Monday, November 29, 2010
What's wrong with this picture?
One of the most intersting effects, I think, of WWI was the culture that appeared after. I've already talked about the lost generation, but I find it facinating that members of the same generation evolved into Wall Street stockbrokers who convinced everyday people to buy into the stock market, making it seem like an easy way to make quick money. Eventually, these people, having contributed to the great "bubble" lost more than anyone else when it burst. So had WWI influenced this "every man for himself" philosophy? Were people more merciless and materialistic because of it? Ultimatly I think they were, somewhat becase they feared what had happened, and still felt that life was fleeting.
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I agree. There's a reason that the decade between the war and the Depression was called the "Roaring 20s." People didn't consider teh consequences of their actions, and so they bought on credit, ran up the stock market, threw wild parties, and tried to have as good a time as they could. They tried to forget about the war.
ReplyDeleteI tend to think individual personal human characteristics do not change. We are always essentially the same (ex: we still listen to Beethoven and read Shakespeare). Society, however, does change, and causes us to make decisions differently. What I am trying to say is that I don't think the 20's made us greedy, but gave us the opportunity to act on greed like never before. I think humans have always been greedy however.
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