Opining about the 1990s is all the rage in the internet salons these days. If you haven't been following the debate, it may come as some surprise that nostalgia for the final decade of he twentieth century is now a subject of controversy. The disagreement arises between those who want to use political means to wind the cultural clock back to the 90s. Behind these types' avowed Conservatism lies a sensualist consumer streak that makes them long for the material richness of bygone days.
While the 90's are a considerably more innocent time than today, I don't look back on them with nostalgia. Not much, anyway. It was nice to be able to have a feast for $3 at Taco Bell. In the early 90's (I lived in Texas) I could scrounge $2 in change and buy enough gas to drive around all day.
The early 90's was a recession. I graduated high school in 92. I got my first job in 1990. I applied all over the place, and the only job I could get was one where I had a friend working there and got hired from a reference. Same for my second job. I put in about 30 applications all around town, but the only interview I got was at a Kentucky Fried Chicken a friend worked at.
I called the 90's "The Xerox Decade". It seemed to me like everything was a copy of everything else. All the music sounded alike. I started listening to Country in the early 90's because all the pop and grunge were identical. Ace of Base had a really popular CD around 1995 or 96 that was 10 tracks that were all the same song. All the sitcoms were just about identical. I had a theory that you could switch the characters around between Friends, Frasier, Mad About You, and several others and not skip a beat. All the cars looked alike, all the houses looked alike. Movies to me seemed like copies of each other. We had some good ones like Independence Day, but most others were just copies of each other. It seemed even worse than today where the tendency is to remake anything that once made money, only make it more "diverse" and gay.
The only fondness I have for the 90's was things were cheaper and while the rainbow was there, it wasn't as in our face as it is now.
It may be different for Millennials because you were still growing up at the time. Coming of age right around the time when IBM had its first historic layoff and suddenly you couldn't depend on a career with anybody was a little different.
I remember the nineties as rather boring. They were a decade in which everyone was restless for something to happen. I came of age in the second half, so you have a lot of bad music and the MATRIX and other things. It's not a decade I'd wish to go back to, but it was better than living now.
Millenial housewife of a single-income family about to be raising two, here. My husband (a mechanic) and I definitely feel the financial squeeze, but we also find ourselves hopeful about things for the future. Two decisions we've both agreed have helped have been (1) limiting our luxuries and (2) staying near family and our church.
We buy very few things new. Our table (which, admittedly was more expensive than most of our purchases but was still well below new prices for the quality), our rugs, our couches and chairs, book shelves, lamps, etc, almost everything furnishing our place was either a gift from family or friends or was bought used. Even my husband's lawn equipment was bought used and fixed up by him or is borrowed from family who don't use the tool regularly. We do have a few luxuries (such as being on the Castalia Library leather book subscription or having a raw milk share), but by being willing to buy used, accept help and hand-me-downs, rejecting certain "staples" of American life (e.g. having all the streaming services to keep up on all the latest shows by people who hate us), and working to maintain what we have, we're able to be pretty comfortably. I don't know what it'll be like in a few years, with older and hopefully more children, but we find ourselves awed by the abundance around us if we look.
The other big decision we've stuck to is staying close to family, both blood and our parish. We might not ever be able to buy a house, especially in our area. However, we're in a good rental with grandparents on both sides 10 minutes away. We could move farther away and pay less in rent and potentially buy, but we don't want to. By staying near family, we can cut down on groceries by eating dinner together, get help with our rambunctious toddler, and are nearby to receive hand-me-down clothes, furniture, appliances, etc. When we moved into our current place, we paid almost nothing for the moving process and still get help regularly with different things. And that's only speaking of the material goods having family nearby provides. Our kids, for instance, will get to grow up with a strong bond with their grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins, just to name one of the non-material goods. The isolation of the nuclear family from the extended family was one of the greatest psyops ever pulled on American culture.
We also want to stay in our parish. We're both Catholic converts, myself from a devout Baptist home and my husband from a very secular upbringing, and we both know for different reasons the importance of a good, spiritual home. We have the blessing of being surrounded mostly by good to great parishes that are already past most of the post-conciliar shenanigans. Our priests are solid. The masses we've been to in our area are often good to gorgeous. There are quite a few young families. There are multiple, devout families we've met, both among our peer group and older, who want to help us out and to build community. This parish is where we want to grow roots and help continue to build.
All that to say, the future is going to be rough, but it's brighter than many think it is. There are sacrifices that will need to be made, and what those sacrifices entail will differ from location and situation, but there's more wealth out there than many realize. And if you can, stay near family and plant yourself in a good church community. They'll help weather the coming storms.
Housewife here too. I'm always keeping it in my mind how women *had* to do things even just 100 years ago, and it makes my life feel so easy, even if we can't afford the so-called "luxuries."
I see boomer and some gen-x couples with a lot of money live absolutely chained to their way of life, because anything less than the best is considered trashy, poor, or unsafe. In my eyes, it's obvious they're living lives of fear and nonstop anxiety over their materialism. I think if they had prioritized what you're prioritizing, they would be a lot happier.
My husband is better at it than I am. He really helps keep me grounded and seeing the blessings. We live in a very affluent area, so it would be easy to look around and feel materially poor. However, he can easily list off so many blessings and point out so many ways our struggles aren't really that bad. It's also helped having so many ways in our relationship, from our engagement until now, that God has provided. It's a struggle, but when I start feeling scared about finances, I try to recall those previous times. And each time I start to feel overwhelmed, God comes through. I know I'm still more stressed about it than I should be, but I can't imagine living with those concerns with a materialistic mindset and a less grateful and sensible husband.
