The golden generation

[CraigD]

I’ve stayed out of this thread so far because I’m unable to find a valid, quantified framework to evaluate claims like

Their [those who went through the great depression and WWII] children and grandchildren, baby boomers and forward … complain a lot more about how hard it is currently, even though they have it easy by comparision to the Golden generation.

Sometimes, one can fall back on anecdotal experience to evaluate such claims, but, in this case, my personal experience with GGers is limited, and, I’m fairly certain, badly biased: having spent most of my adult life in medical setting, most GGers I’ve known have been old and suffering from chronic medical problems. Such people, justifiably IMHO, complain a lot more than their children and grandchildren. I simply know of no way of guessing how brave, stoical, or of high character or honor they were at previous periods of their lives.

 

I’ve noticed a several factually questionable points in the thread, and feel a need to address, based on no particular order or significance, some of them.

… the fact that no records exist of them [GGers] having any mental illnesses during WW2 and the 30's depression doesn't say that it didn't exist. They simply didn't diagnose it properly, because it was yet to be defined.

Although I believe substantial improvements have been made, It’s inaccurate to assume that the diagnosis and treatment of mental illness prior to the 1960s was entirely improper, or that records were not kept. Though a large and complicated literature, good records, particularly of combat-related disorders, are available at least as far back as the 18th century. A good synopsis can be found at the wikipedia article “Combat stress reaction”. Despite popular perception to the contrary, the rate of CSR disorders among soldiers in WWII does not appear to differ significantly from that of soldiers in earlier or later wars, including the US Civil War, the Vietnam War, and the 2 recent Gulf wars. Interestingly, despite US military doctrine popular in Vietnam and to the present, shortening the length of time (“tour”) that combat and support soldiers serve doesn’t appear to have much impact on the incidence of CSR disorders.

Every guy graduating from med school, pursuing his PhD, has to come up with original research.

In the US, medical students are not required to present and defend a thesis, or contribute original research in the field of medicine to obtain a Doctor of Medicine (MD) degree. Only a small fraction of medical clinicians obtain PhDs, requiring that they come up with original research.

[jackson33]

Craig;

 

in discussing an issue, to relate to a few of a mass will not justify an opinion.

if nothing else, what you observed from the old folks or what i may have would likely be different. then there are the times these events take place.

an old person, that medicated, cleaned and fed their parents until death, who lived off the land, went through what was needed to survive the times, sacrificed all we take for granted and nurtured the generation that followed, to lay in a bed with little or no dignity, would bring the worst out of any person. i feel sure most did pass on, w/o our observations, with the pride they earned and with some feeling of accomplishment.

[jackson33]

Buffy; in my opinion, there is no comparing the GG to those that followed. certain things they excelled in are near lost in todays. many are near lost and some maybe have improved. the conditions that existed then however are not what we now live in. maybe by pure numbers alone, maybe from education or maybe from from self indulgence or lost personal responsibility we are no longer that people.

 

there is a people, very similar to them and live in the US. they work hard, most play by the rules, are thrifty from need, care for their families and depend on no one for assistance.(as a group). they also fight in our military, run for office and are determined. they tend to their old, attend church and you will find none in old folks homes. they practice medicine, are police, hold political office and practice what they preach. they are the back bone of our economy and make things work. a few break the rules or take advantage one program or another but all in all are as what built this country. you know these people and live with them. i have known of them over 50 years, worked with them, hired and fired them, loved and married one and had two kids by one. their culture is not mine, but their country is and their desire as those of the GG.

 

my concern is this insistence of the people who came from this GG and the expectations from society they seem to feel are owed them for reason that would make this ancestry sick. no its not all, and many folks are proud of country. what was however is no longer what is and any historian will say much of what i suggest. political spectrum is meaningless to me. i will argue platforms and policy to there limits, but each party has held my conservative view off and on over the years. JFK must turn over every time Teddy speaks and Reagan was a democrat and labor advocate for years...

[Pyrotex]

...Another bonehead handicap that was added to culture was "lets break up the nuclear family so we can handicap all the children." ....

H.Bond, this simply isn't true, no matter how you look at it.

 

There was no person, no agency, no group, no government, no segment of society that explicitly advocated, wanted, or even cheered on the breakup of the nuclear family. There was no person, no agency, no group, no government, no segment of society that explicitly advocated, wanted, or even cheered on the social and emotional handicapping of children.

 

It never happened, H.Bond.

 

Nobody decided to make it happen. Nobody intentionally planned for it or wanted it, secretly or otherwise. The consequences of historical trends and events are largely unpredictable. There is no point or purpose in attributing human intention to the blind, mindless, chaotic forces of cultural change.

 

Just so you can have something else to blame on "Liberals".

[TheFaithfulStone]

Just so you can have something else to blame on "Liberals".

 

Conservatives - the Blame America First crowd. Or half of America anyway. Ironic, eh?

 

[serious post begins here...]

 

While I can certainly respect the contributions of the Greatest Generation (I title I think they certainly earned.) I think that it's silly to look on them as "gods among men" so to speak.

 

I had an uncle who was an honest-to-god, bona-fide War Hero. (2 Purple Hearts. 3 Bronze Stars. (3!!) A cross of some kind - I don't remember exactly.) He was also an alcoholic who beat his wife and kids for years.

 

We all have feet of clay. Is he less of a hero because he was also a terrible bastard for years? Is he less of a bastard because he was also a war hero?

 

He was a person - he did his best, he made mistakes. It's unwise to paint people with such a broad brush that they are all hero or all villian. It denies their subjectivity and replaces them with a symbol which you can use to further your own agenda.

