The 1937 Watershed

Do you know anyone over 90 years of age?¹ I have a 95 year old neighbor; she lives alone;² up until a year ago, she drove a car to the nearby shops. How about that really old English war hero who died during the pandemic? They don’t make 'em like they used to.

They do make 'em like they used to in 1941. That’s when Dick Cheney was born. Something struck me recently: “all these 80 year olds, like Cheney, Trump, Biden, and Pelosi, are not noble people… they make such a contrast with the 90 year olds.” So, I came up with a hypothesis. My hypothesis is based on the idea that there was some big generational shift which delimited the 90-somethings from everyone since.

Muse on this:

Yes, of course, I cherry-picked. The cherries just about pick themselves sometimes.

Gen Shh! splits into two

Officially, they are all part of the same generation; namely, The Silent Generation. I don’t think that grouping is useful.

“Although it is thought of as the wealthiest generation, they were also survivors of the Great Depression...”³

Not true. Only the earliest of them were. On the contrary, most of The Silent Generation grew up in the ‘Goldilocks’ decade, the 1950s. High wage-growth came with low inflation— a very rare happening. One might also bring up the fact of the highest percentage of home ownership since people stopped living in roundhouses.

We may sunder Gen Shh! due to other social changes too. Television, for example. They lived through the changeover from radio to television. Some fell firmly on the TV side of the divide. More on this soon.

I’m picking 1937 as the watershed year. Here’s my hypothesis:

A person born in 1937 or earlier has a high chance of being a humble, hardy, good person; whereas a person born in 1938 or later has a high chance of being a weakling or a prick.

1937 + 14 = 1951

Think of the years when you were 7 to 14. I bet your favorite music and movies come from that time. No other time in your life will ever have as much clout on your conscious mind.

The kids who grew up in the 1940s had a very different experience than the kids who grew up in the 1950s. 1950 was the year things turned around. Inflation was brought under control. It was in 1951, however, that the average person really felt the boons.

I use this outer boundary of 14 to work out the cultural influence of things.

By 1951, if you were 14 years or older, you were already shaped. Too late— your most cherished Christmas was the time when you got a box of crayons and some paper. Perhaps it’s best to say that those born prior to 1938 escaped formation by Consumerism.

1957: Ampex's sneaky invention

My second reason why people of a post-1937 vintage are of such inferior quality stems from the takeover by television. I mentioned television earlier. It’s an easy inference: TV dulls the mind. I’m actually delving a bit deeper. I think a profound change happened in the world of propaganda. In 1957, television producers began to use edited videotape.

This was such a crucial change for politics for two reasons:

The second one is the technique pioneered by Sergei Eisenstein. He hatched it for purposes of Communist propaganda.⁴ A picture is worth a thousand words; that’s why TV is so much more dangerous than radio.⁵

The 37-vintage were 20 years old when the News took this quantum leap in brainwashing. To be honest, I’d say that they were caught in the blast radius. They were still too young. I’d put the watershed for this one at 1933. However, we must also take in television as a whole. Television dethroned radio in 1954. I’m going to say that the sixteen year olds (and older) at this time (b.=<1938) escaped basically unscathed.⁶

1945-1950: Welfare spreads out

This one gets an honorable mention. I don’t know how to calculate it, so I can’t fit it into my hypothesis.

Anyway, it’s moreso a background effect. Between 1945 and 1950, all over the Western World, the welfare state became universal. The swallowing of society by Leviathan was arguably a bigger change than the original safety-net in the 1930s. No longer were people means-tested or excluded due to profession. From 1950 onwards, there was a dramatic psychological effect on people, especially young men. People plugged into the system because it was so safe.

Summary

To maximize one’s chance of being a humble, hardy, and good person, one should…

• ... have been 14 before enjoying a consumerist boom time;
• ... have been 16 before watching television;
• ... have been at least 20, ideally 24, before watching edited, centralized News.

I don’t expect anyone to take my hypothesis seriously. I do hope that people begin to muse upon the reasons why those born before c.1938 seem to shine like stars amongst us.