Posted on 11/02/2018 3:56:33 PM PDT by MNDude
I recall when the issue first came up of whether the students in the engineering course I was teaching could use calculators on an exam. I figured they were cheap enough that anyone who could afford college could afford a calculator, so I allowed them.
The 60s were the decade of more changes in our culture. Starting with the Civil Rights changes, the Pill which changed both our morality and the push for Women’s Rights, and the widespread use of TV. Remember that most folks didn’t get TV until late 40s or early 50s and the changes that tube made on our country have yet to be quantified.
The tech revolution in computers and telephones is big, very big, but I’m not sure it will equal the other era in moral and cultural changes.
FYI I was born in 1940 and saw it all.
Lawyers -——————— Domestic enemy #1
Pubic school teachers -——— Domestic enemy #2
MSM - —————————Domestic enemy #3
Here’s what I said about the Western cultural revolution when someone from the UK referred to the “progress from post-war Britain into the very different culture of the 1960s”. “Progress? Well, depending on one’s values better in some respects, worse in others.”
The changes of what I call the 'Western Cultural Revolution' affected most Western countries, but circumstances varied from place to place. For instance, the United States hadn't been set back by the effects of the war the way the UK was.
Still, in terms of material possessions we advanced greatly since the 1950s. People below the "poverty level" now have high definition tv, air-conditioning, and cellphones (the cellphones taxpayer-financed). I'm concerned, though, that technology is masking, and in some respects delaying, some of the problems to come. Also in terms of national debt we've been borrowing enormous sums from future generations.
As for sexual freedom, I support it, but not irresponsibility. It's not good for a large percentage of children to grow up without a father. (I did so because my mother was a widow, but I wasn't in a dysfunctional family.) In the United States "72.3 percent of non-Hispanic blacks are now born out-of-wedlock...40.7 percent overall [that is, 40.7 is the average for all races and ethnic groups]" [National Review, citing government National Vital Statistic Reports]. Contrast that with rates at the beginning of the 60s. "Out-of-wedlock births comprised 5.3 percent of total births in 1960, including 2.3 percent of white births and 23 percent of black births." [Washington Times]
Black rates then were lower than white rates now (it's not poverty or discrimination that accounts for the change but rather changes in the mores of the culture, black and white). I think the collapse of the family has had serious effects on the quality of life for many persons. Also, along with the alcoholism of the past we now have increased drug addiction. Some of that too may have been affected by changes in the family.
As children my sister and I usually went where we wished. Here in South Carolina we played in slums, including the worst of black slums. Though in some large cities slums were dangerous then too, not to the degree that they are now. In Miami my sister once rode her bicycle from Southwest Miami almost downtown. (That was without my mother's permission, but her main concern was traffic.)
Despite a great improvement in civil rights and economic opportunity, Miami is much more dangerous than it was in the 1950s. A few years ago there was a series of news stories about white European tourists being murdered down there. What was happening was that they would leave the airport and stray into a black slum. Being conspicuously white and usually lacking "street smarts" they were easy targets.
Lately I've noticed some tv shows that do DNA tests to determine who the father of the baby is, with the various girlfriends yelling at each other and sometimes scuffling, and the whole thing set up as a kind of entertainment (rather like professional wrestling). I can't feel optimistic about the prospects for that baby, or for a society that entertains itself that way.
[Sorry, for the disjointed and rambling way in which I’ve presented my thoughts. The topic is so immense, though, that it’s hard to know what to include or how to organize it. Rather than try to organize it, I’ve just mentioned a few things as they came to mind.]
My great grandfather (1877-1981) said essentially the same thing many times.
Wow. 104 years old. Amazing, the things he saw, and the stories he could tell, I would imagine.
Were you the baby of the family?
Incredible!!
Double the size of a Trump rally!!
I'm the oldest of my fathers second marriage. He was a widower from his first marriage.
His first wife gave him my half brother but his first wife also had a daughter from her first marriage. My, "sort of sister".
I am the first born of the second wife whom he married late in life. I have two younger brothers. 11 months and seven years (surprise baby, I think)
Beautiful!!
You’re the oldest....sort of! :-)
Each era had it its own change which impacted or made it
easier for the upcoming era to change more rapidly. JMO.
Sort of the oldest, yes. My father had me at age 50.
I had my first at 39 and my last at 43. She just turned 17.
When I was 17 my half brother was 34 and my dad had just turned 68; doubling our ages.
Occasionally I feel way too old to have a 17 year old at 60 but, my dad was much older when his youngest was 17! I guess if he could handle it, I can. Of course, his was a boy.
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