They’re still considered Boomers and still enjoyed the prosperity and expectations of the post-war economic anomaly (approx. 1945-2008) in larger proportion as a cohort than Gen X did (and larger still in comparison to Millenials and Gen Z).
ETA: I will add, in response to @Gatto’s post above, that the period between 1945 and 1980 was the closest we come to the ideal (as opposed to the reality) where America might be better off with a more educated and informed general population, but it was still far off due to systemic racism and sexism. Even so, that period seems to be the reference point when people point out declining standards. At this point, with the post-war economic anomaly well and truly over, even the flawed ideal has been abandoned by much of the citizenry and we’re back to the expectations and divisions of the rougher and more unequal world that existed before the New Deal.
I am reminded of a letter written and published in today’s Guardian about something else, but the bit in bold seems very apposite:
I hope that Priti Patel had the opportunity to watch episode three of The Thief, His Wife and the Canoe, where she would have heard the wife pertinently remark: “Me not having a brilliant alternative to your terrible idea does not then make your terrible idea a good idea.”
I’ve also seen “The Apollos” used to refer to those of us just old enough to remember the Moon landings.
Certainly better times than those that followed, but declining birthrates, and a declining economy gave everything a certain Fin de siècle feel. It did mean that getting accepted into college was easier, with every new cohort of potential freshmen was smaller than the last one. And college was significantly cheaper in the 80s than it is now.
i think this is largely about the nature of human memory and not a fundamental fact.
it’s hard to take in a time that included internment, mccarthyism, a white’s only gi bill, duck and cover, the transformation of segregation into the drug war, redlining, the destruction of public transportation, the start of reaganism, so much more as a particularly profound golden age
i think it’s just close enough that people remember the good parts, while hazing away the bad parts.
i also feel strongly that the handwaving away of our issues as “dumbness” or “idiocracy” – from the article, and some of the comments here – absolves us from recognizing how bad things were before – and the work people undertook to actually change things.
Sometimes The Atlantic has good content, but they also have a tendency to give a platform to people who are well-known peddlers of disingenuous nonsense, so it’s always a good idea to check the author before taking them seriously.
I don’t think Jonathan Haidt – ostensibly a centrist whose thing is how research needs more conservative ideas – makes the cut, and I am not the least surprised to see all the comments here finding he is basically trying to excuse the right for its key role in undermining education, critical thinking, and belief in our shared reality, which is what is actually the problem.
I believe that Zuck didn’t wish for it … but also that he didn’t wish for anything. He just didn’t think about the implications of social media. I think there was this veneration of the old “marketplace of ideas” trope, even though there’s little evidence it ever existed as idyllically as its proponents believed.
Facebook proved that in a zero-barrier-to-entry media environment, it’s not the best argument or the most truthful argument that wins, but the loudest or most polemical argument—whether or not the argument is even based in actual reality. Even if “no one could have predicted” this from the start, we know that Facebook learned this to be the case after several years, and while some inside the company were alarmed, the management ignored the problem in favor of increased engagement, which leads to increased ad revenue. So instead of two erudite gentlemen having a discussion about the issues of the day at Speakers’ Corner, which is how the marketplace of ideas is presented, you have Alex Jones, naked and sweaty, yelling at passers-by. And that makes way more money.
And it shows how many people would rather engage in “conclusion shopping” and let their confirmation bias run wild than to engage in any self reflection.
My GenX perspective/opinion from living in both rural and metro areas in the 80s was that it was a pretty neutral time for most, and better time for many. The 70s paved the way for revolutionary thought, peace was sorta-happening, and there was an enlightened friendliness.
However, having things go well and being promised a chicken in every pot meant that those WITH things wanted more things. This felt like the hard start of short-term thinking because prosperity seemed somewhat easy. We “Deserved More!” said every marketing message, and we all started gobbling shit up like hungry hungry hippos.
Businesses used metrics to tighten up, people upgraded to the best they could, cheap junk rolled out in greater quantity, and that roll never ended (except for a burp in the 90s that made big business even MORE paranoid, cheap, and short-sighted. Add social media and fast forward; now everyone’s grappling for their piece and willing to toss everyone else under the bus for it.
“The problem is that the left controls the commanding heights of the culture: universities, news organizations, Hollywood, art museums, advertising, much of Silicon Valley, and the teachers’ unions and teaching colleges that shape K–12 education.”
Whatever the commanding heights of the culture are, I’m not sure universities (corporations), news organizations (corporations), Hollywood (corporations), art museums (corporations), advertising (corporations), much of Silicon Valley (corporations), are controlled by the “left,” however defined, and that “the teachers’ unions and teaching colleges that shape k-12 education” have less to do with shaping K-12 education than the Texas State Board of Education, at least when it comes to textbooks.
He raises some serious points but I think he’s missing the bull’s eye.
From a historians perspective (one who studies this period), I find that era to be just as tumultuous, and much darker than the 60s. At least in the 60s, with everything happening, you still had a sense of hope that things were moving in the right direction. By the 70s, I think many people were just turning inward and many activists took a violent turn as a result. It was the revolutionary hope of the 60s curdling into the cynicism of the me era.
About the only thing Bernays regretted in his PR career, according to his autobiography, is promoting cigarette smoking for women.
Once upon a time, I asked Bernays to have a public access TV conversation with Noam Chomsky. Both agreed but Bernays wanted to read Chomsky and Herman’s Manufacturing Consent first. I gave him a copy of the book and he then backed out after reading it.
I found him to be an odious little man in my short acquaintance with him.
