Golden age thinking
Katie Yslas
Mesa Legend
Whether its senior citizens romanticizing the era of their youth, conservatives begrudging modern morality, or history nerds pining for the days of yore, this phrase is often lurking in the midst of intelligent conversation, just waiting to be used as some sort of antiquated checkmate. This type of Golden Age thinking is by no means a new phenomenon. No matter what time they live in, there are those people to the past and proclaiming that life was simply better in some bygone era. But that’s the thing, they aren’t living it. When I was in junior high, I was completely enamored with the ‘60s.
My dad’s old Beatles records had led me to believe that there was no better time for music and every documentary I watched about the Summer of Love inspired me to put flowers in my hair and say things like “far out” and “groovy”. But I was looking back on the ‘60s from the safety of the 2000s. I was hearing the protest songs without living in an America that was at war with itself over the Vietnam and the draft. In love with the psychedelic colors people wore, peace signs on tie dye shirts, but I did not have to experience any of the racial discrimination that I, as a woman of color, would have definitely encountered.
Although it is extremely romanticized by naïve tweens and baby boomers alike, the ‘60s, like any period of human history, definitely had its problems. Only fifty years since, we forget that it was just another point in our history with its own set of struggles and instead think of it as some idyllic golden age, where peace and love reigned and music was “better”. Whether it was fifty or a thousand years ago, we cannot forget that actual people lived in these Golden Ages we look back so fondly on, and they were just as flawed as the era they lived in.
