Time Traveler's Remorse

[JimG]

“What is the worst thing about living in the rubble of a civilization? It is not that you shed a tear for the noble churches and courts and town halls you once knew, as you recall years filled with religious services, parades, block parties, and all the bumptious folderol of an ordinary civic life. It is that you do not even suspect that such things existed.”

Sometimes, a glimpse of the future is too much to bear.[

What would our ancestors think of us.](http://www.crisismagazine.com/2016/what-would-our-ancestors-think-of-us)

 

[Della]

This article prompted me to remember a dream I had many years ago before the sexual revolution had destroyed marriages and families and decency wasn’t a dirty word. I dreamt the streets were filled with people dressed like (what we at that time would have called sluts) with wanton looks in their eyes. Billboards featured men and women nearly naked with openly sexual innuendo in their body posture and look. Everywhere I saw gray and bland and dull people devoid of gaiety and joy. I was horrified and so happy to wake to find it wasn’t so. But something deep in my heart said that it was coming and not very far into the future. I prayed it wasn’t so, but here we are, just as I saw in my dream Sad, isn’t it?

 

[JimG]

This article prompted me to remember a dream I had many years ago before the sexual revolution had destroyed marriages and families and decency wasn’t a dirty word. I dreamt the streets were filled with people dressed like (what we at that time would have called sluts) with wanton looks in their eyes. Billboards featured men and women nearly naked with openly sexual innuendo in their body posture and look. Everywhere I saw gray and bland and dull people devoid of gaiety and joy. I was horrified and so happy to wake to find it wasn’t so. But something deep in my heart said that it was coming and not very far into the future. I prayed it wasn’t so, but here we are, just as I saw in my dream Sad, isn’t it?

Yes, it is. It is sad to recall a time when things were, for lack of a better word, normal, and realize how far we have come, and in the wrong direction.

In my elementary school, no one worried about shooters or abusers. My friends, both Catholic and non-Catholic, lived in intact families. All through school, I didn’t know any kid whose parents were divorced. In high school, the girls on dress up day wore pretty dresses, inspiring thoughts of romance, not lust. There was no porn available anywhere. TV commercials were in good taste; there was one (1) every fifteen minutes!

The saddest part is that when I reminisce about those days, no one believes things were ever like that. You’re dreaming, they say, remembering the happy times. Things are no different now than they ever were. But they are wrong.

 

[ProdglArchitect]

That was an incredibly moving article, and makes me regret even more that my wife and I were born in this age. We’ve never felt at home here, and this article illustrates several of the reasons why. People who grow in good, solid families are out of place in this new era…

 

[Phemie]

Yes, it is. It is sad to recall a time when things were, for lack of a better word, normal, and realize how far we have come, and in the wrong direction.

In my elementary school, no one worried about shooters or abusers. My friends, both Catholic and non-Catholic, lived in intact families. All through school, I didn’t know any kid whose parents were divorced. In high school, the girls on dress up day wore pretty dresses, inspiring thoughts of romance, not lust. There was no porn available anywhere. TV commercials were in good taste; there was one (1) every fifteen minutes!

The saddest part is that when I reminisce about those days, no one believes things were ever like that. You’re dreaming, they say, remembering the happy times. Things are no different now than they ever were. But they are wrong.

Not sure how old you are (I’m 62) but I think we didn’t worry about things in elementary school because our parents didn’t discuss these things. There were they obligatory warnings never to get into cars with strangers but we didn’t watch the news and most bad stuff was discussed in hushed voices when they thought kids weren’t within hearing distance.

I was in my thirties before I found out that the mother of the kids I played with next door sold her body to put food on the table because her husband drank all he made. It came to light when a man who was visiting one day mentioned that he had been in that house a lot and my mother snarkily replied, “Oh, why?” and they joked about the situation.

