Magnon saying the same thing: “Why back when I was a kid, the berries grew in every season and the mastodons were so plentiful we had meat every night. Things were good then.”

There’s always change. Change is permanent and ongoing. Change is still happening and will continue to happen. Forty years from now, some of the current twenty-year olds will be grumping and talking about how much better things were in the twenty-tens. They’ll be wrong, too.

Live in the present. Revel in what it gives you and the possibilities and opportunities it presents. And know that there’s a future ahead that will, inevitably, be different and hopefully even better.

Comments

Oh yeah?

[lsanderson.livejournal.com]

Back in the bad old days, we had the Warren Court, and there was an incredible sense of growth and expansion: of rights, of science, of technology. These days, we got Roberts and an impending sense o' doom with an imminent return to the Dark Ages.

Re: Oh yeah?

[sleigh.livejournal.com]

I never said all change was _good_ change. :-)

[lollardfish.livejournal.com]

Positivism is dead! Long live cyclical historical processes.

[sleigh.livejournal.com]

History always repeats itself. Can't wait for the 1350s to come around again!

[lollardfish.livejournal.com]

Second wave feminists (like my mom), read my CNN essay (27,000 shares! 300,000+ readers! Sorry, just can't believe it) and say - there's nothing new here. Didn't we deal with this already? Third wavers, like me, say, "maybe, but there's been reversion."

So it's much on my mind.

[sleigh.livejournal.com]

I agree that the struggles aren't anywhere near over. Things are _better_ but you're right, things sometimes slide backward because everyone stops paying attention.

BTW, congrats on the response to the last CNN essay -- that's incredible, and you have every right to feel pleased with it!

[kk1raven.livejournal.com]

I'm somewhat younger than you but I don't think another ten years is going to make me wish to return to "the good old days" either. Sure, some things were better back when I was a kid but overall I'd much rather live in the present.

[sleigh.livejournal.com]

Sometimes I can understand the impulse for excessive reverence for the past, I have to admit, but on the whole... Nah, I like it here. And I hope to like the future even more.

[martianmooncrab.livejournal.com]

I walked to school, which was good for a kid, and there were some good things, since a lot of people didnt have air conditioning, they were outside in the evenings, sitting under the carport or on their porches. There were only 4 tv channels too, and programming stopped about midnight, except on weekends when there were the late late movies in flickering black and white.

I remember polio vaccinations and buying bond stamps in school too. The Viet Nam War on the 5 oclock news along with your dinner. Transistor radios and the Cold War. Nothing says security like Atom Bomb drills in grade school.

[sleigh.livejournal.com]

Not all changes are necessarily good changes. Yeah, walking to school was better for kids from a physical standpoint, but it also meant that you went to a school within a mile or two of your house, which in the segregated 1950s meant that you also never saw anything but kids of your own color in school -- or at least that was the case with me. I didn't meet any kids of color at all until I was in high school. I don't think that was a good thing.

I remember the polio vaccine as well; I'm a little too young to remember kids in iron lungs, but there were a couple older kids I knew with bad legs and such that were polio issues. Vietnam I remember all too well -- avoiding the draft was my primary reason for going to college.

[martianmooncrab.livejournal.com]

I have a friend who is ... uh... 7 years older, and she had polio as a child, and recovered, but now has post polio syndrome..

Childhood diseases used to kill a lot of kids, with immunizations and vaccinations, it has reduced the risks.

[smofbabe.livejournal.com]

I believe that the people who are nostalgic for the 1950s and 1960s are not the people who take the long view about whether those eras were better for *everyone*; they're mainly just thinking about whether those eras were better for people like *them*. If you were a white, high-school-educated male in a medium to small town, things *were* better for you back then - you could get a manufacturing job that paid well, your wife stayed home with the kids and was programmed to believe that housewifery and motherhood were her only paths to fulfillment; your kids were similarly societally programmed not to talk back and to do what dad said or else; and you didn't have competition for your job from minorities. These people mainly don't care whether things were worse for minorities, or women, or gays, or people who wanted more of an education.

[sleigh.livejournal.com]

Exactly, and well said. Most of the nostalgia-driven older folks I know are white males, for whom recent changes represent less privilege. I hope to avoid that type of thinking, even though I'm also a white male.

[bardiphouka.livejournal.com]

I think for people of age(and I am in my 60s), what they really mean is that they want to be that age again. Our bodies were better behaved and we did not have as many adult responsibilities. We remember all those wonderful nights and conveniently forget the morning afters.

Much as I dislike the creaking mornings and the fuzzy eyesight, I think I will stick with these times. Horrible to have honest memories sometimes.