Would you rather live in the 60s or 21st century?

All time periods are horrible. There are major negatives for every era.

What we want to do is take elements of one era, not re-live them in context. (Although without the context, we can't understand them; what makes them awful is also what makes the non-awful stuff so interesting).

The '60s were very intense. The early-'60s were a lot like the '50s in look and tone and cultural stuff -- but the sleepy "american decade" optimism of the '50s (the result of a booming post-war economy, stronger unions, and strong anti-trust laws) was juxtaposed rather hauntingly by the brand new threat of The Bomb. That tension continued thru the first half of the '60s, the JFK assassination instantly eerie as it was the pin in the balloon of Cold War tension which had been building for nearly twenty years since the end of WW2, and we didn't know what was going to happen next.

Just after the assassination, midway thru the decade, there's a shift in the culture, Vietnam gets going for real (and would remain the ground zero topic for another 10 years), hippies, ant-war & civil rights protests, acid rock, the generation gap, drug "counter-culture", the clothes begin changing very quickly, and a TV media displayed in living color the bodies of young boys returning in caskets from SE Asia but was otherwise determined to pretend in its entertainment programming that these things weren't going on. The late-'60s felt a bit Dante-esque, with each year having its own distinct flavor, the radio very diverse even if television decidely wasn't. There was an echo-chamber tone about this period that felt filled with a cacophony of voices (to mix metaphors, since echo chambers don't tend to do this) and there is plenty of reason to understand why this gothically psychedelic era resonated with so many, sticking with them for decades after the era was over.

And if you were young in particular, the country was going thru the same adolescence you were, so it was kind of an emotional double whammy.

Even Walter Cronkite observed that the 1960s was the most volatile decade domestically since the Civil War a hundred years earlier, but he also described the 1960s as "a slum of a decade". And indeed it was. Because for all the energy and change and drama the '60s had to offer, it was also a grimy, dire period as well. The inner cities, for one things, were really falling apart, with crime and blight taking over, and even seedy sex shoppes with their wares in the windows popping up in previously "nice" downtown areas. Meanwhile much of the white middleclass had shifted to the safer suburbs, the harsher elements of the time softened except for the impact the Vietnam draft was having on them. And every neighborhood seemed to have at least one garage band. So the transitions going on during the '60s were fast and bustling and terribly uncomfortable and utterly fascinating. And somehow terribly tragic in terms of how they "felt".

With much of this stuff pouring well over into the deeply melacholy early-'70s.

So the '60s was simpler and safer. And yet it wasn't at all.

Anyway, it's hard to describe how the period tasted (which felt like two decades in one) without it sounding kind of melodramatic, but the '60s really did feel like it was looking into the face of eternity in some way, and everybody sensed it. And why, when there are other periods which are full of social and cultural change, too? But it just did. It was the vibe, and the combination of discordant vibes, of the '60s that was so resonant and distinctive.

It was interesting to live through, and you might like to relive it as a fly on the wall, but the downside was pretty significant. Among other things, a lot of the conveniences we have today either didn't exist or they were a pretty ancient, inefficient version of what we have now. (Does anybody recall how bad TV reception often was?? And yet it was still fairly new and kind of exciting). And a lot of the practical drawbacks have been mentioned here by others.

Not to mention how white, straight and mostly male everyone was expected to be.

There was a lot more land though, much more unspoiled acreage (although pollution was ridiculous).

The 21st century, its good and bad points, are here now to be witnessed for all who are present. Medicine is better (except the cost), information is much more massive if you can separate the wheat from the chaff, diversity is much greater (even if the white male power structure still seems to be fighting back against it), any number of things are much better today.

But we know what the problems are, too. (And, jeez, there are so many more people!!)



--
LBJ's mistress on JFK:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcXeutDmuRA

sorry I'll def say 60s even tho people were pigheaded.

I was born in 1951. I lived through all of what you asked about. Every decade had its good and its bad, as is now. No decade was perfect, but the 50s, 60s and even the 70s were great decades for the good times and simpler times there were.

60s! Without any doubt!

[deleted]

Seeing as how lynching people is less in fashionable in the 21st century, I'm going to pick now as the vastly better time to live in.

I thought so too until I went on an excavation for 2 months in a rural place with no signal. I woke up at 5am everyday and went to my tent at 10pm. We hiked an hour climbing a mountain to our site and climbed down again to our tents daily. And you know what? I've never felt more healthy in mu life and I thought I'd hate it. So yeah I'm ready to go to the 50s or 60s.