I was about that same age and pedophilia had become a big topic in the news when I made sense of things I’d overheard as a child and my father confirmed that the old man who lived 4 doors away molested little girls. The adults didn’t take that very seriously and the reviled person was the mother of the child who reported it to the police.

Porn was not in your face but if you knew who and where to ask it was definitely available. In our small town (pop ~4500) it was at the drugstore, under the counter.

But kids were innocent and the parents went to great lengths to keep them that way for as long as they could. THAT’S what I wish had stayed the same. Kids today start school knowing more about the bad in the world than I did when I was in high school.

 

[JimG]

Not sure how old you are (I’m 62) but I think we didn’t worry about things in elementary school because our parents didn’t discuss these things. There were they obligatory warnings never to get into cars with strangers but we didn’t watch the news and most bad stuff was discussed in hushed voices when they thought kids weren’t within hearing distance.

I was in my thirties before I found out that the mother of the kids I played with next door sold her body to put food on the table because her husband drank all he made. It came to light when a man who was visiting one day mentioned that he had been in that house a lot and my mother snarkily replied, “Oh, why?” and they joked about the situation.

I was about that same age and pedophilia had become a big topic in the news when I made sense of things I’d overheard as a child and my father confirmed that the old man who lived 4 doors away molested little girls. The adults didn’t take that very seriously and the reviled person was the mother of the child who reported it to the police.

Porn was not in your face but if you knew who and where to ask it was definitely available. In our small town (pop ~4500) it was at the drugstore, under the counter.

But kids were innocent and the parents went to great lengths to keep them that way for as long as they could. THAT’S what I wish had stayed the same. Kids today start school knowing more about the bad in the world than I did when I was in high school.

It’s true that porn was available, perhaps under the counter. I never encountered it until in my teens. A busy news and magazine and bookstore in the downtown area had it out in the open, but buried in the corner. Even then it was nothing as bad as internet porn. When I went back to that store years later after getting out of the Air Force, I was somewhat shocked to find that the porn had expanded from its back corner to take over the entire front of the store. If you wanted the Wall Street Journal or Life Magazine or other books or magazines you had to get past the porn and look further back in the store.

For myself, I did watch the news, becoming a news junkie from the first fifteen minute broadcast of John Cameron Swayze’s National Cavalcade of News. I think he covered more news in 15 minutes than is covered now in 30.

 

[Indigo_Cardinal]

Not sure how old you are (I’m 62) but I think we didn’t worry about things in elementary school because our parents didn’t discuss these things. There were they obligatory warnings never to get into cars with strangers but we didn’t watch the news and most bad stuff was discussed in hushed voices when they thought kids weren’t within hearing distance.

I was in my thirties before I found out that the mother of the kids I played with next door sold her body to put food on the table because her husband drank all he made. It came to light when a man who was visiting one day mentioned that he had been in that house a lot and my mother snarkily replied, “Oh, why?” and they joked about the situation.

I was about that same age and pedophilia had become a big topic in the news when I made sense of things I’d overheard as a child and my father confirmed that the old man who lived 4 doors away molested little girls. The adults didn’t take that very seriously and the reviled person was the mother of the child who reported it to the police.

Which, actually, sort of underlines some of the problems of ‘the good old days’. Women trapped in bad marriages because even if they left, there were very few jobs where they would have been paid well enough to support themselves and their children. Child abuse (sexual and physical) ignored because ‘it’s not our business’.

Anytime somebody romanticizes the Fifties, I always want to ask them, “If you could go back–but as a black person–would you still? Would you go back as a woman, knowing your career options would be either limited or you’d get paid a lot less for the work? Would you really want to live in a time where if your dad beat you and your mom senseless, nobody would intervene because he’s ‘the head of the house’ and ‘it’s not anybody else’s business’?”

The current time might have its problems (and we might all disagree on what exactly they are), but all past times had their issues as well too. So will future times.

There never was a ‘perfect time’. Nostalgia just makes us think it was so.

