From Fool To Fortune Part Three - The Invasion of Family Virtues With Electronic Images
Old School, New School, No School Like an Old Fool As explained in "From Fool To Fortune Part One," budgets and household economy was a way of life for the average Americans who survived the Great Depression from 1929 to 1940.
The bullish approach of those who did well were not the majority.
Frugality, humility, hard work, well-cared for family and the like were common attitudes adopted by those who had worked on farms, stood in soup lines and forced to live in tents or on the charity of others.
Some say this world economic disaster began with Black Tuesday, the day the stock market crashed.
Others say the stocks only reflected the stalled industry.
Whatever the cause, those who emerged from that time period would never again take employment for granted.
Saving money was also an adopted custom.
Many took to hiding their money in locked metal boxes hidden beneath the floor boards.
Some stuffed it in their walls or mattresses.
One can only imagine what it must have been like to lose a job and think that you at least put some money away in the bank to tide you over only to discover that your bank had gone bankrupt and your money was gone.
Suddenly, you have nothing and there are no jobs.
You know it is only a matter of time before they take your house.
Naturally, you would pass along to your children the valuable lessons you have learned - even if it kills them.
For the average citizen, cutting back on spending, finding work, hunting for food, sharing shelter, and other penny-pinching tactics were what kept families fed and sheltered.
However, it was not necessarily the right thing to do.
Companies that found wealth, such as Kellogg and Proctor & Gamble, took aggressive action instead of the usual attempts of cutting back.
In fact, those who did well during the Great Depression refused to buy into the idea that consumers would not buy.
They simply advertised even harder.
Wealth does not disappear, it merely changes hands.
Robert Kiyosoki's "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" was a worldwide situation.
In other words, there were those who stooped to any depth to survive and save up some money and those who ignored the economic weather and advertised their entrepreneurial way to wealth.
The money did not go away, it simply shifted hands.
Those who understood this built empires.
Something happened that brought about a shift in the American frame of mind, an entire drug culture, a change in morality, a severe breakdown of the family unit, a drastic drop in work force, a decrease in small business growth, a "buy now, pay later" finance, a materialistic approach to life, a loss of faith, a loss of patriotism, a loss of national pride, no longer caring for one's neighbors and more.
And it happened all in one generation.
The world invades our homes! Television was invented in 1926 by J.
L.
Baird of Helensburgh, Scotland.
Broadcasting started in Germany in 1935.
American broadcasting started in 1941.
The average person did not own a TV set, however, until the 1950s.
If people wanted to know what was happening around the world, they had to buy a newspaper, listen to the news on the radio or read a magazine.
If they were "movie goers," they might see newsreels before the main feature.
Children under the age of six were not exposed to worldly news unless they overheard it from their parents.
In 1949, there were only about a million TV sets in the U.
S.
However, by 1959, there were 50 million.
Parents did not prevent their youngest children from watching and, in fact, TV watching was fast becoming a family ritual.
During the 1960s, color TV made watching even more popular and the number of television sets in the average American home grew exponentially.
What was America watching and how did it affect home values? Though television broadcasting began as early as 1928, too few homes had televisions for there to be an effect on the majority.
In 1947, while there were 40 million radios in the U.
S.
, there were only about 44,000 television sets, most of them in the New York area.
In 1948, DuMont Television Network, NBC, CBS and ABC were broadcasting.
By 1949, the networks stretched from New York to the Mississippi River, and by 1951 to the West Coast.
Life before television was extremely different.
Segregation was a way of life.
One knew one's place in the unspoken social structure (told to the children by the parents), were raised according to their parent's religion and expected to "marry well" which meant a person of your own race who equaled or exceeded your social status.
This applied to every race and religion within each community.
America had become a place of many races, religion and cultures but not yet a "melting pot.
" Our communities were contained and controlled to a great extent.
The virtues of this were language, culture, mutual support and gradual adaptation.
Then came TV.
Viewers watched "The Lone Ranger" (an outlaw and an Indian), "Cisco Kid" with his barely-speaks-English friend Pancho, "I Love Lucy" featuring a redhead married to a Cuban musician, and other visual concepts flashing into our eyes powered by a cathode ray tube.
The adults might have understood it to be fiction but impressionable toddlers saw it as part of life with their parents enjoying it and obviously approving of it.
There was violence on TV right from the start.
While researchers argued over the cause in the sharp rise in crime from the 1960s to the 1990s, few looked at the education of violence given those who were seated in front of a television starting in 1950.
The good guys shot the bad guys, the good guys never died and the bad guys never bled.
Besides violence, TV had two other major effects on the average American family.
