Are we walking towards a dystopia?

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I have important, secret news for you. Lean close and I'll whisper it in your ear. Ready, baby?


EVERYONE IS A UTOPIAN!!!!!

It's true. Ask anyone and they'll tell you their vision of perfect perfected perfectioness. And you know what else? We're all full of shit.

SHIT! WALLOW IN IT! IT'S LIKE JELL-O, EVERYONE HAS ROOM FOR MOAR.

I must be broken.

[Placid Dingo]

Maybe the real harm in the whole utopian ideal is that is involves a perfect vision that needs to be IMPOSED on other people.

[NewSpag]

Maybe the real harm in the whole utopian ideal is that is involves a perfect vision that needs to be IMPOSED on other people.

Or maybe the real harm in the whole utopian ideal is that it presumes the perfection can be objectified.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

Maybe the real harm in the whole utopian ideal is that is involves a perfect vision that needs to be IMPOSED on other people.

Or maybe the real harm in the whole utopian ideal is that it presumes the perfection can be objectified.

The real harm in utopianism is that it presumes perfection is possible. Actually the real harm is that people subscribe to that delusion.

[Deepthroat Chopra]

A concept I've loved toying with is past Utopia's, otherwise known as a "Golden Age" of some sort to someone.

An example is the conservatives (here at least) fixation with the 1950's. Apparently, there were no drug problems, crime, or dark people then. Well, there were the indigenous dark folk, but they solved that problem with a series of Mission's just far enough into the desert so that they didn't have to look at them. We've had politicians even defend that particular decaed as a perfect time. Womens were still in the house all the time, you didn't have to put any effort into coffee making. None of that Sushi crap around. Meat and three veg. Oh, and priests weren't being harangued by all that paedophilia accusations.

Of course, as you know, there's the dark side to all of those things. Sure, hardly anyone divorced. But why is that seen as a good thing? Do you really want to be in a time when Men weren't at all accountable for violence, financial abuse and just being plain bores?

Bugger the 50's. Gimme today. It's not perfect, but I can eat Vietnamese food as much as I want.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

A concept I've loved toying with is past Utopia's, otherwise known as a "Golden Age" of some sort to someone.

An example is the conservatives (here at least) fixation with the 1950's. Apparently, there were no drug problems, crime, or dark people then. Well, there were the indigenous dark folk, but they solved that problem with a series of Mission's just far enough into the desert so that they didn't have to look at them. We've had politicians even defend that particular decaed as a perfect time. Womens were still in the house all the time, you didn't have to put any effort into coffee making. None of that Sushi crap around. Meat and three veg. Oh, and priests weren't being harangued by all that paedophilia accusations.

Of course, as you know, there's the dark side to all of those things. Sure, hardly anyone divorced. But why is that seen as a good thing? Do you really want to be in a time when Men weren't at all accountable for violence, financial abuse and just being plain bores?

Bugger the 50's. Gimme today. It's not perfect, but I can eat Vietnamese food as much as I want.

This. So much this.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

A concept I've loved toying with is past Utopia's, otherwise known as a "Golden Age" of some sort to someone.

An example is the conservatives (here at least) fixation with the 1950's. Apparently, there were no drug problems, crime, or dark people then. Well, there were the indigenous dark folk, but they solved that problem with a series of Mission's just far enough into the desert so that they didn't have to look at them. We've had politicians even defend that particular decaed as a perfect time. Womens were still in the house all the time, you didn't have to put any effort into coffee making. None of that Sushi crap around. Meat and three veg. Oh, and priests weren't being harangued by all that paedophilia accusations.

Of course, as you know, there's the dark side to all of those things. Sure, hardly anyone divorced. But why is that seen as a good thing? Do you really want to be in a time when Men weren't at all accountable for violence, financial abuse and just being plain bores?

Bugger the 50's. Gimme today. It's not perfect, but I can eat Vietnamese food as much as I want.

This. So much this.

Not only that, but that mindset is a very conservative way of thinking regardless of political inclination. Everyone has their golden era.

Well you know what? Your golden era sucked for some reason.

Let's take the 50s, since it was brought up. There's this false sense of domestic tranquility even though there is clear gender inequality. Dad was always fucked up on Scotch because he had a hard day at the office. So he'd come home and smack around mom and ignore the kids because he had a hard day at the office and they had to suck it up because he was the breadwinner and was only for their good. So mom has to pop valium while feeling trapped and Junior has to be an asshole to his peers. Also, constant threat of nuclear warfare.

Yep. Sounds like an awesome time to live and go back to.

It's like when I was a kid and my chemistry teacher told me flat out that if I lived in the Middle Ages I would have died already.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Yesterday in Sociology we were asked "When was the Golden Age of the American family?"

I (semi-jokingly) answered "The pre-Columbian era", but after thinking about it my serious answer would have to be now. Because this is the first time in American history when fathers don't essentially own their wives and children, when girls who get pregnant outside of marriage aren't sent away in shame or forced into servitude, when widows don't have to indenture their kids, when children don't have to start work at age 12, when people are (almost) free to marry whom they want regardless of race or sex, when children are very likely to survive to adulthood without crippling disease, when life expectancies are so long that kids can reasonably expect to grow up with grandparents or even great-grandparents, and when there is a support network... however flawed... that helps single parents to raise their kids without resorting to slavery or prostitution.

An era that actually accepts and supports all kinds of family instead of glorifying one and punishing the others seems like a "golden age" for family, if you ask me.

[Q. G. Pennyworth]

It's like when I was a kid and my chemistry teacher told me flat out that if I lived in the Middle Ages I would have died already.

I'd be dead three times now without modern medicine. It's a sobering thing to keep in mind.

[AFK]

Of course, life span expectations were different in that era.  It seems like such a short amount of time to us today, and an existence that was undoubtedly fraught with tribulation and struggles.  But within the paradigm of that particular time, it likely would not have felt any more egregious than our life spans today feel to us. 

I would expect many people made the most of the time that they had and did what they could within that time to make their world and community stronger. 

[Q. G. Pennyworth]

Of course, life span expectations were different in that era.  It seems like such a short amount of time to us today, and an existence that was undoubtedly fraught with tribulation and struggles.  But within the paradigm of that particular time, it likely would not have felt any more egregious than our life spans today feel to us. 

I would expect many people made the most of the time that they had and did what they could within that time to make their world and community stronger.

18, 20, and 23 are not ages that have ever been considered "a full life," regardless of the time period. Even when there's a very low life expectancy, it's not because people were dropping off at 35 or 40, it's just averaging out the infant mortality, maternal childbirth deaths, and early childhood illnesses. People were living into their seventies and eighties even in the worst of times, just fewer of them made it that far.

[Doktor Howl]

Yesterday in Sociology we were asked "When was the Golden Age of the American family?"

I would say between 1976 and 2000.  Relatively speaking.  And mostly toward the earlier end of that range.

[Freeky]

Yesterday in Sociology we were asked "When was the Golden Age of the American family?"

I would say between 1976 and 2000.  Relatively speaking.  And mostly toward the earlier end of that range.

Why's that?

[Cain]

Wages were still rising in real terms in the earlier part of that period.

Also, after Watergate and Ford, there was a kickback against instrusive government which involved, among other things, investigations into the CIA and the election of several firebrands determined to bring more accountability and transparency to government.

It wasn't ideal, but there seemed to be progress happening, as opposed to "progress being co-opted by elite economic elements to continue gorging themselves on public money and strengthen the National Security State", which is pretty much 2008 summed up.

[Freeky]

The wages I get, but how does the Watergate blowback have anything to do with families?