Our era vs. our parents'
I was thinking out loud with a friend (you know who you are) the other day about the weird things we've (meaning my post-WWII so-called "boomer" generation) lived through in our time: assassinations, 9/11, this (COVID-19). Sleepless during the night, I started thinking about my parents' era and how they lived through events of deep social inspiration: the Depression and social movements of the 1930s and '40s, World War II (fight against fascism).* Then I started to think more about it. They had their weird times too: McCarthy period being one. And we had our deeply soul-inspiring things too: the civil rights movement and the anti-war movement being two. Of course their era overlaps with ours. What stands out to me, though, is World War II and everything connected to it.
*Oh, I forgot about the Bolshevik Revolution and its ripples through time and space.
Let's see if I can make a timeline/chart: soul-inspiring in red, weird in blue
Us (adult years):
1950s-70s: civil rights movement - assassinations - antiwar movement
2001; 9/11
2020: COVID-19
Parents:
1910s: Bolshevik Revolution
1930s-40s: Depression - labor movement/New Deal - WWII
1950s-70s: McCarthy period - civil rights movement - antiwar movement
I didn't include McCarthy period under "us" because we were children then
I didn't include assassinations under "parents" because I don't think it was quite so shocking to them, having lived through WWI and II, than it was to us.
I could have included World War I under "parents" - maybe I should, but not sure how it fits in with my "schema" (i.e., "a representation of a plan or theory in the form of an outline or model").
Of course there's more than one way to look at any of this. For example, the Depression was both horrible ("weird") in its various features and soul-inspiring in the social movements of its time.
Another observation: notice the big gaps in "our" timeline - nothing much in the 1980s-90s. Yes things happened, but nothing that stands out to me in the way these other things do.
My overall impression, looking at my "chart", is that we've had more "weird" than our parents did.
*Oh, I forgot about the Bolshevik Revolution and its ripples through time and space.
Let's see if I can make a timeline/chart: soul-inspiring in red, weird in blue
Us (adult years):
1950s-70s: civil rights movement - assassinations - antiwar movement
2001; 9/11
2020: COVID-19
Parents:
1910s: Bolshevik Revolution
1930s-40s: Depression - labor movement/New Deal - WWII
1950s-70s: McCarthy period - civil rights movement - antiwar movement
I didn't include McCarthy period under "us" because we were children then
I didn't include assassinations under "parents" because I don't think it was quite so shocking to them, having lived through WWI and II, than it was to us.
I could have included World War I under "parents" - maybe I should, but not sure how it fits in with my "schema" (i.e., "a representation of a plan or theory in the form of an outline or model").
Of course there's more than one way to look at any of this. For example, the Depression was both horrible ("weird") in its various features and soul-inspiring in the social movements of its time.
Another observation: notice the big gaps in "our" timeline - nothing much in the 1980s-90s. Yes things happened, but nothing that stands out to me in the way these other things do.
My overall impression, looking at my "chart", is that we've had more "weird" than our parents did.
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