An excellent post. I'd suggest 1999 - I remember the mood at New Year's Eve 2000 as being particularly optimistic. The Cold War was over, and 9/11 hadn't happened yet.
Kind of late to this, but I think the shorthand for a lot of people (present company excluded, of course) is to do the following:
1. Take your birth year.
2. Add ten years for the first best year. Odds are good that you're a kid doing fun kid things and your needs are adequately provided for. Be sure to include the fact that things were "simpler," likely because as a kid you didn't have adult worries to consider.
3. Add twenty years for the second best year. You're a young adult, you have the world by the tail and everything is new and exciting. Of course, there are those reactionary old fogies who have everything wrong and are scared of new ideas and technology, but what do they know?
4. Add thirty or more years for the bad, scary times. So much to worry about, lots of uncertainty and looming threats on the horizon. The world is going to hell in a handbasket and look at the crazy things the kids are up to. Also, the new technology is baffling and has all sorts of scary societal effects. It was better when things are simpler.
Obviously, the positive stuff isn't everyone's experience - lots of people experience difficult lives as kids and young adults. But I spend some time on social media groups devoted to the history of my home town and the town where I live now, and the constant "everything back then was great and now it sucks" is deafening.
Back in the nineties I remember saying how much I missed the eighties. Grunge music and gangsta rap didn't take off because people were generally *happy* with how things are going.
I do think there are some years we can look back on as particularly tumultuous - 1939, 1968, 1979, 2020 - but even the "best" years had serious problems that dominated the news and conversation while even "bad" years had their bright spots. I find myself having much more nostalgia for the 2000s than I could possibly have expected at the time.
Each of us lives inside a bubble that contains our conscious experiences and beliefs. Outside our individual bubbles are the experiences we don't have or cannot recall, including other people's experiences and beliefs. It doesn't matter how much you know, there is always more that you don't know. Korzybski would say that our relationship to our world is one of abstraction. There is no way we can escape these limitations. However, we can be conscious of these limitations and make an effort to stay curious about things we do not know or believe. Korzybski labeled this attitude a "consciousness of abstracting" resulting in psycho-physiological investigatory reactions.
An excellent post. I'd suggest 1999 - I remember the mood at New Year's Eve 2000 as being particularly optimistic. The Cold War was over, and 9/11 hadn't happened yet.
1993!
Kind of late to this, but I think the shorthand for a lot of people (present company excluded, of course) is to do the following:
1. Take your birth year.
2. Add ten years for the first best year. Odds are good that you're a kid doing fun kid things and your needs are adequately provided for. Be sure to include the fact that things were "simpler," likely because as a kid you didn't have adult worries to consider.
3. Add twenty years for the second best year. You're a young adult, you have the world by the tail and everything is new and exciting. Of course, there are those reactionary old fogies who have everything wrong and are scared of new ideas and technology, but what do they know?
4. Add thirty or more years for the bad, scary times. So much to worry about, lots of uncertainty and looming threats on the horizon. The world is going to hell in a handbasket and look at the crazy things the kids are up to. Also, the new technology is baffling and has all sorts of scary societal effects. It was better when things are simpler.
Obviously, the positive stuff isn't everyone's experience - lots of people experience difficult lives as kids and young adults. But I spend some time on social media groups devoted to the history of my home town and the town where I live now, and the constant "everything back then was great and now it sucks" is deafening.
Centennial year in Canada — 1967. Pierre Breton called it “The Last Good Year.” Was it?
2015 - last year before that weasel in the LHC screwed up the timeline/when David Bowie was still holding reality together.
Back in the nineties I remember saying how much I missed the eighties. Grunge music and gangsta rap didn't take off because people were generally *happy* with how things are going.
I do think there are some years we can look back on as particularly tumultuous - 1939, 1968, 1979, 2020 - but even the "best" years had serious problems that dominated the news and conversation while even "bad" years had their bright spots. I find myself having much more nostalgia for the 2000s than I could possibly have expected at the time.
1957, Macmillan tells Britons they've never had it so good.
1994
1996
In the picture, the older kid looks like he's sporting 1980s New Wave fashion and hair.
Let me try another: 1976 - Montreal Olympics, the year I immigrated to Canada, before Bill 101 took root...
1911
Each of us lives inside a bubble that contains our conscious experiences and beliefs. Outside our individual bubbles are the experiences we don't have or cannot recall, including other people's experiences and beliefs. It doesn't matter how much you know, there is always more that you don't know. Korzybski would say that our relationship to our world is one of abstraction. There is no way we can escape these limitations. However, we can be conscious of these limitations and make an effort to stay curious about things we do not know or believe. Korzybski labeled this attitude a "consciousness of abstracting" resulting in psycho-physiological investigatory reactions.
I'd be curious for a look at the Roaring Twenties, so how about 1924?
1961 = beginning of JFKs Camelot period.
How about 1972 , I was seven years old and as a Vancouver Island kid spent the long hot summer in Moose Jaw at my grandparents.