People born in the 60's/70's have it better ?

[velmwend]

The entire mudane past is compacted into 30 minutes of fluffiness, and it's always the good stuff.

The majority of living, for everyone, is shit and boring, apart from those fluffy moments that turn into 'those were the days' as you get older.

Good stuff happens with each generation, but the majority of everyday, mudane, drab, dreary, just living, typa shit, is the same for us all

 

[LadyElaine]

I grew up in the 70s and 80s. The original poster was correct - the music was way cooler. Everything was less expensive. Times were simple. Families spent more time together.

 

[socko]

Yes, The boomers and their children amassed the wealth and land at the expense of the current and previous generation, even once they're finally dead we'll still be sucking on all the toxic shit they pumped into the environment for a quick buck.
They got to enjoy their youth years free and under very little regulation but then made sure that gen x and y live in a polluted police surveillance state so they could protect their precious equity.

The current generation is far more informed than previous ones and knowing that this whole consumerist enterprise is unsustainable and that the environmental outlook is bleak doesn't exactly lend itself to carefree times. I feel sorry as fuck for kids today.
Still like every generation does I think mines the best, late 70's early 80's babies on that just right like baby bear shit.

Yes. Baby Boomers and those who spawned them, the "Greatest Generation," did indeed ruin this country. They plundered the economy, invented strip malls and urban sprawl, pillaged the mass transit system, plundered the nations and the world's resources, and left us with a quasi-fascist surveillance state, global warming, and an environmental mess. We (younger people) are fscked. No matter how much harder we work and better educated we are, we (Gen X and Gen Y) for the most part don't have a chance at having the easy, middle class lifestyle of previous generations. And Millennials don't have a chance in this climate.
My question is why isn't any body doing anything about it? Why the apathy? It seems like most younger people (under 40) don't even vote.

 

[L2R]

nb, when you are born in a certain decade, you tend to really grow up with the music two decades later. i'm a 70's baby, but that only means i grew up in the 90's, so that is where my heart is. although i do have nostalgia for vaguer 80's memories.


as for having it better, i do appreciate having living memory pre-internet and pre-cable tv.

 

[Care]

There is a tendency of people in the present to long for ye' olden days, its been a constant theme throughout history.

That being said, that era was a good time in the US.

 

[Max Power]

People born in the 1890s had it better, actually. But my opinion may be biased.






(Unless, you're a black man living in the US. Then being born anytime after the 60s is a hell of a lot better.)

 

[Gratuitous Grace]

Do some of you guys feel that people born in the 60's/ 70's had it better ?

Having been born in the early-'70s -- so, solidly in Generation X -- I personally feel like I had it better. Yeah, definitely. People born around that time really "came of age" in the late-'80s and early-'90s, and as such, there was a very nice mix of simple and modern going on. We had some technology, but it served us ... it didn't rule us. We were healthily consuming it as opposed to being consumed by it. We played outside -- not in front of computer monitors. We rode BMX bikes -- every kid did! -- like, for real ... and not with a joystick or whatever. There was a sense of *real* community as opposed to virtual community. Sure, I was happier then. But, maybe all I'm saying is that I was happier as a kid than as an adult? IDK.

One thing I feel somewhat guilty(?) about is the fact that Gen Xers were "supposed" to pick up the counterculture movement from the mid- to late-'60s when we had some social capital to do so. (Meaning when we hit late adolescence and very early adulthood.) I do feel pretty strongly that this was expected (if unspoken). Read the books, watch the movies... Sadly, we didn't do that. Instead, the '90s marked the beginning of unprecedented economic growth, and those who might have led such a movement cashed in on the good financial circumstances in which they surprisingly found themselves. Eh ... who can blame 'em?

Their music is in general better (esp 70's and 80's)

Maybe? We seem to have had a closer and more meaningful connection to music. That could have a lot to do with the way that the distribution of music has shifted over the last few decades, however. Buying a vinyl record -- or even a CD -- in a bricks-and-mortar record store was an *entirely* different psychological and social experience than streaming that same album via Spotify. I still have the first record I ever bought in '80 or '81 (AC/DC "Back in Black") but I can't tell you what's playing in the background as I type this. Don't really care, I guess?

and they seemed to have a better time

To pick up on what I said earlier, riding a BMX bike as a 10-year-old is FUN. Going on vacation with your family in an Airstream trailer is FUN. Holidays with family members who live in the same town are FUN. I don't do any of that stuff anymore ... and I don't see anyone else doing it to any degree either. Everything's so damned serious -- there's no time for a good time. As a society, we just seem to keep screwing ourselves down tighter and tighter. For increased productivity and bigger profits and happier stockholders than we had last quarter, I guess.

I don't think there even was that much depression/biploar back then.

I never really heard of it back then. We ran around outside a lot. Maybe there's a connection.

people I know just have better stories and did much more than me or people I know my age.

IDK ... in the end, no matter what the social landscape, each one of us is responsible for creating his or her own experiences, good times, memories, and stories. I think we all get the sense that we're living too much in front of computers. But, we're all doing it. It's a risk to close down your Facebook account, to stop tweeting, to forget about Instagram. What if all my virtual friends really do want to know where I am right now? What if they're all dying to know what I just ordered for dinner?? What if I really am a star??? LOL! We gotta get over ourselves if we're gonna go deeper than the pathetic and totally superficial lives a lot of us are leading. It actually doesn't take that much to have genuine experiences IMO. But, it does require leaving "the device" at home -- for starters. That's just a recipe to live out all of your experiences a few levels removed from them.

Maybe I"m just a cynical bastard.

