WHAT HAPPENED IN 1960?
Someone on another site was opining about how, from 1920 to 1960, the marriage rate was three times what it is now and the crime rate was one-third of what it is presently. His main thrust was that because of social media and media in general, we are all manipulated and basically being driven insane and that people like the Amish, who do not indulge in media, don't seem to have transgendered folks or Covid deaths. Not sure if this is true or not, but it got me thinking about what did happen back then, or was in process back then, to bring us to this sorry state in which we currently exist.
So just what did happen in 1960?
The pill? Kennedy? The heating up of the space race? Definitely some of that. The movies, which had been heavily censored since they started getting racy in the 30’s, began to push the envelope again. First, with the ones based on bible stories, ironically (there were a lot of dancing harem girls, and seductive villains). I have read articles from Protestant leaders back then, who warned against watching them. Then there were films like Long, Hot Summer (’58); check out the trailer on that one. I was a little child, but I remember the adults talking about it. The pill paved the way for the sexual “liberation of women”, wherein women, like Esau, traded in their birthright (holding onto the prowess of their virtue in exchange for the legal status and protection of marriage, and for their respectful treatment in society), for a bowl of pottage (orgasms, STDs and broken hearts, it seems). Hugh Hefner and his ilk had already been doing some preparatory damage of the men by then. From there, Feminism came back swinging from its hiatus after women won the vote.
The Catholic Church, whose adherents were immigrants and their first and second generation offspring (meaning they were the rising middle class), was going through a convulsive overhaul called Vatican II which amounted to throwing the baby out with the bathwater, severely weakening the Faith, in my opinion.
For us kids, the Church had been the third parent. But now, boundaries became wiggly and porous morally, and I remember hearing from the good Christian monks who were our catechists that, hate to tell you, but when the bible says, “God is love”, it means there is no sovereign Supreme Being, just an ethereal emotion. Kind of erodes accountability, right there.
Now, it could be that some of these things I have described were planned, coordinated and orchestrated, even. It matters not very much to me, however, because these social engineers have merely commandeered the vehicle of the tendency of unguarded human nature to devolve into degeneracy. That tendency is always there; it never changes, but it can be corralled at times by religious revival and righteous laws. And there in the engine room, stoking the infernal fire of that runaway train is the enemy of our souls, the evil one, who is the father of lies and author of confusion.
I believe it behooves anybody who cares about a decent and sane world to look at getting right with God and purpose to live out His will, shining our little lights into this dark and decaying generation.