wasthroughduring this decade, I remember pretty much every crazy song, fad and TV show from the era, My memories of that time are personal with the exception of a few major events: long lines at gas stations, Jim Jones, the Iran hostage crisis, and because I was just young enough, I am fascinated to read about how thes fit into ath century historical context.
I will get my complaint about this book out of the way first at times the author made conservative statements that broached offensive to me.
But these moments were few, and overall, this book is a thoughtful mustread for anyone interested in exploring how thes and not thes fed many of the greatest social changes in modern America.
For being an overview of the decade, "How We Got Here" is surprisingly indepth I learned a lot from it, and it introduced me to a lot of events and issues that I was to research further.
Per Ric This is a popular history of thes, with the thesis that thes sociocultural changes are responsible for today's modern attitudes and social conditions.
Part I concerns a widespread collapse of trust in many institutions, especially government and civil authorities.
Frum believes the collapse started with Vietnam, was intensified by Watergate, and branched out from distrust of the federal government into a distrust of civil government and civil authorities.
A web of petty corruption scandals appeared on all levels, from the presidency to various civil officials and the police were no longer believed competent or honest.
Part II: At midcentury and before, Americans had a fairly strong devotion to duty, But around, the ethic of responsibility fell apart, and was replaced by a very brazen ethic of selfcenteredness.
This allowed such things as an explosion in nofault divorces, and many blatant expressions of selfcenteredness in advertising and pop culturesuch as a bestseller on selfcenteredness titled "Looking Out For Number One" and commercials with taglines like "This I do for me.
" Because the worst effect of the new selfcenteredness was in marriage, the old linear progression of flirting to courtship to marriage disappeared, and was replaced by a paradigm of individuals going through "a series of relationships," which is often the case today.
Frum says that between about thes ands, attitudes toward love and marriage were highly unromantic and stoic: love was expected to feel bad, and marriage to be unpleasant, but the thought was that if you endured marriage in good faith, it might not be so bad.
Leaving your spouse and especially your children without a good material excuse was socially unacceptable, Posts attitudes find it ridiculous at best and shameful at worst to stay in an unhappy or unsatisfying marriage or relationship.
Individualism also eliminated the universal willingness to serve in the military this is probably the main reason, other than the defeat in Vietnam, why military morale was so low in thes.
Other manifestations were an unusual strong fear of children, which showed up in several popular movies and television shows, and people's suddenly becoming eager to talk at lengthabout themselves in opposition to the previous American tradition of being a relatively quiet people , which institutionalized itself in the appearance and popularity of television programs, in various genres, that depicted, discussed, and showed a fascination with individuals' misbehavior or psychological problems, no matter how bizarre or disgusting, and often sympathized with them.
Example: Phil Donahue.
Part III concerns Americans' new antiRationalism in the seventies, There was a sudden dislike for technology, standardization, central planning, and rationalism, This was a reaction against the strong acceptance of those things by government and the public which peaked in thes.
People turned against because it was seen as simply having gone too far Frum implies they saw it as complicit in the Vietnam War atrocitiesspecifically, the use of the defoliant Agent Orange.
The new antirationalism manifested itself in a new popularity for premodern architecture, esp, brick buildings, and a backlash against modernist architecture a growth in environmentalism a removal of "pretentious" home decor styles, all the way down to removing wallboard and carpet a preference for food that was not mass produced, and wearing rough "close to the earth" clothing styles.
The only popular technology was stereo equipment, There were also, among other thingd:
A dumbingdown of educational standards nationwide
Health and fitnesses crazes first widespread antismoking laws and
hatred of smoking.
An unusual vulnerability to cults, crackpot theories and dubious selfimprovement schemes,
Christian revival in the lates, but only in evangelical churches churches emphasized forgiveness over conduct and services were more emotional.
Ever since then, the character of evangelical Protestantism has been now different in two main ways, People beforewent to church as a social duty as much as for spiritual nourishment, and it was the mainline Protestant churches that they went to.
And, as Frum says, these churches preached an ethic of conductin other words, they primarily urged members to avoid sin.
The popular Protestant churches since thes are all evangelical, emphasizing forgiveness over conduct their services are more emotional and, according to Frum, they treat their members as "audiences to a performance" rather than "witnesses to an event.
"
IV: Desire: This part concerns new selfcentered trends in individual health, fitness and especially sexuality,
Manifestations:
Porn magazines sold more copies than ever before, and new titles started up,
Various fitness crazes, especially jogging,
Interest in natural foods huge rise in consumption of wine and Perrier,
A national obsession with safety, leading to many new safety regulations, especially motorcycle and bike helmet laws, and antismoking laws.
VI: Regeneration: Discusses the lowest points of the slide, and concludes that both laissezfaire capitalism and socialism have been rejected, and the American public now expects some sort of middle ground.
During this time, there was as much anger over high taxes, and rising cynicism and class envy among the lower classes, as concern over inflation.