 

[JimG]

Which, actually, sort of underlines some of the problems of ‘the good old days’. Women trapped in bad marriages because even if they left, there were very few jobs where they would have been paid well enough to support themselves and their children. Child abuse (sexual and physical) ignored because ‘it’s not our business’.

Anytime somebody romanticizes the Fifties, I always want to ask them, “If you could go back–but as a black person–would you still? Would you go back as a woman, knowing your career options would be either limited or you’d get paid a lot less for the work? Would you really want to live in a time where if your dad beat you and your mom senseless, nobody would intervene because he’s ‘the head of the house’ and ‘it’s not anybody else’s business’?”

The current time might have its problems (and we might all disagree on what exactly they are), but all past times had their issues as well too. So will future times.

There never was a ‘perfect time’. Nostalgia just makes us think it was so.

I keep hearing such things from people who weren’t there, but I didn’t have any friends whose dads beat them or their mom senseless. Everybody knew everybody else in the neighborhood. Somebody would certainly have intervened. My mother married my dad at time when he was making 30 cents hour working at a factory. Then they had five kids. Mom worked off and on a various jobs, and stayed home at other times. She had not the slightest qualm about working, and convinced many employers that she was the one they needed. I can’t think of any of the wives up or down the street who would have tolerated an abusive husband. Neighborhood business was pretty much everybody’s business. There were a few weird neighbors but no abusive ones. I can’t speak for the experience of black families but most black families of that era were intact—a trend which has since reversed.

The first paragraph of the linked essay rings true. If one has grown up “living in the rubble of a civilization,” it is hard to believe that it has not always been so. Civilizations do, however, rise and fall, and our perceptions of them depend upon where we reside on that curve.

 

[Indigo_Cardinal]

I keep hearing such things from people who weren’t there, but I didn’t have any friends whose dads beat them or their mom senseless. Everybody knew everybody else in the neighborhood. Somebody would certainly have intervened. My mother married my dad at time when he was making 30 cents hour working at a factory. Then they had five kids. Mom worked off and on a various jobs, and stayed home at other times. She had not the slightest qualm about working, and convinced many employers that she was the one they needed. I can’t think of any of the wives up or down the street who would have tolerated an abusive husband. Neighborhood business was pretty much everybody’s business. There were a few weird neighbors but no abusive ones. I can’t speak for the experience of black families but most black families of that era were intact—a trend which has since reversed.

My parents did live in that era (born in 1944 and 1946) and could tell you a different story. My dad had a childhood friend in his very close-knit neighborhood who was being beaten (along with his mom), and neighbors had been told by cops, “Nothing we can do, it’s a family matter.”

My parents met at work–they started the same day, doing the same exact job. My mom never made as much as my dad did–even though he ‘lost’ two years by going to Vietnam (something, incidentally, he has made plain he wouldn’t want to go back in time and have looming in his future ever again). At one point and time, she even took the night shift because it paid more…and she still wasn’t making as much as my dad.

And the black family may have been intact, but I note you didn’t answer the question–would you want to live in the fifties as a black individual? I’m betting not.

It’s lovely that you had the picture-perfect life in the fifties (though I suspect time has washed away many of the unpleasant memories, or there are things you don’t remember, just as I don’t really remember the long gas lines of the 70’s, even though I was alive in that time frame).

And just in case you’re wonderin’…my folks ain’t liberals. My mom’s pretty conservative, and my dad’s a middle-of-the-roader. They’d both say things might not be perfect in 2016, but they both agree the fifties weren’t the idyllic “Happy Days” image either.

I think anybody who thinks a previous age was perfect is simply kidding themselves.

 

[JimG]

My parents did live in that era (born in 1944 and 1946) and could tell you a different story. My dad had a childhood friend in his very close-knit neighborhood who was being beaten (along with his mom), and neighbors had been told by cops, “Nothing we can do, it’s a family matter.”

