Does Modern Society Unfairly Portray the 1950s?

[PetraG]

And today is perfect?

If you read my posts, I have been very careful to avoid saying that things are perfect now.

Yeah, if you could afford to fly to Mexico. That was one of things the pro-abortion people were harping on: poor women can’t fly to Mexico so let’s make it legal in the US. Good idea?

The point is not that abortion should be legal or easily available. The point is that worldwide the abortion rate isn’t really tied to whether it is legal or not.

Now, there are those who would say this shows that it doesn’t make any difference whether abortion is legal or not. I think this is preposterous, because obviously it is gravely wrong and an abuse of a medical education. After all, nobody would make the murder of an adult legal if it could be shown that the murder rate isn’t directly tied to the civil penalties are on the books. It is a grave offense against human life. It should not be permissible under civil law.

No, my point is that although the 1950s were very optimistic and economically prosperous and in a lot of ways were a good juncture for a lot of people, we know now that there was also frequent cover-ups of shocking behavior in order to keep up a good front. In the case of the sexual abuse of children, that kind of cover-up provides protection for offenders. It is more disturbing to know about these kinds of offenses, but being aware of them and what offenders need to offend also prevents opportunities for abuse. Acting like abuse never happens and that everyone can be presumed to be safe may feel more safe, but it is not more safe in actual fact.

It is better not to babble about bad things that people don’t need to know, because that causes unnecessary harm, but when people need to know these bad things in order to improve safety or justice, they need to know, even if initially learning about these things doesn’t feel as good as not knowing about them felt.

We also know that the economy of the 1950s was on an upswing. Nothing wrong with that, but it wasn’t the kind of economy that was destined to go on indefinitely, even if the way of doing things had not changed. That’s OK, that doesn’t mean things weren’t great, but it does mean we can’t go back in time.

 

[JanetF]

My mother graduated from college in 1953, with a degree in education, she taught for a few years (at the same time obtained her master’s degree) before marrying my father in 1956. They moved from Houston, Texas to a small town in Illinois where my father had grown up. We lived there until 1975.
Some aspects were probably very “Leave It To Beaverish”, but that undoubtedly has to do with the socioeconomic status (he was an engineer, she was a homemaker) and the fact that they were Caucasian. The only thing I remember her complaining about from that era of her life was that she lived right next door to her in-laws. In a small town, lack of privacy, etc. Other than that, it was a great time to raise children, in a great place (she had spies everyone because everyone knew everyone else). She wasn’t one of the stereotypical 50’s mom’s who self-medicated with alcohol. She was the sort of person who when confronted by something she disagreed with she made an effort to change things, or accepted that it couldn’t be changed.

For some people the 50’s and 60’s were the Wonder Years. For others not so much. I do believe that things were much simpler then. We didn’t have the 24-hour news cycle, bad things happened, but it wasn’t saturating the airwaves as happens today. As a child growing up in the 60’s I know now that they were turbulent years, but I didn’t realize it while I was living through them. I didn’t know there was a war going on half-way across the world. But I do remember the Moon Landing. We weren’t directly affected by the war in Vietnam so it wasn’t discussed at the dinner table. I’m sure families with older kids who had siblings/relatives serving have different memories. In those days experts told parents not to talk about it unless you had to, so my parents didn’t. Kids today are confronted by images every single day about events that don’t directly concern them and I would imagine that it’s scary.

 

[MagdalenaRita]

. Radicals and anarchists appeared in our neighborhoods to promote perverted sex, illegal drugs and don’t listen to mom, dad or the Church

I’m not sure about the Vietnam war part but I certainly agree about the drugs, (acid tests, who would push that? Crazy), rebellion, fight against authority and parents…were all problems of the 60s

 

[JimR-OCDS]

Fine, then watch what you post

The 1960’s certainly brought a change in the mindset of the younger generation

Distrust of the status quo, the use of drugs and open sex(due to the pill being invented), brought on a cultural change that didn’t exist in the 1950’s

Jim

 

[edwest211]

The fictional world of today covers up a lot of things. There are things going on in courtrooms right now that end up getting sealed. The Fake Marxist Utopia doesn’t exist. Those who claim to work for social justice are the rich and powerful, who decide who to help and when. And how to market them. In the ugly world of the Leftists, they pick and choose among the oppressed to get a handful to positions of “power.” And influence.

