Why I don't believe in "golden ages"
Added 2025-02-22 02:25:51 +0000 UTCIt's common in popular discourse to talk about one period or another as being a Golden Age, but I don't think it's a useful or interesting concept.
Comments
I totally agree. It reminds me of how people often think that the 1950s were a boring time in which nothing happened. Billy Joel wrote the song "We Didn't Start the Fire" for this very reason, to show that the fifties were actually pretty crazy. Seems like there are two stereotypes about the past that exist simultaneously. Either people in the past were honest and hard working and life was simple then, or people were stupid and cruel and life was really hard. And since folks today don't know about specific historical events, they tend to think that in the past not much ever really happened except for the few events that we learn about in school.
Premodernist
2025-03-06 03:50:49 +0000 UTCI don't mind if people do but I don't share their optimism. I do like Star Trek but I don't think anything like that would happen in real life.
Premodernist
2025-03-03 01:21:30 +0000 UTCInteresting video! I do want to ask if you like people saying the golden age is ahead since you mentioned that's what motivated the people of Star Trek? Is it more useful in that context? Or it also is it meaningless as well?
Nav
2025-03-01 04:34:11 +0000 UTCWhat about the golden age of capitalism from the 50s to the early 70s? Is that an adequate description?
Nav
2025-02-28 21:39:31 +0000 UTCI feel the same way about the Era of Good Feelings. If I was a northeastern Federalist I do not think I would have had much of a good time that entire decade.
John H
2025-02-26 04:11:13 +0000 UTC"I'm not gonna try to psychoanalyze."... "Anyway so this goes back to people's childhoods" I love this topic. I've sort of gradually moved more and more to this way of thinking in the last few years. I absolutley think that there is a general bias in humanity to view past times as inherently better or less chaotic or people were smarter or tougher than now. I think it's a subtle manifestation of dunning Krueger. To give another different but related example, imagine a person reading a text on the 1920s and are appalled by how awful things were, and they get the idea that was the worst time ever. Person B reads a book about the Victorian era and comes to the conclusion that's the worst most evil most unprecedented time ever. Then they get into an argument with each other and neither can understand how the other person doesn't see how awful their own time they read a lot about was the worst. Normally I think this terminates with everyone dunking on the medieval era as the time everyone agrees that nothing much happened, things were simple, until colonialism and industry was invented. But in truth it's just that most people don't read about the medieval era. I think this same thought pattern causes that romanticization. People start paying attention when they turn 20 and they just assume in the absence of knowledge that all the bad stuff started right when they started paying attention.
John H
2025-02-25 21:15:17 +0000 UTCYes, I think the idea of a golden age makes more sense if you define it in very narrow and particular terms. The Golden Age of Streaming in the 2010s would be another example.
Premodernist
2025-02-24 02:12:42 +0000 UTCI think people also use the term "golden age" to separate good times from bad times. We see this in music - Beck's song "Golden Age" is more or less about forgetting the bad times of the past and beginning a new chapter, thus entering a new golden age. I definitely understand your point on this video however. What always irks me is how James Monroe's presidency was nicknamed the "Era of Good Feelings" even though the United States was in an economic depression during the first half of it.
Brodie Savage
2025-02-24 02:11:24 +0000 UTCI'm glad you still liked it!
Premodernist
2025-02-24 02:11:08 +0000 UTCThere is one possible definition of “Golden Age” that I think can be useful: a period of rapid development and growth in some young industry that has just started to find its footing or place in society. The “Golden Age of Television” is the period just after when most American households had TVs and they started to be the primary means of entertainment for most people. Companies put larger and larger budgets into TV show development and directors and actors were willing to branch out and take risks / make more unconventional shows. From a modern perspective, the shows they did make aren’t all that good, but it was exciting at the time compared to the much more limited TV of before. You could use a similar definition to describe “Golden Ages” for sudden flourishing of art or industrial progress at other times.
Alex Bishop
2025-02-23 17:48:06 +0000 UTCThis was a bit overly Lib for my tastes but still good
Pigeon Lover
2025-02-23 01:24:46 +0000 UTCWhat is interesting is that somebody will think of our current time as a golden age, just like we do today with some other time. Our brains just aren't built to comprehend long periods of time.
Thomas Pellino
2025-02-23 00:11:38 +0000 UTCIt's fascinating you were able to be there for that moment in history. The late 20th / early 21st centuries was such a wild time for China.
Premodernist
2025-02-22 20:22:35 +0000 UTCI'm glad it made sense eventually!
Premodernist
2025-02-22 20:18:45 +0000 UTCTNG is such a great show. I watched it all the way through again a few years ago. So much fun.
Premodernist
2025-02-22 20:16:57 +0000 UTCThoroughly enjoyed the video, as usual - although, yes, a little more rambling than usual, as other commenters have said I will add one small comment about the contemporaneous cognizance of a "Golden Age." I lived and worked as a foreign professional (in finance & investment) in Shanghai China at the turn of the century. To both the expatriates and our local counterparts, it was obvious every single day that we were at that time living through the Golden Age, and indeed we said so to ourselves, frequently. We knew it wouldn't last, but no one knew quite by how much. I remember distinctly being in Hong Kong in July 2007 to see the 10th anniversary of the handover, and sharing drinks with some friends thinking apprehensively about the next 10. Of course, this in no way invalidates your point, and indeed is fully consistent with both the generally unspoken or unacknowledged truth of how much oppression and toil underlie the ability of a smaller group to experience a "Golden Age," and the fact that such a thing exists only from a specific, defined perspective; it was a Golden Age to US: a small privileged class who were luckily positioned to enjoy all the benefits and avoid almost all the downsides of a particular confluence of social, political, and economic forces at one small moment. But that kind of thing can't exist for long In this way, a Golden Age has much more use as a storytelling device than as a tool for the study of history. As you yourself said, they're a way for people to fill out their own narratives about the world, fully true or not.
Peter Marino
2025-02-22 18:42:59 +0000 UTCHave to admit that I felt that this was a bit more "rambly" than usual and I had a hard time grasping your point, but I eventually got it especially when you brought up if billionaires today commissioned a lot of good art today makes what we live in now a "golden age". My initial struggle with understanding your point was because I myself failed to consider everything else that was happening within the so-called "golden ages" of history. So I guess this turned out to be one of the more thought provoking monthly video for me!
hohohaha
2025-02-22 11:48:11 +0000 UTCThere is a similar disconnect or denial when the late 19th and early 20th century countries are referred to as 'democracies', when they actually only were democratic in the 'home country', but in no way in their colonies where the majority of the subjects lived.
Rudy Flameng
2025-02-22 09:06:41 +0000 UTCThat was a great way of putting it. I think there isn't enough discussion about meta-narratives in history. So you end up with these weird idealizations of the certain points in the past as a result.
Kewl0210
2025-02-22 07:49:43 +0000 UTCGreat!
ty zj
2025-02-22 03:40:35 +0000 UTCGolden ages are not as much historical as they are rhetorical. Regimes use a vision, ideal, golden age, etc. to justify abuses of power. E.g. Pol Pot and the Khmer Empire
katieeatsrocks
2025-02-22 03:24:26 +0000 UTCIt’s so accurate that you brought up TNG, because this is a belief that I have and regularly reference Roddenberry! Scientific advancement will eventually lead to better and better outcomes for mankind, barring some terrible disaster.
Nykäli Wu
2025-02-22 02:41:00 +0000 UTC