My parents met at work–they started the same day, doing the same exact job. My mom never made as much as my dad did–even though he ‘lost’ two years by going to Vietnam (something, incidentally, he has made plain he wouldn’t want to go back in time and have looming in his future ever again). At one point and time, she even took the night shift because it paid more…and she still wasn’t making as much as my dad.

And the black family may have been intact, but I note you didn’t answer the question–would you want to live in the fifties as a black individual? I’m betting not.

It’s lovely that you had the picture-perfect life in the fifties (though I suspect time has washed away many of the unpleasant memories, or there are things you don’t remember, just as I don’t really remember the long gas lines of the 70’s, even though I was alive in that time frame).

And just in case you’re wonderin’…my folks ain’t liberals. My mom’s pretty conservative, and my dad’s a middle-of-the-roader. They’d both say things might not be perfect in 2016, but they both agree the fifties weren’t the idyllic “Happy Days” image either.

I think anybody who thinks a previous age was perfect is simply kidding themselves.

I’m not saying that they were idyllic. They just occurred before the sexual revolution turned the popular media into a sewer and made children into experiments in the furtherance of sexual licentiousness.

Yes, it’s true—memories of the 1950’s involve nostalgia. When my brothers and sister and I get together to reminisce, there’s a lot of nostalgia. We discuss the old neighborhood. There were always neighborhood kids to play with. We talk about some of the strange stunts we pulled, and things we never told our parents about until it was too late for them to worry.

But we never wax nostalgic about being beaten by parents because that didn’t happen. We don’t talk about the neighborhood kids who were hiding porn because they didn’t have any. We don’t talk about the ones who were addicted to drugs, although we had heard of such things even as kids, but not in our neighborhood or our school. We didn’t reminisce about the unwed pregnancies at our high school because there were none.

We never considered any of that idyllic. We considered it normal. It is the current culture, which kills it’s babies and sexualizes kindergartners, that we consider abnormal.

 

[Phemie]

I keep hearing such things from people who weren’t there, but I didn’t have any friends whose dads beat them or their mom senseless. Everybody knew everybody else in the neighborhood. Somebody would certainly have intervened.

Everybody knew everybody in my neighborhood too and we all attended the same church. My next door neighbour still beat his wife black and blue and he also beat his oldest daughter, the reason he’d had to get married. Said daughter once yelled at him, “Go ahead, kill me. You never wanted me to live anyway!”

At one point he pointed a gun at his wife. Nobody did anything. He also tried to sleep with every maid they ever had, even his nieces and slept with every woman who’d give him a second look.

They recently celebrated their 64th wedding anniversary – because she couldn’t support 8 kids as a single parent.

 

[BlueEyedLady]

Everybody knew everybody in my neighborhood too and we all attended the same church. My next door neighbour still beat his wife black and blue and he also beat his oldest daughter, the reason he’d had to get married. Said daughter once yelled at him, “Go ahead, kill me. You never wanted me to live anyway!”

At one point he pointed a gun at his wife. Nobody did anything. He also tried to sleep with every maid they ever had, even his nieces and slept with every woman who’d give him a second look.

They recently celebrated their 64th wedding anniversary – because she couldn’t support 8 kids as a single parent.

This whole thread is sad. My mom’s family could very well have been JimG’s neighbor in a small, Christian, tight-knit town. She suffered a decade of molestation at the hands of her grandfather. She tried to tell her parents once, and they just became angry and wouldn’t believe her. If she lived next to Jim in this perfect little fantasy, he would never have known and he would still be explaining why it would be better for everyone to go back to that lifestyle. Sure, when it worked, it worked well. When it didn’t, women and children are the ones to bear the brunt of it, and they had no way out and no resources to help them.

You never, ever know what goes on behind closed doors, and going back to a time where we don’t talk about it won’t prevent abuses, it will only harbor them. (Heck, look at the Duggars!) Going back to a time where all of the darkness is hidden may make you more comfortable, but it keeps those caught in it from ever finding a way out.

