how awesome were the 60's vs. how it is portrayed in the media?

Question

Shows like Mad Men, films like X-men first class, the Wonder Years, Austin Powers, the 60's always look like one of the greatest decades to be alive!

Where everyone had a good job with vacation time and great wages, everyone knew their roles and did their jobs well, the girls were sexier, Men were men, kids were always safe to go outdoors and could take their guns out just for fun to shoot woodland animals, nobody cared about guns at all for that matter and you could go to a gun store and upon receipt of cash immediately have a new gun thrust into your hand!

Everybody had sex everywhere all the time, nobody had to worry about aids or political correctness or social issues of any kind while smoking and drinking openly and freely everywhere even while driving and at the office.

As someone born in the 90's your decade upside down I have to ask:

If you were alive in the 60's does that represent the average american life. Do you like things better now or then? If you could would you change the direction America has gone in since that era? Do you feel like we have more or less freedoms as a people? Or have we become overly responsible to the point of being a nanny state?

staisil · Accepted Answer

These sites will give you some great back-round information.

http://kclibrary.lonestar.edu/decade60.html
http://www.thepeoplehistory.com/1960s.html
http://www.history.com/topics/1960s

Roger Lathbury · Answer

Your picture of the 1960's is more of a caricature than a faithful statement of—to use a 1960's phrase—"like it [was]." There was, however, more excitement in the air, I think, and the various liberations from racism, dress codes, social restraint, and conformity, subsequently pushed even further, were more focused and consciously there. However, the 1960's began officially with the assassination of President Kennedy and ended with the resignation of Richard Nixon. During that time an unjust and unpopular war was going on in Vietnam, and the social upheavals had downsides as well as upsides.

I do remember having sex in the 1960's, but not everywhere all the time. The girls were pretty, but no prettier than now. I, prettier then too, was a student and had to earn a degree; some time was spent in the library. It wasn't all lying out on the grass tripping. I recall well smoking pot and trying to get high. The darn stuff doesn't work for me—I get no effect; I gave it up. I also remember a lot of stoned people acting silly and thinking it was important. I loved the music; a new album by the Beatles, Bob Dylan, or the Rolling Stones (and many others) was an event.

I don't remember much about guns. I believed in the â® movement ("Girls say yes to boys who say no") and disliked anyone harming anything. Still feel much that way. I had friends who were in communes and some who lived in group arrangements, but what looked like easygoing cohabitation was often colored by jealousies, cross-rivalries and sometimes coercion. It wasn't all a utopia.

In sum, I think I did like it better then, but part of the lesson of those times is that it's silly to harp on such an idea. As Bob Dylan says in "It's All Right, Ma, I'm Only Bleeding," "He not busy being born is busy dying."

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how awesome were the 60's vs. how it is portrayed in the media?

2 Answers