You can work with that!

 

[thujone]

To pick up on what I said earlier, riding a BMX bike as a 10-year-old is FUN. Going on vacation with your family in an Airstream trailer is FUN. Holidays with family members who live in the same town are FUN. I don't do any of that stuff anymore ... and I don't see anyone else doing it to any degree either. Everything's so damned serious -- there's no time for a good time. As a society, we just seem to keep screwing ourselves down tighter and tighter. For increased productivity and bigger profits and happier stockholders than we had last quarter, I guess.

...

IDK ... in the end, no matter what the social landscape, each one of us is responsible for creating his or her own experiences, good times, memories, and stories. I think we all get the sense that we're living too much in front of computers. But, we're all doing it. It's a risk to close down your Facebook account, to stop tweeting, to forget about Instagram. What if all my virtual friends really do want to know where I am right now? What if they're all dying to know what I just ordered for dinner?? What if I really am a star??? LOL! We gotta get over ourselves if we're gonna go deeper than the pathetic and totally superficial lives a lot of us are leading. It actually doesn't take that much to have genuine experiences IMO. But, it does require leaving "the device" at home -- for starters. That's just a recipe to live out all of your experiences a few levels removed from them.

I'm reminded of an article I read recently, which is more about contemporary Japanese society but also foreshadows a shift in American society, now that our average network density/bandwidth is slowly catching up to Japan (they've been using their phones for e-mail since before we even had BlackBerry). I think the only way to fight this trend is to keep reminding people that there is a reality outside of their phone and that they shouldn't marginalize it in deference to ephemeral, intangible connections with people across the internet.

As someone who grew up in the 90s and uses a computer a lot, I don't think the problem is with us "living too much in front of computers" but rather with the way we choose to use our computers. I don't see any issue with using the internet to connect more meaningfully with people and ideas, but when you start using social networks as a means to keep people at arm's length because it would be too tedious to physically see someone you're connected to all the time anyway, that's when the situation snowballs from slightly fuzzy to fucked-up social dystopia.

 

[Gratuitous Grace]

I'm reminded of an article I read recently, which is more about contemporary Japanese society but also foreshadows a shift in American society, now that our average network density/bandwidth is slowly catching up to Japan (they've been using their phones for e-mail since before we even had BlackBerry). I think the only way to fight this trend is to keep reminding people that there is a reality outside of their phone and that they shouldn't marginalize it in deference to ephemeral, intangible connections with people across the internet.

Really great article. Here are a couple of my favorite take-aways:

Committing oneself to a task, to a relationship, to a goal of any type naturally involves risk. But the manifold seductions of virtual realities – anyone can join, anyone can post and you can be anyone, anywhere, at any time – reduce our sense of risk, promising to banish our insecurities, imperfections and uncertainties, if not finally being able to eradicate them entirely.

Granted, it’s often hard to make things happen in real life. Committing to a relationship or the achievement of an ambition is usually a lot more challenging than creating a sudden buzz on the internet, posting a blog entry, tweeting 140 characters or adding new friends to your Facebook, Mixi or digital address pages. But a retreat from reality poses its own set of risks: newly emerging anxieties and uncertainties that we are only now beginning to recognize and understand. Tetsuya Akikawa, a musician who unwittingly became a counselor to Japan’s suicidal youth when he hosted a radio call-in program, distills his listeners’ most common complaint: “A lot of teenagers said to me that they couldn’t feel the real feelings of living,” he says, shaking his head in disbelief. “They live a shadow of a life, rather than life itself.”

As the article points out -- and as I think we know intuitively -- there's nothing essentially Japanese about these sentiments. They certainly resonate with me (an American).

 

[Jabberwocky]

^ that's an interesting article. I liked Tetsuya Akikawa's quotes, "...couldn't feel the feelings of living" ... "they live a shadow of a life, rather than life itself".

Too much time is spent online by too many people.

 

[Max Power]

I don't think the problem is with us "living too much in front of computers" but rather with the way we choose to use our computers. I don't see any issue with using the internet to connect more meaningfully with people and ideas, but when you start using social networks as a means to keep people at arm's length because it would be too tedious to physically see someone you're connected to all the time anyway, that's when the situation snowballs from slightly fuzzy to fucked-up social dystopia.

I'd recommend anyone who shares this view or would like to explore it further to check out Neil Postman's seminal work, "Amusing Ourselves to Death", in which he contrasts Orwell & Huxley's dystopias. [spoiler: Huxley was right.] Of course, he's only building off Marshall McLuhan's work but it's an updated outlook that takes into account modern technology.

That stuff's a bit dry so here's some Louis CK:

 

[thujone]

we need more public figures like louis c.k.! cheers for the recommendation, you had me at "builds on marshall mcluhan..."

oh, ITT I learned that some BLers actually read

 

[Max Power]

we need more public figures like louis c.k.! cheers for the recommendation, you had me at "builds on marshall mcluhan..."

oh, ITT I learned that some BLers actually read

I pay the homeless to read to me. Reading is for plebs.

Audiobooks less so.

 

[Whosajiggawaaa]

I'd recommend anyone who shares this view or would like to explore it further to check out Neil Postman's seminal work, "Amusing Ourselves to Death", in which he contrasts Orwell & Huxley's dystopias. [spoiler: Huxley was right.] Of course, he's only building off Marshall McLuhan's work but it's an updated outlook that takes into account modern technology.

That stuff's a bit dry so here's some Louis CK:

Fk yeah. Fk fb even tho I still get excited when I get over 5 likesies.

 

[Max Power]

you had me at "builds on marshall mcluhan..."