Posted on 02/13/2009 11:00:52 AM PST by sldghmr300
Why did the 60's Generation get it so wrong in so many areas of life?
The sad thing is these boomers as a whole actually consider themselves "smart" .."well educated"..etc.
When the opposite is more closer to the truth.
A music appreciation class many years ago made the point I stated above. One of the periods of time studied was the days of slavery and afterwords in the US. The music of the slaves spoke of hard word but not of cruelty. I don't know how valid the teaching was, but found the concept very interesting.
The Great War (WWI) started the modern cycle of ennui and depravity. Although the seeds were sown before the war. I blame ragtime and The Wizard of Oz.
Typical.
I am a product of the 60's. My parents toiled very hard and they climbed the social/economic ladder right there in front of us kids and we grew into hard-working individuals that have raised kids who are hard-working members of society.
I have many friends who are products of the 60's that have worked their way into very productive, upper-middle class members of society.
Like much of everything else in life, it depends on the character of your family and the part of the country from which you came. Lumping everyone from the 60's into a group of ne'er-do-wells is not very accurate and doesn't show a great deal of thought, IMHO.
“Say what you will about our young generation now but they’re joining the military out of high school knowing they’ll be thrown into a very tough war.”
*******************
possibly they think it’s all just an extension of their experience and orientation with video war games/pc games—and with multi-thousand $$$$$ bonuses, boot camp w/no cussing, etc. must sound like business as usual to them.
Paragraphs are my friend, but sometimes the computer is not. LOL
It’s Friday the 13th. I don’t believe in superstition, since it is bad luck. But, apparently it is the day the return key no longer works.
Also, the fear came before the music of the 60’s, the music was the echo of the fear. Like “Eve of Destruction”, maybe.
Elvis was a creation of other peoples demons...
lol
We saw our parents living their lives according to strict social rules (which most didn’t even question, much less dare to challenge) and they ended up bored at best and often quite miserable. Didn’t inspire us to live our lives by the same rules. The pendulum certainly did swing too far, but it urgently needed to swing.
The effect is that every child’s teacher is mental and they teach the children that everyone has a mental problem.
Look at TV. Monk is the replacement for Jim Rockford. Not?
The Beatles were part of it, but every time a culture reaches the point where leisure becomes the norm, it decays and falls.
What went wrong? Easy. The older generations succeeded. What a foolish statement.
The Older Generations had struggled to defeat the Kaiser in WW I. They came home to build a better land
The next older generation saw the country through the Great Depression, working beyond hard, instilling in the next generation a love of self, country, family and also instilling a sense of responsibility.
The next group fought a horrendous war around the entire world, a war that saw the slaughter of 50,000,000 people. When the war ended, their country, in effect, disarmed itself and came HOME. They married, raised children, and at the SAME time, built a world of scientific advances, medical advances and (debatable) cultural advances.
They brought forth a nervous “peace” that kept the following generations safe in their homes. They brought forth medical advances that freed their children from the terrors of Polio, Tuberculosis, and uncounted other “childhood diseases”. When I was a child, it was common to have a classmate die from one disease or another. Tragic, but not uncommon. I remember a terrible expression, often heard then, but thankfully no longer. One woman could be heard to say of another, “she had three children WHO LIVED”.
Did anyone under 40 ever hear that? Today, if a child tragically dies, buses of “grief counselors” are brought to school.
By the sixties, the young had been basically freed from the worries and concerns of countless generations. They had the free time to concentrate completely on “ME”.
Today we reap the harvest of CHILDREN who have NEVER LEFT THE CAMPUS. Educated in their own minds, but knowing nothing of the world in which they live.
It IS a new world, whether it is better is debatable.
I’m with Tom Wolfe who recently said we lost our country in the 1970’s. When society allowed the ten commandments to be removed from public they took with it the laws that tether man’s conscience. Ever since then the laws of man have been front and center changing with each whim. No rules to follow.
Society tried the golden rule but that became ‘do unto others before they do unto you’. They tried the virtues but greed became good. Reason was replaced with what we have now....moral equivolence or moral relevance. There is nothing in society that is above man now. Nothing to humble man. Nothing to cause man’s head to bow. It’s very sad.
You just nailed it. A consequence of socialism.
Parents stopped being parents - (go back and watch “Rebel Without A Cause” with Jim Backus as James Dean’s father)
While I’m not sure I agree women have it worse, yours is a great summary.
The thing that gets me is that people of the generation we’re talking don’t give up childish things because they still LIKE them. They are unable to step back and think “Watching endless TV, playing video games, reading comic books and getting stoned on the weekends isn’t cute anymore when you’re in your thirties and forties.”
They fear embracing deeper works of art instead of just OD’ing on pop crap. They fear committed relationships and restraints on personal “freedom” (as if one isn’t enriched and uplifted by respectful, loving relationships).
Obama is cultivating these very elements. This is why the readers of Rolling Stone love him—they think it’s going to be the sixties all over. Plus more “free” money.
I think you have hit on something. I grew up in the 60's. There was a lot of denial going on with the adult generation. Everybody was in denial. According to the culture of the day, there was no child abuse, no incest, no spousal abuse, etc etc, it was all not talked about.
Everybody was concerned about what the neighbors thought. We were sick of the mentality to a great extent
Here's one mistake you make. They were not necessarily conservative in the depression. They allowed responsibility to shift to the Federal gov't at lightening speed. This displacement of personal responsibility was passed on to their kids.
When the sixties came (teenage years) this lack of teaching about responsibility exploded into the free love era, the repercussions of which live with us still. The free love philosophy is the bedrock upon which all the social programs are built.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.