RICHARDSON: A 'golden age'?
A "golden age" generally refers to a period of prosperity, be it financial or some other sort of enlightenment. While it was first coined by Greek and Roman poets, the term has been used to describe almost any prolific time in human development.
But I want to break it down further. Individually, we all define our own "golden age." My "golden age" has nothing to do with yours. In fact, mine might be the exact opposite. That could explain why so many see things differently. Your highs might be my lows and vice versa. Last week I saw gas prices at $1.58 a gallon. Great for most, but not so great if you work for an oil company.
Some see the glass half full, others half empty. Some see doom and gloom, while others see a bright tomorrow. Both views might be right depending on the perspective.
If you're part of my generation and manufacturing was your thing, you've seen it disappear. You might think America is in decline. But if technology is your thing, there are bright, blue skies ahead.
My "golden age" includes three distinct decades: the 1960s, '70s and early '80s. Can anyone dispute that the 1960s was the "golden age" for music? Of course, they can. If my mother were alive, she'd be the first. While she enjoyed the music of Motown, her "golden age" of music came a few decades earlier, but I say that with a caveat. If Sam Cooke or Brook Benton had walked into our house and said, "let's go," I'd be an orphan.
But the '60s and early '70s weren't all golden moments. As a high school student, Southeast Asia was on all our minds. The last place we wanted to end up was in Vietnam. Were we unpatriotic? No. We had no idea why we were there, and we had no clue why some of our classmates were coming home in body bags.
At the start of the '70s, I didn't understand all the demonstrations against that war or why the Ohio National Guard would open fire on students at Kent State, killing four and wounding nine more. This was not golden.
Any era, even the golden ones, are a mixed bag. While some people are having a great time bathing in champagne, others are having trouble finding clean water to drink.
Obviously, the "golden age" of the civil rights movement can be traced from the day Rosa Parks didn't give up her seat on the bus in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1955 to the day a shot rang out in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1968, killing Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. While the outcome could be termed "golden," the process was anything but.
I have to constantly remind myself not to live in an age that will never return. If we believe America isn't great and a carnival barker will make it great again, we're fooling ourselves. The power to make this country great resides in each citizen. And those citizens are male, female, gay, straight, yellow, brown, black, white and every shade in between.
The next "golden age" is ahead of us, not because of any entity, but because it will form out of the individual creative talents of this nation's people. Government can't stop it. It can't even harness it. These creative people are dreaming dreams built on the shoulders of other dreamers. But here's the catch. These new dreamers are everywhere.
Some would like to shut off the spigot of creativity, but water finds its own level. If we want to make sure America stays great and enters the next "golden age," we need to invite all these bright minds we've trained to stay and develop their ideas right here rather than turn them into competitors.
We all see our individual "golden age" through the prism of our experiences. As that prism reveals the substance of that white light that enters and our eyes open to the colors it contains as it exits, maybe we can move this nation forward to a new era that's a golden rainbow. And you know what? It was there all the time.
Charles E. Richardson is The Telegraph's editorial page editor. He can be reached at 478-744-4342 or via email at crichardson@macon.com. Tweet@crichard1020.
This story was originally published January 23, 2016 at 9:25 PM with the headline "RICHARDSON: A 'golden age'? ."