Other Interesting Discernments:
According to Frum, midcentury American culture was "materially egalitarian but intellectually hierarchical," meaning that there was not as huge an economic gap between the wealthy and everyone else, but we recognized that some ideas can be superior to others, and popular culture at least tried to respect high standards of sophistication.
But since thes, these attitudes have flipped to their exact opposite, We are intellectually egalitarian and materially hierarchical, Middleclass people aren't usually offended by Bill Gates's wealth, but our culture treats all ideas as equal and would find it bigoted to do otherwise.
Industry: American industry started to have a serious problem with quality around thes it was turning out junk.
In a survey, both workers and consumers largely said they are or would be embarrassed buying the products they made.
But for some reason, industry responded not by raising quality, but by offering more unneeded features,luxuries and gimmicks.
This resulted in what Frum calls "a vast tsunami of shlock" in thes eighttrack players and tapes were part of that.
The cynicism of thes spawned several new trends in popular entertainment, many of which are institutions now.
One is investigative reporting with a strong and deliberate tendency to smear people who had done nothing wrong with false accusations.
Another new trend was talk shows that made no attempt whatsoever to give the interviewee any sort of respect.
Another was the comedy of Steve Martin as a deliberate expression of the new cynicism, Martin's material was, according to Frum, made deliberately unfunny, in order to mock the idea that any comedian's material could be funny.
Frum believes that the new individualism was so strong as to form a deliberate and strident religion of the self.
The obsessions with health and fitness were so strong that you could be harangued by a grocery store checker if you bought food products they disapproved of, and especially if you smoked.
This was the decade in which antismoking laws and social ostracism for smokers suddenly took off, and Frum believes it was because to consciously do something as toxic as smoking constituted blasphemy against the "new religion of the self.
"
America's industrial revolution, economic growth, and consumer prosperity have all been financed on credit far more than the same things were in Great Britain, and almost all the wealthiest people in American history, including Andrew Carnegie and John D.
Rockefeller, used credit freely. Also, Frum claims the growth in credit borrowing is responsible for the growth in business success since the eighties, but also blames credit borrowing for "the often low character of American commercial morality.
" All of these are possible because American bankruptcy laws are some of the most lenient in the world.
The wild and crazy decade of my birth, "The Seventies were the Fifties in drag", ROLLING STONE, last issue of
To paraphrase the late Robyn Williams, if you can remember the Seventies I feel sorry for you.
David Frum, a Canadian neoconservative, makes a compelling case on how that seemingly sleepy decade did more to shape modern America than the tumultuous Sixties.
So, why didn't we children of the Seventies notice the cultural earthquake underneath our feet Most of us were "dazed and confused" one way or the other.
Consider dope. The Seventies started out on quaaludes and ended with cocaine, Or women: secondwave feminism had already peaked byand then came Roe v, Wade making abortion legal, and even after the Supreme Court's revocation most Americans stand by that momentous decision.
See a pattern here If the Sixties were all about politics the Seventies were all about culture, and Frum repeats the neocon adage that "politics is downstream from culture".
Everything about the Seventies smacked of a "turninward" away from the organization or institution and towards the ego.
Religious cults, such as EST and Scientology, promised you personal fulfillment without God or Church and through a messiah a trend culminating in the Jonestown massacre.
Music Don't get me started on disco, We had one President who literally fell down on the job Gerald Ford followed by another asleep at the wheel Jimmy Carter.
In fact, the NixonFordCarter triad cemented a distrust in government that lasts until this very day, In the Seventies cynicism married egoism, thus undermining faith in any kind of political action, left or right.
Except neocons, like Frum himself, who saw the perfect opportunity to ride the bus of discontent all the way to the White House.
So, who won the Seventies, I'll let a paleoconservative, Pat Buchanan, have the last word: "We won back politics with Nixon and stayed on course with Reagan, but we lost the culture".
Recommended by author of the popular LDS historical fiction series Children of the Promise and Hearts of the Children, Dean Hughes included this book in one of his reading lists.
Being a fan of his work, I took his word for it and read it myself, Having already read other nonfiction books about when the distrust of the government began, the dissolving of family, marriage and how feminisim all had their start in the's, well, it was not surprising to find all of those facts repeated here.
I was born inand now that I'm in my thirties, a genXer, I'm currently on a quest to learn more about how so many of society's problems oringinated in the's and's and the price we're all paying for it today in thest century.
Perhaps that's why I found myself weeping uncontrollably atam, There are some intense and profane facts Frum includes here about the evils of pornography and homosexuality pretty much taking over the world.
I didn't really enjoy reading this book and would recommend caution to everyone who wants to learn more about this decade.
. . just don't stay up too late reading it, Another rating that would be half a star higher if Goodreads would let me give those marks, Very interesting review especially for someone who came of age during those years, Also a good reminder that Jimmy Carter was a terrible President and that the Democratic Party has been a mess for a long time.
Interesting discussion on how the Kennedy administration was responsible for the inflation of thes, .
Delve Into How We Got Here: The 70's: The Decade That Brought You Modern Life (For Better Or Worse) Written By David Frum Released Through Bound Copy
David Frum