Why do I hate the 1970s so much?

BegintheBeguine · Jul 22, 2007

This is what 40 looks like.

Not just thrift shops but parents' and grandparents' attics. Even Barbie doll advised me to go into the family attic to look for a piano shawl to wear.

Warden · Aug 14, 2007

I grew up in the 70s and I do not think highly of the decade. Mrs W on the other hand is 12 years younger than me and cannot remember much of the decade. She enjoys the music and for some reason the fashion.

For me it was a time of power strikes, TV shutting down at 10:30, only 3 TV channels, shortages in public schools meant having to share a school exercise book, one pupil would write on one side of the book and the other public the other side of the book. I still can't see how this saved paper, it just meant the book was full twice as fast.

Positive things, the film stars I now enjoy where still alive, long hot summers playing outdoors with friends. I lived in the country and my friends & I would go out and play in the fields, orchards and in the rivers for hours on end. Can't see my children been allowed to do this.

Harry

KL15 · Aug 14, 2007

I can undertand the dislike of the fashion. But I really like alot of 70's rock 'n' roll. I do like some of the movies. The world may not have been in the best shape. When everyone seems to be smashed off their head on cocaine and disco dancing unitll the sun comes up the world looks pretty ugly. But I was born in 1978, so all I have is what I've read and heard. There's is alot I have no clue about.

jamespowers · Aug 16, 2007

KL15 said:
I can undertand the dislike of the fashion. But I really like alot of 70's rock 'n' roll. I do like some of the movies. The world may not have been in the best shape. When everyone seems to be smashed off their head on cocaine and disco dancing unitll the sun comes up the world looks pretty ugly. But I was born in 1978, so all I have is what I've read and heard. There's is alot I have no clue about.

You didn't miss anything dude.

panamag8or · Aug 16, 2007

Lincsong said:
A Francophile?????? I never would have guessed you and Francisco Franco.

Hey, if anyone thinks Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem and Bella Abzug are bodacious babes then to each his own.

In other news... Generalisimo Francisco Franco is still dead.

KL15 · Aug 16, 2007

jamespowers said:
You didn't miss anything dude.

You're probably right. I do really like the rock 'n' roll from the 70's though.

Warden · Aug 16, 2007

Well if you think 1970s music was good, here is a story from 1970s Britian which I will tell my grandchildren and mighty bored they will be.

I started going to gigs in the late 1970s around when the whole punk thing started. Ho yes I was there at the beginning and before you ask, no I never saw the Sex Pistols.

In 1978 I was watching the punk band Generation X play at the High Wycombe Town Hall, where my friend John managed to 'gob' on Billy Idol, who then to our excitment wiped it into his hair. From that day until the school term ended, John was a hero. Indeed it was the highlight of 1978 too us wannabe school boy punks.

I can't remember how 'gobbing' (spitting) started in the punk following, Indeed I would hit the roof of I caught my children spitting today, but it was acceptable to my 'punk' peers in the 1970s.

I guess this is one event in life I won't forget. I often wonder what ever happend to John? According to Friends Re-united he lives over the pond in LA now, maybe he wants to live close to Billy Idol?

Harry

panamag8or · Aug 16, 2007

Warden said:
Well if you think 1970s music was good, here is a story from 1970s Britian which I will tell my grandchildren and mighty bored they will be.

I started going to gigs in the late 1970s around when the whole punk thing started. Ho yes I was there at the beginning and before you ask, no I never saw the Sex Pistols.

In 1978 I was watching the punk band Generation X play at the High Wycombe Town Hall, where my friend John managed to 'gob' on Billy Idol, who then to our excitment wiped it into his hair. From that day until the school term ended, John was a hero. Indeed it was the highlight of 1978 too us wannbe school boy punks.

I can't remember how 'gobbing' (spiting) started in the punk following, Indeed I would hit the roof of I caught my children spitting today, but it was acceptable to my 'punk' peers in the 1970s.

I guess this is one event in life I won't forget. I often wonder what ever happend to John? According to Friends Re-united he lives over the pond in LA now, maybe he wants to live close to Billy Idol?

Harry

I'm glad you defined "gobbing" for us Yanks. I got a very different, and rather disturbing, mental image when I first read that.

Micawber · Aug 16, 2007

The 70's were generally ok for me. I reached and achieved several important and unforgettable milestones in the late 60's to mid '70's. The present (as it was back then) is what YOU make it.

Roger · Aug 16, 2007

Double Digit Inflation, gas lines. It sucked:rage:

J.S.Udontknowme · Aug 17, 2007

Roger said:
Double Digit Inflation, gas lines. It sucked:rage:

I guess I was lucky here. I got my drivers license in 1970 and I never had to wait in a gas line. Forty miles from here in Charlotte gas lines were bad, some roads would be blocked with cars trying to get into a station, some stations were limiting the amount you could get and some would run out while people were waiting in line. I think this was about 1973 or 74.