While the 90's are a considerably more innocent time than today, I don't look back on them with nostalgia. Not much, anyway. It was nice to be able to have a feast for $3 at Taco Bell. In the early 90's (I lived in Texas) I could scrounge $2 in change and buy enough gas to drive around all day.
The early 90's was a recession. I graduated high school in 92. I got my first job in 1990. I applied all over the place, and the only job I could get was one where I had a friend working there and got hired from a reference. Same for my second job. I put in about 30 applications all around town, but the only interview I got was at a Kentucky Fried Chicken a friend worked at.
I called the 90's "The Xerox Decade". It seemed to me like everything was a copy of everything else. All the music sounded alike. I started listening to Country in the early 90's because all the pop and grunge were identical. Ace of Base had a really popular CD around 1995 or 96 that was 10 tracks that were all the same song. All the sitcoms were just about identical. I had a theory that you could switch the characters around between Friends, Frasier, Mad About You, and several others and not skip a beat. All the cars looked alike, all the houses looked alike. Movies to me seemed like copies of each other. We had some good ones like Independence Day, but most others were just copies of each other. It seemed even worse than today where the tendency is to remake anything that once made money, only make it more "diverse" and gay.
The only fondness I have for the 90's was things were cheaper and while the rainbow was there, it wasn't as in our face as it is now.
It may be different for Millennials because you were still growing up at the time. Coming of age right around the time when IBM had its first historic layoff and suddenly you couldn't depend on a career with anybody was a little different.
"Xerox Decade" sums it up perfectly.
I remember the nineties as rather boring. They were a decade in which everyone was restless for something to happen. I came of age in the second half, so you have a lot of bad music and the MATRIX and other things. It's not a decade I'd wish to go back to, but it was better than living now.
As Devon Stack said, stage 2 cancer might be better than stage 4 cancer, but wanting to stop there would be weird.
Millenial housewife of a single-income family about to be raising two, here. My husband (a mechanic) and I definitely feel the financial squeeze, but we also find ourselves hopeful about things for the future. Two decisions we've both agreed have helped have been (1) limiting our luxuries and (2) staying near family and our church.
We buy very few things new. Our table (which, admittedly was more expensive than most of our purchases but was still well below new prices for the quality), our rugs, our couches and chairs, book shelves, lamps, etc, almost everything furnishing our place was either a gift from family or friends or was bought used. Even my husband's lawn equipment was bought used and fixed up by him or is borrowed from family who don't use the tool regularly. We do have a few luxuries (such as being on the Castalia Library leather book subscription or having a raw milk share), but by being willing to buy used, accept help and hand-me-downs, rejecting certain "staples" of American life (e.g. having all the streaming services to keep up on all the latest shows by people who hate us), and working to maintain what we have, we're able to be pretty comfortably. I don't know what it'll be like in a few years, with older and hopefully more children, but we find ourselves awed by the abundance around us if we look.
The other big decision we've stuck to is staying close to family, both blood and our parish. We might not ever be able to buy a house, especially in our area. However, we're in a good rental with grandparents on both sides 10 minutes away. We could move farther away and pay less in rent and potentially buy, but we don't want to. By staying near family, we can cut down on groceries by eating dinner together, get help with our rambunctious toddler, and are nearby to receive hand-me-down clothes, furniture, appliances, etc. When we moved into our current place, we paid almost nothing for the moving process and still get help regularly with different things. And that's only speaking of the material goods having family nearby provides. Our kids, for instance, will get to grow up with a strong bond with their grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins, just to name one of the non-material goods. The isolation of the nuclear family from the extended family was one of the greatest psyops ever pulled on American culture.
We also want to stay in our parish. We're both Catholic converts, myself from a devout Baptist home and my husband from a very secular upbringing, and we both know for different reasons the importance of a good, spiritual home. We have the blessing of being surrounded mostly by good to great parishes that are already past most of the post-conciliar shenanigans. Our priests are solid. The masses we've been to in our area are often good to gorgeous. There are quite a few young families. There are multiple, devout families we've met, both among our peer group and older, who want to help us out and to build community. This parish is where we want to grow roots and help continue to build.
All that to say, the future is going to be rough, but it's brighter than many think it is. There are sacrifices that will need to be made, and what those sacrifices entail will differ from location and situation, but there's more wealth out there than many realize. And if you can, stay near family and plant yourself in a good church community. They'll help weather the coming storms.
Housewife here too. I'm always keeping it in my mind how women *had* to do things even just 100 years ago, and it makes my life feel so easy, even if we can't afford the so-called "luxuries."
I see boomer and some gen-x couples with a lot of money live absolutely chained to their way of life, because anything less than the best is considered trashy, poor, or unsafe. In my eyes, it's obvious they're living lives of fear and nonstop anxiety over their materialism. I think if they had prioritized what you're prioritizing, they would be a lot happier.
My husband is better at it than I am. He really helps keep me grounded and seeing the blessings. We live in a very affluent area, so it would be easy to look around and feel materially poor. However, he can easily list off so many blessings and point out so many ways our struggles aren't really that bad. It's also helped having so many ways in our relationship, from our engagement until now, that God has provided. It's a struggle, but when I start feeling scared about finances, I try to recall those previous times. And each time I start to feel overwhelmed, God comes through. I know I'm still more stressed about it than I should be, but I can't imagine living with those concerns with a materialistic mindset and a less grateful and sensible husband.