Like I said, there were still issues back then. You're right, happiness is individual, not cultural. But one culture can be happier, on average, than another. And if I'm not just romanticizing the past it does genuinely seem like people were happier back then. The economy was booming. The United Nations seemed to promise global peace. We were taking our first steps into space. It seemed like there was a whole world of possibilities back then, not just economically but in the arts as well.
For the arts, the possibilities have exploded. You can shoot an entire movie for budgets that are in the budget of individuals/small groups. You can find an audience for your art orders of magnitude bigger than anything you could find then.
Commercially, you can start high tech businesses in your garage that weren't even dreamt of in the 50s.
As for space, we're currently landing rockets on ships. We're actively planning Mars exploration.
The UN still promises global peace. The second half of the 50s had much worse nuclear saber rattling than anything we see right now. The Korean war very much was a high risk of US and USSR clashing directly.
I really think you romanticize the 50s. (I strongly encourage talking to people who lived through the 50s, especially minority groups)
Again, I really want to say "you're completely wrong" here - in terms of GDP growth, the 50s were great. In terms of sharing that growth (as opposed to concentrating wealth in a small group), they were great. BOth of these only apply to white men/families, though. And I deliberately exaggerate the picture in the other direction to show how much this is a question of framing.
And your right, one culture can be happier than another. We know which cultures are happy, and we have a fairly good idea why they are happier. It's on us to change our culture if we want that happiness.
You see this as a dark picture. I see it as a call to action, and the potential to make the world so much better. I don't know what the chances of success are, but I can promise you that seeing the future as malleable and culture as an ongoing project makes life better than focusing exclusively on the darkness.
Ok you're right. I just think about how empires like Rome that collapsed in on themselves at the height of their power and can't help but see parallels with what is happening now. An affluent apathetic population that just let things slide back into chaos. But I suppose that's hardly an original observation
> Ask black and queer people how golden the 50's were. Or women.
Or people outside of North America. Really, the main cause for the '50s seeming like a golden age was that the U.S., protected by two oceans with its massive industrial capacity and population, emerged from WWII as accidental global hegemon. So it was easy to be optimistic when not only did America win the war, it was very prosperous and on its way to running the world. A decade after the Great Depression, American capital was helping to rebuild old Europe. All of the domestic cultural changes were just second order effects from this situation.
