What Was So Good About the Good Old Days?

Surely you're familiar with the alluring appeal of the good old days. "Girls were girls and men were men," as the All in the Family theme song goes. And some good old days, it seems, were better than others. Tom Brokaw, in his mega-best selling book, The Greatest Generation, informs those who came of age during the era of Reagan and Rambo that those who came of age during the Depression and WWII were "the greatest generation any society has ever produced." This was a generation that would take its rightful place alongside those "who had converted the North American wilderness into the United States," Brokaw declares without even a hint of irony.

WATCH VIDEO: Top 2009 Mythbusters

The danger inherent in the good old days myth is twofold:

- Like all myths, its mere existence makes other illusions easier to swallow. If the good old days invention is accurate, the wars fought, the businesses started and subsidized, the legislation passed, the culture created, and the leaders elected in the good old days get a free ride on its coattails. We become a nation of people gazing backward for innocence lost rather than looking ahead with lessons learned.

- The second danger of the good old days fiction is disempowerment. By accepting that "the greatest generation any society has ever produced" roamed the earth some 50 to 70 years ago, we surrender new ideas and embrace whitewashed nostalgia. The answers, we acknowledge, are found in the past; all we have to do is slam on the brakes and throw our SUVs in reverse.

A valuable step in fostering a more forward-thinking approach would be to expose the good old days for what they were: a mixed bag of good and not so good, like all such "days." If we don't buy into the mythology, it's harder to convince us that most or all the solutions lie in the past.

Historian Howard Zinn reminds us "history involves the selection and arrangement of facts." Challenging that "selection and arrangement" is but one way to ensure that the best days are yet to come.

Looking Back While Moving Forward

Learn from the past: Get retro-progressive

Appreciate the present: There's never been a better time to be an activist

Re-imagine the future: Green your mind