"This is a uniquely terrible moment, for all kinds of reasons. The coronavirus pandemic, the election, the wildfires, followed by hurricanes, followed by a second wave of coronavirus."
I think this view is actually the root of the problem.
In the late 1950', early 1960's, instead of fire drills at school we had "duck and cover" drills. Get under your desk and cover the back of your neck to protect yourself from the incoming atomic bomb. We joked about how stupid that was—no, not about the bomb, the hiding.
Soon, we learned of police dogs attacking civil rights demonstrators who were beaten up and thrown in jail for months. That was more upsetting. The SF Chronicle sent its outdoors columnist Bud Boyd and his family into the Sierra's to see how long they could survive without provisions in case of a nuclear attack. That didn't go well. Then Kennedy was assassinated.
By 1965 we had the Watts riot in which, unlike Portland, the police shot and killed 34 Blacks, while their whole community went up in flames. This was followed by many more such riots especially after MLK’s was assassinated. Two months later Bobby Kennedy, who had a real chance of stopping the Vietnam war was assassinated.
In 1968 Erlich published The Population Bomb — our version of global warming — that would starve billions to death a few decades hence. By the next year, the war was killing 1000 young men per month, while our government incinerated villagers with napalm — that was the one that upset me.
Still, as I recall, we remained optimistic until we ran the wonderful progressive George McGovern for president, he concluded “I opened the doors to the Democratic Party and 20 million walked out,” after handing us over to Nixon. But Watergate soon cheered us up.
I think we were angry but not anxious about these events because we knew how bad the 1950s had been with Korea and Joe McCarthy, and how much worse than that the 1940s had been with WWII, and how much more dismal than that the 1930s were with ten years of the Great Depression. And in the ‘20s they didn’t even know antibiotics would be discovered. And before that washing machines were hand-powered and they didn’t even have cellphones.
Kat Rosenfield has many good suggestions for coping, but the one I would expand on is this: “Let go of that lie.” And the biggest lie is “This is a uniquely terrible moment.”
Perhaps it is quite normal for young people in particular to be ignorant of their own history but it seems particularly pronounced in the current moment.
Most people alive today have never lived in a ‘terrible’ age compared to even the relatively recent past. I hear similar hyperbolic sentiments expressed in the UK (where I live) fairly often. Nearly anyone born here since 1945 is prodigiously lucky compared to most other people living in most other places at most other times.
"This is a uniquely terrible moment, for all kinds of reasons. The coronavirus pandemic, the election, the wildfires, followed by hurricanes, followed by a second wave of coronavirus."
I think this view is actually the root of the problem.
In the late 1950', early 1960's, instead of fire drills at school we had "duck and cover" drills. Get under your desk and cover the back of your neck to protect yourself from the incoming atomic bomb. We joked about how stupid that was—no, not about the bomb, the hiding.
Soon, we learned of police dogs attacking civil rights demonstrators who were beaten up and thrown in jail for months. That was more upsetting. The SF Chronicle sent its outdoors columnist Bud Boyd and his family into the Sierra's to see how long they could survive without provisions in case of a nuclear attack. That didn't go well. Then Kennedy was assassinated.
By 1965 we had the Watts riot in which, unlike Portland, the police shot and killed 34 Blacks, while their whole community went up in flames. This was followed by many more such riots especially after MLK’s was assassinated. Two months later Bobby Kennedy, who had a real chance of stopping the Vietnam war was assassinated.
In 1968 Erlich published The Population Bomb — our version of global warming — that would starve billions to death a few decades hence. By the next year, the war was killing 1000 young men per month, while our government incinerated villagers with napalm — that was the one that upset me.
Still, as I recall, we remained optimistic until we ran the wonderful progressive George McGovern for president, he concluded “I opened the doors to the Democratic Party and 20 million walked out,” after handing us over to Nixon. But Watergate soon cheered us up.
I think we were angry but not anxious about these events because we knew how bad the 1950s had been with Korea and Joe McCarthy, and how much worse than that the 1940s had been with WWII, and how much more dismal than that the 1930s were with ten years of the Great Depression. And in the ‘20s they didn’t even know antibiotics would be discovered. And before that washing machines were hand-powered and they didn’t even have cellphones.
Kat Rosenfield has many good suggestions for coping, but the one I would expand on is this: “Let go of that lie.” And the biggest lie is “This is a uniquely terrible moment.”
@steven stoft -
I completely agree with your point.
Perhaps it is quite normal for young people in particular to be ignorant of their own history but it seems particularly pronounced in the current moment.
Most people alive today have never lived in a ‘terrible’ age compared to even the relatively recent past. I hear similar hyperbolic sentiments expressed in the UK (where I live) fairly often. Nearly anyone born here since 1945 is prodigiously lucky compared to most other people living in most other places at most other times.
“Wouldn’t you rather be outside?”
I think that answer applies equally well to both readers’ questions asked in this round.