 

[BlueEyedLady]

Also, where I’m from, in a small, sheltered town, it’s downright cliche for 40-70 year old men to lament how their fathers drank too much and beat them and their mothers. Not all of them by any stretch, but it’s really common to hear.

 

[Della]

I don’t think anyone is saying that life before the 70’s was perfect by any means. That’s not the point here. As I see it, the point is that along with all the social strides that gave people freedom from mere conventions, we decided to toss out the commandments, as well.

Read the commandments sometime with a eye to how most cultures have believed they should behave, not just how they did behave, and you’ll see that they are universal. What Moses received from God was merely the codifying of what God has already instilled in us–that there are right ways to behave and wrong ways to behave. Coveting one’s neighbor’s spouse is always wrong–this means drooling over pictures of naked men/women or having sex with children, as well. Taking treatment of parents by children for how families ought to be with one another, parents should not beat their children or abuse them. We all know deliberate murder is wrong, hence deliberate abortion is too.

Civilizations that stay close to those commandments/natural law remain stable. Those that flaunt them do not. It’s as simple as that.

 

[Rico_S]

As I see it, the point is that along with all the social strides that gave people freedom from mere conventions, we decided to toss out the commandments, as well.

Sounds like the ten commandments were tossed out long before the sexual revolution…or is it only the sexual sins that are really grave?

 

[Della]

Sounds like the ten commandments were tossed out long before the sexual revolution…or is it only the sexual sins that are really grave?

Of course they’ve been tossed out long before the sexual revolution–that is in the Christian West. Every civilization that tossed them out descended into calling sexual abuse normal. Procreation is the most powerful force in nature. The sex drive drives every living being. The thing is, we are supposed to be able to control the sex drive, but we’ve decided we no longer need to. In that we’ve fallen deeper than the animals who don’t obsess about it the way humans do.

Of course the other commandments need to be kept. But, in our day and age, sexual excess and abuse is our worst sin. Greed is bad, of course. So is murder, but most of us aren’t as affected by those in our society as sexual abuses. Every culture has fallen through disobeying natural law, in one way or another. Ours just happens to be licentiousness more than the others.

 

[holyrood]

The saddest part is that when I reminisce about those days, no one believes things were ever like that. You’re dreaming, they say, remembering the happy times. Things are no different now than they ever were. But they are wrong.

Although I’m just a bit too young to remember the days you describe, what I find sad is that when I pointed some of the benefits of earlier, less ‘progressive’ days, he got very righteous and declared those were days full of racism, and is that what I want to go back to?

Um…no. And nobody has ever claimed there’s a perfect age with no problems. But he simply refused to talk about the rampant STDs, abortions, babies born out of wedlock, fatherless children, broken families, the poverty that often comes with that, the increasing taxes to help all the people who are no longer being cared for by husband and father, and so on.

I find it sad that people are so invested in what things have become that I can practically be called a racist for saying we have a lot of problems TODAY that we didn’t used to have. I guess that’s easier than talking about the problems.

 

[holyrood]

This whole thread is sad. My mom’s family could very well have been JimG’s neighbor in a small, Christian, tight-knit town. She suffered a decade of molestation at the hands of her grandfather. She tried to tell her parents once, and they just became angry and wouldn’t believe her. If she lived next to Jim in this perfect little fantasy, he would never have known and he would still be explaining why it would be better for everyone to go back to that lifestyle. Sure, when it worked, it worked well. When it didn’t, women and children are the ones to bear the brunt of it, and they had no way out and no resources to help them.

You never, ever know what goes on behind closed doors, and going back to a time where we don’t talk about it won’t prevent abuses, it will only harbor them. (Heck, look at the Duggars!) Going back to a time where all of the darkness is hidden may make you more comfortable, but it keeps those caught in it from ever finding a way out.

What a scathing and patronizing response, using words like 'perfect little fantasy.