One was that TV replaced the time when families sat in the living room after dinner reading, knitting, talking, reciting passages from the Bible, playing board games or other family activities.
The second effect was the invasion of multi-faceted ideas from outside the family into the home and minds of the next generation.
TMI - Too much information - causes the "Generation Gap" Nowadays, what is seen on TV may not seem very significant or influential.
A couple of generations have gone by and TV is no longer a novelty.
One would have to consider "life before TV" to understand the full effect.
For example, before TV there were community activities and charity functions.
There were swings on the porch and hanging from trees.
Fishing, hunting, horseback riding, lawn games and picnics by the lake were all common activities.
There were family "get-togethers" to which everyone brought food.
Children were sent out to play in any season while the adults played cards and talked.
What a child learned he or she learned from his parents or possibly a favorite teacher or family member.
In the cities there were plays, social functions, museums, opera, orchestras, big band lounges and dancing.
While parents were trying to teach Emily Post manners, a balanced diet, clean language, reverence and other virtues, they were also plopping their kids in front of a TV where their heads were filled with jingles about buying things.
Coffee, cigarettes and alcohol were catchy tunes.
Winston tastes good like a cigarette should.
Mabel was serving Black Label (beer), people were eating a lot of food and handling it with Alka-Seltzer, many different coffee companies were saying mornings were only for coffee.
If a man wanted a girl he had to use Brylcreem (a little dab will do ya).
The cultural changes that came with TV were faster and more drastic than any other in history.
It happened so fast that parents did not have time to figure out what was going on.
Belief in God was questioned, the rightness of one religion versus another was challenged.
The idea of segregation no longer made sense.
Families seen on TV did not compare to our own.
Suffering with illness did not make you stronger when drugs were so readily available to ease our pain and get rid of the symptoms.
We could eat junk food because vitamins had been discovered and were now widely available and affordable.
These ideas and more came from one source - Television.
TV was not the only factor but it was a major one.
Never before in history had a family and community been so easily infiltrated with ideas coming from outside of the family and community unit.
Research into countries who did not have TVs confirmed the above.
Television as a cultural disease and addiction Industrious activity and business growth is necessary to paying off debts.
Ironically, while it would seem that television was a cultural shock that knocked us off our feet, the internet just might stand us back up.
While super corporations such as fast food places, transportation companies, etc.
, just aren't cropping up much these days, huge overnight billion dollar companies have been blooming on the internet: Google, Facebook, Skype, Netflix, Groupon.
Wealth does not go away, it simply changes hands.
The bullish approach of those who did well were not the majority.
Frugality, humility, hard work, well-cared for family and the like were common attitudes adopted by those who had worked on farms, stood in soup lines and forced to live in tents or on the charity of others.
Some say this world economic disaster began with Black Tuesday, the day the stock market crashed.
Others say the stocks only reflected the stalled industry.
Whatever the cause, those who emerged from that time period would never again take employment for granted.
Saving money was also an adopted custom.
Many took to hiding their money in locked metal boxes hidden beneath the floor boards.
Some stuffed it in their walls or mattresses.
One can only imagine what it must have been like to lose a job and think that you at least put some money away in the bank to tide you over only to discover that your bank had gone bankrupt and your money was gone.
Suddenly, you have nothing and there are no jobs.
You know it is only a matter of time before they take your house.
Naturally, you would pass along to your children the valuable lessons you have learned - even if it kills them.
For the average citizen, cutting back on spending, finding work, hunting for food, sharing shelter, and other penny-pinching tactics were what kept families fed and sheltered.
However, it was not necessarily the right thing to do.
Companies that found wealth, such as Kellogg and Proctor & Gamble, took aggressive action instead of the usual attempts of cutting back.
In fact, those who did well during the Great Depression refused to buy into the idea that consumers would not buy.
They simply advertised even harder.
Wealth does not disappear, it merely changes hands.
Robert Kiyosoki's "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" was a worldwide situation.
In other words, there were those who stooped to any depth to survive and save up some money and those who ignored the economic weather and advertised their entrepreneurial way to wealth.
The money did not go away, it simply shifted hands.
Those who understood this built empires.
Something happened that brought about a shift in the American frame of mind, an entire drug culture, a change in morality, a severe breakdown of the family unit, a drastic drop in work force, a decrease in small business growth, a "buy now, pay later" finance, a materialistic approach to life, a loss of faith, a loss of patriotism, a loss of national pride, no longer caring for one's neighbors and more.
And it happened all in one generation.
The world invades our homes! Television was invented in 1926 by J.
L.
Baird of Helensburgh, Scotland.
Broadcasting started in Germany in 1935.
American broadcasting started in 1941.
The average person did not own a TV set, however, until the 1950s.
