Misplaced nostalgia.

[Cowley]

Morning all. An enforced day off due to a strained arm muscle has given me a chance to ask this.
While reading the thread - Chasing steam behind the Iron Curtain - I came across the term 'Ostalgie' again, this being a nostalgia for socialist life in the former Communist Eastern Block countries, I've heard the word Ostalgie used a few times recently and it got me thinking about starting this thread.
Reading some of the posts from people that experienced those regimes and have some knowledge of them it's hard to understand why people would look fondly back at those days, yet nearly all of us look back at things we remember from our past with rose coloured spectacles at times.

Most of us on here are rail/transport enthusiasts or have some interest in transport as well as social history and sometimes when we think back to the past we feel things were better. Often though when services for instance are compared to current standards they weren't better at all, in fact far from it at times.
Do we have the same nostalgia for old hospitals, cars, schools, politics, attitudes?
Were things better or are we in danger of forgetting the bad aspects of the past and just remembering the good because that's the way our minds work over time?
I wonder how many people on here have reminisced about something for years and when reacquainted with said thing have found it be somewhat disappointing and to have wished that they'd just stuck with the fond memories they'd had instead? I'm pretty sure I have.

I also wonder how many of us have heard someone waxing lyrical about something they remember, that you know from your own experience and memories was nothing like as good as they seem to remember it being?
Railwaywise the classic one of course would be the BR blue era, I loved it due to it being the era that ran through my childhood. People of my fathers generation that loved railways understandably didn't.

Any of your thoughts would be much appreciated.

 

[Bill EWS]

For me it's the two-tone green liveries I prefer. There was few, if any locomotive that didn't look good in two-tone green. The overall blue was seen as an austeric act that was dull and aged very quickly and seemed to go hand-in-hand with the austerity of the 70's with it's damaging rationalisation, right up to Privatisation. The only saving grace was the coming of the HST's that have proved themselves. So for me it isn't a matter of thinking the railways were much better just that the two-tone green was much better visually and the all-blue certainly wasn't.

Being brought up between the 40' and the 50's has it's happy memories but I have not forgotten the sheer austerity and drabness of those times.

 

[TheNewNo2]

Nostalgia is usually misplaced. It's responsible for a lot of problems in the world - Trump and Brexit for example. Nostalgia is inherent in the phrase "Make America Great Again". And for a lot of people, nostalgia is about a time when things were simpler.

The modern world is a confusing place. It wasn't so long ago that a man and woman met at school, they'd get married, the man would go out to work and the woman would stay home to make babies, and eventually you died having lived together the entire time. Now not only does that homogeneity not exist, even the basic things - like men and women - aren't binary options anymore.

We all yearn for the past, partly because when you're young you're protected from the complexities and the decisions. Being an adult is ****ing hard, and things were easier when you could just come home and your mum would cook your dinner for you and you didn't have to worry about bills or children or politics. We do forget the bad things as time goes by, unless they truly defined the time. But even bad things, if they're predictably bad, can be a source of comfort. People reoffend after being released from prison because in prison they don't have to worry about things so much - the world is smaller, and while nasty it's predictably nasty. A hankering for communism is similar - you were told how to live, it was easier than finding your own way.

 

[DerekC]

. Now not only does that homogeneity not exist, even the basic things - like men and women - aren't black and white anymore.

Hmm - may be best not to comment on that bit. Fifty thousand shades of dark brown to pinkish? I think it's all about perception. Things seem homogenous when you are young.

We all yearn for the past, partly because when you're young you're protected from the complexities and the decisions. Being an adult is ****ing hard, and things were easier when you could just come home and your mum would cook your dinner for you and you didn't have to worry about bills or children or politics. We do forget the bad things as time goes by, unless they truly defined the time.

I agree. I suffer from nostalgia like everyone else and I really do wish I could watch and listen to processions of A3s and A4s beating their way past Potters Bar again, but when I think about it - do I really want coal fires and smogs, dirty slow trains (yes, they mostly were), deaths of trackside workers, miners and industrial workers in the thousands per year, pretty basic healthcare (although radically better than the my parents' generation), freezing cold bedrooms with ice on the window in the morning. Cars (if you had one) that regularly wouldn't start and frequently broke down on the road, regular horrific train crashes (look at the photos from Harrow)? I think not. There are lots of things wrong with the modern world and we should absolutely support our grandchildren when they want to fix them, but it's a better place for more people than the old one.

