Older Generation: Is the doom and gloom the norm?

Hello Senior ATSers

I am pushing 40 (pushing as hard as possible, but its not budging).
I was remembering when I was in my teens/20s (during the Bush Sr and Clinton years) how on the radio, they would interview the odd "nutjob" with all sorts of fairly plausable conspiracys demanding we are at the end times, world will end in the next year or so (any given timeframe). It made me feel when I was young that somehow the world would end very soon.
The very early net then (and BBS systems) also were spreading one doomsday after another, always coming and going.

Now that the net is pretty universal and no longer just the domain of the geeks and nerds, you of course have an exponential growth of these theories and prophecys..but its not like this is new..just easily accessable.

I am curious if this has always been the norm..of people ringing the bell of doom and salvation and to do it quickly because the time is up..what mediums were the older conspiracy doomsdayers? papers? guy screaming in the town center? radio shows? and was there also a feeling when you were young that the world is surely ending?

I can imagine what it must have been like when WW2 was raging..no doubt many doomsday prophets were convincing others of the end...but doubt we will have any here that remembers those days.

Pity there are no such thing as vampires..it would be interesting to hear his perspective of the generational doom phenomona

Finally..why do you think its almost key to peoples lives to demand the world is about to end? you reckon its some sort of personal fear of their own future simply pushed out to a wish for the end and grasping for any straws to convince themselves?

Well, Im only 35 yrs old, but I can remember ever since I was a kid hearing about the last days/tribulation. My parents have heard end of the world predictions since they were kids and so have my grandparents. I think people either hate life (want "bad people" to be punished while they go to heaven) or want something to believe in that makes them feel safe.

I dont think it was so gloomy - but there were only 2 or 3 tv stations. The newspaper came every night and uncle Walter explained the news. The stock market was reported only in the Sunday paper.

If someone was preaching doom and gloom they did it to your face -- which is a lot harder to do in person. The cold war was on and McCarthy was calling everyone communists. As I got older the Viet Nam war blossomed and it seemed everyone was getting drafted. A semester of college cost about as much as one months rent of an apartment on campus. The war protests and the civil rights movement were in full swing and the protests actually made things change. We all had hideous junker cars that we kept running ourselves and we also had very powerful V8s just for fun.

Communications were slower and people had time to think and discuss. There was bad stuff happening to people all over the world - but there also seemed to be the feeling that it would be taken care of for the better. After all everybody worked together in the war. We were also surrounded by heros when I was little - there were a lot of stories that everyone had about those 4 years and we and our allies had defeated evil.

My bet is that if you took a vacation form the web things would be less gloomy.

I'm in my 50's and yes, it is absolutely the norm. I remember when I was a kid in the 60's, my dad had a comic strip hanging in the "sewing room" (older folks probably remember those) and it featured a man with a boy on his knee, and the caption said "Remember son, the world is always in the worst shape it's ever been in!" LOL! Yeah, doom and gloom is the norm and people always think it's never been worse than it is right "now".

EDIT to add- when I was a kid we were in the middle of the Cold War and if you think there's a lot of fearmongering now you should have heard it then. People were always talking about who would launch the first strike (USA or Russia) and what would be left afterwards. We used to have school drills on getting under our desks and covering our heads in case of a missile attack. The good ol' days were chock full of doom-and-gloom.

Originally posted by spyder550
If someone was preaching doom and gloom they did it to your face -- which is a lot harder to do in person.

That right there would dismiss lots of theories. Seeing the crazy in someones eyes is enough to simply walk away.

