1980 – the year my first son was born.

1957, but I’m not telling why.

@janbb – Fair enough. We all have our personal moments of elevated happiness, etc.

Just to be clear, however, I’m referring to the condemnation of the present and a simultaneous longing for a time that was better for everyone. We get a ton of comments here on fluther about the media or the Republicans or the Democrats or people just not doing things right, “like they used to”. It could also be “moral decline”.

So, if you feel that things are a mess now (not personally), what time do you refer to as the time before things fell apart?

Yes, I kind of understood that but I feel, while a good question, it is a somewhat arbitrary call to make. “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…...in fact, it was a time so much like the present….” (Dickens)

The future.

I have always pictured the decade I was born into, the 40s, the WWII years, as a period in the U.S of great patriotism, solidarity and sacrifice. Admittedly, I got this impression mainly from the movies, which are not always the best measure of reality—although if you want to see one movie that doesn’t sugarcoat one of the biggest problems of that decade, returning vets, see “The Best Years of Our Lives.” But I do recall asking my mother in the late 50s or early 60s if she remembered the 40s being the way I imagined, and she confirmed it. (Of course she was a devout movie fan herself.)

These are the good old days.

Or, rather, they will be in another 20–30 years.

None were, #Nostalgiafreaks

#flutherthreadenvy

There is healthy expression on that thread about what is causing the moral decay. I’m hoping those people will come here to school us about those years that had the characteristics they so miss.

1971. Particularly February 22 of that year.

From an article by Patrick Dillon: ”....Edward Gibbon, author of “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire” (1776–89), didn’t have much doubt. “If a man were called to fix the period in the history of the world during which the condition of the human race was most happy and prosperous, he would, without hesitation, name that which elapsed from the death of Domitian to the accession of Commodus.” This was the second century AD, when Rome’s “five good emperors”, Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius, brought a peace and stability that western Europe would—in Gibbon’s view—never see again. But maybe it was an easier question then. Gibbon was white, smart and male. He could walk from the right end of one hierarchical society into another without a tremor. Nor was he sacrificing much technology to do so. Barring gunpowder and the printing press, his world and Hadrian’s were close enough to let Gibbon swap breeches for a toga and barely notice the difference.”

I always wonder about this, too. So far as I can tell, overall there has never been a better time to be alive than right now.

I don’t believe that there was such a thing as the ‘good ole days’. I do feel that there may have been some things which were better relating to different points in history, but they were always offsetted by their darksides. A great deal of things that people fantasize about today which they believe were a thing of the past were nothing more than mere delusions.

What’s truly frightening to me is the fact many traditionalists today really believe that we should go back to the past, and even more frightening is that they have delusions of how the great or romantic the past was.

The best year in the history of humanity is the one you would prefer having to visit a dentist. I choose 2013.

You’re just using that as an excuse not to mow your lawn @mattbrowne!

Yes, I don’t enjoy lawn mowing.