 

[Welly]

I was not even born until the 1970s but I sometimes hankered for 1950s BR steam until I remind myself that I would not have had good hearing aids to hear them!

 

[DynamicSpirit]

The modern world is a confusing place. It wasn't so long ago that a man and woman met at school, they'd get married, the man would go out to work and the woman would stay home to make babies, and eventually you died having lived together the entire time. Now not only does that homogeneity not exist, even the basic things - like men and women - aren't black and white anymore.

I'm not sure that has much to do with nostalgia though - I'm going to hazard a guess that people a thousand years ago typically felt just as nostalgic for the past as we do today.

We do forget the bad things as time goes by, unless they truly defined the time. But even bad things, if they're predictably bad, can be a source of comfort.

Indeed.

For much of the last year, I've been quite nostalgic for a period in the mid 1990s when I lived in Sheffield. I've often found myself deeply wishing I could be back there, re-living that life of 20ish years ago, and experiencing all the things I experienced then. Reasonable? I suspect that's not an unusual state of mind. But - the thing is, I was incredibly unhappy at that time. I was less confident, less financially secure, socially very insecure, found my job extremely stressful. By just about any rational measure, my life today is massively happier and better than my life was in Sheffield back then. I know that. Yet still something in my brain keeps making me wish I could be back there.

Make of that what you will - my own guess is that it illustrates how much nostalgia for the past is a fundamental characteristic of the human mind, and is not really affected by how good or bad the past was in reality.

 

[TheNewNo2]

Hmm - may be best not to comment on that bit. Fifty thousand shades of dark brown to pinkish? I think it's all about perception. Things seem homogenous when you are young.

I didn't mean to indicate skin tone in my comment, I've revised "black and white" into "binary options".

 

[Cowley]

Some very interesting replies thanks folks. I've just spent the evening tinkering around with my friends model railway which is set in the mid 70s on a branch line in the middle of the southwest somewhere. It struck me that we're trying to recreate some of our fondest childhood memories and that we were thinking of ways we that could make it look decayed and run down as things were back then (it takes nerve to make a smart station building look decrepit).
I'm not sure how to portray in model form power cuts, strikes and three day weeks though...
Yet somehow it all looks so calm and peaceful.

 

[AlterEgo]

I didn't mean to indicate skin tone in my comment, I've revised "black and white" into "binary options".

A lot of people yearn for the days when you wouldn't have had to say this.

 

[70014IronDuke]

I'm a liberal, but it has its limits.

Misplaced nostalgia is one of the most dangerous emotions known to man.

It causes, amongst other things, long, absurd, rambling threads on Rail UK Forums about re-opening basket case railway routes that should never have been built in the first place, like Aberystwyth to Carmarthen, Stranraer to Dumfries and the Waverley Route from Hawick to Carlisle.

It prevents progress and development, wasting human time and energy on daydreaming nonsense. In fact, I think peddling such twaddle should be banned. Actually, even raising the subject should be made a crime.

On the other hand, genuine nostalgia, when things were better, people were kinder, when every driver invited you onto the footplate, every signalman into his box, when the Royal Scot always ran to time behind a gleaming red Duchess, the Somerset & Dorset was filled block to block with Midland 4-4-0s piloting Bulleid pacifics (and with Ivo Peters behind every second lineside bush), when Cadbury's chocolate was 6d (and proper chocolate) and money was proper £sd, a farthing bought you a black jack and fish n chips came in last Friday's Daily Sketch automatically with salt and vinegar, and politicians didn't even claim expenses, let alone falsify them – well, there's nowt wrong with remembering those times. Of course not.

 

[Cowley]

I'm a liberal, but it has its limits.

Misplaced nostalgia is one of the most dangerous emotions known to man.

It causes, amongst other things, long, absurd, rambling threads on Rail UK Forums about re-opening basket case railway routes that should never have been built in the first place, like Aberystwyth to Carmarthen, Stranraer to Dumfries and the Waverley Route from Hawick to Carlisle.

It prevents progress and development, wasting human time and energy on daydreaming nonsense. In fact, I think peddling such twaddle should be banned. Actually, even raising the subject should be made a crime.

On the other hand, genuine nostalgia, when things were better, people were kinder, when every driver invited you onto the footplate, every signalman into his box, when the Royal Scot always ran to time behind a gleaming red Duchess, the Somerset & Dorset was filled block to block with Midland 4-4-0s piloting Bulleid pacifics (and with Ivo Peters behind every second lineside bush), when Cadbury's chocolate was 6d (and proper chocolate) and money was proper £sd, a farthing bought you a black jack and fish n chips came in last Friday's Daily Sketch automatically with salt and vinegar, and politicians didn't even claim expenses, let alone falsify them – well, there's nowt wrong with remembering those times. Of course not.

