There's been the usual annual attention paid this week to the Beloit College "Mindset" list of semi-cute perspectives on generational change. I've been thinking about more realistic ones they never mention:
- Thurgood Marshall died before they could walk.
- They can't remember when Aid to Dependent Children was a national guarantee
- Hillary Clinton has always had a national role in politics
- Both Indira and Rajiv Gandhi have always been dead
- There has always been an American military presence in either Saudi Arabia or Iraq
- There has never been a Soviet Union.
- Eastern Airlines has never existed.
- South Africa has never required racial registration at birth.
- Cars have always had airbags.
This gets to be a tiresome exercise after a while, because anyone really should do the same for themselves. Creating this list for those younger than you is really an exercise in egosim: "Oh, isn't it great how much more historically aware I am?" Except that the Beloit list is generally about trivial matters.
Perhaps more humbling is the following exercise (whose origins I can't remember at the moment): take your father's or mother's birth year. Figure out what point in history is as far before the birth year as the birth year is from the present. What was happening two lifetimes ago?
My father was born in 1932, 78 years ago. 78 years before 1932 is 1854, before the Dred Scott decision and the Civil War. 1854 was the year of the Kansas-Nebraska Act and in the middle of the Crimean War (I vaguely recall that was the year of events commemorated in Charge of the Light Brigade).