Ask HN: Will the energy of the 80s ever come back to the West? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Will the energy of the 80s ever come back to the West?

4 pointskeepamovin14 comments

I was alive then, and it was wild. Say what you want but it was a good time to be alive. Snapshotted in the films of that era: a mix of possibility and optimism, expansion and vibrancy - that started to decay in the 90s (grunge et al was a symptom of the 90s zeitgeist) and was completely demolished by the noughties.

Stranger Things is one of a few recent 'era remake' period pieces that capitalizes on demand for this kind of nostalgia.

In a strange way, I think hacker culture of the 90s continued the excitement of the 80s, but underground, when it had already begun to die in the mainstream. Who's with me on this? Or knows what I'm talking about?

In the 2000s I traveled to Asia and found the same sense of aliveness in the Sinosphere, unsurprisingly. That's gone from there now, too, replaced with something else in capitalisms' rapide marche. But I really want to know -- will this vibe ever return to the West?

Or, put it differently, where in the world can you now find that mix of fun, openness, positivity and possibility that was once alive in the 1980s? :)

I never went there but judging by music and TV output I'd try west Africa.

Yeah, I hear you on that. A long ago question on where is cyberpunk rn? I answered "probably somewhere in Africa rn". Good to know the view from someone who's watching, thanks! :)

London (and nearby) seems fairly good right now if you can squint past some of the politics and media culture war fixations... As good as ~Y2K I'd say. Indeed I may be having more fun now!

Cool, man. I will have to swing by sometime. Only been very briefly to Paddington Station, Thames, The Wharf, Shakespeare and British Museum. Good show. Have to skip back based on this, thank you!!! :)

Really? As someone who lives within easy commuting distance of Central London, I'd say the UK is a pretty dire place to be right now.

It's always easy to be doom and gloom, and the press loves to push that fear and dread end-of-the-world line too for their sales. But having been through several rounds of crashes and recessions and lived other places around the UK and spent significant time in various other countries, I think that London is doing fine. Not utopia, but good.

Are you sure you don't mean the energy of the 70s?

(When were you 13 years old? ;-)

Very sure! :)

Ha. 70s is a diff vibe. To me it's diffuse, unfocused, open and permeable, but no direction -- no decisiveness. The 80s is all like "We know what we want and we are going there now! You with us? Okay, come along! You're not? CYA later, alligator." Hahaha! :)

But I'm curious -- for you, where was the 70s good and what was good about it? :) haha! :)

70s US: it had been under a decade since everyone had finally agreed people with lots of melanin were also people, and soon the states would ratify the ERA, finally agreeing that people without Y chromosomes were also people. Then all the old square bigots and chauvinists would eventually die off naturally and everything would be groovy.

At the time, of course, life was limited to dancing to disco and blasting classical on the Klipsch and gaining another few hundred feet uphill of mellow on Mt. Tam, but soon —maybe even by 2020*?— we'd be hang gliding in space colonies at the Lagrange points, eg https://nss.org/wp-content/uploads/Bernal_Interior_AC76-0628...

* after all, extrapolating from:

  1903 - beginning of manned aeronautics
  1961 - beginning of manned spaceflight

just imagine what another 60 years of aerospace would bring!

Hahaha! Wow, that's quite a write up, hahahahahaha! :) Thank you :)

I was watching the Joe Rogan Experience episode yesterday with Diana Pasulka, and they discussed something intriguing towards the end. They delved into the war on drugs, drawing connections with the counterculture movement and political activism. It was suggested that the outlawing of various drugs, particularly hallucinogens, was an attempt to dampen the temperature of the activist movement, perceived as a threat to governing systems. According to Joe Rogan, this marked the beginning of the war on drugs at the end of the 70s.

Then came the 80s, a period Rogan described as a clumsy expression of perhaps the wrong values – a perspective that struck me significantly. This era represented a departure from the openness of the 70s, which I find highly valuable. My previous comment didn't fully capture the importance I place on the availability of hallucinogenic drugs and associated experiences (their connection with UAP and religion is explored in the podcast as well), which I believe can be experienced without societal decay or government collapse.

Rogan and Pasulka highlighted the contrast between the 70s and 80s. The 70s brought an expansion of experiences through fantastic drugs, while the 80s, post-war on drugs, ushered in a change not just in societal values but also in the drugs themselves. The shift towards substances like cocaine, seen as ego-driven, was emblematic of this change. It's fascinating and somewhat saddening to think that the energetic and valuable thread of the 70s was lost in the 80s.

Despite the positive energy of the 80s, I feel we need to recapture the 70s vibe. I highly recommend watching this podcast episode, especially for that insightful discussion, as I think it'll resonate with many.

definately africa...Nigeria is da place

i miss the all-powerful USA I did grew up with. the reagan era. the movies where we had masculine huge bad-ass stars. i want that USA back. rambo, schwarzie, predator, and all the great shows we had in the 80s : miami vice, k2000, all that stuff.

i want movies with big bad-ass ass-kicking stars. all powerful usa looking far ahead at the horizon.

i want to embrace but scared is troll mockery. anyway very raw perceptive! :) hahaha! :)

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