Why doesn't the Golden Era extend to the 50s or early 60s?

[LizzieMaine]

Exactly. And I'll just add, as I always do when someone points these things out because we obviously have never considered them before, that anyone who thinks racism and sexism aren't still the order of the day isn't paying close enough attention. The modern folks just hide them, so everyone can make believe they aren't happening.

 

[LizzieMaine]

vitanola,



First, I want to reemphasize what I said earlier. Folks of the Golden Era were tough. Most of them were barely 2nd generation Americans having come from the fields. They knew depravation, poverty, war, and the Great Depression. These experiences taught them that thrift, hard work, and self reliance were the necessary character traits needed to achieve a better life. That better life is what we are calling “The Golden Era.” The traits and ethics of that era are as necessary today as they were then if you wish to live a comfortable life. I doubt you would find anyone from that era even mildly receptive to the culture of dependence we have evolved into. They knew full well from their own experiences there are no free rides.

Golden Era Values:

"There is no greater calling than to serve your fellow men. There is no greater contribution than to help the weak. There is no greater satisfaction than to have done it well."
-- Walter Reuther

 

[Foxer55]

Idbenj,

Also, the idea of the "Golden Era" covers only fashion and art, not society as a whole.

Attribution, please. Fashion and art are part and parcel of the environment that created them. Do you think the clothes and accoutermenst, the cars, the artwork, just kind of happened. These traits were part of the experience. Just like our ugly, all-all-the-same, jelly bean cars of today are part of our experience.

During that period, racism and sexism were taken for granted, there was no social safety net, and there was just as much depravity as today, the only difference being that it was hidden, so everyone could make believe it wasn't happening.

This is dangerously close to expecting some "other" thing to take care of you and manage your life. Racism and sexism existed because people did not attend to their individual welfare. There were successful women and minorities who excelled in the Golden Era environment because they attended to their individual welfare and took care of themselves. If you believe it is someone else's responsibility to attend to your welfare - they will - but not in the way you want. The only people who successfully emerged or whose offspring successfully emerged from that era are the ones who knew it was up to them. Sure, the gangster had ALL the accouterments, where are they? Sure, there were people who spent their money like a drunken cowboy, where are they? Sure, there were people who lived at the speakeasies, where are they? I would venture that many of those that had all the resources were the ones who failed to get through the Golden Era.

 

[Foxer55]

Lizzie,

Golden Era Values:

"There is no greater calling than to serve your fellow men. There is no greater contribution than to help the weak. There is no greater satisfaction than to have done it well."
-- Walter Reuther

First, you need to be sufficient within yourself to do this, otherwise you become a casuatly that someone else is obliged to "serve." I know personally of a manner of thinking somewhere that promotes this idea: each of us is born with a finite amount of capacity and energy. If we do not wisely husband those resources we eventually consume them and then become the victim that victimizes others for help (or in this case, "service").

So, concluding, your above quote is all well and good provided you understand that in the end - regardless of how idealistic your "service" - you are obligated to not "serve" to self detriment. Why should someone else become your keeper because you were a poor keeper of yourself?

 

[St. Louis]

I enjoy these discussions precisely for that reason: they force me to think about & explain to myself why I love the golden era. I've been thinking about this thread ever since it began, but haven't wanted to post until I had a clearer sense of why I have this fascination / affection for the era, and why I have no real feeling for the 1950s, 1960s, let alone later decades. Much of this is obviously a matter of personal / idiosyncratic taste and enjoyment. I'm interested in the reasons other people love the fifties, and I wouldn't dream of arguing with someone about their taste (or even question it) -- but the whole conversation forces me to think about my deep emotional attachment to the 1930s and 1940s. Here are some random & disorganized ideas.

I agree with an earlier poster that the people who lived through those decades were forced to confront some catastrophic challenges -- depression, unemployment, war, loss of loved ones, loss of homes / farms / businesses. True, the era also appeals to me aesthetically -- I will admit that I love the fashions, music, etc. -- but I am primarily drawn to its spirit and character.

I hope no one will take any criticism of their taste from my ideas, so please bear with me here. I think what appeals to me personally about the 30s and 40s, and why I can't call anything past that the GE, is that it's the last time in our history when we see a balance between the old-fashioned and the 'moderne' for lack of a better way of putting it. (That extra "e" on modern is meant to be ironic.) I would need to think this through in more depth, but I could begin with the post-40s love affair with plastics, the immense emphasis on widespread, mass consumption of ready-made goods, the focus on individualism at the expense of community welfare, and the relentless drive for personal, individual rights without reference to duty. I am emphatically NOT talking about civil or citizens' rights here--I'm one hundred and ten percent behind equal civil rights for all. I'm only talking about that entitlement idea that is being discussed in a different thread here.

