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Would you go back, if you could?


Aeriel

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So, a friend and I were talking about the good old days (which for me is the 1950's through 1980's) and how much cheaper and simpler life was back then.

Even with a pretty low level job, I could pay my rent and my bills and still have a bit left over for a special treat. There were no HMO's. There were no menus to navigate if you needed to call a big company, you got a person on the very first try. And most of the time, that person would actually help you out. In the 1960's, gas was about 25 cents a gallon, a loaf of bread was 29 cents and kids didn't carry guns to school. Not very many people needed anti-depressants and no one had ever heard of ADD.

However, there was no internet, there was little tolerance for anyone who was 'different' in any way, and women didn't have the same social and economic power that men did. Life then seems rigid and narrow compared to the relative freedom to be ourselves that we enjoy today.

So my fellow old f**ts, if you could, would you go back in time and live out your life in the decade of your choice? Why or why not?

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I would certainly live in the 50's if I could. We didn't miss the "new technology because there wasn't any to miss.

Yes, standards of living may have been "lower" but we didn't notice that and it was generally pretty stress-free for most in those days.

But then I DO "escape" back to those days at least in part by my school role-play activities (which are all based round a 50's 60's style school)

roddy

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Some ways I would, some ways I wouldn't. Women were treated very shittily in the work force - had to dress like Doris Day as well as had this 'Donna Reed Expectation' on them at home. There was no maternity leave (wouldn't matter to me but the point is that a woman had to quit her job and start at ground level again after the baby was born). Pregnant women smoked and drank and took any medications they wished and didn't know anything was wrong with it. There was segregation and our natives were treated like animals and most people didn't know any better.

On the other hand - as far as office dress is concerned, you never had to contend with being served by a clerk in a tank top with her bra showing, a thong that shows off the yin yang tattoo on her bad. There'd be no 12 month maternity leaves with the woman's job held open only to have her come back and take every other day off because her baby is sick. People often still used home remedies or realised when they got a stomach bug they just needed to stay home and close to a toilet and not go to emergency, pushing aside people with missing limbs. You didn't have to contend with trying to talk to people while they have a cel phone glued to one ear and an ipod on the other and people knew how to use indoor and outdoor voices.

So...it's hard to say. I think life just seemed to BE simpler back then because there wasn't the TV/internet coverage of things going on overseas. Now we have the technology to keep us informed of dire situations, which is good if you can do something about it but more often than not, all it does is keep people awake, obsessing over something they can't do anything about.

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Mb Loves Batman

i am 43 so some of the generational stuff i can't relate to but i did watch alot of 50's t.v. shows and reruns and i don't think i could have lived up to june cleaver's perfection. plus weren't women very subservient and if asexuality wasn't identified women compromised alot and if i was married to a high sex male, that would have been hard. i'd have to have a perfectly clean house, perfect kids, look perfect, be in bed on the count of 3 because after all, didnt he make the money to support us and it was my wifely obligation to be sexually available any time and look beautiful all day and have a pot roast on the table for ward by six pm with the newspaper and his slippers by the door.

I could not have lived then. I did go to college before the internet and i think that i would have had alot easier time researching with online options. cell phones are great because my kids can reach me any time and i feel as though i have an open line in case of any emergency. prices are bad but medicine is better now, cars have airbags, we have to wear seatbelts, people get away with less because of child protection and domestic violence rights to victims and back in the day children were molested and wives were beaten and it was a secret and nobody knew where to go for help if they needed it. so the media helps people know there is punishment for crime and if you do something, everyone will hear about it.

i guess iwth good progress is bad stuff too but i think in all fairness, idealism and happy nostalgic memories are wonderful but the reality is, we need to see the benefit of progress and utilize the resources to our advantage and find opportunity in technology that brings us to aven every day.

i would not know i was asexual if it weren't for technology. i am grateful for progress.

just my opinion --

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people get away with less because of child protection and domestic violence rights to victims and back in the day children were molested and wives were beaten and it was a secret and nobody knew where to go for help if they needed it.

If only that were the case. Let's just say there are more PROMISES of that. I agree though, if things don't progress...for better or worse it stagnates and that can be worse.

I'd know I was asexual if this were the 50s, I've always known I was but there would be nowhere to outreach and find OTHER asexuals.

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I would not go back, if only because it would put me way too close to the rapes, and I really don't care for that. I had toooooo much rage buried at the time!!! Glad to get rid of that.