Is anything shocking anymore? You tell me. Apparently not. Things happen and there is very little the average, living from paycheck to paycheck American can do about it. We are working 6 and 7 days a week. Meanwhile, look at Wall Street. Who can afford to buy in? Not the average American. In the 1960s, it was a big deal to be a millionaire. Now it’s a billionaire, going on your second billion. The 1950s were prosperous. All of the moms I knew were stay at home moms. Did they watch “soap operas”? They could. But all were active in their day lives, in the home and outside of it. During summer vacation, one mom would take all us kids to the local playground. Meals were cooked from scratch. Canning fresh fruit. And so on. Dad had his share of things to do besides go to work. On Sunday, the stores were closed.

There are no cover-ups today? What? They disappeared?

 

[PetraG]

The only thing I remember her complaining about from that era of her life was that she lived right next door to her in-laws. In a small town, lack of privacy, etc. Other than that, it was a great time to raise children, in a great place (she had spies everyone because everyone knew everyone else). She wasn’t one of the stereotypical 50’s mom’s who self-medicated with alcohol. She was the sort of person who when confronted by something she disagreed with she made an effort to change things, or accepted that it couldn’t be changed.

I grew up in a small place like that, a place that is still very much like that, and it’s a trade-off. It is both great and not-so-great to live where everybody knows everything you do. It is both great and not great to have a rhythm of traditions rather than a constant thirst for novelty. On the whole, I’d go for something in the middle. The thing is now, though, that technology is changing so fast that it is very hard to maintain a sense of tradition. It is hard to resist getting the latest best thing instead of using the last best thing for a reasonable lifetime. It is all about striking a balance.

Yes, things were simpler when we only had three television channels and only morning and evening news. There were a lot of things that were better. I remember things like the winking at drunkenness and drunk driving. I was shocked at how much more dangerous the cars were. I would have said those heavy old cars were pretty safe, but then I saw this:

If there was one big thing I wish we had that we don’t have now, it is this: it was a time when people openly praised what was truly praiseworthy and looked down on that which was not. Maybe looked down on the persons too much, yes, but I think we are in great danger because of how we glorify self-gratification and yet sometimes look on virtue with a bit of flippant disdain. That’s a very bad sign for our survival as a nation, it really is. It certainly speaks badly of our preparedness for the Last Judgment, and in the end what else matters more than that?

I’m not saying everyone was all angels in the 1950s, but I still think that examination of conscience was more common across Christendom. We could really learn from that.

 

[edwest211]

No one has to buy into what the media offers. No one. Leave it to Beaver was my family. I knew they were actors but I knew people just like them. Things were not much simpler. Today some people would balk at a meat grinder that had to be cranked by hand, or going to the farm for fresh fruit. I was in the fields, guided by my dad and others. That’s where the food comes from. I grew up in the big city.

Caucasian? You mean white? Oh how terrible it is to be white. Leftists are trying to ‘save’ people of color from people who are white. Reverse racism.

In the 1960s, we listened to experts. No more.

 

[OKComputer]

, but it does mean we can’t go back in time.

Right. It’s okay to feel nostalgic about the past, I do sometimes, but we can’t go back and relive those days.

 

[PetraG]

Caucasian? You mean white? Oh how terrible it is to be white. Leftists are trying to ‘save’ people of color from people who are white. Reverse racism.

No, that was only saying that whites had the sort of justice that everyone ought to have. I know what you’re saying: it is a poisonous form of resentment to be upset because people of one color are treated as everyone ought to be treated. I don’t know any whites who go around feeling upset (as they might have in a previous era) when they see non-white ethnic groups treated exactly as they are. Everyone decent wants that, and of course whites who are accused of enjoying “privilege” feel unfairly singled out when they aren’t one of the very small number of people who are given unfair privileges and know it and feel entitled to it. That is a very small number of people who have that, and it is mostly attached to their wealth, not their color.