Yesteryear...such people would get an eye rolling (and perhaps tossed a dollar out of pity)
Today...they trend on ATS and get interviewed by project camelot

Originally posted by SavedOne
We used to have school drills on getting under our desks and covering our heads in case of a missile attack. The good ol' days were chock full of doom-and-gloom.

edit on 29-2-2012 by SavedOne because: (no reason given)

I remember as a kid the USSR V US stuff. Of course my memory kicks in around the Reagen years, so I guess I missed the "good stuff" (cuban missile crisis springs to mind)

I know the home I grew up in had a bomb shelter built into it...you know...for when we get bombed of course...our little farmtown in massachuttes. high priority target no doubt (the reds wanted our apple trees no doubt)

Every generation throughout history has had it's doomsayers. I have come to believe that a lot of people wish for something to happen to alleviate their own boring lives... Some seem to get a thrill out of convincing themselves and others of imminent doom 'you can read it all day long on this very website'

Religion has always had it's end time prophecy, but the collapse of christianity in the western world may also explain why there seems to be a lot more of this sort of thing in recent years. A lot of people seem to have a yearning for the supernatural. These endless doomsday scenarios may be a way of tapping into that primal urge and replace the hole left by a lack of faith in organized religion. Either way, it's all a lot of nonsense. No one can see the future, and the supernatural does not exist.....

I'm pushing 60 and grew-up/live probably not far from your little farm town, OP. There are stark differences IMO between then and now. Yes, there was the Cold War. But it was real. The Cuban Missile Crisis proved that. We lived in a 2-bedroom house and I recall clearly being woken in the middle of the night by commotion in the kitchen. I got up to find my dad (an officer in the Army Reserves) sitting at the kitchen table in his fatigues with a duffle by the door, his helmet on the table, with the phone and some papers laid out in front of him. My mother had clearly been crying and the mood was tense. I was shuffled back to bed. I later learned that he had orders and was waiting for 'the call' to launch the 'phone tree'.

The Cold War hung over us and we had the polio scourge to deal with. One kid in my neighborhood got it and the entire neighborhood went nuts. It was bad.

But there were jobs. A college eductaion was attainable if not assured if you studied. The financial system was taken for granted and my dad, on a paltry $11k/yr could provide adequately for our family of five. We had our own modest house and had what we needed. One of my brothers and I went to college. He became a doctor.

I can honestly say, from my POV, that although there has always been 'doom', things are different now. There is a gravity and immediacy that was never there in the 'old days'. Many more things have gone out of alignment and there are far, far more people in high places lacking ethics and any sense of community or caring. My feeling is that we are infinnitely more screwed now than we ever were when we were sparring with the Russians.

The cold war provided all those cool submarine books -- James Bond -- and the space race. The Cuban missile crisis taught us what a real leader could do when put in a game of brinksmanship.

Even though I am a Senior Network Engineer. I blame computers -- everything was easier time was longer - things were not monetized to death. You needed a screw go to the hardware store - here's a handfull no charge. Now every screw has a barcode and every barcode goes through the POS. You could get lost and have an adventure - now I know where I am within feet. You could disappear for a long while and nobody worried if you didn't answer your phone.

I am glad I am old - my step kids don't have any fun everything is a struggle and the stuff they do do is bland and unexciting. I really think we used all the fun. Im sixty two and have worked my way through a pretty fun bucket list. I don't think my kids will be able to do that. The little sports car will kill me eventually, so I don't worry so very much.

reply to post by jtma508


From everything you wrote, I would personally have come away with the opposite reaction...
That back then, because there was actual credible threats and a cowboy style government ready to nuke away, that the doom was far more relevant than todays "something is going to kill us somehow' mindset, then grasping and twisting straws until something moderately menacing is shown (under certain lighting conditions).

I will agree that corporatism may destroy the market and our currency, and much of the west, if not world, will be in a tailspin for quite awhile while we restructure commerce..but I think the great depression was probably more impacting in such a case.