 

In my opinion portraying "The Greatest Generation" as pure paragons of republican agricultural virtue dishonors their memory. It says "You have no worth as human beings, only as a political symbol for my own ends."

 

Sure, we can be proud of them - I'm certainly proud of my war-hero uncle. But I hope not to repeat his mistakes. I don't think that any member that generation would say they did nothing wrong, or that we have not improved the world in some ways from what they left us. I think they would be profoundly dissappointed in us if we hadn't.

 

TFS

[Pyrotex]

...While I can certainly respect the contributions of the Greatest Generation (I title I think they certainly earned.) I think that it's silly to look on them as "gods among men" so to speak....

Well said! Thanks.

 

This brings me to a point that I have purposefully not touched on until now. It is probably a delicate subject and certainly subject to debate. Having had a super-conservative (SC) father, and having a SC brother and several SC cousins, I have noticed a pattern. It has to do with "history".

 

I submit for your consideration the propositions that successful White SC Males (WSCM) have a pronounced tendency to (1) romanticize political and national history, and (2) romanticize their own or their SC ancestors' success.

 

(1) To WSCM's, eras where conservative "ideals" dominated the nation, propelled financial booms or helped to win wars are homogenized, so to speak, and become "the good ol' days when conservative ideals reigned supreme and everyone thrived on the fruits of their own hard-earned labor". Such daydreams gloss over the suffering, the financial collapses, the social destruction that such eras caused (which terminated the eras). The "ideal" of the 1900-1929 era with its rapid economic boom and basically unregulated economy led directly to the Great Depression, but WSCM's turn a blind eye to that.

 

WSCM's tend to generalize from this that WSCM convictions uniformally produce a generation of hard-working, honest, ambitious, honorable, courageous and personally successfully (and usually God-fearing) noble gentlemen worthy of being "pedestalled". Certainly, some of them deserve those accolades, but not all by a long shot.

 

(2) To WSCM's, their personal financial success (or that of their pedestalled WSCM ancestors) is entirely due to their own SC convictions, morals, attitudes and hard work. "SC convictions alone produce financial success." From this they derive the conclusion that financial failure is a product of non-SC convictions. This is faulty logic, but very alluring.

 

WSCM's fail to recognize that success in life has a huge element of "luck" in it. Many SC folks eventually wound up homeless or penniless due to disease, Acts of God or other unforeseeable events, but WSCM's turn a blind eye to them as well, preferring to believe that somehow, those folks must have strayed from the straight and narrow, and their misfortune was a just punishment.

 

Likewise, many successful people in life did NOT and NEVER did have SC convictions. Horrors! Well, so the WSCM's rationalize, they must have got their money some easy or sleazy way: inheritance, dishonesty, the lottery or some such.

 

Having said that, I must admit that I favor many, if not most SC convictions. I consider myself a "conservative" in matters of economy, justice, foreign policy and self-reliance. I live those convictions. But I also study history and know that unregulated economies, corporations, industries and social systems are inherently chaotic and unstable. Today's boom is tomorrow's bust. Over the long haul, a certain amount of regulation is worth the cost, if it avoids or softens the busts.

 

My first clue in a conversation that I am talking to a SC is when I detect that they have romanticized history.

[HydrogenBond]

Here is a psychological angle that shows how great the Golden Age was. People tend to look at reality in the light of their own psychology. If one is a paranoid person they will see dangers everywhere. If one is a loving person, they will see love in the air. If one has character, they will try to see the character in others, etc.

 

I was born in about the middle of the baby boom. I was becoming a teenager about the time of Woodstock. The parents back then, at least where I grew up, saw life through the eyes of people with character. So they just assumed the youth had the same characteristics. This caused them to give us a healthy dose of reality check, while at the same time cutting us alot of slack to participate in the realities of being young I guessed they figured we could overcome just like they did, and become good adults and good citizens.

 

One may notice how the attitude or inner psycholgy of parents have changed. They are still projecting or seeing the world through their own psychology, only now collective psychology doesn't see character in the world but treachery. Everything is a problem. If a stranger is being nice call 911 and treat him/her is a pediphile. If the parents of today, had the teen conditions of the parents of the baby boomer, they would all be on some type of tranquilizer or psycho-couch. The mental attitude of adult culture has gotten centered in a place not made of gold.

[CraigD]

One may notice how the attitude or inner psycholgy of parents have changed [since the 1960s]. They are still projecting or seeing the world through their own psychology, only now collective psychology doesn't see character in the world but treachery. Everything is a problem. If a stranger is being nice call 911 and treat him/her is a pediphile. If the parents of today, had the teen conditions of the parents of the baby boomer, they would all be on some type of tranquilizer or psycho-couch. The mental attitude of adult culture has gotten centered in a place not made of gold.

Though I can’t support this view with statistical rigor, I believe it is to a significant extent true, begging the question “why?”

 

I suspect this change in attitude the due in the largest part to a change in how information, especially news, is presented. I believe that, as a result of the increase in number of news outlets, improvements in measuring viewership, and increased financial competition, journalistic organizations have, in an effort to most effectively server their parent companies advertiser customers, exaggerated the prevalence of treachery an danger existent. More than any other influence, this, I believe, is responsible for the change HydrogenBond describes.

 

Although focused on a single issue of public perception of danger, I found the documentary “Bowling for Columbine” (by decidedly not-golden-generation, not-super-conservative filmmaker Michael Moor) compelling in its comparison of statistically supported data vs. perception. Its comparison of differences in perception of danger in different communities was also interesting.