I grew up in the States and I don't know that "remembered fondly" is exactly the right term for how WWII was recalled in the sixties, but it was certainly glorified. Similar with the Great Depression: people didn't think it was a wonderful time, but they did believe that people were better and more noble back then and the travails of the period brought out the best qualities in people.
While people now think of the sixties as a period of huge cultural transformation, there were loads of people then who hated what was going on and looked back on the fifties as being a golden age when everyone (especially the damn kids and coloured folks) knew their place and everything was wonderful.
In Britain, many people - most of whom weren't even alive in 1945 - still persist in looking back at WWII as the country's Greatest Hour. That attitude is so deeply ingrained in so many Brits that it's a good part of what's behind the current Brexit shitstorm.
The truly malignant side of nostalgia is that believing the myth of an illusory glorious past can prevent you from acknowledging where you and your country are now and making sensible decisions about the future. Instead, you try to recreate some marvellous past that never actually existed.
IIN That I'm sick of all the nostalgia in today's society?
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Do you ever remember there being any sort of nostalgia back in the 1960s? Like, did people back then ever look back fondly on the WW2 period?
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Boojum
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spunkluvr
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I grew up in the States and I don't know that "remembered fondly" is exactly the right term for how WWII was recalled in the sixties, but it was certainly glorified. Similar with the Great Depression: people didn't think it was a wonderful time, but they did believe that people were better and more noble back then and the travails of the period brought out the best qualities in people.
While people now think of the sixties as a period of huge cultural transformation, there were loads of people then who hated what was going on and looked back on the fifties as being a golden age when everyone (especially the damn kids and coloured folks) knew their place and everything was wonderful.
In Britain, many people - most of whom weren't even alive in 1945 - still persist in looking back at WWII as the country's Greatest Hour. That attitude is so deeply ingrained in so many Brits that it's a good part of what's behind the current Brexit shitstorm.
The truly malignant side of nostalgia is that believing the myth of an illusory glorious past can prevent you from acknowledging where you and your country are now and making sensible decisions about the future. Instead, you try to recreate some marvellous past that never actually existed.
No. Mainly because, in the sixties, we were all having such a good time!
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Anonymous Post Author
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Including those in the Vietnam?
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spunkluvr
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We're not all American - thankfully.