For example: just for my own personal sense of well-being, I like to have furniture, dishes, textiles, etc., around me that are made of natural materials; I like their look and feel, and I'm generally opposed to objects that won't rot in landfills or that cause toxic fumes when being incinerated (again, just my personal taste here.) I like the older-fashioned 1930s, not so much the streamlined Hollywood-style deco that you see in fluffy romantic comedies of the late 30s and early 40s. That's just one example. I won't go on, b/c the post is already too long, but to sum up: I'm fully aware that people living in the 30s and 40s had their warts and flaws; but I also feel that there were some aspects to the daily way of life, and the general outlook on their role in society, that are worth considering and perhaps reviving, at least for me.

 

[Fletch]

Golden Era Values:

"There is no greater calling than to serve your fellow men. There is no greater contribution than to help the weak. There is no greater satisfaction than to have done it well."
-- Walter Reuther

Foxer is part right. There were people, even communities, in that era who didn't believe in helping others in any way at all. Today we'd call them sociopaths, and their communities sick.

 

[LizzieMaine]

My point is simply that service to the community and to others was held in very very high esteem in the Era -- you weren't considered a "success" if you made it clear that you were out for yourself, and only yourself. People enjoyed a deep, satisfying draft of schadenfreude when Richard Whitney went to prison and Ivor Kreuger killed himself. Had someone like Joseph Campbell come along in 1933 and declared the only purpose in life was to gain your "bliss," he would have been shouted under by a chorus of voices arguing that the primary purpose in the life of the individual was to build a strong, healthy community. Children were inculcated in this very early, as any examination of a Scout handbook or civics textbook will demonstrate.

"The hand is a member of the body. It receives life from the body and contributes to its life. If the body is sick, the hand cannot do its work well; if the hand is crippled the body suffers. So your life is closely interwoven with that of the community of which you are a member. The best of your life comes from your participation in its life."
-- Arthur William Dunn, "The Community and the Citizen," high school civics textbook, copyright 1907-1914.

That's the philosophy that the adults of the 1930s had drilled into their minds over and over again while growing up. The hand is part of the body, and the hand cannot exist independent of the body. The citizen is part of the community, and cannot exist independent of the community. The health of the citizen depends on the health of the community, the health of the community depends on the health of its citizens.

If someone wants to follow a different philosophy, for whatever reason, that's their affair. There were Daddy Warbucks types in the Era who believed in self-interest as a virtue, fusty old walruses in dusty old suits who sat in the Union League Club and harumphed about That Man, but they were a dying minority in an age in which belief in the importance of community was paramount. And there's simply no historical support for claiming otherwise. Forget the "Golden Era" trope for a moment, because as most of us here agree, the idea of what makes the Era Golden is entirely subjective, depending on who's doing the defining. To try and come up with a definitive, dogmatic definition is a fool's exercise.

The question here is "was the 1930s and 1940s an era which valued "rugged individualism" above all else?" The preponderance of evidence is that it was not. To claim otherwise is to bend reality to suit an agenda, which is something that's been going on pretty steadily since the '80s. But in the 1930's even Mr. Reagan himself was a staunch New Dealer.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Foxer is part right. There were people, even communities, in that era who didn't believe in helping others in any way at all. Today we'd call them sociopaths, and their communities sick.

Or we'd call them Friedmanites and give them Nobel prizes.

At least in the Era we had the Farmers' Holiday Association and the CIO to stand up and put those people and those communities in their place. And that's why forty-six out of forty-eight states reaffirmed their belief in the New Deal in 1936.

 

[Foxer55]

Lizzie,

[...]The question here is "was the 1930s and 1940s an era which valued "rugged individualism" above all else?" The preponderance of evidence is that it was not. To claim otherwise is to bend reality to suit an agenda, which is something that's been going on pretty steadily since the '80s. But in the 1930's even Mr. Reagan himself was a staunch New Dealer.

Ah, I believe the Golden Era, and all of its attractions were a result of that rugged individualism. The era was the reward for all the sacrifice that went before it and was provided by that rugged individualism. There was rugged individualism that had been learned through sacrifice and endeavor carried forward and still present in the era with attempts to promote its values but it was dying. It finally died with the era and left us with what we have today - no work ethic, terrible products like the ones you criticize, people who are incapable of taking care of themselves and depend on everyone else, music that will break your ears, the average American salutation of FU!, terrible clothing, posturing tough guys who speak in mumbled growls, and women who look like cadavers. So, all those rugged individualistic traits that were part of the birth and life of the Golden Era are lost and gone and we're left with what - a herd of swine. I have to tell ya, it reminds me of the swine farm a friend of mine manages. Pigs are all alike, they're all dumb, they're all ugly, they need to be fed and kept warm, they need to be carefully housed and controlled to avoid infections, they make babies in huge litters, and you need to clean up after them. There are no individualist pigs.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Ah, a herd of swine. What to do with them? To the slaughterhouse, perhaps?