Oh yes and did I hear right that the weather was always better in summer back then too?
Anyway, this Aberystwyth - Carmarthen reopening. Sounds interesting...

 

[ChiefPlanner]

I'm a liberal, but it has its limits.

Misplaced nostalgia is one of the most dangerous emotions known to man.

It causes, amongst other things, long, absurd, rambling threads on Rail UK Forums about re-opening basket case railway routes that should never have been built in the first place, like Aberystwyth to Carmarthen, Stranraer to Dumfries and the Waverley Route from Hawick to Carlisle.

It prevents progress and development, wasting human time and energy on daydreaming nonsense. In fact, I think peddling such twaddle should be banned. Actually, even raising the subject should be made a crime.

On the other hand, genuine nostalgia, when things were better, people were kinder, when every driver invited you onto the footplate, every signalman into his box, when the Royal Scot always ran to time behind a gleaming red Duchess, the Somerset & Dorset was filled block to block with Midland 4-4-0s piloting Bulleid pacifics (and with Ivo Peters behind every second lineside bush), when Cadbury's chocolate was 6d (and proper chocolate) and money was proper £sd, a farthing bought you a black jack and fish n chips came in last Friday's Daily Sketch automatically with salt and vinegar, and politicians didn't even claim expenses, let alone falsify them – well, there's nowt wrong with remembering those times. Of course not.

Where are the Housemann quotes - or even "a la recherche du temps perdu" ?

 

[AJM580]

Railways like everything evolve and change. Back in the day when steam gave way to diesel there were those who hated the change, and today with the increased use of MU trains there are many that hanker for the 1980s and "proper trains". My opinion is that while nostalgia has its place, we shouldn't close our eyes to the present and the future. The advent of technology has aided the hobby - RTT, internet gen etc and the new travel opportunities opened up by things like Crossrail and the like are to be welcomed.

 

[Busaholic]

I remember having to go to church two, three or four times on a Sunday in the 1950s/early 60s, but then there was nothing else to do on a Sunday anyway: the Hancock's Half Hour episode written by Galton and Simpson summed it up brilliantly. I also remember steam trains, and my father dragging the whole family somewhere to witness them and me and my sister being covered in dirty smoke and smuts while we choked away! My father called it character forming, while I became a lifelong convert to electric trains. I remember having to go a very long way home from church choir practice for fear of being beaten up by teddy boys. I remember, aged 8, waiting with my mother in our fogbound S.E. London house for hours wondering where her husband and my father was on what transpired to be the evening of the Lewisham (St. John's) train crash, in which thankfully he was only involved in the sense of being stuck in a train on a line immediately behind a train with multiple casualties: we had very rudimentary knowledge via the wireless of the crash two or three hours after it, but until my father walked in after midnight no inkling of whether he was dead, injured or alive. On the other hand, I remember on Boxing Day 1961 or 1962 when my very young brother was sick a locum G.P. travelled by trains/tube to administer to him from Whitechapel to Eltham, and probably saved his life.

So what I'm saying is, things weren't all so much better then (whenever ' then' was) but it is easy to superficially remember the things that gave us pleasure and enjoyment and assume everything was better. There was certainly less selfishness and arrogance, but too much deference imo, but I think as a teenager I had a lot more to look forward to realistically in that decade of change the 1960s than teenagers do now. Full employment and free education were a given and it's criminal that's no longer the case.

 

[Cowley]

I remember having to go to church two, three or four times on a Sunday in the 1950s/early 60s, but then there was nothing else to do on a Sunday anyway: the Hancock's Half Hour episode written by Galton and Simpson summed it up brilliantly. I also remember steam trains, and my father dragging the whole family somewhere to witness them and me and my sister being covered in dirty smoke and smuts while we choked away! My father called it character forming, while I became a lifelong convert to electric trains. I remember having to go a very long way home from church choir practice for fear of being beaten up by teddy boys. I remember, aged 8, waiting with my mother in our fogbound S.E. London house for hours wondering where her husband and my father was on what transpired to be the evening of the Lewisham (St. John's) train crash, in which thankfully he was only involved in the sense of being stuck in a train on a line immediately behind a train with multiple casualties: we had very rudimentary knowledge via the wireless of the crash two or three hours after it, but until my father walked in after midnight no inkling of whether he was dead, injured or alive. On the other hand, I remember on Boxing Day 1961 or 1962 when my very young brother was sick a locum G.P. travelled by trains/tube to administer to him from Whitechapel to Eltham, and probably saved his life.

