From today’s David Brooks column in the NYT:
“When you look from today back to 1945, you are looking into a different cultural epoch, across a sort of narcissism line. Humility, the sense that nobody is that different from anybody else, was a large part of the culture then.”
Yeah, it was nice the way people in the ’40s thought nobody was different from anybody else, and everybody could go to whatever school they wanted to, or drink from whatever fountain they wanted to. Good times!
The moral of the column is: back then we were modest and focused on humanity as a whole, whereas now we are selfish, or at least self-promoting and self-indulgent, even though back in the WWII era we actually had more to crow about.
Oh. And his examples of those humble 1940s people: Cary Grant, Bing Crosby, Dwight Eisenhower
Our modern selfish culture-destroyers: Muhammad Ali, Kanye West, “football players”
…
Some humble folk affirming their shared belief that nobody is different
Smooth Peet
popeix
Nathaniel Snerpus
Danger 2012 