I had a friend who said a black family moved in next to hers in the 1960s. This was rural Oregon. She said their house burned down and they had to move away. She thought is was just bad luck until she was much older and learned that it had been arson. Your state might have been different, but our state still had routine and shocking discrimination against blacks, Chinese, Asians and other non-white ethnic groups in the 1950s.

 

[edwest211]

I sure can. Family, friends and intergenerational ties. A lot of TV and movies from the period are available.

 

[edwest211]

Are you shocked by anything today? Is anything worth being shocked about today?

I understand the correct charge of racism but racism is gone now? Arson stopped against the reframed “people of color”? Don’t make the mistake of believing that the issues of the past just disappeared today.

 

[edwest211]

Too late. You’re on the record. Anything you write can and will…

 

[PetraG]

The fictional world of today covers up a lot of things. There are things going on in courtrooms right now that end up getting sealed. The Fake Marxist Utopia doesn’t exist. Those who claim to work for social justice are the rich and powerful, who decide who to help and when. And how to market them. In the ugly world of the Leftists, they pick and choose among the oppressed to get a handful to positions of “power.” And influence.

I agree that there are all sorts of pretty mythologies going on now–for instance, people who try gender reassignment and find it was a bad thing for them get a lot of pressure to hush that up–but it isn’t the same as covering up the sexual or physical abuse of children. (Some of my childhood friends were abused for many years by their uncle, and it was covered up. Looking back, that is exactly the kind of thing that parents, teachers and children in Catholic parishes are now trained to prevent. Had the same thing happened now, those girls would have been saved that.)

You are singing to the choir about stay-at-home moms. I have a PhD in chemistry, but I was a stay-at-home mom who stayed home to cook from scratch and especially to drop off and pick up our children at school and be home to let them play at home after school, to take them to sports practices, to give them things to do that weren’t video games and so on. I was able to volunteer at church and at school the way mothers used to be able to do. Not many of my peers did that. I do think we have a ways to go to socially mind our own business about how married couples run their own families.

As for soap operas–I’d probably be a lot better off if I only had a soap opera habit, instead of spending so much time here!! Seriously, as much as I like the ability to have the conversations that are hard for people who actually have a friendshop to protect can’t have, I’d be better off if I gave it up. The best I can say is that I suppose it is better to bore people who are free to ignore me than to bore people who are trapped with me in the same room.

Each era has its own trials and its own temptations. It is a vale of tears and it will be until Our Lord returns.

 

[edwest211]

That sort of avoids the questions, doesn’t it? Just shuffle off and ignore them? If people can’t or shouldn’t ignore the past, they shouldn’t ignore the present. Or even imply it’s better. It’s not. It’s worse than the 1950s. A lot worse.

 

[PetraG]

Are you shocked by anything today? Is anything worth being shocked about today?

I understand the correct charge of racism but racism is gone now? Arson stopped against the reframed “people of color”? Don’t make the mistake of believing that the issues of the past just disappeared today.

I think that people who are decent are perhaps more aware of the damage done by knee-jerk prejudices, but heavens, no, they are not gone!

There are also “old-fashioned” forms of bigotry that are still alive, well and even approved by those who consider themselves free of all that. Bigotry against working-class and rural whites as being ignorant, stupid, drunken NASCAR fans without manners is probably the most glaring example I can think of off of the top of my head, along with bigotry that presumes that all Asians are accomplished but unimaginative students bent on getting a job that will make them a lot of money. (Kind of like the bigotries about Jews when I was growing up.)

No, I don’t mean that bigotry crimes have stopped or that they are never covered up. Yes, I am saying that there is nothing like the unexamined scope of prejudices now that there were when I was growing up. I don’t know that we’re less likely to have these kinds of prejudices, but I think our friends are more likely to recognize and call us on how our thinking is prejudiced!

In other words, no, people probably aren’t a lot better at recognizing our own faulty thinking about others. Probably our mother or our little brother could do a better job at examining our conscience in 1950 than we could ourselves, and probably that much hasn’t changed a bit!

That sort of avoids the questions, doesn’t it? Just shuffle off and ignore them? If people can’t or shouldn’t ignore the past, they shouldn’t ignore the present. Or even imply it’s better. It’s not. It’s worse than the 1950s. A lot worse.