So what I'm saying is, things weren't all so much better then (whenever ' then' was) but it is easy to superficially remember the things that gave us pleasure and enjoyment and assume everything was better. There was certainly less selfishness and arrogance, but too much deference imo, but I think as a teenager I had a lot more to look forward to realistically in that decade of change the 1960s than teenagers do now. Full employment and free education were a given and it's criminal that's no longer the case.

Excellent post, although when I read it out to my other half she reminded me that with the internet it's now possible to learn about anything you want with just a few taps on a computer.
Nobody loves a smart ar*e though (apart from me).

 

[Calthrop]

On the other hand, genuine nostalgia, when things were better, people were kinder, when every driver invited you onto the footplate, every signalman into his box, when the Royal Scot always ran to time behind a gleaming red Duchess, the Somerset & Dorset was filled block to block with Midland 4-4-0s piloting Bulleid pacifics (and with Ivo Peters behind every second lineside bush), when Cadbury's chocolate was 6d (and proper chocolate) and money was proper £sd, a farthing bought you a black jack and fish n chips came in last Friday's Daily Sketch automatically with salt and vinegar, and politicians didn't even claim expenses, let alone falsify them – well, there's nowt wrong with remembering those times. Of course not.

Oh yes and did I hear right that the weather was always better in summer back then too?

Where are the Housemann quotes - or even "a la recherche du temps perdu" ?

(Making two posts; because there are things which can probably be done with the quoting mechanism, which I don’t know how to.)

The above-quoted, poetically, “says it all”: this is stuff which human beings are famously prone to doing – with considerable evidence that they’ve been doing it ever since there has been any way of passing people’s thoughts down to future generations or millennia.

 

[Calthrop]

Being brought up between the 40' and the 50's has it's happy memories but I have not forgotten the sheer austerity and drabness of those times.

Just my own (born 1948) subjective experience: many, many people remark on the overall scene of drabness / run-down-ness / privation in Britain for a good while post-World War II -- I never at the time had any sense of that -- the encompassing world seemed to me brightly-coloured and generally glorious. Perhaps I was just too young to get any inkling of the general "austerity" thing -- and small kids were presumably given the best of what was available. Also, we lived in a smallish country town...

We do forget the bad things as time goes by, unless they truly defined the time. But even bad things, if they're predictably bad, can be a source of comfort. People reoffend after being released from prison because in prison they don't have to worry about things so much - the world is smaller, and while nasty it's predictably nasty. A hankering for communism is similar - you were told how to live, it was easier than finding your own way.

A trait which sometimes amazes me, is how little there seems to be that cannot become nostalgia-fodder -- no matter how predominantly awful it may have been at the time. (Considerably worse stuff than life in the Soviet bloc post-the 1950s -- where also, in my perception, you could if you were subtle about it, to a fair extent thumb your nose at the system and do your own thing.) It would appear -- from what heard and read over the decades -- that many people, on the Allied side anyway, who lived as adults through World War II (whether in the armed forces or quasi-such, or as civilians): found in after years, a lot about it to retrospectively enjoy, and remember fondly.

And, from memoirs I've read, by people who were in Soviet forced-labour camps in the era of Stalin -- many Soviet citizens who suffered that fate, but came through alive, and physically and mentally something like still whole: enjoyed in the decades that followed, getting together with fellow-ex-prisoners and reminiscing about "the old times in camp" -- concentrating on the meagre "upside" of the experience, and the funny things that had happened during it, rather than the hideous parts. This, if anything, would tend to an outsider to look like nostalgia which was misplaced -- but as we find, that's how people are. (Actually, going by much of the writing about that milieu: horrible though the Gulag was, there was plenty about it to laugh at: largely, revolving around much stupid bungling, and crazy attitudes and pronouncements, on the part of those in charge. It seems often to have resembled a gruesome "Carry On" film -- though with minimal sexual-titillation content .)

... coal fires and smogs, dirty slow trains (yes, they mostly were), deaths of trackside workers, miners and industrial workers in the thousands per year... regular horrific train crashes (look at the photos from Harrow)...

