Baby boomers in America were raised in a massively popular ahistoria of the realities of then-recent world politics, dictatorial regimes, social psychologies, war, and life elsewheres for many years thenafter.
Prosperity in the suburbs, and their social psychologies and lifestyles, provided a substitute for worldviews, knowledge of the potentials for good and evil individually and collectively of mankind, and postwar realities lived contemporaneously but separated by geographies and histories.
Rarely has this ahistoria been subsequently informed by knowledge of even the basic facts of 20th century history.
For instance, recently, in conversation with a rather successful “businessman” – one who had studied at an ivy league school in the 70’s – it was necessary to inform him that his birth year was eight years after World War II ended.
But for most, getting-by, perhaps succeeding and enjoying life – Jeffersons worldly “pursuit of happiness” – was a substitute for a world-view and -knowledge they rarely realized that they did not have.
Stephen Lapeyrouse . . . Notes Dropped Along the Way 