If people wanted to know what was happening around the world, they had to buy a newspaper, listen to the news on the radio or read a magazine.
If they were "movie goers," they might see newsreels before the main feature.
Children under the age of six were not exposed to worldly news unless they overheard it from their parents.
In 1949, there were only about a million TV sets in the U.
S.
However, by 1959, there were 50 million.
Parents did not prevent their youngest children from watching and, in fact, TV watching was fast becoming a family ritual.
During the 1960s, color TV made watching even more popular and the number of television sets in the average American home grew exponentially.
What was America watching and how did it affect home values? Though television broadcasting began as early as 1928, too few homes had televisions for there to be an effect on the majority.
In 1947, while there were 40 million radios in the U.
S.
, there were only about 44,000 television sets, most of them in the New York area.
In 1948, DuMont Television Network, NBC, CBS and ABC were broadcasting.
By 1949, the networks stretched from New York to the Mississippi River, and by 1951 to the West Coast.
Life before television was extremely different.
Segregation was a way of life.
One knew one's place in the unspoken social structure (told to the children by the parents), were raised according to their parent's religion and expected to "marry well" which meant a person of your own race who equaled or exceeded your social status.
This applied to every race and religion within each community.
America had become a place of many races, religion and cultures but not yet a "melting pot.
" Our communities were contained and controlled to a great extent.
The virtues of this were language, culture, mutual support and gradual adaptation.
Then came TV.
Viewers watched "The Lone Ranger" (an outlaw and an Indian), "Cisco Kid" with his barely-speaks-English friend Pancho, "I Love Lucy" featuring a redhead married to a Cuban musician, and other visual concepts flashing into our eyes powered by a cathode ray tube.
The adults might have understood it to be fiction but impressionable toddlers saw it as part of life with their parents enjoying it and obviously approving of it.
There was violence on TV right from the start.
While researchers argued over the cause in the sharp rise in crime from the 1960s to the 1990s, few looked at the education of violence given those who were seated in front of a television starting in 1950.
The good guys shot the bad guys, the good guys never died and the bad guys never bled.
Besides violence, TV had two other major effects on the average American family.
One was that TV replaced the time when families sat in the living room after dinner reading, knitting, talking, reciting passages from the Bible, playing board games or other family activities.
The second effect was the invasion of multi-faceted ideas from outside the family into the home and minds of the next generation.
TMI - Too much information - causes the "Generation Gap" Nowadays, what is seen on TV may not seem very significant or influential.
A couple of generations have gone by and TV is no longer a novelty.
One would have to consider "life before TV" to understand the full effect.
For example, before TV there were community activities and charity functions.
There were swings on the porch and hanging from trees.
Fishing, hunting, horseback riding, lawn games and picnics by the lake were all common activities.
There were family "get-togethers" to which everyone brought food.
Children were sent out to play in any season while the adults played cards and talked.
What a child learned he or she learned from his parents or possibly a favorite teacher or family member.
In the cities there were plays, social functions, museums, opera, orchestras, big band lounges and dancing.
While parents were trying to teach Emily Post manners, a balanced diet, clean language, reverence and other virtues, they were also plopping their kids in front of a TV where their heads were filled with jingles about buying things.
Coffee, cigarettes and alcohol were catchy tunes.
Winston tastes good like a cigarette should.
Mabel was serving Black Label (beer), people were eating a lot of food and handling it with Alka-Seltzer, many different coffee companies were saying mornings were only for coffee.
If a man wanted a girl he had to use Brylcreem (a little dab will do ya).
The cultural changes that came with TV were faster and more drastic than any other in history.
It happened so fast that parents did not have time to figure out what was going on.
Belief in God was questioned, the rightness of one religion versus another was challenged.
The idea of segregation no longer made sense.
Families seen on TV did not compare to our own.
Suffering with illness did not make you stronger when drugs were so readily available to ease our pain and get rid of the symptoms.
We could eat junk food because vitamins had been discovered and were now widely available and affordable.
These ideas and more came from one source - Television.
TV was not the only factor but it was a major one.
Never before in history had a family and community been so easily infiltrated with ideas coming from outside of the family and community unit.
Research into countries who did not have TVs confirmed the above.
Television as a cultural disease and addiction Industrious activity and business growth is necessary to paying off debts.
Ironically, while it would seem that television was a cultural shock that knocked us off our feet, the internet just might stand us back up.
While super corporations such as fast food places, transportation companies, etc.
, just aren't cropping up much these days, huge overnight billion dollar companies have been blooming on the internet: Google, Facebook, Skype, Netflix, Groupon.
Wealth does not go away, it simply changes hands.
Source...