"The Good Old Days"

The Good Old Days, plainly, never existed.  If ever anyone says that things were better, think about the time they're talking about.  You'll probably find out something that wasn't so good.

For example: at a study group I was in, someone referred to the 1930s as the Good Old Days.  I immediately exclaimed, "But black people couldn't go into some restaurants!"  He said he went to an desegregated school.  There are two problems with that comeback:
That it was called "desegregated" means it had been segregated at some point, and some point recently.
The second problem, and in fact the general problem with the "Good Old Days."  It's based on personal experience, and colored by nostalgia.  Integrated grade schools were not widespread, and there was much violence against attempts at desegregation.  So his own experience is a little irrelevant to the point. (And besides all that, the 30s were the Great Depression - clearly not a time to be envious of).

I love Super Mario 3.  All other console games pale to it.  Even the Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.  For the computer, I will forever love playing Sim City 3000 and Civilization: Call to Power.  Why?  Because they were my first favorite games, and I had nothing else to do.  Now I have to balance my gaming with work and making my own food and keeping up with the news and getting gas and my blog and making plans with friends and budgeting my money.  No time in my life will be as easy as when I was a kid.  And not because the 90s were particularly great, but because I was a kid.  We ought to say "I miss being a kid," if because that is almost definately what you mean.  Even those who miss WWII because you "knew who the enemy was because of their uniforms," well, there were spies on both sides and there were Jewish Partisans.  We still know who the enemy is, we just have to listen to their words, not just look for a uniform.

There is a larger form of this. On movies or plays or books: Oh, they don't make them like they used to! Or how everyone loves foriegn films more than American films. It's explained real simply: we remember the good and not the bad. We don't have records of crap.

In the ancient days, everything was handwritten (of course).  If they wanted something copied, they'd write it again.  There were tons of plays written and performed, and books, too.  The ones that were good were copied, so that if the original got destroyed, they'd still have it.  Alternatively, they'd write copies to send to faraway places.  And as time went on, they'd write more and more.  So the reason we have Sophocles and Aristotles and Socrates and Aristophanes and Cicero and Caesar is because everyone back then liked their stuff and wrote it A LOT, thus increasing its chances of survival, thus increasing our chances of finding it.  There were plenty of idiots in the ancient world - Aristophanes writes about one of them.  There were plenty of bad writers and stupid philsophers - but they got drowned out and forgotten.  As will it be with us.

There are 50 million (according to CyberJournalist.net) blogs online.  If the internet crashes and dies (erasing absolutely everything), only those quoted in print, or those printed onto paper (for personal use) will be saved for posterity.  The one quoted most often will likely be discovered later.  I only hope they don't take those 50 great ones and say "Man, the 00 decade was full of millions of these?  This was truly a great generation!)  No, most blogs are crap.  This blog doesn't have much push beyond whoever reads it, and that's fine with me.

Even if the internet doesn't crash and die (I'm not even sure that can really happen), eventually some blogs will fade into obscurity.  After I die, I imagine this blog will stop being updated, and soon no one will check it.  And that will happen to a lot of blogs.  And once we find the next technology beyond the internet, only a few will still be visited and even updated, and eventually only the really great ones will be transmitted to that new medium.

As for foreign films, it's even simpler.  The Foreign Film award category at the Oscars takes EVERY MOVIE made out of the US and takes the top 4.  Of course those movies are going to be spectacular.  They are, literally, the best of the best.

I call it Good Old Days Syndrome, for the simple fact the acronym is GODS.  And because it is always wrong, it is thus false.  So, to be clear, I am decrying false GODS.

To help fight false GODS, I have decided to include a few reasons why every decade sucked.


1900s Boxer Rebellion, US Chinese Exclusion Act Passed, Plague in India, Russo-Japanese War, Bloody Sunday, Typhoid Mary Captured and Exiled, Italian Earthquake kill 150,000, Tunguska Event, US President McKinley, Japanese Prince Ito, and Italian King Umburto I Assassinated, Segregation
1910s Chinese Revolution, Mona Lisa Stolen, Titanic Sinks, Archduke Ferdinand of the Hapsburg Empire (Austria-Hungary) is assassinated, World War I, Armenian Genocide, German use of Poison Gas, Lusitania Sunk by German U-Boat, Russian Revolution, 1918 Global Flu Epidemic, Russian Tzar Nicholas II and Family are killed, Segregation
1920s Mussolini marches on Rome - takes over Italy, Prohibition (and Subsequent Gang Violence), Mein Kampf published, St. Valentine's Day Massacare, Stock Market Crashes, Segregation
1930s Great Depression, Stalin Begins Collectivizing Agriculture, Hitler becomes Chancellor of Germany, The Dust Bowl, NAZI Nuremburg laws, Spanish Civil War, Hindenberg, Japan invades China, Kristallnacht, Chamberlain declares "Peace in our Time", German Jewish Refugees refused immigration rights everyone, Segregation, World War II declared
1940s:  World War II, Pearl Harbor, Japanese Internmant Camps,  the Holocaust (Or, if you're Anti-Semitic, the founding of Israel), First Nuclear Bomb Dropped, Start of the Cold War, Jewish Refugee on the Exodus are refused entry to Palestine by British, Gandhi Assassinated, Apartheid in South Africa begins, Segregation
1950s Korean War, McCarthyism, Murder of Emmet Till, "Great Leap Forward," Segregation, Threat of Nuclear Annihilation
1960s Bay of Pigs, Berlin Wall built, Cuban Missile Crisis, First Person Killed while trying to Cross the Berlin Wall, JFK Assassinated, Nelson Menela sentenced to life in prison, LA Riots, Malcom X Assassinated, Vietnam War, "Cultural Revolution," MLK Assassinated, Robert F. Kennedy Assassinated, Helter Skelter," rise of Yassir Arafat, Segregation, Threat of Nuclear Annihilation
1970s Palestinian Terrorists hijack 5 planes, Kent State Shootings, Israeli Athletes killed at Munich Olymics, Watergate, rise of Pol Pot, death of Elvis, Nuclear Accident at Three Mile Island, Iran Hostage Crisis begins
1980s John Lennon Assassinated, Failed Rescue Attempt of Hostages in Iran, AIDS Identified, Soviets Shootdown Korean Commercial Jet, US Embassy in Beirut Bombed, Hole in Ozone Discovered, Challenger Explodes, Black Monday, Exxon Valdez Oil Spill, Tiananmen Square Massacre, Threat of Nuclear Annihilation
1990s Iraq Invades Kuwait, WTC Bombing, Waco Texas, Rwandan Genocide Begins, Oklahoma City Bombing, Gass Attack in Tokyo Subway, Yithak Rabin Assassinated, Mad Cow Disease, Unabomber Arrested, Princess Diana Dies, India and Pakistan Test Nuclear Weapons, Columbine, Kosovo-Serbia War, Threat of Nuclear Annihilation (Less emphasized)

See?  Every decade has its downs.  I was a kid in the 90s.  I have no idea what happened in Waco - all I know is that it made people sad and I couldn't play my video games for a few days.  So the next time an old person, unless it's your grandparent, talk about the Good Old Days, call them out on it.  It's False GODS.  So go do the Lord's work! :-p


James Thomas must be disbarred!!