Past Tense

Delving around in the world of the past should be an illuminating affair, but in fact, it's often more perplexing and obfuscating than you'd believe. I feel like the more I see and read about the 1960s, the less I understand of it.

From a 21st century perspective, how easy is it to understand a world where new-fangled "supermarkets" routinely baffled housewives who thought taking something off a shelf and putting it in your basket before paying was theft? Where people who danced to songs like Don't Stop The Carnival and The Israelites on a Saturday night would later go out and attack immigrants with knives while chanting Enoch Powell's name? Where the ordinary worker had the power to make or break governments if need be - a power which a treacherous generation later handed over to Margaret Thatcher to dispose with as she pleased?

That society will never be regained, and overall, it's neither a good thing nor a bad thing. For every scene of peace, love and unity, you can find at least one of war, hatred and violence, and it seems they were never a million miles apart. I'm not even sure the people who lived through it could make sense of it. Thank God, then, for the year 2012: at least nowadays we can see more or less what's going on. Just a shame it's not a very pretty sight.