Optimism
I vaguely remember the 1970s. It was a time of optimism and hope, forever looking to the future and thinking great things were going to happen to us. We partied and took drugs while swilling vast amounts of alcohol, truly believing that we were immortal. We thought that nothing bad could happen and that we held the secrets to the future. We all told each other how great we all would be and how the world would remember us for eternity. We were the generation that would save the world from itself.
Then we grew up.
We had children, responsibilities, and our future seemed darker, somehow. That bright shiny light that we all saw so clearly was now dimmed a little bit by reality. We got real jobs and began to see that being a responsible human was not such a bad thing after all. We started to obey the laws instead of doing what we would and found we liked it.
The 80s became the decade of excess, more of everything to make us forget that we were failures in our own minds, that the dreams that we were certain would come true were gone like farts in the wind. We traded material things for those dreams of spiritualism and enlightenment, and did it with a gusto that made us feel young again and helped us get so fucked up that we forgot our loss. (If just for a little while.)
The 90s were the decade of conformity, the dreams of the 70s finally gone from our minds, forgotten in a haze of booze, new experience, and affluence. We could finally drown our loss in things, great, shiny, beeping, glowing, cleaver things that do things that we never thought possible, like computers and satellite TV. We became entertained like no generation had ever become entertained.
Now we live in the new millennium. Now finally mature, we are thinking of retirement and taking things a little easier as the creaks in our bones grow louder and more insistent. The optimism of the 70’s is finally gone, replaced with a new hope of leisure time and knowing that the past 30+ years have been better than we thought they were at the time, that all those dreams and feelings were just part of the cycle of life, and, if nothing else, we did not blow up the whole world in a fit of nuclear rage.
I think we all did pretty well after all.
Then we grew up.
We had children, responsibilities, and our future seemed darker, somehow. That bright shiny light that we all saw so clearly was now dimmed a little bit by reality. We got real jobs and began to see that being a responsible human was not such a bad thing after all. We started to obey the laws instead of doing what we would and found we liked it.
The 80s became the decade of excess, more of everything to make us forget that we were failures in our own minds, that the dreams that we were certain would come true were gone like farts in the wind. We traded material things for those dreams of spiritualism and enlightenment, and did it with a gusto that made us feel young again and helped us get so fucked up that we forgot our loss. (If just for a little while.)
The 90s were the decade of conformity, the dreams of the 70s finally gone from our minds, forgotten in a haze of booze, new experience, and affluence. We could finally drown our loss in things, great, shiny, beeping, glowing, cleaver things that do things that we never thought possible, like computers and satellite TV. We became entertained like no generation had ever become entertained.
Now we live in the new millennium. Now finally mature, we are thinking of retirement and taking things a little easier as the creaks in our bones grow louder and more insistent. The optimism of the 70’s is finally gone, replaced with a new hope of leisure time and knowing that the past 30+ years have been better than we thought they were at the time, that all those dreams and feelings were just part of the cycle of life, and, if nothing else, we did not blow up the whole world in a fit of nuclear rage.
I think we all did pretty well after all.
posted by MizfiTroll at 5:55 AM
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