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The past was not that cute

(juliawise.net)
430 points mhb | 5 comments | 06 Dec 25 21:53 UTC | HN request time: 0.673s | source
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techblueberry ◴[06 Dec 25 22:58 UTC] No.46177361[source]▶
I will pre-empt this by saying I most certainly look to the past with rose colored glasses, and some of this is for sure childhood nostalgia, but one thing I appreciate about the aesthetics of the past is they felt more… Honest; for lack of a better term. Things made out of wood and metal were actually made out of hardwood and metal. Not so many composites that fall apart instead of wear ala wabi-sabi. So I think there’s something to the fact that the past was kind of “cute”, just not in all storybook way.

Theres a lake I visit in the summer that I’ve been visiting since the 80’s, and the houses used to all be wood cottages with no fences, now they’re all mansions, many walled off. Sure the houses weren’t insulated, and you would be crammed in there together, but it felt way more…. Human? Communal?

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samdoesnothing ◴[06 Dec 25 23:03 UTC] No.46177398[source]▶
I wonder why it is that the past seems more real and the present dishonest and fake? Is it simply that it is?
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1. bsenftner ◴[07 Dec 25 02:34 UTC] No.46178670[source]▶
People don't learn history, and I'm not talking about the wars and battles BS that they use to glorify going to war. I mean real history: biographies of the lives of real and ordinary people. Not the history makers, the people that lived through and had the mind to record their lives for prosperity.

Case in point, this notion that the past as "more real" and the present "more fake"... the amount of fake doctors, fake medicine, religious revivals that were actually fleecing entire towns into destitution was out of control. The "wild west" it truly was, and the law was owning a gun because everyone was desperate.

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2. lo_zamoyski ◴[07 Dec 25 03:01 UTC] No.46178783[source]▶
> Not the history makers

Even the so-called "history makers" are the product of imagination, of myth, and of hagiography. If you met these people today, you wouldn't recognize them if you went by the expectations built up by the images we're fed. The same holds of so-called celebrities.

3. Qwertious ◴[07 Dec 25 08:58 UTC] No.46180255[source]▶
Most cowboys didn't own a gun - a gun was a month's pay, and nobody with that sort of money worked as a cowboy.
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4. bsenftner ◴[07 Dec 25 12:08 UTC] No.46181161[source]▶
20% to 25% of the cowboys were Black, and that aspect of history has been erased. Hollywood, propagandists and media's efforts to glorify, White wash, and profit off the American West Frontier has 100% distorted our history. It was much closer to this "the past was not cute", and then add in rampant corruption, criminal and religious criminal activity and you art starting to get there.

We are a propaganda nation, far better at it than any other on Earth.

5. techblueberry ◴[09 Dec 25 15:05 UTC] No.46205690[source]▶
Actually the history of real people is my main area of interest :-). I stand by what I said, but I way understand you have to sort of blur your vision and take the bigger 60%, this is not the 99%, also the article was specifically about aesthetics, which is inherently a more rose colored glasses approach. I’m not sure that there’s any era I’d rather live in than today (though this is a nuanced question, since you wouldn’t know better, and I do think we’re in sort of a local minima so for sure I’d rather live in like the early 2000’s and maybe before, probably no earlier than auto-bill pay, digital banking and modern dentistry lol.). But there are many eras I would like to travel to for the aesthetic.