Fast · Aug 17, 2007

What happened to History?

Strange debate. Just a little taste of reality here. The people of the U.S. forced the end of the Vietnam War. I know. I was there. The people forced the removal of a malign president. I know. I was there. I saw the godfather, in a theater, the day it came out. I saw a young keith jarrett change jazz and the modern Jazz quartet preserve it, in the same year.

We, as a nation really wanted to be the good guys, and acted as if we did more often.

Nobody equated having sex with a stranger with jumping off a cliff. But more people stayed married then than now. Far more children knew their fathers then than now.

A decade is a huge thing. Somebody decided to qualify and disqualify elements of it because they had a view. Rubbish. A lot of different people did a lot of different things, and if they did them in the seventies, then they were part of the seventies.

The time before the seventies? OK. The depression was depressing, world war !! was hell. the 50's wer probably a fun time to be a little boy. The 60s were revolutionary? Most of the Haight ashbury folks were really dirty, and really doing small crime to stay alive, and really not very nice to each other or anyone else. They did invade my home town.

The regan decade: Can you say oliver north, the big idea and the poster child for alzheimer's, having it even then, running the country.

Come on!

Just about the least important thing that happened in the 70s was disco, a cultural phenomena similar to dancing to big band music, most of which has been mercifully forgotten.

If you really want to accomplish something, make this decade, the one marked by us the torturer, us the corrupt, us the helpless to catch one guy is 6 years, us the mesmerized by a hateful, ugly minded pathetic junkie radio boy, make this dacade worth remembering. It can still be the decade we hit bottom and chose to be better. That still hasn't happened.

Carpe Diem
Fast

Roger · Aug 17, 2007

Your point being????? Give me any decade other than the 70's.

Katie Brookes · Aug 17, 2007

i do blame a lot on the 70s a lot of them have to do with my straight-haired mother using my curly hair to create all the crazy big hippie hairdos she wanted to wear but couldn't...

but here are a few things i love about the 70s...

Warden · Aug 17, 2007

You see 'Billy' is in there.

Plus 1970s British TV did have its hight points, even though it closed down at 10:30.

For example The Professionals, the Sweeney, Morecome and Wise and of course Dads Army.

Mind you this might just be the viewing habits of a pre teenager male.

Harry

Dr Doran · Aug 17, 2007

Fast said:
If you really want to accomplish something, make this decade, the one marked by us the torturer, us the corrupt, us the helpless to catch one guy is 6 years, us the mesmerized by a hateful, ugly minded pathetic junkie radio boy, make this dacade worth remembering. It can still be the decade we hit bottom and chose to be better. That still hasn't happened.

I'll work on it.
Still hated the hair in the 70s, though.

jamespowers · Aug 18, 2007

"In the Western world, the focus shifted from the social activism of the sixties to social activities for one's own pleasure, such as cocaine-fuelled, hedonistic all-night parties at discotheques and swinging parties. The seventies were characterized by the writer Tom Wolfe as the "Me Decade." The one exception is the activism of the environmentalism movement.

The perception of the established institutions of nuclear family, religion and trust in one's government continued to lose ground during this time. Major developments of the sexual revolution included the awareness of the impact of contraceptive pills on social-interactional relationships, and an increase in divorce rates, single parent households, and pre-marital sex. By the end of the decade, the feminist movement had helped change women's working conditions. The Gay Rights movement became prominent, and the hippie culture, which started in the 1960s, peaked and carried on through the end of the decade. The United States' withdrawal from its extensive military involvement in Vietnam and the resignation of Richard Nixon helped bring about a sense of malaise.

The United States experienced an economic recession, but the economy of Japan prospered. The economies of many third world countries continued to make steady progress in the early 1970s, because of the green revolution. They might have thrived and become stable in the way that Europe recovered after the war through the Marshall Plan; however, their economic growth was slowed by the oil crisis."

Hmmmmm....doesn't exactly sound like a paradise of times.
It actually seems like the nexus that created problems that plague us still today. :eusa_doh:

cookie · Aug 18, 2007

Excellent summary of a lost decade like the 2000s will be...having lived through it....

Dr Doran · Aug 18, 2007

Sad Facts of Human Reproduction

I may have posted this before, but in regard to all changes in all societies, the following article is brilliant and very easy to read. It's by the American demographer Phillip Longman. This summer I have become increasingly aware of the need to look at demographic angles of all things.

Philip Longman, "The Return of Patriarchy," Foreign Policy magazine, March/April 2006
Note that Longman does not ADVOCATE a "return to patriarchy." He is simply looking at some (occasionally uncomfortable, to egalitarians like us) facts and tendencies about human reproduction.

It's a brilliant article. If anyone wants it I can send you a Word document of it.

Lincsong · Aug 20, 2007

I have no problems with a patriarchy. Better to have a society of strong brave men than cowering wimps.

And another thing bad about the '70s; unleaded gas and "lite" beer!!!!!

Why do I hate the 1970s so much?

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