xepherys

Does anyone else ever yearn for yesteryear? Being born in the late 70's, I often look back on the bulk of the 80's with a sigh of longing. As a product of the 80's, I wonder what ever happened to the excitement and intrigue that life held back then. Not just from an age standpoint, either.

At that time, the Cold War was an everyday item. The USSR and the USA were toe to toe and everyone knew it, even kids in elementary school. There was a sort of mysticism about the Soviets and the situation of the world at large. Modern technology was just in it's infancy. The personal computer was being born. Science was making grand new leaps forward. Every new discovery, invention or change in the geo-political climate was intense. Everyone felt it. Kids, from young to college age were going through something very different... very unique. The music, the culture... it almost felt electric.

During the 90's that started to change. Business got big, tech got bigger, the world got smaller and life got less exciting. Discoveries still came in at lightning speed, but none of it was as interesting. There was less "wow-factor" in anything. It was almost expected that things would change monthly, weekly or daily. The wonder drug of yesterday was tomorrow's cause of cancer. Everything began to rapidly spiral into a sense of platonic acceptance of life.

Now in the 2st century, the era that sci-fi writers of days gone by dreamt of, we seem to have gone so much backwards in so many ways. Technology doesn't change every year or even every day now. It changes by the second, news is poured forth over the ether to the masses around the world. Every event is logged into the annals of history with speed and accuracy never before imagined. Life changes in the blink of an eye, not whenever a major event happens (9/11, Vietnam, WWII, Kennedy Assassination, etc.) but all the time... period! Life is a blur of knowledge without climax.

As I sit here looking up info on the musical Chess I realize how much things are different. Frankly, I'm not sure I'm happy with how things have turned out. Sure, the world is in conflict, just like always. But it's not at conflict with stable, common enemies. It's a crap-shoot. A free-for-all of those willing to die for no other reason than to kill others. There's no intrigue anymore, no romatic vision of espionage and spies, no pride to well up from the Olympics or the World Chess Championships. There's just life, for whatever we have to take it as.

Anyone have any clue what I'm rambling about?

isis

Maybe though, in 10 more years you'll look back on the early part of this century and realize how intriguing it really was. It takes time to dwell on events, I think, and since you're living in the present you can't really do it.

But man, those 80's sure did rule (from what I can remember of it)

ShaniFaye

I miss the 80's....I really really really miss the 80's 82-86 were my highschool years and I had the BEST time back then...I miss the music, and and I miss the shoes....chunky heels were the death of my shoe buying....I hate those fugly things

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I want the diabetic plan that comes with rollover carbs. I dont like the unused one expiring at midnite!!

xxSquirtxx

Yay! I thought I was the only one!!

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ShaniFaye

no you def arent the only one lol Its SO nice to see normal spikey heels are coming back

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I want the diabetic plan that comes with rollover carbs. I dont like the unused one expiring at midnite!!

Rlyss

I remember using Encyclopedia Britanica as a reference in essays, and then the awe with which we used Microsoft Encarta '95 as a substitute. I remember trawling through pages and pages of both mediums looking for information on my middle-school essays and marveling at the advances in technology able to fit ALL those huge hardcover books onto one little piece of plastic.

I'm not sure if I can say that the thrill of Google doesn't match though. Sometimes I marvel at the speed at which I can find information (ignoring accuracy for a moment) compared to the books, or even Encarta, and am still amazed at the incomprehensible size of the net, and other times I just think 'Oh great, another godamn Google search'.

I think isis makes a good point about everything seeming a certain way when it's the present. I was born in 1983 so it's the late 80s and the 90s that influenced me the most. I see a two year old toddler now and marvel when it strikes me that September 11 attacks to him or her is something that happened in the distant past, much like much of most of the Afghan/Soviet conflict, the Vietnam War, the Munich Olympic attacks, etc. were for me. They're events that happened to other people in another world that I can only study, and not experience. The post-September 11 era is something that we all experience, but to anyone born after 9/11 it's just... normal life.

Craven Morehead

Ha, you young pups! I graduated from high school in 1970. I'd love to go back and experience the late 60s again. So much was happening then, I don't think I even picked on half of it. Cultural changes, Viet Nam, cold war, military draft, racial unrest, all were huge issues that was just part of life. Now that its 25 years later, I'd love to go back and see what I missed. Not missed because I was stoned, but because I was just unaware that these were huge issues that were going to define a generation.

ARTelevision

Nope.
I do not miss any part of the past.
I'm pleased it does not exist.