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Mb Loves Batman

what i am curious to know and maybe i should start a different thread is because i am 43 and an aromantic, can i look forward to being alone forever? do you ever get lonely? is the emptiness inside every replaced or gone?

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I have to wonder if you could afford to live off a "low level" job had anything to do with joining the order of dagon...

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I don't know if I'd call what I get 'lonely' but I certainly do miss people. When they pair up and kick me to the curb, I really miss them. I'd like a partner but she'd have to be A and there's just slim pickins here.

I can look forward to a lifetime of being alone if you want to but just by being asexual doesn't condemn you to a life alone.

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Mb Loves Batman

You look awfully young to be on this thread. You actually have great comprehension, communication skills and writing ability. The freckles are adorable. I guess i am too aromantic and the thought of not finding an aromantic scares me and it's a dark place I don't want to think about. do you have a pet?

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I think people have sucked an equal amount in every decade - just in different ways.

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You look awfully young to be on this thread. You actually have great comprehension, communication skills and writing ability. The freckles are adorable. I guess i am too aromantic and the thought of not finding an aromantic scares me and it's a dark place I don't want to think about. do you have a pet?

LOL, that was me in 1968, I use that when wierdos on the internet ask for my picture so I thought it would be fun to just use it here for an av and thanks for the compliments on the writing skills. Yes, I do have a pet - a kitty named Monstah.

I think people have sucked an equal amount in every decade - just in different ways.

I agree - "the gold old days" never really existed. I think people just have fond memories of 'the good old days' because their life was simpler back then. I fondly remember the '60s and '70s (well, most of the '70s, didn't like the later years) and they weren't 'good times' but they were my halcyon years as a child.

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I have to wonder if you could afford to live off a "low level" job had anything to do with joining the order of dagon...

Ah. One cannot join the Order of Dagon, one must be born to it. :mrgreen:

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I don't recall the Order Of The Dragon from days gone by, is that a cult or something?

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Hallucigenia

The Esoteric Order of Dagon is a fictional cult that was written about by H.P. Lovecraft. Or at least I think that's what you're talking about.

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Oh, I see. I just thought we were talking about going back in time.

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I think people have sucked an equal amount in every decade - just in different ways.

I agree - "the gold old days" never really existed. I think people just have fond memories of 'the good old days' because their life was simpler back then. I fondly remember the '60s and '70s (well' date=' most of the '70s, didn't like the later years) and they weren't 'good times' but they were my halcyon years as a child.[/quote']

It may well be true that there never were any "good old days" but life WAS simpler without modern technology and with hindsight I can't see anyone was much worse off for it in general terms. Clearly it would seem different for someone who has had to use modern medical technology!

I started work in the 60's before the days of computers (in general use that is). The Bank I worked for installed the first EVER computer used by a bank in the Uk during late 60's (wow..big thrills). I was able to watch the changes wrought by such a simple thing (to todays people) as a pocket-calculator. I was also able to see the effects of world-wide inflation working as I did in the City of London.

It is not a question of "halcyon days of childhood" for me though no doubt there were some. What I look at is the working life and general predictability of life in those days . Yes, these days I certainly enjoy the benefits of cheap air travel and the internet to gain much in the way of pleasure..but it is at a price of a huge amount of stress at work. What you never have you never miss and I truly think I would be happiest in a late 50's to early 60's environment in the UK (I can't obviously speak for the US) where a reasonable education meant a reasonably well-paid job with reasonable expectations. What I look at now, as an employer running a small business, is being unable to trust educational qualifications, being unable to pay reasonable wages to my staff and struggling to maintain a sensible life-style for myself with NO expectations for the future other than welfare (which admittedly is pretty generous over here).

Born in '49 I am one of the last of one generation and one of the first of a new generation as regards expectations of life. One of the last to be brought up expecting marriages to last for life, to expect effort to gain reward and for courtesy to be the over-riding virtue. One of the first to see the "benefit" of new technology, to see the advent of cheap travel and therefore expand my horizons beyond work and home, one of the first to have freedom to live in a style I like rather than a style demanded by "the great and the good".

I have seen the world I was brought up in crumble and have yet to see the new order firmly established. So all in all..take me back to the 50's/60'!

roddy

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In one perspective a certain nostalgia indicate that the time that was spent was spent well. I don't feel tempted to move to live in another time - though I sometimes feel that I already do that. Or rather live in the present but still a different frame of reference. Probably not unlike living in Iowa with internet.

