Does Modern Society Unfairly Portray the 1950s?

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edwest211 said:
There’s that fake word - diversity. There were no blacks, Asians and other people of color until today? Stop the fake narrative.

And convenience? There’s too much convenience.
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Where I grew up and went to school (Catholic school), there was no diversity. My elementary school K-8 had two black children in it (250 enrolled) the entire time I was there. Then I went on to a large Catholic high school (2000+ kids) and we had, maybe, 10 non-white kids in the whole school.

I grew up in the suburbs. We would go into town and see people of other races there. I promise you, they weren’t embraced by members of the white community.The same city is very different, for the better, today with regards to this. Lots of celebration of diversity (racial, religious, cultural of all kinds, and LGBTQ).

Yes, Ed, I love the diversity in the town I live in now. I love it, love it, love it. If it is fake for you, I feel sorry for you.

As for appreciating convenience, to each his own.
 
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I grew up in the big city. There was the part of town where the poor people - not ‘diversity’ - lived. They were primarily people of color along with a few of the currently hated “whites.” We had two farmers’ markets, East and West. I saw plenty of people of color and they had families like mine and acted like other people of the time. I had no reason to believe otherwise. The black people who worked some stalls were polite and pleasant to talk to. There was also a Mexican Town and a Greek Town. All fine people. Crime was low.

There were also plenty of “people of color” at the city park. All doing the same things we were doing.
 
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If I understand your post correctly, you think that people like me use the word “diversity” in place of “poor” or “poverty”. Is that correct?

I can assure you, the words don’t have the same meaning at all, and I don’t use one for the other.
 
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edwest211 said:
Deflect away. Deflect away…
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Deflect? Deflect what, lol? I don’t think there are any real historians who believe that the nation could have stopped everything just as it was in the 1950s and just stayed there. That was not going to happen. It was an optimistic time, the economy was going well, but it wasn’t idyllic for everyone and it was definitely not a sustainable model of life.

Pretending that nothing would have changed if not for some outside social agitators who were bent on ruining the family coming in to ruin everything for all the happy contented masses is just nonsense. Pretending that good guys who knew to only date “nice” girls never got their girlfriends pregnant and anyone who thinks otherwise must “know little actual history about dating at the time” is also not in keeping with what my family told me about how things actually were in the 1940s and 1950s.

Does modern society unfairly portray the 1950s? Sure, in a lot of ways, it does. Did people actually living in the 1950s dishonestly portray the times as they were living in them? They absolutely did!! Could we ever go back to living the way we did in the 1950s? No. No, like all times it was a time in which changes were going on through the entire decade, it was not static and idyllic and destined for everlasting stable happiness, the “way things were” could not be frozen in time, even less so that times before it, and that’s just the obvious truth of the matter.
 
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“the obvious truth” appears lost on you. Study some history. Especially the history of sexual morality in the West.

1950s Not perfect. People did get married and have kids. Lots of them. Going to Church was very important. God was in our lives every day, not just Sunday. And Holy Days of Obligation, weddings, and funerals. That was just the way life was.

The BIG MYSTERY.

2019 Birth rates down. Church attendance down. A media that portrays wrong sexual arrangements, including scenes of simulated sex. Better? Better how?
 
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edwest211 said:
I grew up in the big city. There was the part of town where the poor people - not ‘diversity’ - lived. They were primarily people of color along with a few of the currently hated “whites.” We had two farmers’ markets, East and West. I saw plenty of people of color and they had families like mine and acted like other people of the time. I had no reason to believe otherwise. The black people who worked some stalls were polite and pleasant to talk to. There was also a Mexican Town and a Greek Town. All fine people. Crime was low.

There were also plenty of “people of color” at the city park. All doing the same things we were doing.
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You do know that from your description we can identify parts of the United States were you could not have been living at the time, right?

Sorry, but I remember how my grandmother acted when my cousin started dating and then married her very fine husband, who is black. It did not go over well. It took them a good while to warm up to him, and that was 100% because of the color of his skin. That was in the 1980s, in one of those places where the 1950s stuck around a lot longer than others. A lot of things stuck around, and they weren’t all good.
 
Things changed and being JFK was killed, you can only speculate that he would follow through on what he said before.

