what happened to america since 1950

[TOMAHAWK70]

Im in my 30s and read alot about the 50s and love anything 50s. It seemed like a time when life worked, The husband went to work the mom stayed home for the kids; They took a vacation in the family wagon and it seemed like life was good; but today it seems as if kids have no respect; people work crazy hours; the family structer is gone; and anything goes. My take is in the 60s when women started working the family broke down and morals were compromised. Then everyone needed to keep up with the jones or else their ego would suffer; so everyone needed 2 cars and a bigger house,and a cell phone; and a compuer; 65 inch tv; a summer house..etc...etc...etc.. I could go on and on...but whats your take on why things have changed.

 

[howiesatwork]

Liberal excesses.

 

[Knife Outlet]

The breakdown of discipline. People were more disciplined in the 1950's and raised their kids with discipline. It came from the war. The men learned discipline in the military. The women learned it in their contribution to the war at home. That started declining in the epicurean 60's and virtually disappeared in the greedy 1970's.

Also people in the 50's had at least a modicum of concern and respect for others. People were sometimes willing to sacrifice for the common good. There isn't any of that left today. Looking out for number one is all that is left. There is no number two or three any more. Selfishness is an order of magnitude more evident in society today than it was then.

I could write a book about it. I'll just leave it at that. Discipline, respect and sacrifice are wounded character traits today.

 

[Andrew3000]

It's surprising how all the descriptions above seem to fit Russia and Russians of these days. Maybe liberalism is not completely identical to democracy and should not be used as a substitute for it? Maybe a little bit of responsibility in everyone would only benefit the society?

 

[mwerner]

Nostalgia= Failing to remember how bad things really were.

As a "boomer", born in 46, I recall a few not-so-wonderful things. The idyllic family life was largely an invention of television; things were just as screwed up then as now. People just didn't talk about it as much.
Our advances in medicine have left behind the spectre of children dying of polio, scarlet fever, diptheria, and so forth.
Law enforcement tended to be brutal, with little regard for anyone's rights.
The economy was based on industry and agriculture, which generally required little in the way of education.

Things change, and each generation is heir to it's own problems. I recall a tract from Aristotle complaining about the out-of-control young people of his day.....

 

[Esav Benyamin]

My father was disgusted that greed and discourtesy were destroying his country.

It's the usual balance between affluence and adversity. In hard times, members of a society recognize the need for the common defense and mutual support. In good times, the pressure is off, and everyone goes his own way.

Naturally, there is a half-a-generation slip between affluence moving in and people recognizing the opportunity for hedonism over sacrifice. People who grow up in adversity reward their kids with affluence when it's available, and the kids grow up expecting that life owes them a living.

It's a long-term analog to the cycles of feast or famine in subsistence societies.

 

[MikeH]

The 50's:

Good: Comic books were a dime.
Bad: You didn't have the dime.

Good: The most serious incident at school was an occasional fist fight. No one ever shot anyone. If a teacher caught you fighting, she turned you over to the football coach, who took both of you to the gym and brought out the boxing gloves. When it was over, it was over.

Good: Practically every guy in my school carried a pocket knife. They were tools. No one ever cut anyone. Very, very seldom did anyone cut themselves. when they did, the teacher gave them a band-aid and said to be more careful next time.

Good: At age ten I could roam all over south Tallapoosa County, Alabama with a twelve gauge shotgun (I was a big kid for my age.) No one thought it strange or called the cops. If I wandered up in someone's back yard around lunch time, I was invited in to eat. There were only two property owners within walking distance of my home who didn't want you shooting their squirrels and rabbits. Everyone respected this restriction, although
those people were considered a little "strange".

Bad: I was lucky if I had over five shotgun shells at any one time.
Good: I learned to be very selective with my shots.
Better: I learned to work for what I needed.

Good: Kids knew where food came from. I participated in "hog killings" each fall, and helped with slaughtered beef.

Good: Fresh hog brains and eggs. Best scrambled eggs ever!

Bad: Fifty year old men called "boy" if they happened to be black.
Good: A dad who would not do this, and who would have given me the strapping of my life if he had ever heard me do this.

