quote:

Originally posted by Rawny:
^^^^ Well heck, why stop there. 1492 was when Columbus sailed the ocean blue. America was then discovered.

He didn't make any music!

I want to go back to the late 70's /early 80's

Such a great time to grow up in So. Cal. Best concerts, backyard Keg parties, cheap used muscle cars, no homeless where I lived, girls looked so hot!
So much more items were still made in the USA. Sears stores and mall shopping.
Please take me back!

Absolutely would go back! I was born in 1971 so 80s teen and 90s 20 year old. So much fun and absolutely agree about the best music!

quote:

Originally posted by Black92LX:
I was born in 1983 so my perspective for those decades I was just a kid. But man if I could go back I absolutely would.
Everything seemed so much slower and simpler. I think a big part of it was we did not have the news headlines blasting us in the face every second of the day.

Maybe it’s because I was a kid but I long for those days quite often. Been watching a lot of movies from that era and listening to music from then as well and I am just taken back.

Were the 80s and 90s as good as I remember or is it just because I was a kid and had no true understanding of life’s responsibilities?

Black, I'm a bit older than you, but I'm with you. I'd go back to the 80's.
Ronald Reagan, Maggie Thatcher, John Paul II.
Yes, it was simpler then... and the music was great!

quote:

Originally posted by Hamden106:
I would prefer early 70s, late 60s.

That would be my "un-adulterated era" no tech yet, it was just starting, a TV Pong game was it so we were always outside until called in for bed time. Playing baseball, basketball, football, nobody kneeling during games, no NIL, no political discussions at that age.

Now, to the specific question asked, the 80's would be fine, had just turned 20, single, Corvette, Mercedes, Toyota Supra, moved to NorCal and it hadn't flipped to psycho mode yet, a lot of fun.

since we're talking 80's and returning to our yout...

Hell I would be willing to go back to no smartphones and no social media applications. Forums/BBS, are ok. I think this change would literally change society overnight.

Nostalgia is sometimes about the things we never experienced ourselves.

I’m not criticizing, but if we weren’t there then, we can only dimly imagine what it was like. The thread about living in the 1850s comes to mind. Going back to the 1980s and 90s is obviously much different, but ....

One thing is that it’s hard to know how good things are without a comparison with the bad. It wasn’t until Commirado passed a magazine limit law that I really knew what a nuisance it would be—unlike all the people who had been living under it for years before. (I of course experienced the Dark Decade of the Federal ban, but my situation was different and mags weren’t as important to me then.) Most of us don’t think much about good health very much—until we no longer have it.

For me personally, in many ways that era was the best of times and the worst of times. Seven years of workweeks of 70, 80, and even more hours with constant pressure to do more were not fun even though it was work I wanted to do. One of the best places to be assigned, but the worst boss ever. Criticisms and the Legion of Merit—but really deserved? Getting married then weeks of travel in Europe after I retired from the Army, but then drifting and even unemployment for a year. “Retired law enforcement? That’s fine, but you still don’t need a concealed carry permit; you do need to register your AR, though.”
Working for a time at a job that is commonly reviled today. The stress of being forced to move on short notice, but ending up in the best place I’d ever been (for now, anyway). Health issues and then recovery. But mostly not knowing what I didn’t know, but would have been good to know.

But other than my and my wife’s having been younger in those days is there anything I miss about them? No.

Oh, yeah: About the music. The invention of the CD was a huge leap forward, and my collection of classical works grew by leaps and bounds.

Yes…but only if I had the power to stop the “progress” made by well-meaning but intellectually ineffective people and companies.

Think no internet. No cloud. No 24x7x365 news. Newspapers still exist. AM radio is as intended.

quote:

Originally posted by 4MUL8R:
Yes…but only if I had the power to stop the “progress” made by well-meaning but intellectually ineffective people and companies.

Think no internet. No cloud. No 24x7x365 news. Newspapers still exist. AM radio is as intended.

I'm thinking more like, buy 100 shares each of Apple, PayPal, Amazon, and many others at the prices they were at back then.... Leave everything alone and teleport back to today, stopping along the way to grab a few more shares of companies like Nvida...

And then there was the international situation. Up until the (temporary) demise of the Evil Empire, the 1980s were in many ways the most likely to have been the time places like Washington, DC, and New York City would have been subjected to the nuclear fires some people are so eager to see used to destroy much of the world today. The Soviet leadership was terrified of Reagan, and some were convinced that the US was planning to attack them first. During my time in Germany I was prepared for the idea of being awakened by the sound of Soviet tanks rumbling through the small town where I lived a short distance from the East German border. That was unlikely, and I wasn’t afraid of its happening, but I had definite plans for what I would have done if it did.

I was also still in Germany when the Chernobyl nuclear plant went up and spread radioactive materials across much of Europe.

Most Americans, of course, were oblivious to all that, just as they are today about the threats posed by our good buds the Chinese and Russians—not to mention the threats posed by religious zealots who would happily see us all sent to their particular version of Hell. In the ’90s there wasn’t any real danger of such fanatics building the bombs themselves, but there were persistent rumors about large numbers of loose weapons from the former Soviet Union floating around and being available to the highest bidders.

I didn’t lose sleep about things I could have done nothing about, but they were things for the knowledgeable to think about on occasion.

I do still listen to music on vinyl, played on a nice turntable from 1981, through speakers from 1989. It takes me back to the 60's - 80's. I still play some of the original albums from back then.

No. In cursory thinking, I do not want to live in the 80's again. I like the modern levels of technology and knowledge (much of it, anyway).

What I would want is a return of a higher level of ethics and morality, of consideration and manner, of rationality and reason.