I believe that the 1980s were the most philosophically and culturally stable decade of the past fifty years. I attribute this belief to many things, but at the bottom is Science Fiction and Atari.
You have the 50s, the 60s, the 70s, the 80s, the 90s and the 2000s. Exclude political events which, arguably, no one can control…yet. Focus more on the culture of the decade and the philosophy of that culture. Then answer how things like Atari and Apple (or Sputnik and the Space Race) change the dynamic.
Finally, if you can, answer what happens when you enter politics into the equation.
Well let’s see:
Arthur C. Clark in the 50’s practically invented satellites with his science fiction, and his 2001:Space Odyssey had philosophical overtones that changed a generation.
The 60’s gave us the break from the 50’s with it’s music and cultural revolutions.
The 70’s were pretty much a blur but they definitley happened.
Now the 80’s. Atari, 16 Candles, the Breakfast Club and the Brat Pack, I’m not sure how the 80’s really changed our philosophical views.
It’d be nice if the OP splained a little more.
I remember, Guns N’Roses, Twisted Sister, Talking Heads, BIG, HUGE Hair, lot’s of blue eye shadow, rainbow leg warmers, square pegs, white shadow[early 80’s late 70’s], Reagan.
Your premise assumes that decades have cultures and philosphies that are distinct from those preceeding and following. You need to prove this before we can proceed, or make it an explicit proposition for debate.
And, you can’t exclude political events and come to a meaningful conclusion. (This assumes you are able to craft a meaningful proposition - a work in process at this point, IMO). The President has a tremendous effect on the cultural “feel” of the period - Jimmy Carter begat “Carter Country” and country chic, Reagan fathered “Family Ties” and “Wall Street”.
Finally, you’ll have to do better at defining the mechanism by which Science Fiction and Atari have acted as the arbiters of culture and philosphy for one particular decade (and presumably not the others).
I’m not convinced this clarifies anything. What exactly is the limit of understanding? If you can’t explain your premise, perhaps you should have waited before posting.
For one, I don’t think philosophy is meant to be stable. Second, you base your view of philosophy on science fiction and a computer game? That’s a little strange, to me.
Politics aren’t meant to be stable either. In the U.S., Reagan had to deal with a Democratic congress, and in Central America, there were all kinds of political disputes.
Also, I think it’s erroneous to divide “eras” by decade. Cultural trends don’t change simply because a year ends in a zero.
Not to mention that most of the time, major cultural trends overlap so much that you can’t divide time up into discrete “eras”. For instance, the biggest single era of changes in music and pop culture in the past 100 years happened between 1963 and 1968, but you had the most major changes in civil rights happen before that, and the lingering drug culture associated with the 60s lasted well into the 70s.
But I agree that unlike most 10-year periods, the 80s did not have many sudden changes, it was all incremental. But you could say the same about 1945-1954, too, and that is within the past half-century and is a decade depending on your definition of the two.
You lost me with that. Its been years since I saw Night of the comet because, well, it was pretty easy to forget in last 20+ years and Wargames bored me silly. Still i could say both movies are 2 of my top 10 flicks and still not understand what you’re trying to say.
I have to agree with Genghis Bob and** Fear Itself.** Your OP doesn’t actually make sense. I could say that the 90’s were the most philosophical enlightening age but you’d have to be a fan of the Macarena to understand and would be the same as your statement…ambiguous and confusing.
I’m not a fan, but philosophy is flexible, I guess, so go on and continue to blissfully contemplate the stability of the 80s. (You won’t get anyone who was a teenager then to agree with you, though.)
The unifying features of the 1980s were nuclear war and the stock market. Oh, and don’t forget suspenders.
The 1980s were an extremely unsettled period. You simply had to be looking in the right locations: Home computers were finally getting powerful enough to run rather sophisticated telecommunications software and encryption programs. The Internet was widespread in academia and the corporate world and experiencing its first major growth spurt as thousands of undergrads got online via their university’s computers, plus it was expanding into the home in a limited fashion via email-to-BBS and Usenet-to-BBS gateways. The entire concept of communication as we now know it was being invented as the very first many-to-many medium was penetrating into the mainstream.
Seriously, the whole concept of dividing time into decades is marginal at best. Centuries are no better: The 20th Century didn’t begin until 1914 and was over in 1991.
Don’t forget “Max Headroom sunglasses”, pastel colors and Big Hair bands. Oh, and Michael Jackson. Not that he was stable in the 80’s at all. As I remember, he was actually still black when the 80’s began.
??
Artificial satellites have been around in fiction ever since Edward Everett Hale’s “The Brick Moon” back in 1869. They were used countless times after that, and by the 1950s were incredibly old hat.
Arthur C. Clarke suggested the idea of satellites to be used as communication relays in an article in the 1940s. And not just a casual suggestion – it was a technical article.
He wrote the short story “The Sentinel” in the 1950s, although that lead to “2001” a decade later.
Are you trying to say that WWI didn’t end until 1991? Isn’t it a little more complicated than that? Or maybe you’re referring to the Cold War. Still, an interesting idea.