Fact is, we don’t know what he would’ve done.

We do know that both LBJ and Nixon lied to the American public about the war, and even Westmorland well after the war ended admitted that they misrepresented the cost in lives and treasure for the war.

Either way, we’re not debating the history of the war itself, but the fact the war did have a major impact on the 60’s generation, especially because of the draft

If there was no draft, we wouldn’t have see the protests as we did, just like after 18 years of being at war in Afghanistan, few if any civilians are protesting against the wars.

As long as someone else is going over to bleed and die, people will not protests against the conflicts the presidents get us into.

Jim
 
Like the stage magician ‘look here but not there.’ Race relations were never a problem with me.

Back to my point. Wrong sexual behavior has ruined lives and is ruining countries.
 
edwest211 said:
“the obvious truth” appears lost on you. Study some history. Especially the history of sexual morality in the West.

1950s Not perfect. People did get married and have kids. Lots of them. Going to Church was very important. God was in our lives every day, not just Sunday. And Holy Days of Obligation, weddings, and funerals. That was just the way life was.

The BIG MYSTERY.

2019 Birth rates down. Church attendance down. A media that portrays wrong sexual arrangements, including scenes of simulated sex. Better? Better how?
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The obvious truth is that the standards of sexual morality were already changing not just in the 1950s, but in the 1940s. It wasn’t a perfect time. It was not a time with no changes. The changes were already beginning then: some good, some bad. Had the social conditions not changed at all, that would have been very bad. Had some things not changed or even been taken back to an earlier time yet, that would have been better. Could some things have changed without the others changing? I think so. I don’t think trying to pick that ten years as the high point of Christendom in the United States holds water. It is both unrealistic and overly romantic.
 
That’s not a fact. I can quote that issue of Stars & Stripes. The fact is the hawks at the Pentagon wanted war. They wanted it during the Cuban Missile Crisis when John and Robert Kennedy worked through it. I was there when President Kennedy gave his speech. He was very direct about Russia. World War III was about to break out. A relative of mine was on the East Coast. His unit was told to grab their gear and board a train. No orders were given beyond that. M.P.s were in each car to make sure no scuttlebutt was being spread. When they arrived in Florida they were deployed to various spots and told to prepare for an invasion.

The draft does not, in any way, explain the craziness that happened, especially the Sexual Revolution. That was about the draft? Give me a break.
 
edwest211 said:
Race relations were never a problem with me.
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How much interaction with other races did you have? I don’t mean seeing them in stores or parks or on the other side of town. I mean how many were your friends that you had over for dinner? How many did you work side by side with. How many were in your school classes. How many did you date?

My impression is that you you lived in a middle class white bubble. Am I wrong or right. Thank you.
 
edwest211 said:
Like the stage magician ‘look here but not there.’ Race relations were never a problem with me.

Back to my point. Wrong sexual behavior has ruined lives and is ruining countries.
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The question of the thread is “Does Modern Society Unfairly Portray the 1950s?”

If you’re saying there wasn’t any pre-marital sex going on, sorry, it isn’t a historically accurate statement. If you’re saying the changes we’ve seen can all be laid at the feet of some agitators from outside the society as it was in 1950, sorry, that doesn’t fly.

Yes, there are great lies being told now about sexual morality. I think it could be argued that the level of sexual confusion, sexual addiction and emotional distress due to believing pervasive lies about human sexuality is, if not unprecedented in history, certainly among the worst in recorded history. I cannot think of a worse time, yet this time is being portrayed as some kind of a springtime for human sexuality. It is very disturbing, and it looks to be headed fast in an even worse direction. In spite of good things, such as awareness about how to prevent the sexual abuse of minors and young people, most of the news seems pretty bad.

Having said that, though, I’d say that the high school I worked at before I retired was actually better than my own high school in that regard. There were a lot more students who had many friends of both sexes but didn’t have a social life that revolved around who-was-dating-whom. There were some couples, of course, but on the whole they didn’t “date” a lot. They did things in groups, just had fun and weren’t all out looking for a romantic relationship. There wasn’t the same pressure to have one as there happened to be when I was in high school. The students are more free to be a bit odd, too. There isn’t the pressure to conform in what were actually arbitrary things. There is more of a feeling that “here are the moral boundaries, but besides that, be yourself. Let other people be themselves. It’s OK.”

