The Golden Age
Mon, May 9, 2022 There is a period in recent history known as the Golden Age of Cycling, during the late 1940s after WWII and into the 1950s. In countries like Italy, France, Belgium and Switzerland, professional cyclists were the super stars of their day.
It is the period that the Eroica event celibates, and tries to recapture. It was the era when I started cycling, and I remember what a joy it was to ride a bike in England back then. In the UK there was a lot less motorized traffic, and people were in less of a hurry.
We could always ride two abreast anywhere, and it was unlikely there was opposing traffic when a car needed to pass a couple of cyclists, or even a bunch of twenty or more.
There was no honking of car horns or screaming abuse, most people had grown up riding a bike to school, or probably their first job was delivering groceries on a bike, so they could relate. There was coexistence on the roads.
It has occurred to me recently that this era was not just the Golden Age of Cycling, but it was the Golden Age, period.
For a few brief years there was peace and prosperity, the world economy was booming as everyone rebuilt after the war. There were plenty of hard manual labor jobs available, where a person could work physically hard. Jobs for people of all levels of education.
Over the years life has become easier and easier, but easy does not necessarily go hand in hand with the quality of life.
Have we reached a point where our quality of life is now at a standstill or even in reverse?
At one point in ancient history people had to chase animals with a stick in order to eat and survive, life was extremely hard and there was much suffering.
The problem as I see it is that it took tens of thousands, if not millions of years to get from killing animals with a stick, to tying a rock on the end of the stick to make a simple tool.
Now in just the last two or three hundred years, technology has exploded and continues to develop at an ever increasing and alarming rate of speed.
Meanwhile our DNA, our bodies have not caught up with technology. We are still programmed to chase animals with a stick. We no longer have to work physically hard in order to eat, the result is we exercise too little, and eat too much.
Our children are unable to follow their basic instinct, and are constantly told, "Don't run." Watch any baby animal at play and it involves chasing each other, training for later life when they are either chasing or running away from other animals.
When I was a child our games too consisted of chasing each other, I remember I pretty much ran everywhere, two miles to school and back. Running was effortless, it seemed my feet hardly touched the ground.
I loved to climb trees, sitting at the top of an eighty foot tree, looking out over the canopy of a wooded area, is an experience I will never forget. Squirrels and birds would come and sit close to me. I cannot remember the last time I witnessed a kid in a tree.
It is a shame children and young adults cannot experience adventure. When I was fourteen I went touring on my bike with a school friend. We rode all over England, we slept in a tent, or stayed at Youth Hostels for very little money.
Maybe the reason video games are so popular is because it satisfies a need for adventure, along with a primitive instinct to chase something.
The problem is only virtual adventure, all in the mind and there is no physical effort associated with it. Real adventure prepares one for the real world. It involves physical activity, and interaction with real people.
One answer for a young person would be to take a job like construction work that is hard physical labor or take up a sport so the exercise and training has an end purpose.
The problem is some are so stressed working to maintain a “comfortable” life style, they just want to relax after a hard day at the office, and lead a sedentary life.
If we are honest, we don’t work hard anymore, not physically hard that is. Our minds work hard, multitasking, trying to cram a million things into our day. We rush here, rush there. We end each day mentally exhausted, rather than physically exhausted.
Physical exhaustion means sleeping soundly at the end of the day, whereas mental exhaustion means stress and the likelihood of being unable to sleep.
Governments are not going to change things for us, it is up to each individual to decide on his/her own lifestyle. “Less is more” is a worn-out cliché I know, but learning to live simply on less, rather than trying to make more, is worth considering.
Question: What are you doing to make your life better? Not necessarily more prosperous, or easier, but a better quality of life
Reader Comments (5)
I was born in 1963 and had basically the same childhood experiences as you Dave.
My partner and i had children late in life, partner had a professional career etc, so my children are 14 years old. I think they have missed out on a simple childhood, todays environment, social media etc seems to have stifled good old fashioned playing in the woods, making camps, climbing trees etc.
We have tried to induce them to try such simple pleasures but there seems to be huge peer pressure not to!
Perhaps it was the golden age if you were alive at the time and if you were fortunate enough to be in a position to experience it. As a freshman in college the very first thing I learned in economics 101 was that there was only one immutable rule: everything will change.
We cannot choose to live in a golden age. We must do our best to make our own age golden. So, Dave, how happy for you to be able to say that your age was golden.
It is still your age.
No offense meant, but that's a pretty narrow view of the world. The late 40s and 50s weren't a golden age for a lot of people: Women, Black Americans, the Chinese, the Palestinians, the LGBTQ community, for example. Conversely, there are a lot of people for whom this is a golden age. This is probably the best time in the history of planet Earth to be disabled, for example.
People don't work hard? The guys who poured the foundation of the addition we're building certainly were doing physical work. The paper mill across the river from me is much the same as it's ever been. Sure, we've outsourced too much of our manufacturing to foreign countries, but there's still a need for OSHA. So what do you mean by 'we?'
I agree with some of your larger points here, but I think you need to widen your viewpoint.
Alex G,
I am sorry, when old people reminisce, we tend to dwell on the good times and leave out the bad. Maybe next week I will address the injustices of the world that I was fully aware of at the time but could do little about it apart from not engaging in that behavior myself.
Dave.
When I tell people i used to run in a field chasing after a wooden or metal hoop and used a stick with which to guide it, my message is often met with howling laughter, confused looks, or both. I still enjoy and seek out physical labor. The past week included digging and installing pavers and shoveling mulch. I'm comfortable enough where I could pay someone to do those things, but I prefer to do it myself. The work settles my mind as does knowing it is being done correctly. But more importantly, it satisfies my soul.