Still Stuck in the 1970s, Part Two

The 1970s returned to the news recently as older Americans wondered why the 250th anniversary of our nation’s founding did not generate the same national pride as the Bicentennial in 1976.

A YouTube video entitled “The 12 Things That Made Americans Happier in the 1970s (That We Destroyed)” provides some insightful answers into how the country has changed in the last 50 years. The first six of those things, and how many of them were connected to television or were reflected in the shows of that decade, were covered last week (just scroll down to read that post).

We left off on a particularly salient point related to Comfort TV: “Entertainment was shared.” It relates how, on a single evening in 1972, more than half the people in the United States were watching shows on one of the handful of channels available. Then, the next day at work and school and at the grocery store there was something to talk about: “a common thread running through the entire country."

Now, of course we consume entertainment on personal devices, individually, with thousands of programming options instead of four channels. That common thread no longer exists.

Moving on to point #7: “Food was just food.” I love this one. Food wasn’t as closely examined then as it is now, when it has become a source of anxiety and moral judgement. Mothers took their kids to McDonald’s without feeling guilty. Saturday mornings were spent wolfing down sugar coated cereals while watching cartoons. 

No one talked about probiotics or keto or meat and dairy alternatives, which is why ‘70s shows were blissfully free of any such references. And for those who think all this nanny state nonsense has produced a healthier populace, every study shows there were fewer obese people in the 1970s than there are now.

Point #8: “You were not comparing yourself to anyone.” This is like an observation in the previous blog about how social media gave us a barometer to measure ourselves against everyone else in the world, which for some added pressure to be doing better. “Keeping up with the Jones” is not a new sentiment, but in the ‘70s it was a localized phenomenon. If someone down the street bought a new car, or put a pool in their backyard, you might have felt some pressure to do the same. But your summer vacation at the King’s Island Amusement Park shouldn’t seem less enjoyable because someone you’ve never met was swimming with sea lions in the Galapagos Islands and shared the video on Facebook.

Next, “Institutions could be trusted.” Oh, boy. Our confidence has been shaken in government, media, church, schools, and the medical establishment. As reflected on TV shows in the ‘70s, if a student was sent to the principal’s office, or a kid like Danny Partridge was caught shoplifting, there was an automatic assumption that the authority figure was in the right. 

That assumption no longer exists, leaving each of us to personally adjudicate the truth of everything. That’s stressful, and exhausting.

Point #10. “There was a clear path, and it worked.” We all knew what it was, and how it was reinforced by most family shows on TV: finish school, get a job, get married, buy a house, have children, retire with a pension. I didn’t follow that path exactly, but I still saw the value in it. Fewer people do so now and even doing so does not guarantee a stable future.

Next, “Aging had a place.” Our older relatives were a respected source of wisdom to convey to grandchildren. Now they are “a problem to be managed, rather than a resource to be valued.”

The video’s final point is one that connects to many of those it preceded: “Time.” We just don’t have as much of it anymore. Is it better to be time-rich and money-poor? Or Money-rich and time-poor? Money can’t buy happiness but leisure hours, away from work, from computer screens, can add immeasurably to our peace of mind.

What do you think? The video has drawn more than 200 comments. Most are what you might expect – some blame the political left for our present perilous state (“Feminists ruined the one paycheck model”), while others blame the right (“Then we got Reaganomics and it just went downhill ever since.”). For others it’s just politicians regardless of party, or the media, lawyers (Shakespeare would approve) or technology (some truth there). And there are the usual voices condemning millionaires for not giving everyone more of their money.

But in many ways, we are to blame because we’ve done this to ourselves. The good news is we could reverse course if we wished to do so. Before televisions needed software updates. Before the internet put idiots on Tik Tok on equal footing with experts who have studied an issue for decades (with the idiots always getting more clicks). Before heads of prestigious medical schools could testify with a straight face that men can get pregnant. Before exposure to a 24-hour news cycle that has us convinced the country and the world are in far worse shape than they are.

“We are not going to pretend the 1970s were perfect. There were real injustices that needed fixing, and some were fixed, and that was good,” the video states in its conclusion. “But the things in this video were not injustices. They were the load-bearing structures of an ordinary contented life, and we knocked them down without noticing they held up the ceiling.”