I'm sorry, your idea of the "Golden Era," where human beings are divided into "worthy" and "unworthy," a vicious dictatorship of the self-declared Elite, is something I would fight with the last fibre of my being to overthrow, just as so many people in *my* "Golden Era" worked to do.

Long live the Spirit of '37.

 

[Feraud]

This is dangerously close to expecting some "other" thing to take care of you and manage your life. Racism and sexism existed because people did not attend to their individual welfare.

Racism and sexism existed (and still do) because of the exact opposite of what you state here.
Racism and sexism exist when people impose their will and enact laws on others. This resulted in folks physically and legally unable to attend their individual and more important familial welfare through education, voting, business, and personal progress.
Our country has an ugly history of such behavior. It's incorrect to state racism and sexism exist because folks lack "get up and go"..

 

[Foxer55]

Life is too short to be a victim. Once a victim, always a victim. When you learn that lesson it will serve you more than well.

 

[LizzieMaine]

And it was the fact that so many people stood up in the 1930s and declared that they would no longer be victimized that made the Era Golden. Remember the Bonus Army, remember the Ford Hunger March, remember Toledo Auto-Lite, remember the Battle of Bulls' Run, remember the Battle of the Overpass, remember Lewiston-Auburn, remember the Memorial Day Massacre.

 

[Foxer55]

Lizzie,

And it was the fact that so many people stood up in the 1930s and declared that they would no longer be victimized that made the Era Golden. Remember the Bonus Army, remember the Ford Hunger March, remember Toledo Auto-Lite, remember the Battle of Bulls' Run, remember the Battle of the Overpass, remember Lewiston-Auburn, remember the Memorial Day Massacre.

Nope. Too busy working to take care of myself.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Those who forget history are condemned to repeat it.

 

[Fletch]

Of course some of us want to be the strikers and some of us want to be the goons. That's our choice to make, and our cross to bear.

 

[John in Covina]

"Christ, in terms of the Christian philosophy, is the human ideal. He personifies that which men should strive to emulate. Yet, according to the Christian mythology, he died on the cross not for his own sins but for the sins of the nonideal people. In other words, a man of perfect virtue was sacrificed for men who are vicious and who are expected or supposed to accept that sacrifice. If I were a Christian, nothing could make me more indignant than that: the notion of sacrificing the ideal to the non-ideal, or virtue to vice."

"In the name of the cross men are asked to sacrifice themselves for their inferiors... To love as Christ is, in other words, immoral, and what you do for “the least of these, my brothers” is a waste."

This sort of stuff owuld have scandalised most Americans, as yet it scandalises me.

Christ is not simply ideal man, He is God and man and is uncreated. The sacrafice for sin must be blood and in order to have blood the living thing must die to pay the price of sin. <The wages of sin is death.> Here however the sacrafice had to be perfect. Mortal men can never be perfect they cannot sanctify themselves, therefor the sacrifice in order to be perfect had to be God inorder to be perfect but also man so there would be blood. The concept of the perfect being sacrificed for the imperfect is the only way the price could be paid. That is the love that is spoken of in the phrase for God so loved the world.

As i said be fore objectivism fails because there is no sense that people need help, the problem with todays altruism is that it has moved past helping people have ordinary lives of self support to one that is the enabler of amoral lifestyles and as power to get re-elected.

Even Al Smith figured it out - others still think that Che is a hero.

 

[Feraud]

Those who forget history are condemned to repeat it.

Condemned to repeat yet regurgitate a selective version of it apparently..

 

[LizzieMaine]

The concept of the perfect being sacrificed for the imperfect is the only way the price could be paid. That is the love that is spoken of in the phrase for God so loved the world.

And the idea that mortal man can somehow be perfected by his own devices fails on both theological and practical means: the concept of a "super man" has been promoted by all sorts of fanatics, cultists, eugenicists, and despots over the years, but somehow in practice they've never managed to live up to their billing.

I've always found it amusing that the supporters of the various "super man" theories are always careful to include themselves in their own particular definition of what constitutes "superiority." It's like the way believers in past lives always seem to remember being nobles in the court of Louis XIV, and never plague-ridden, scab-encrusted serfs.

 

[mikepara]

Just read this whole thread. There are some interesting posts, but I think overall it ended up in a totally different tack and place than I expected. However It's still nice to pop in and read polar opposite views being expressed in a civilized manner. Unlike some forums I frequent!