Indeed -- we who remember everyday steam and think of it as idyllic and delightful, tend to gloss over its rather stark downsides, as set out above. (I would suggest that horrific accidents are equally capable of happening on more modern rail systems -- the price of safety is great vigilance, and even so, sometimes things just go awry) -- but concur that the less mechanised, more labour-intensive rail working of decades back, meant a lot of danger, and numerous injuries, for many staff.) Interestingly, material above is echoed by a fascinating book I was reading recently -- rail and steam reminiscences of the period between the 1940s and '60s, by a chap now aged 80-ish. He loved, and delighted in, steam when it was on the scene; but writes eloquently of the ugly "other side of the coin", as per your post -- and concludes with some regret, that it's best that it is gone.

"On the third hand", essentially anything set up by humans, however positive its intent, will have its hidden horrors. Our comfortable way of life in the rich world at the present day, comes at a price of what are seen as potentially very alarming effects on the global environment; and a lot of misery in the poorer parts of the world.

I'm not sure that has much to do with nostalgia though - I'm going to hazard a guess that people a thousand years ago typically felt just as nostalgic for the past as we do today.

I very much concur: as per my previous post. Nostalgia is something that humans characteristically do -- whether it makes much sense or not. Although IMO, the world changes nowadays at a far greater pace than most people are equipped to be comfortable with.

 

[yorksrob]

I'm nostalgic for a time when Western liberal secularism was the ascendant force in the world.

Now with capitalist authoritarian regimes cornering the economic development and religious fanaticism gripping large parts of the underdeveloped world, I can only see society going backwards into the quagmire.

No, I don't view this nostalgia as being in any way misplaced.

 

[ChiefPlanner]

(Making two posts; because there are things which can probably be done with the quoting mechanism, which I don’t know how to.)

The above-quoted, poetically, “says it all”: this is stuff which human beings are famously prone to doing – with considerable evidence that they’ve been doing it ever since there has been any way of passing people’s thoughts down to future generations or millennia.

INTO my heart on air that kills
From yon far country blows:
What are those blue remembered hills,
What spires, what farms are those?

That is the land of lost content, 5
I see it shining plain,
The happy highways where I went
And cannot come again.

 

[Shaw S Hunter]

I'm nostalgic for a time when Western liberal secularism was the ascendant force in the world.

Now with capitalist authoritarian regimes cornering the economic development and religious fanaticism gripping large parts of the underdeveloped world, I can only see society going backwards into the quagmire.

No, I don't view this nostalgia as being in any way misplaced.

While I very much agree with the first two sentences I'm not sure I can accept the conclusion. I suspect that some of the nostalgia is a form of complacency, of being unwilling to resist at least some of the negative forces to which you refer and finding it more comfortable to hide away and reminisce rather than deal with the real issues that confront us. And it's not a completely new trend; I suspect that the reason young people have become so disengaged from politics has much to do with the complacency of their comfortably off elders sitting on the sidelines. The price of freedom is constant vigilance but too many of us are sleeping.

 

[Busaholic]

Excellent post, although when I read it out to my other half she reminded me that with the internet it's now possible to learn about anything you want with just a few taps on a computer.
Nobody loves a smart ar*e though (apart from me).

Information doesn't necessarily equate to learning, though. What do the population of China 'learn' from the bits of the internet they have access to, for instance?

 

[Cowley]

Information doesn't necessarily equate to learning, though. What do the population of China 'learn' from the bits of the internet they have access to, for instance?

Yes good point. I'll tell her that .

 

[70014IronDuke]

I'm nostalgic for a time when Western liberal secularism was the ascendant force in the world.

Now with capitalist authoritarian regimes cornering the economic development and religious fanaticism gripping large parts of the underdeveloped world, I can only see society going backwards into the quagmire.
...

As I understand it, this is a contradiction in terms. At least, as Adam Smith defined capitalism - both an authoritarian government and monopolistic players are inimical to genuine market capitalism, which Smith insisted must be underpinned by competition within an ethical framework. If your government, be it communist, fascist or other authoritarian, does not seek to provide a level playing field for competition and entrepreneurship, governed by the rule of law, your economy simply misses out on human potential of its population (or worse, destroys it). That is not part of Smith's model, not in any way.

Note how many entrepreneurs leave Russia and other countries where patent law or at least its enforcement (for example) is a sick joke - only to settle in California, London and Berlin.

 

[yorksrob]

While I very much agree with the first two sentences I'm not sure I can accept the conclusion. I suspect that some of the nostalgia is a form of complacency, of being unwilling to resist at least some of the negative forces to which you refer and finding it more comfortable to hide away and reminisce rather than deal with the real issues that confront us. And it's not a completely new trend; I suspect that the reason young people have become so disengaged from politics has much to do with the complacency of their comfortably off elders sitting on the sidelines. The price of freedom is constant vigilance but too many of us are sleeping.

