Before I started this class, I had no idea how significant the year of 1968 was for so many people in so many different places. I’ve taken a few history and classical literature classes in my life, but I had never encountered the type of attitude that has appeared in this class. From our first readings of Vinen, the year 1968 is treated almost as some mythical creature or extraterrestrial being. It is important to note that Vinen, a distinguished scholar of the time period, refers to 1968 as “The Thing.” When someone such as him calls a certain year by a name like that, the awe which people still have for it is clear. It’s almost as if he doesn’t know what else to call it. However, each of my grandparents was a young adult in that particular year, and I have never heard any of them wax poetic about that year as Vinen has. But, I am certainly looking forward to learning about why a year can constitute the stuff of legend for so many different people.
3 Replies to “The Uniqueness of a Single Number”
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I agree with you, it is very interesting that a single year, or number, can be so significant. I myself haven’t heard my grandparents describe 1968 as Vinen does. An earlier blog post explained the importance of perception in politics and in this class and I believe that this relates to why we both haven’t heard anything about 1968. Our grandparents had a different perception of 1968 and its significance. I think that the idea of a single year is so significant can relate to 2020. The year 2020 is going to live on for a lifetime but people have many different opinions and thoughts about what has happened and what will happen. These differences in ideas will determine if teens today will tell their grandchildren about 2020.
I think that is an interesting comment that you make about 68. For the younger generation, 68 was just another year. Yes, there are major events that we learned about in school, but we were not there to experience the significance of that one year. Looking past the major events, I would imagine that 1968 would’ve been extremely formative in many people’s minds because it changed the way that people thought. Many of the ideas and thoughts that people began to adopt in 1968 are relevant in our time today. For example, 68 was the year that Martin Luther King was assassinated in the peak of the Civil Rights Movement. This movement was changing the way that people thought about equality for all, and here in 2020 society is still pushing for those ideas to be made a reality. I think that is why 68 takes on a different level of significance then other years. And who knows, perhaps 50 years from now we will speak the same way about 2020, and the younger generation will not understand because they weren’t here to experience what life was like before that time of extreme change in the way that people think.
I think it’s interesting you mention how your grandparents have never really told you stories about the 1960s with anything close to the reverence Vinen has. I’ve heard many stories from my grandparents, but I too haven’t heard many tales of the 1960s. I’m wondering if its a function of our grandparents not being in a city that was a hub of protest and experienced a “different 68” from that which Vinen documents?