The curse of todays society (globalism, corporate capitalism) may actually be a blessing in disguise. the stock market and financial services are so disconnected from mainstreet now (beyond negativity) that I don't think the cloud will be as dark if and when the whole thing does collapse...it may actually be what is needed in the long run to stimulate more local sectors into the market..kill the giant tree so the thousand saplings unable to grow under its shadow get some sunlight sort of thing.

reply to post by spyder550

Sounds like we grew up together! Not the same town or probably the same state but I remember all that stuff. Still have a scar on my forehead from trying to crawl under the desk.
I was a country kid and I was thinking yesterday about all the country kids that drove pickups to school. Every pickup had a gun rack and it was full. We used to go out after lunch and check out the rifles. No one was ever killed or even threatened. If there was to be a fight they used their fists. Guns were for coyotes and rattlesnakes.
Worse thing I did in school was chew gum in class. Had to wear it on my nose until the bell rang.
The bad day was when a boy started school there and they said he was from Russia. But he was cool.
I think the scariest time was during the Bay of Pigs. Of course, we didn't have Obama then.

Originally posted by SaturnFX
Yesteryear...such people would get an eye rolling (and perhaps tossed a dollar out of pity)
Today...they trend on ATS and get interviewed by project camelot

I'm sorry, not much to add but that made me smile and chuckle.

im glad im not the only who ponders this. Being 23, i always wonder if the world has always been this messed up, (crime etc) (end of times etc) or if i am just now becoming aware to this. Only thing that makes me believe that we are in the end of times is the sudden booom of knowledge and population growth since the 1900s

The world has always been #ed.....

always will be

reply to post by SaturnFX


I was recently in a debate with a few other members over a similar topic. They pronounced that the world is more dangerous now because Russia and China might combine their forces against the West.

I asked whats new?

The thread title:

Older Generation: Is the doom and gloom the norm?

has two issues which are relatively non-specific.

"Older generation" is non-specific. A child would call a teenager the "older generation", as a teen we considered anybody above teenage the "older generation" and so on.

and

"the norm" is non-specific. The norm for conspiracy theorists? The norm for evangelists? The norm for the common sheeple?

Now, on to your question from my relative point-of-view.

In the 60's I saw a Watchtower or somesuch little black and white booklet about Armageddon. I think it was a Jehovah's Witness or somesuch little publication they'd drop in phone booths.

I asked Dad about it. He said, "Oh, that's just doomsayers. Doomsayers have been here since the beginning of time."

Okay, the next I hear the word Armageddon is in the 70's - the title of some block-buster movie.

Hollywood has made oodles of EOTWAWKI movies.

Next, we have "the bomb" issue of the Cold War. Nuclear bombs were relatively new and unknown. Nuclear holocasts were a concept that adults might discuss behind closed doors; magazines might obliterate their cover with pictures of mushroom clouds, and occassional backpage articles might examine ... but, it wasn't as much the "norm" as the EOTWAWKI we get now.

We now have the net to magnify the Hollywood and newspaper articles of yesteryear and today.

There's MORE EOTWAWKI talk on conspiracy sites and evangelistic religious sites than elsewhere.

Part is where you place your attention.

Overall, I think everybody knows the term Armageddon now ... in the 70's, it wasn't that way. The movie introduced the word to those who didn't know it already.

There's a lot more to be doom and gloomish about today as well. That's a subject for another thread though.

reply to post by SaturnFX


Im your age (40s), and i remember the scariest thing, from my experience, for us kids back then, was what seemed like the very real possibilty of nucleur war with russia. I remember hearing stories of bomb shelters and 4 minute (was it?) warning sirens, i was told there was one near my school, and to be honest it was a very scary time to be a kid (well pre-pubescent teenager). None of it was helped by Frankie goes to Hollywood's "Two Tribes", or the Spitting Image puppet of Reagan with his shaking hand over a white telephone or a red telephone, not knowing which one to pick up to order coffee, ( i just made that up, but it was the same sorta thing,). lol

The Great Game Remains the Same.


I bet you'd find that most people have some conspiracy theories, even the most rigourously logical. That the apocolyptic or renewal, resurrection, birth, rebirth, destruction, the "golden age" of the past remain constant through-out all of human history.

Only now, they are more dynamic. I think it remains to be seen if this makes people more crazy or less.