Good: All of us kids of whatever race played sandlot ball, swam in the creek, worked (farm labor, picking cotton, etc.) together, with much less racial conflict than is common now.
Bad: We then got on different school busses and went to strictly segregated schools.

Bad: There were two kinds of adults. Those who, when the dogs ran out to the road barking at black kids passing by, would call the dogs off, and those who would not.
Good: My dad, an uneducated cotton mill hand, a compassionate man who gireved deeply about racial discrimination and took every opportunity to ease someone else's pain.

Bad: Those who talked, acted or looked differently than the crowd suffered mightily. Pressure to conform was intense.

Good: Kids were treated as if they had sense and were expected to behave responsibly. It was not considered cruel and unusual to have us work. My vo-ag class painted the vo-ag building, castrated yearlings and shoats for local farmers, etc. Imagine the outrage today (except in some rural farm areas where people still have some common sense) if a junior high guy was given a sharp scapel and permitted to emasculate a dozen pigs! If you did something stupid and got hurt, instead of freaking out and calling a lawyer,
your parents told you to be more careful next time.

Good: My new school clothes each fall consisted of a couple of pairs of new jeans. The money for these came from a couple of weeks of picking cotton.
Didn't hurt me then, and has been an immense advantage in later life.

Bad: My son got very tired of hearing the cotton picking lecture every time he wanted an expensive pair of new sneakers.

 

[Knife Outlet]

I remember attending a class once in college wearing a hog leg (Colt Peacemaker I had bought mail order) in a western rig to class. This was in 1965 - just a year after the federal government got involved in regulating firearms. The professor asked why I had it. I told him I was going out to practise for a quick draw tournamet right after class. He asked if he could go along. He had a double western rig and was pretty good at quick draw. That wouldn't be likely to happen today.

 

[FullerH]

Nostalgia= Failing to remember how bad things really were.

As a "boomer", born in 46, I recall a few not-so-wonderful things. The idyllic family life was largely an invention of television; things were just as screwed up then as now. People just didn't talk about it as much.
Our advances in medicine have left behind the spectre of children dying of polio, scarlet fever, diptheria, and so forth.
Law enforcement tended to be brutal, with little regard for anyone's rights.
The economy was based on industry and agriculture, which generally required little in the way of education.

Things change, and each generation is heir to it's own problems. I recall a tract from Aristotle complaining about the out-of-control young people of his day.....

As a pre-boomer, born in 1942, I tend to agree with MWerner. I suspect that the reason that we got away with so much more than kids do today was that there weren't anywhere near so many people crammed into the living space. When I was growing up in the mid-fifties, the population of the USA was around 130,000,000, less that half of what it is today.

Good: The most serious incident at school was an occasional fist fight. No one ever shot anyone. If a teacher caught you fighting, she turned you over to the football coach, who took both of you to the gym and brought out the boxing gloves. When it was over, it was over.

That may have been true at your school and mine, but I remember hearing of knife-fights at some of the schools, both urban and very rural. Virginia Military Institute forbid cadets to challenge other cadets in the manner of the Service Academies. When I asked why, I was told that the Southern mountain boys who came there frequently would not settle the challenges in the boxing ring in the manner of the Service Academies but would have gone at it with knives, and the Institute could not have its cadets killing each other.

 

[Geraldo]

Oh, yeah, the fifties were positively idyllic. Jim Crow and segregation, McCarty's Communist witch hunt, discrimination against women in the workplace, overthrowing the government of Guatemala because United Fruit didn't want the people to own land, the threat of atomic war, war in Korea...

 

[FoxholeAtheist]

I blame the teach of evolution. If teach children that they're just animals, then you can expect them to act like animals.

/sarcasm/

Seriously, I think selective perception has a lot to do with it.

 

[TorzJohnson]

Oh, yeah, the fifties were positively idyllic. Jim Crow and segregation, McCarty's Communist witch hunt, discrimination against women in the workplace, overthrowing the government of Guatemala because United Fruit didn't want the people to own land, the threat of atomic war, war in Korea...

Dont' forget Ed Gein!