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| Lileks: Things Were Better Then, and Things Are Horrible Now |
| 2007-11-13 |
| Progress is a herky-jerky march, and it’s not always clear which way we’re heading. I tend to believe it all could be much, much worse, and I still have faith in the future, mostly because I am loath to abandon Youthful Optimism and settle into gouty disapproval. I do know that things are certainly cooler than ever. Things are just cool. When I first started doing the MYS concerts, I was writing on an iMac, calling up the baby internet on a 640X480 screen; last night I was looking over my script backstage, and I realized that I was introducing an opera about which I knew nothing. So I called up wikipedia on the iPhone, got some details a minute before I was supposed to go on stage, and added them to the remarks. And it felt cool. Anyway. If there’s one conviction that afflicts the keenest mind as it ages, it’s the belief that Things Were Better Then, and Things Are Horrible Now, usually because no one has learned the lessons of your own generation and insisted on experiencing the world for themselves. (Frank Rich provided a neat example of this a few days ago, when he diagnosed Americans as “clinically depressed” and unable to capture the glories of his demographic, which Took It To the Streets, Man. And blew up a few buildings while they were at it, but you can’t make an omelette without breaking into a farmer’s coop, stealing his chickens, setting fire to the coop and running off with the eggs, all of which you later misplaced because you were high.) I’m so used to being lectured by sour Boomers I’ve come to think of them all as the Gratingest Generation, . . . . . . Here's the odd thing: most of my compatriots and contemporaries - guys who came along in the shadow of the ur-boomers - look fore and aft with more pleasure than the founding boomers. Maybe they expected less, and got more; maybe we were sold so much gloom we checked the aftermarket for optimism. Maybe we watched too much Star Trek. I don't know. I do know that there's a certain swath of American culture - well-educated, well-off, well-situated, well-read, well-spoken - who seem to think we live in mud up to our nostrils. They can't look back except to praise the Brave Few who made the unimaginable artistic and intellectual bounty of the late 60s possible (coff); they can't look at the present without cursing the Perfidious Cabal that makes the foolish electorate go to Wal-Mart on Monday and War on Tuesday, and can't look forward without bewailing the ineradicable damage wrought by whatever the New York Times is fretting about today. They're the champions of Man, but give them a minute and they'll quote Mencken and grin about the booboisie. Well, the booboisie of the 20s had lots of kids, and they were the ones who volunteered to kick Hitler. Someone did something right. |
| Posted by:Mike |
| #2 Ala THE WONDER YEARS, the 1960's was a great time to be a kid. Sure, we didn't have the things, probs and issues that are pervasive today, or even during the 70's or 80's, but we didn't feel "bad", etc. about ourselves, society, or the world like many want us to in the present. The World is what we make of it - despite the WOT and anti-Americanism, there is still a lot of good things that should be preserved or enhanced. |
| Posted by: JosephMendiola 2007-11-13 17:31 |
| #1 I enjoy pointing out that even the good things that came out of the 1960s happened because things were awful. Air and water pollution were awful, litter was everywhere. It was an article of faith with dirty, filthy hippies that they never bathe and have a loathsome odor. Just cleaning all that up makes today far better. The music were creative and original because much of America was boring beyond stultifying for young people. The one thing they could afford was musical instruments and to form garage bands. So competition was murderous. The vast majority of teenagers stayed home, and did little more then grow their hair a bit longer. The golden age of movies had come to an end, as had the studio system of movie production. This meant there was also a surfeit of low budget movies in the general collapse of the industry, and the theaters would take anything they could get. The Democrat party finally collapsed, so was seized by radicals, and the conservative movement was down in the dumps and in retreat, because the MSM said so, and there was no other source of news than those who supported the radicals. Generally, the 1960s sucked. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2007-11-13 15:47 |