In the spirit of my returning here to 'explain' what has gone on in OWF's past and to draw open the drapes to shed some much needed light on what many considered a 'gray area' in its history, I thought it appropriate to start my first blog entry with this.
Am I justified in feeling that we've somehow been gypped? Is this what "the future" really could have looked like if history had gone differently? The uber-flamboyant and needlessly excessive styling characteristics of the time after World War II surely reflected the mindset of 'first-world' society....I mean, look at the cars from this era. Detroit wasn't turning out
just cars, they were turning out
little spaceships. The buildings, the signs, same thing.
Of course in hindsight, even in a culture obsessed with space it was completely unreasonable to think that we could simply blast off into space and leave all of our problems here on Earth behind. Is this what I'm seeing in these dated conceptions of a "space age" future, and by the examples of the styling characteristics of the time? What was in the mind of the artists? In the mind of the population to have such high hopes and dreams for, what is depicted not only in these pictures but in many other designs and pieces of artwork from the era, a 'utopian' world?
Personally, I think that it's all been washed away not just by (what we now realize to be) the sheer impractical nature of what we'd planned to 'build' our future out of (Atomic energy for christ sake- this was, after all, the "Atomic Age"), including the disillusionment of not only the impacts that this would have on the planet but also of our realization that we had to stay here and deal with our own very "human" and social problems.
I'm humbled at how today, the 'products' or 'items' of this era are now either coveted or considered
junk. Look at how a car similar to what you see below, in its day was a masterful feat of styling and engineering, and today it is either lovingly restored or sits rotting to oblivion, returning to the earth in a field or junk yard somewhere. Look at how we're so quick to plow down our old buildings and houses- all icons of a different era, all part of our heritage...
Sadly, when you and I as a society threw out all those old "things" we also threw out the values that went with them. It was a very naive time.
I don't believe in holding on to the past, as nothing is permanent but I see our past disappearing to make way for an
all new fantastic plastic future where little seems to retain any substance or quality or even heritage. Where are our heads?
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(About the space race thing, not the GAYce city- though it would be interesting...)