I'm not sure there's anything that can satisfactorily be done about the religious fanaticism issue - at least not that will resolve it, other than reacting to it.

In terms of the first issue, I know very well what needs to happen - western capitalism needs to be more successful at increasing the standard of living of its citizens. Unfortunately, during the first decade of this century, the USA managed to achieve massive economic growth, but average wages stagnated. That's what the West has to address.

 

[yorksrob]

As I understand it, this is a contradiction in terms. At least, as Adam Smith defined capitalism - both an authoritarian government and monopolistic players are inimical to genuine market capitalism, which Smith insisted must be underpinned by competition within an ethical framework. If your government, be it communist, fascist or other authoritarian, does not seek to provide a level playing field for competition and entrepreneurship, governed by the rule of law, your economy simply misses out on human potential of its population (or worse, destroys it). That is not part of Smith's model, not in any way.

Note how many entrepreneurs leave Russia and other countries where patent law or at least its enforcement (for example) is a sick joke - only to settle in California, London and Berlin.

Call it what you like, but China has been achieving massive industrial development without social/political liberalisation.

 

[Senex]

Just my own (born 1948) subjective experience: many, many people remark on the overall scene of drabness / run-down-ness / privation in Britain for a good while post-World War II -- I never at the time had any sense of that -- the encompassing world seemed to me brightly-coloured and generally glorious.

I'm a bit older than you, but like you I never at the time had that sense of drabness in the 50s (late 40s most definitely!)

Indeed -- we who remember everyday steam and think of it as idyllic and delightful, tend to gloss over its rather stark downsides, as set out above.

My memories of steam are much less positive—filthy rolling stock, pretty poor performances, etc. Except of course for steam on some of the prestige ordinary trains and on some of the specials we got in the 60s, which really did shew us just what it could do.

On the positive side, I'm certainly nostalgic for main-line rolling stock where all seats lined up with the windows. That continued in First into the Mk3s, but were the Mk2f-s the last ones where in Standard too everything lined up?

Nostalgia is something that humans characteristically do -- whether it makes much sense or not. Although IMO, the world changes nowadays at a far greater pace than most people are equipped to be comfortable with.

Agreed both sentences!

 

[Senex]

I'm nostalgic for a time when Western liberal secularism was the ascendant force in the world.

Now with capitalist authoritarian regimes cornering the economic development and religious fanaticism gripping large parts of the underdeveloped world, I can only see society going backwards into the quagmire.

Whilst I agree completely with your second paragraph, I have reservations about the first. I think Western liberal secularism has gone too far, with all its stress on "rights" (whatever those may be) but with no stress on any complementary duties and with the deliberate smashing of Western cultural traditions in favour the liberal élite's beloved Multi-Kulti which just seems to mean saying to the incomers into the west that they should keep their own separate cultures whilst we abandon ours to be friendly to them.

 

[yorksrob]

Whilst I agree completely with your second paragraph, I have reservations about the first. I think Western liberal secularism has gone too far, with all its stress on "rights" (whatever those may be) but with no stress on any complementary duties and with the deliberate smashing of Western cultural traditions in favour the liberal élite's beloved Multi-Kulti which just seems to mean saying to the incomers into the west that they should keep their own separate cultures whilst we abandon ours to be friendly to them.

I suppose I'm inclined more towards the idea of western "secularism" being a philosophical entity in itself, rather than just a vacuum created by the retreat of western religious observance.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

In terms of the first issue, I know very well what needs to happen - western capitalism needs to be more successful at increasing the standard of living of its citizens. Unfortunately, during the first decade of this century, the USA managed to achieve massive economic growth, but average wages stagnated. That's what the West has to address.

By 'the first issue' I assume you're referring to young people becoming disengaged from politics. Yet the standard of living today in the UK (and most Western countries) is massively greater than it was in - say - the 1970s. By your logic, shouldn't that mean that young people would be more engaged today than they were 40 years ago?

 

[yorksrob]

By 'the first issue' I assume you're referring to young people becoming disengaged from politics. Yet the standard of living today in the UK (and most Western countries) is massively greater than it was in - say - the 1970s. By your logic, shouldn't that mean that young people would be more engaged today than they were 40 years ago?

It wasn't so much young people becoming disengaged, it was more about the West falling behind what I've termed authoritarian capitalist economies.