perspective

Here's the thing:
TV shows and old movies are not and never were reality. That's not to say they are unimportant. They have merit because, in portraying the world not as it is but how it could be or could be, they give us something to strive for or to avoid. No one I knew had a family like Leave It To Beaver or The Cosby Show but those families are wonderful ideals that everyone can see as a personal goal. As children, we grew up with these ideal taught to us. The problem is too many people think the past was actually like that. The 50's were not at all like Happy Days. There was segregation, no birth control, very few legal rights for women, McCarthyism and blacklists. There was massive poisoning of the environment with DDT and lead added to gasoline (not because it was the best solution but because the process was patented and there was more money to be made off that) and the list goes on but that's not anything you'll ever know about unless you actually make the effort to research the archives of that time. We grow up and see things from an adult perspective and think the world is worse now because we only have a child's perspective of the past. Daddy never told us everything he did during his military service.

We should be more imaginative and forward-thinking. We should not be mourning a world or people that never existed. We should be evolving into something better rather than wishing we could regress into myth.