Molestation of children has not stopped. I would even tend to believe it’s increased, due to the number of broken families, as it’s much more likely to come from a step-father than from a biological father living in the home. I’m not sure talking about it has really improved the problem. There are still plenty of people–possibly more–caught in it and not finding a way out.

There are now plenty more women feeling pressured to have sex. My own daughter has been called a number of names and chastised and criticized numerous times for her decision to wait until marriage. How sad for those young women who aren’t as strong as my daughter, who give in and end up pregnant, and single mothers, or suffering from abortions–many of which woman are also pressured into.

Besides which, as a previous poster said, you’re missing the point. Nobody claimed there were no problems before the 60s or 70s. The point is that there are now far more problems.

 

[BlueEyedLady]

What a scathing and patronizing response, using words like 'perfect little fantasy.

Molestation of children has not stopped. I would even tend to believe it’s increased, due to the number of broken families, as it’s much more likely to come from a step-father than from a biological father living in the home. I’m not sure talking about it has really improved the problem. There are still plenty of people–possibly more–caught in it and not finding a way out.

There are now plenty more women feeling pressured to have sex. My own daughter has been called a number of names and chastised and criticized numerous times for her decision to wait until marriage. How sad for those young women who aren’t as strong as my daughter, who give in and end up pregnant, and single mothers, or suffering from abortions–many of which woman are also pressured into.

Besides which, as a previous poster said, you’re missing the point. Nobody claimed there were no problems before the 60s or 70s. The point is that there are now far more problems.

It’s like Jim ignoring the question of whether or not he’d feel like going back if he were black. Back then, the only people who had full say over their own lives were white men. Women, children, and people of color were largely at their mercy. Sure, if you’re a white man or a woman who had a good man, there’s no issue with going back.

But it is unbelievably arrogant to say that behind closed doors, bad things didn’t happen because they wouldn’t be tolerated. Well, they did, and a lot of people suffered as a result. Nothing changed. But now we talk about these things, take accusations seriously, and provide victims with a way out.

You’re right, now, people have freedom to make bad choices. But it’s better that everyone have that freedom than just one group. Men still drank, still bought dirty magazines, still hit their wives, etc. Now, women and minorities have the same options those men did. But they aren’t held hostage by them. I would much rather have a promiscuous society than one that traps innocent people with those who would harm them.

And by the way “pressured for sex” really doesn’t quite compare to the problems that we’re talking about here.

 

[Indigo_Cardinal]

What a scathing and patronizing response, using words like 'perfect little fantasy.

Molestation of children has not stopped. I would even tend to believe it’s increased, due to the number of broken families, as it’s much more likely to come from a step-father than from a biological father living in the home. I’m not sure talking about it has really improved the problem. There are still plenty of people–possibly more–caught in it and not finding a way out.

There are now plenty more women feeling pressured to have sex. My own daughter has been called a number of names and chastised and criticized numerous times for her decision to wait until marriage. How sad for those young women who aren’t as strong as my daughter, who give in and end up pregnant, and single mothers, or suffering from abortions–many of which woman are also pressured into.

Besides which, as a previous poster said, you’re missing the point. Nobody claimed there were no problems before the 60s or 70s. The point is that there are now far more problems.

Are you absolutely certain that there wasn’t just as much sexual abuse going on back in the fifties as there is now? Or are you only convinced of this because “I didn’t hear about it back then, so therefore, it didn’t happen!”

As has been pointed out, just because it wasn’t reported didn’t mean it didn’t happen. Even now, it’s believed sexual abuse/rape cases are underreported because victims aren’t comfortable in doing so, even with all the resources available to them. In a time and place where it was actively hushed up by family members, how often do you think it was reported to authorities back then at all?

I personally don’t believe there are ‘more problems’ than there used to be. I think it’s a combination of ‘more reporting of problems’ (as opposed to ‘sweeping them under the rug’) combined with ‘different set of problems’.