Some things are, other things aren’t. As I said, if my friends’ uncle were to try now what he had going back then, he’d be caught now, because the girls and their parents would have known what they would know now. In every case? I can’t say that. In their case? I have no doubt.

But yes, things aren’t as just and good as is widely imagined. That is a problem that we share with the 1950s.

The other problem is that I don’t know how realistic it is to “go back.” The actual question is how to go forward. I think a lot of people now positively choose some of the best that was had then by necessity. There is a lot to be said for that.

On that note, I need to choose to go do my work. Thanks for your time.

 

[edwest211]

You seriously believe the last few lines you wrote? You believe it was not possible to have a serious examination of conscience if you were white in the 1950s? I strongly suggest you disconnect from the Marxist/Communist media, and especially NPR, if you listen to it.

And let’s look at the perfect world, Leftist nonsense being peddled today against 1950s reality.

THE group catching flak were White Anglo-Saxon Protestants or WASPs.

The John Birch Society.

The KKK.

Do you honestly believe that aside from being taught to be racist by family or relatives, that whites were somehow naturally racists?

Do you actually think that anyone looked at Asians, for example, as anything other than smart if they were doctors or engineers or otherwise involved in the sciences? And who gave them those jobs? Poor people of color?

I think you need to sit back and work out the origin of those thoughts.

And who elected John Kennedy? All that supposed prejudice against Catholics, and I know there was some, was not enough to derail that. And what was Robert Kennedy actually doing in the 1950s? Against who? How did he get that ‘position of power’?

 

[PetraG]

You seriously believe the last few lines you wrote? You believe it was not possible to have a serious examination of conscience if you were white in the 1950s? I strongly suggest you disconnect from the Marxist/Communist media, and especially NPR, if you listen to it.

More like C.S. Lewis:
“Aggravate the most useful human characteristics, the horror and neglect of the obvious. You must bring him to a condition in which he can practise self-examination for an hour without discovering any of those facts about himself which are perfectly clear to anyone who has ever lived in the same house with him or worked in the same office.” The Screwtape Letters, Letter III

Most of our parents and siblings (or co-workers or spouses or children), given the chance, could give us a far more realistic view of the justice and charity of our actions than we could, and in far less time. It was true then and it is true now. If you don’t believe me, go ask your brothers and sisters, lol.

Don’t presume we get this all from the media!! Some of us are also old enough to remember it! My grandfather didn’t think of himself as racist, but I couldn’t repeat some of the things he used to say about other ethnic groups in a family forum. (Oh, and not just blacks but Europeans split up by ethnic group and don’t pretend you have no idea what I mean.) Grandpa was a good person, but these were unexamined prejudices that too many people carried around back then.

No, it hasn’t all gone away. One of my college roommates told me not to be alarmed if I saw a black man in our rental unit, because she had gotten a black boyfriend. I told her, “Um, Nancy, I’m going to be alarmed if I see any strange guy I don’t know just wandering around our house, and as far as his race goes I would say most of the rapists that have been on the news lately have been white guys, so…” She was a little dippy, generally, but I think that is the sentiment you’re referring to.

 

[JulianN]

You know, I lived in those neighborhoods, and that didn’t happen in them. Why do you assume your own anecdotal experience is somehow sociological fact?

 

[JulianN]

Do you honestly believe that aside from being taught to be racist by family or relatives, that whites were somehow naturally racists?

How do you explain all those wonderful neighborhoods many of us lived in that came with deed restrictions on selling to black people?

 

[PetraG]

The Vietnam War created the 1960’s mindset

Mmmm…I’d say more that it stoked the fires. I think that parents of the 1950s reared their children in a different world than they were reared in. They believed in the same principles they always had, but they had been raised in hard times, times when people had to pull together to survive. They had fought a war in which the necessity and the objectives were far more clear. Their children were raised in different times, far more triumphant and prosperous times, and in spite of the hopes of the parents, the children turned out differently. There were inter-generational misunderstandings, sometimes. (Let’s remember that not the entire nation was given over to free sex, drugs, rampant divorce and all the rest.)

This is all too interesting, but I really do have to go, lol!!