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Lockjaw

Yeah I miss the 80s I guess everybody looks back on their childhood fondly but the world just seemed so simple. Things seemed to me a little more positive and upbeat.
But now I just look at the world and wonder when is the next time somebody is going to do something crazy and it all comes to an end.

warrrreagl

I'm down with ART; I'm glad the past is gone and staying gone.

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xepherys

Art-

Based on the past several posts of yours I've seen, you seem tucked somewhere between nihilism and existentialism. Is this the case, or am I just hoping to conclusions?

Bill O'Rights

Let's see...I grew up in the "Disco" era. Leisure suits, platform shoes and the Bee Gees. Am I glad it's gone? Yes. Oh god, yes.

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Glory's Sun

I don't miss the past for the most part. Some times I wish I could go back to highschool and relive the prank filled days..but I try not to focus on the past.

xepherys

LOL, Bill... yeah, I can't imagine missing the 70s. Though oddly enough, "That 70's Show" really hits well on the era and makes it amusing. But disco, polyester and Three's Company is enough to make anyone wretch. *grin* That is, of course, just my opinion.

roachboy

nostalgia it's no good
our future is not in our past

gang of four

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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

xepherys

roachboy-

That's a good post. I need to feed off of it for a moment. Hopefully, our future IS in our past, for we need to learn our mistakes so that we do not commit them again. It's fair to call that common knowledge. But the opposite can also be applied. Hopefully we learn what DOES work, and how things go most smoothly so that we may apply those theories to future ventures as to help assume the best outcome. Hopefully our future is not as grim as it appears today, but as bright as it appeared twenty years ago.

roachboy

well, i particularly enjoy the fact that the song came out in 1979.

high school for me was in the 1970s.
the only line i like about that period comes from "dazed and confused"--a crappy film that i took as being crappy because it was pretty accurate in depicting what it was like to be in high school during that time---the line is:

"if you ever hear me saying that these were the best years of my life, just fucking shoot me."

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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

Glory's Sun

ahh what a great movie.. I went to high school in the 90's so I was part of the grundge movement or whatever the hell it was called.

Clark

The thing about the past is that it is seen through a filter. Most of the crap of the time is filtered out and only the good things and the few extraordinary bad things are left. Longing for a past time is like longing for a past relationship it can be idealized because it dose not have to compete with the realities of your life. If you were to talk to me about the 80’s you would hear grate stories about the shows I went to and the times I had. You would think it was the best but you would not be hearing about all the nights I did not go to shows and the crapy times I had. Why would I bore you with my down times. Over a 10 year period I had a lot of good times but I bet you are having just as many right now and don’t even realize it. 15 or 20 years from now when you look back you will only think of that grate party of the show you caught. I would spend my time now having a blast.

ARTelevision

xepherys, nihilist in terms of the refusal to accept conceptual frameworks as descriptive of anything but themselves and existentialist as regards how I live my life.

Insightful.
Thanks.

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maleficent

Early 80s here... Pink and Green as a color combination, multiple layerd Izod shirts with the collars sticking up, oh lord what were we thinking?

Glad it's gone - the future is where it's at... (though I did have some really good times at Grateful Dead concerts, and a few others...)

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Grancey

Things do not change, we change.

-Henry David Thoreau

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Suave

No, I don't; a lot of my friends are all like "man, it was so awesome back *insert grade, age, year, whatever*" and then they go into how much it sucks now for whatever reasons. No, what I normally do in terms of reminiscing (on those rare days that I can remember anything at all), is I enjoy the memories past, and I'm just sort of happy and thankful that I got to experience that aspect of living.

Cynthetiq

nope... I'm finding that life is getting better with age

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JohnnyCarson

I graduated in 1976 and the biggest thing that I miss is the seeming innocence we had back then...there was no AIDS, no terrorism, much less hating in our country, especially in politics. You never heard "liberal" or "conservative" thrown about with such venom as there is today.

I often think back fondly to those "days gone by" and how I would love to go back to them sometimes. Life seemed so much simpler then and in the early 80's.

maleficent

absolutely true

Robert Browning said it best:

Grow old along with me -- the best is yet to be...

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lurkette

I'm with the anti-nostalgia crew on this one. Every era has positive and negative attributes, and they're often intimately linked. It's kind of pointless to wish things could be the way they used to be: for one thing, it's not going to happen. Enjoy where you are instead of waiting 20 years to look back and wish it was like this again.

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