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What decade did Western Civilization peak?

I remember things began to rapidly decline around the time Britney Spears and The Backstreet Boys became trendy.
 
1997, this exact moment.
Petrusich-FaceOff.jpg
 
moreorless87 said:
Pretty much, I think really being a conservative just entails a high degree of wilful blindness to how many times a "sky is falling" prediction has been made and remade. The same fear/hate mongering tactics are used decade after decade just the targets change, black men, homosexuals, transsexuals were all "a threat to our women/children".
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In defense of conservatives, they oppose every big change in society so they look bad if you look at how things are now. But a lot of what they opposed, they were right to oppose, and it didn't survive. Imagine a guy who is immortal and throughout time has claimed that all new inventions are worthless. He's been right in over 99% of cases, but looking back from the standpoint of someone who lives today, they only see that he's said that about a lot of really good inventions and they think he's an idiot.

moreorless87 said:
Honestly though I'm no longer so convinced that is the case, maybe on a very long scale it maybe true but I think the idea that were moving to a freer more liberal society as a constant advancement has been seriously tested in the 2008 recession.

A big issue for me is that what we think of modern western society really was IMHO forced upon it in the 30's and 40's by the threat of communism, capitalist societies were forced to adopt a lot of socialist policies to stave off the threat of a much larger shift that would remove even more of the wealth/power of the elite. Since then though socialism has gradually been rolled back and today I think were in a situation more akin to the robber barron era and capitlists and conservatives are starting to think allying with the far right is a better option again as they did in the 30's.
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But we have much stronger safety net today than we did in the 1930s and 1940s. For example, no SS before 1935 (and it was pretty shitty at first), and about half of the elderly population was in poverty. Medicare and Medicaid came along 30 years after that, and again, were both very weak by our standards. There were some food stamps in 1939, but we didn't really get something like our modern SNAP program until '64, and it was much weaker than it is now. And so on. We've been doing increasingly more to raise the minimum material standard of living, and the median has also been rising non-stop for a while. Even the GOP's recent turn back to religious conservatism and away from democracy has been accompanied by an easing of hard-line opposition to social spending. Trump would likely support every aspect of the left's policy agenda if it meant he could be dictator, and most Republicans would back him on that (only problem is that there wouldn't be an enemy to fear-monger about so the whole thing might not work).
 
SakurabasEar said:
1950's

What we have today is a hogwash of technology, degeneracy and depression
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In the '50s, a huge portion of the population didn't even have a shower in their homes, and the median income for men was around $37K in today's dollars. Infant mortality was like 5 times higher than now. Etc. Way better time to be alive now. And as for degeneracy, note that interracial marriage was illegal in a lot of places in the '50s (and few among the public even disagreed with that), domestic violence was much more common, a large portion of the population was totally OK with forced segregation, etc. You couldn't even suggest that married couples had sex in popular entertainment. Censorship was off the charts by modern standards. I think it takes a pretty twisted view of morality to say things were better morally then, and a lot of ignorance to think we were more prosperous.
 
When order was turned on it's head by progressives. The entire world is on fire right now as a result.
 
You people blaming one side of the political spectrum or the other are part of the problem, always looking for someone else to blame. We are all part of the problem, we are all complicit. And now we are so divided I doubt we will ever come up with or enact viable changes that turn our society around. We will just sink further and further into partisanship; the elite will keep hoarding power/wealth, while our country falls apart around us.
 
I can only comment on the 6 decades I've seen. Loved the 1970s. Never saw homeless...hard drugs were weed and shrooms. Could hang out till 2am as kids without some prev snatching you off the streets. Was a charmed life I had even though kinda poor in Southern Louisiana where roaches came up through wooded floorboards in school house. Mom didnt have to work, dad was only a Union lineman and bought us all motorcyles and we still took vacations to Europe where my ancestors came from. Oh and guns in school for show and tell was a thing. Hunting after school too for HS kids but they had to leave them in their car.

BTW my dad retired at 45 from Pg&E (we moved to cali in 1982 so he could take that job for like 28hr, in 1982 that was real money) with pension about 8K mo now with COLA plus ~2K SS... try that shit these days.
 
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12ga. said:
I can only comment on the 6 decades I've seen. Loved the 1970s. Never saw homeless...hard drugs were weed and shrooms. Could hang out till 2am as kids without some prev snatching you off the streets. Was a charmed life I had even though kinda poor in Southern Louisiana where roaches came up through wooded floorboards in school house. Mom didnt have to work, dad was only a Union lineman and bought us all motorcyles and we still took vacations to Europe where my ancestors came from. Oh and guns in school for show and tell was a thing. Hunting after school too for HS kids but they had to leave them in their car.
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Today, kids not only get to bring guns to school, they can use them!

But seriously, the '70s were a really miserable decade for most of America. Massive amounts of domestic terrorism, energy crisis, huge tension, rapidly rising crime, etc. What you miss is probably childhood.
 
Western Civilization hasn't peaked, it's entering into a new phase which will lead to abundance through tech.
 
For me - from the 1990s until the time when it became hard to just go about my day without thinking about politics, which was around 2017.

I know the problems started long before that.

edit: Okay my personal life wasn't part of the question. I'll say the 1990s through early 2000s then.
 
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Jack V Savage said:
In the '50s, a huge portion of the population didn't even have a shower in their homes, and the median income for men was around $37K in today's dollars. Infant mortality was like 5 times higher than now. Etc. Way better time to be alive now. And as for degeneracy, note that interracial marriage was illegal in a lot of places in the '50s (and few among the public even disagreed with that), domestic violence was much more common, a large portion of the population was totally OK with forced segregation, etc. You couldn't even suggest that married couples had sex in popular entertainment. Censorship was off the charts by modern standards. I think it takes a pretty twisted view of morality to say things were better morally then, and a lot of ignorance to think we were more prosperous.
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Yeah, but white people had more power
 
12ga. said:
I can only comment on the 6 decades I've seen. Loved the 1970s. Never saw homeless...hard drugs were weed and shrooms. Could hang out till 2am as kids without some prev snatching you off the streets. Was a charmed life I had even though kinda poor in Southern Louisiana where roaches came up through wooded floorboards in school house. Mom didnt have to work, dad was only a Union lineman and bought us all motorcyles and we still took vacations to Europe where my ancestors came from. Oh and guns in school for show and tell was a thing. Hunting after school too for HS kids but they had to leave them in their car.

BTW my dad retired at 45 from Pg&E (we moved to cali in 1982 so he could take that job for like 28hr, in 1982 that was real money) with pension about 8K mo now with COLA plus ~2K SS... try that shit these days.
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Weren't most famous serial killers from the 70's?
 
Fashionisdanger said:
Weren't most famous serial killers from the 70's?
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Its no coincidence that the 70's and 80's had peak serial killer activity and its because that's when we first started categorizing serial killers.

That coupled with the fact that law enforcement itself is relatively new (only about 250 years old) and its probable that the worst serial killer of all time was probably some dude in the 13th century killing dozens of peasants without anyone caring/knowing about it
 
1950s. Prosperity in the west has been coasting along after the huge gains made in that time period.
 
The aftermath of WW2 created unique circumstances that led to the rise of the American middle class, which has been in decline since the 1970's.
 
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