{"id":2305,"date":"2010-08-17T22:42:44","date_gmt":"2010-08-18T02:42:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/shermandorn.com\/wordpress\/?p=2305"},"modified":"2010-08-17T22:43:15","modified_gmt":"2010-08-18T02:43:15","slug":"alternative-mindset-list","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/?p=2305","title":{"rendered":"Alternative &#8220;mindset&#8221; list"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>There&#39;s been the usual annual attention paid this week to the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.beloit.edu\/mindset\">Beloit College &quot;Mindset&quot; list<\/a> of semi-cute perspectives on generational change. I&#39;ve been thinking about more realistic ones they never mention:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Thurgood Marshall died before they could walk.<\/li>\n<li>They can&#39;t remember when Aid to Dependent Children was a national guarantee<\/li>\n<li>Hillary Clinton has always had a national role in politics<\/li>\n<li>Both Indira and Rajiv Gandhi have always been dead<\/li>\n<li>There has always been an American military presence in either Saudi Arabia or Iraq<\/li>\n<li>There has never been a Soviet Union.<\/li>\n<li>Eastern Airlines has never existed.<\/li>\n<li>South Africa has never required racial registration at birth.<\/li>\n<li>Cars have always had airbags.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>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: &quot;Oh, isn&#39;t it great how much more historically aware I am?&quot; Except that the Beloit list is generally about trivial matters.<\/p>\n<p>Perhaps more humbling is the following exercise (whose origins I can&#39;t remember at the moment): take your father&#39;s or mother&#39;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?<\/p>\n<p>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).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There&#39;s been the usual annual attention paid this week to the Beloit College &quot;Mindset&quot; list of semi-cute perspectives on generational change. I&#39;ve been thinking about more realistic ones they never mention: Thurgood Marshall died before they could walk. They can&#39;t remember when Aid to Dependent Children was a national guarantee Hillary Clinton has always had [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[12,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2305","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-higher-education","category-history"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pag0MB-Bb","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2305","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2305"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2305\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2311,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2305\/revisions\/2311"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2305"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2305"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2305"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}