I don’t know, but maybe high school social reality has caught up with the reality that marriage isn’t on the near horizon. Dating the same way as your grandparents, people who could marry and support a family right out of high school, isn’t necessarily a very good social model, after all. Some of them still fall for each other, of course, but there is a large segment that chooses to put off actively looking for romantic relationships altogether. That’s probably a good thing. (My own children did not date at all in high school. They took friends to the prom and went as a huge group. Some students went in groups without any designated “date” at all. They weren’t at all unusual.)
 
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I never said/wrote that no pre-marital sex was going on. It was. But in most cases, the guy took responsibility and married the girl.

I can identify agitators and incidents. When the FDA approved The Pill in 1960, it was only available by prescription. By 1967, in order to move product, a false freedom was promoted. “Freedom from Fear.” Fear of what? Babies. That was “modern”? Most women did not want it at the time. My mom called it useless.


What about sexual abuse among couples? No commitment means that guy or girl could do strange things. An employee at a restaurant told me the following: “Yeah, my ex-boyfriend came to my house, threw a cinder block through the front window and set my car on fire.” All presented in a that’s just the way it is tone. That’s modern? That’s rational?
 
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edwest211 said:
What about sexual abuse among couples? No commitment means that guy or girl could do strange things. An employee at a restaurant told me the following: “Yeah, my ex-boyfriend came to my house, threw a cinder block through the front window and set my car on fire.” All presented in a that’s just the way it is tone. That’s modern? That’s rational?
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Um, that isn’t sexual abuse. That is vandalism. And perhaps attempted manslaughter or murder (depending on if the house was occupied at the time), I suppose. But definitely not sexual abuse.
 
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Ed, sexual abuse is not throwing a brick through someone’s window.

Sexual abuse is just what it says. Abusive sexual behavior.

Good grief.

And yes, of course sexual abuse can and does unfortunately happen between partners in a relationship sometimes. But again, it doesn’t entail throwing bricks through windows. That is not sexual abuse. It may be domestic abuse. Domestic abuse is not sexual abuse, although sexual abuse could be a part of domestic abuse.
 
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edwest211 said:
I never said/wrote that no pre-marital sex was going on. It was. But in most cases, the guy took responsibility and married the girl.
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That is not “doing the right thing” unless they both freely enter into the marriage, though. There is a reason that pastors now frown on “shotgun marriages.”
edwest211 said:
What about sexual abuse among couples? No commitment means that guy or girl could do strange things. An employee at a restaurant told me the following: “Yeah, my ex-boyfriend came to my house, threw a cinder block through the front window and set my car on fire.” All presented in a that’s just the way it is tone. That’s modern? That’s rational?
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If you’re saying that the idea that living together without the benefit of marriage is far more enslaving than freeing, you are singing to the choir. The Christian model of marriage protects both spouses from many of the abuses that family alliances can take on if the persons consorting don’t give each other the dignity of each of the baptized that Christian marriage is built upon.

I had a friend (not Catholic) actually asked me what reasons she could give her boyfriend (that she was living with) why they ought to marry. They were not religious. He said it was just a piece of paper. I pointed out that if his commitment was as real as he said it was, then getting the piece of paper got the recognition from the state and from society that the commitment was real and deserved the benefits of marriage. Like what? Well, like universities who hire you (they were academics) will help you find employment for your spouse but not your girlfriend. Your wife can be on your health insurance, not your girlfriend. If you are incapitated, your wife can make decisions for you; otherwise, it is your parents, not your girlfriend, who has that right. And so on.

They got married. They’re still married. Even from a secular point of view, when the commitment is real then marriage is appropriate. When commitment is not there…why is this guy living in your house and getting treated like your husband and why are you planning on buying real estate with him?

As I said, we agree about a lot. There was some common sense in the 1950s that has been totally lost. (Well, not totally, but “freedom” has come to mean the expectation that you’re free to make really stupid or contemptible decisions or to act as if moral law formed along arbitrary lines, but then when bad consequences result everyone is supposed to pretend that those consequences had nothing to do with your poor decision-making or your stubborn refusal to believe in the inherent wisdom of a moral life.)
 
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