As a queer person (agender) with a conservative dad, I don’t get why he says he wants to go back to the 1950s. What was so special back then besides his reasoning that times were simpler? I feel like it would be harder for me then as a queer person.

  • 𝕽𝖚𝖆𝖎𝖉𝖍𝖗𝖎𝖌𝖍@midwest.social
    10·
    6 hours ago

    A little later, maybe, but much the same… on the upside:

    • we were optimistic.
    • we were going to conquer space, and it was going to be real live humans, not semi-autonomous robots
    • society (in the US and W. Europe) was (very) slowly getting more progressive.
    • Hitler had been killed, and fascism defeated forever. Never again would we have another dictator; never again would we watch a country commit genocide against a people.
    • life was slower. TV was the bad influence rotting kids brains. We didn’t have an entire industry focused on commoditizing us.
    • computers were fucking incredible. The future we imagined coming from computers was very, very different than what we ended up with. For one thing, we didn’t imagine a single-minded focus of all software and computing power on commercializing every aspect of our life.
    • no Facebook, no Twitter, no TikTok
    • Income disparity was far less extreme, and class mobility was a realistic dream. You could imagine buying a nice house and raising a family on a single income. If you worked hard and had a little luck you could pass on some reasonable wealth to your kids.
    • shit really was - in the aggregate - getting better all around. Technology was advancing and bringing amazing products; science was being discovered that you could basically wrap your head around. Lives (in the Western world) were improving (relatively, compared to previous decades) for most people, and all this happened at a pace that didn’t up-end your world every day, 365 days a year.
    • you could get all the news you needed for a fairly rounded world view in a single newspaper, much of which you could read over breakfast. There was no information overload.

    On the downsides,

    • dad beat us with a belt as punishment
    • we were having wars that were disrupting society. The draft was a real worry.
    • we were constantly afraid that nuclear war could happen at any time
    • commies were hiding under our beds
    • minorities of all kinds were fighting for their rights, and fighting to get them enforced. It sucked to be gay, or black, or a woman (but it was getting better, slowly)
    • most people didn’t have access to a computer, much less a PC until well into the 80’s, so you had to infiltrate University computer labs.

    It was a slower world, with fewer consumer goods, fewer conveniences, and worse medical care. Everybody smoked, all the time. But slower was good, and - best of all - we didn’t realize yet that we were killing the planet; the world wasn’t ending.