But I like the present and can relate to it. I like that interaction with other people is more relaxed on the private level, and not totally as strict and formal at work as it may have been in passed decades.

Somehow I like the feeling of having having been part of that development. I enjoy documentaries from passed decades. Simply because it helps me remember how I became to be who I am, and if they are from before me they may add to my understanding of how my parents came to be who they are.

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I would return to the 50's to live. It was an innocent age for me. I had fun without the stress, dangers or immorality of todays world. But I never want to relive the 60's again.

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. But I never want to relive the 60's again.

As I understood the original question it was not so much about re-living a decade but living IN that decade..ie if you are 60 now you would be 60 in your decade of choice. I doubt anyone would really want to go back and re-live a period of their life in total although no doubt we all have periods which we look back on with nostalgia.

roddy

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Hmm - I was thinking of responding earlier but the sudden appearance of Dagon threw me off course as well. I was born in 1952 in the UK, brought up in that same post-War sense of courtesy and established values and marriage being for life, but it had a completely different effect on me because I never felt I fitted it, and still see a lot of that as being based on a false sense of who the "goodies and baddies" were, that shut a lot of us out. I do see that it was also based on our parents having lived through a World War and wanting to make a safe world afterwards. I don't like today's rudeness and greed and selfishness and waste either, but the late 1960s and early 1970s were my time, for all those reasons of trying for a newer, more open and inclusive world that created feminism, the early lesbian and gay movement, the modern peace movement... it didn't save the world, yet, and it didn't end abuse, and probably nothing will, but that's where I would go back to and that's where I still sort of live.

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I don't recall the Order Of The Dragon from days gone by, is that a cult or something?

In the books they were based in innsmouth which is what aeriel has for his (?) loc, thats why i mentioned it.

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r,
but the late 1960s and early 1970s were my time, for all those reasons of trying for a newer, more open and inclusive world that created feminism, the early lesbian and gay movement, the modern peace movement... it didn't save the world, yet, and it didn't end abuse, and probably nothing will, but that's where I would go back to and that's where I still sort of live.

Interesting...

Sort of fits in with my (very personal theory) that that late 60's were a kind of watershed in UK. Interesting also that you look to a period of discovery (in a personal sense) presumably because in that you found a place to "fit in" whilst I had already found where I fitted (unfortunately it wasn't as good a fit as I would have liked) but the world moved away from me rather than moved with me. No great surprise I suppose that I found security in the ranks (literally) of the TA during the upheavals of the 70's.

roddy

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No, I wouldn't want to be 57 in the 60s - that would mean that I would have had to experience WW II, and though my mother's tales of how things were are amusing in hindsight, it wasn't fun.

I think mostly I'm happy being the age I am at the time I am. I enjoyed my childhood, I had a freedom that today's children don't. No TV meant my imagination was allowed to develop, I lost myself in books, I wandered fields alone wondering at nature.

I suppose there are some things I think I'd like to change - but then I wouldn't be the person I am, and over time I've learned to accept myself.

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roddy9uk wrote:

As I understood the original question it was not so much about re-living a decade but living IN that decade..ie if you are 60 now you would be 60 in your decade of choice.

There was nothing about the 60's that I liked the first time. Living it as a 54 year old, instead of as a teenager, wouldn't make it any better.

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A lance for the 80s! Wages were high, taxes lower and technology available for those who needed or liked it, but the good old stuff, which could be serviced, if it ever needed it, was still around and competitive.

O.K. there was no internet, but personal freedom was quite available and didn't significantly increase since these days.

I don't know earlier decades personally, but the 80s seemed guite great to me.

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Ahh, the 80s. 8) Yeah, I wouldn't trade my life as it turned out for anything, but I have to admit it would be really, really cool if I had a time machine. I would totally go back to the 80s for like a month, just to see a bunch of concerts. I was too young at the time, sadly...

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First time I used a computer was 1986 when I started working at the newspaper. We used an old thumper card punch thingy in highschool (1977-1980) but there were only four in the school and I was about 1050th in line so I did get to SEE people using it.

Mostly pre-'75 or so I can think of where the negatives would lie would be the lack of choice for women.

I do agree with the more technology, the more stress. HOW can people take a holiday when they have a computer and cel phone strapped to their arse to check in to the office?

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