The power of other-hand thinking
Is one decade really better than another?
Sometime during the late 1980s, right-wing students at Dartmouth hosted a debate in which the audience chose the winner by exiting through one of two doors. The event imitated the Oxford Union, the famous debating society. The topic of the Dartmouth debate:
Which was the better decade, the 1960s or the 1980s?
Arguing for the Sixties was a philosophy professor named Ronald Green, who had come of age during that storied decade. Editors of the right-wing Dartmouth Review made the case for the Eighties.
The students went first by singing the praises of President Reagan, the personal computer and, to much applause, the defeat of Communism. When it was Professor Green’s turn, he placed a record on a turntable—or an ultramodern CD into a player, I forget which. Music wafted through the loudspeakers: “All You Need Is Love,” the 1967 single by the Beatles.
Love, love, love
Love, love, love
Love, love, love…
The crowd groaned, then waited for Green to stop this rhetorical overture and say something. But he didn’t say anything. The philosopher just stood with a gentle smile.
All you need is love, all you need is love
All you need is love, love, love is all you need
All you need is love (All together now)…
Finally, after a lyrically repetitive 3 minutes and 57 seconds, the song ended. Green gave a little bow and sat down to some laughter and much booing. Most of the crowd left through the Eighties door. While the professor was making a very good point—the song became the anthem for the 1968 Summer of Love—the message got lost. Green was waxing nostalgic in the midst of the greed-is-good era. He would have done better playing the B-side of that same record: “Baby You’re a Rich Man.”
Some of those now-graying rightward students doubtless continue to pump for the Eighties to this day. They’re not alone in waxing nostalgic, of course. When we don our rosy Panglossian glasses, most of us declare some earlier era to be superior to the current one. In fact, Americans’ preference for the past recently helped elect a President. Props to those Dartmouth students for finding happy delusional joy in their own decade!
But can we honestly say that one decade is better than another? I assume we can agree that our current decade beats the 1340s, when the Black Death wiped out a third of Europe. But were the 1950s better than the 1970s?
It occurs to me that this debate would make an excellent exercise for any high school AP English Language or History class, as well as any adult gathering equipped with sufficient wine. By debating the superiority of one decade or another, we can practice the fourth-century command of a former rhetoric professor named Augustine of Hippo (aka Saint Augustine):
Audi alteram partem.
Hear the other side.
(I actually paid for that Latin motto to be carved into a step in the main lecture building of the Vermont Law School, in hopes that my $500 investment would buy me a shortened stretch in Purgatory.)
Ideally, the game should begin with the host asking participants to nominate the best and worst decade from the last century or so. Then require each to make the case for the decade they hate. Hear the other side.
The exercise fosters what I like to call other-hand thinking. Just about every consideration we make can be honed with, “On the other hand.”
The character Tevye does just this in Fiddler on the Roof. He conducts a mini-trial with himself over whether to allow his daughter’s marriage to a penniless young man.
Other-hand thinking is a great cure for nostalgia. Let’s look at some decades that people tend to pine for.
1890s
On the one hand: McKinley, Trump’s No. 1 fave! USA a world-class empire with acquisition of Puerto Rico, Guam, the Philippines, and Hawaii. Tariffs galore, economic boom!
On the other hand: USA, the land of freedom, brutally supresses Filipino independence, paves the way for coconut-bra’d tourists in Hawaii. White supremacists violently overthrow the duly elected government of Wilmington, North Carolina. McKinley refuses to protect Black residents. Then gets assassinated by a wannabe political appointee.
1920s
On the one hand: Boom times! Peacetime! Civil Service! Women can vote! Invention of television! Lindbergh flies across the Atlantic Ocean! Jazz!
On the other hand: Wealth gap slightly higher than in 2025. Red Army wins in Russia, Mussolini in Italy. Osage Indian murders. Prohibition, Al Capone. Peak support for Ku Klux Klan, with 4-5 million members.
1950s
On the one hand: Happy Days! G.I. Bill, V.A. housing loans, Baby Boom (including yours truly). Polio vaccine! DNA, Elvis, “I Love Lucy.”
On the other hand: McCarthyism. Sputnik. Korean War. G.I. benefits and housing loans denied to most Black vets. Kids hiding under desks to prepare for nuclear Armageddon. Peak teen-bride decade—almost half marrying in 1954 are under 20.
1960s
On the one hand: Boom times! Tax cuts, good jobs. Civil rights, beautiful hair, free love. Green Revolution (crops, not alternative energy). JFK, MLK.
On the other hand: JFK and MLK murdered. Violent crime doubles. Stonewall Riots. Vietnam. Kids still hiding under desks.
1970s
On the one hand: Computers! Equality for women! Moon Landing! Nixon in China! Smallpox eradicated! Concorde, the amazing supersonic jetliner! VCRs! Apple computers! 18-year-olds can vote! Rolling Stones, Dylan, Bee Gees, Motown, Led Zeppelin, Elton John, HBO, Star Wars. Golden age of porn!
On the other hand: Porn. Stagflation. Oil crisis. Crime. Love Story. Bell bottoms. Disco. Munich massacre. Watergate. Jimmy Carter’s “malaise” speech. Jonestown Kool-Aid. Terrible cars.
1980s
On the one hand: Morning in America! Glasnost, perestroika, MTV, PC’s, World Wide Web! Pac-Man! Designer babies! Hip hop! Michael Jackson, Prince, Madonna!
On the other hand: Duran Duran. Voodoo economics, stock market crash, savings & loan crisis. Roger Moore and Timothy Dalton as James Bond. Summer Olympics boycott after USSR invades Afghanistan. Mullet hair, shoulder pads, leg warmers, track suits. Televangelist scandals. Challenger Disaster. AIDS. Cars still terrible.
1990s
On the one hand: Boom times—growth with low inflation! NAFTA. USA sole superpower! Human Genome Project! Hubble Telescope! Mobile phones, email, video games. Nelson Mandela. Titanic, The Simpsons, Harry Potter. Better cars.
On the other hand: NAFTA. Gulf War. Monica Lewinsky. Anita Hill v. Clarence Thomas. 24-hour news. OJ Simpson, Y2K panic. Don’t ask, don’t tell. Chernobyl. Heroin chic with record overdoses. Columbine school massacre. LA riots. Crystal Pepsi.
2000s
On the one hand: GPS, texting, smartphones, iPod, broadband, Wikipedia, Google Maps, social media!
On the other hand: Texting, social media. Dotcom bubble bursts. 9/11. Patriot Act, military drones, Afghan War, Guantanamo, Putin. Obesity crisis, Botox. Warmest decade in history. Reality TV. Decline of print. Emo, auto-tune.
2010s
On the one hand: Boom times! Arab Spring. LGBT rights. #MeToo. Paris Agreement, Obamacare.
On the other hand: Cancel culture. Rise of populism. Arab Winter. Fifty Shades of Gray. Warmest decade in history.
Do feel free to correct my judgments. Meanwhile, vote on the future!
RE the '70s, I'll give ya Love Story; that sucked. But disco and bell bottoms (the latter which are BACK, baby!) belong in the plus side. What's wrong with pants you can put on and take off while wearing shoes?
Well done. This took some time! (Or maybe some AI.) On the other hand. Disco, bad?