They did not preach austerity as an ideology. They learned the contours of life by bumping into walls and saying out loud I cannot do that. That phrase mattered. It was not a resignation. It was a way of organising attention and time so other things could breathe.
Why limits were lived not theorised
In the 1970s limits were practical. Rationing had receded but habit remained. Families planned meals around what was available rather than what an algorithm suggested. People negotiated friendships and jobs in a way that accepted friction as normal rather than a sign of failure. That acceptance created a different psychological ecosystem. You could be bored and still useful. You could fail and still belong.
On attention and scarcity
It is easy to mistake constraint for backwardness. That is lazy. The 70s generation practised a kind of local optimisation. They limited their social circles because travel was expensive and news came intermittently. That scarcity produced deep conversability. Conversations had length. They tolerated pauses. Today we mistake quantity for depth. We measure connection by concurrent windows and notifications. The cost is subtle but enormous. Friction is gone. So is pause.
Limits shaped choices and habits
There is a moral tone in most modern takes on limits as if someone somewhere must be punished for being excessive. The 70s generation produced few moral certainties and many practical rules. They learned that some indulgences shrink the rest of life. This knowledge was not delivered in manifestos. It was learned at the kitchen table when the week ran short and priorities revealed themselves. The result was a preference for resilient routines rather than relentless optimisation.
Economics of small decisions
Think of the household as a small engine. A broken part calls for judgement. Fixing or replacing is a choice with ripple effects. People in the 70s modelled maintenance and repair as routine. Today we swap and upgrade and call it progress. But progress can be a cheat. The 70s instinct resisted waste not for virtue signalling but because it was efficient. Much of our modern waste emerges from a different failure to respect limits the luxury of immediacy.
No, no, no. Of course I’m not suggesting that. I think that life wouldn’t be worth living and people couldn’t be fully human if they didn’t have significant choice about many many aspects of their lives. But what I am suggesting is that just because some choice is good it doesn’t follow that more choice is better. We have long since passed the point where additional choice tyrannizes us.
Schwartz makes a compact empirical case that choice overload can become a tyranny. The 70s generation were not immune to error but they practised limits that seem deliberate today because they slowed the ecology of decision making. That slowness turned out to be an advantage when storms came.
Public life and decorum as limit frameworks
There were idioms of restraint that operated like civic scaffolding. Trading insults in public was rarer. Careers had gatekeepers that also performed a kind of curation. Gatekeepers were frustrating. They were also stabilising. The friction of a system that requires patience produces an effect we have lost a structural patience. We now bypass filters and then complain when noise swamps signal.
Not every boundary was fair
This is not nostalgia. Many boundaries in the 70s were exclusionary and wrong. Limits have a political valence. The lesson to reclaim is not the particulars of who was kept out. The lesson is an old one hard to sell to our present impatience. Limits can be chosen to protect space for others and for future action. They can also be unjust. The smart question is which limits we keep and which we repudiate.
Limits as taste and cultural editing
Taste is an editorial act. The 70s generation were taste editors by necessity. They curated music on cassette sides they rewound by hand. They valued curation because curation conserved attention. Modern algorithms promise curation while extracting choice. The difference is moral. When an algorithm edits for engagement the result is not taste. It is attention harvesting. Editing by humans can be messy and capricious. It also creates a trail of intention.
Where modern life misunderstands limits
We now fetishise limitless options as freedom while forgetting that freedom to choose without cost is itself a curated product. Corporations sell the illusion that choice is neutral. It is not. Choice comes with framing. Someone decides the menu. In the 70s the menu was narrower and the frames were visible. Today the frames are invisible and engineered. That invisibility is corrosive.
Practical steps they used that still matter
They compartmentalised. They kept physical spaces for distinct activities. A living room was not also a workplace. They used temporal limits like fixed bedtimes and weekly rhythms that mattered less in an era of constant light. The point is not to mimic these habits blindfolded. The point is to see limits as instruments that can be chosen and adjusted rather than painful impositions.
Personal observation
I live in a city where most apartments are designed as multifunctional boxes. It is tempting to call that clever. It is also impoverishing. The 70s generation demonstrated that carving out dedicated space and time increases the value of what occurs there. That seems banal until you try it.
Final blunt thought
There is no moral requirement to resurrect the past. Some limits were unjust and some were incidental. But our present worship of boundless possibility comes with costs. We have fewer rituals to end things. We have more unfinished projects. We measure identity through consumption rather than commitments. Adopting deliberate limits is not a retreat. It is a design choice. It forces clarity about what to keep and what to jettison.
Summary table of key ideas
| Theme | What the 70s practiced | What we tend to do now |
|---|---|---|
| Attention | Fewer concurrent choices longer conversations | Many parallel streams short engagements |
| Maintenance | Repair and reuse as default | Replace and upgrade rapidly |
| Public limits | Visible gatekeeping stabilised careers | Invisible algorithmic filters and churn |
| Curation | Human editors with messy taste | Algorithmic curation optimised for engagement |
| Choice overload | Managed by practical rules | Often unmanaged and exhausting |
FAQ
Were limits in the 70s always fair or equitable?
No. Many limits were exclusionary. The era contained structural injustices in class race gender and other domains. The argument here does not romanticise those structures. Instead it proposes we can take useful techniques from a lived practice of limits while rejecting its injustices. Limits can be redesigned to be more inclusive and deliberately protective rather than arbitrary barriers.
How do I experiment with limits without seeming old fashioned?
Start small. Choose one domain like email social feed or spending and set a constraint that is easily reversible. Make the constraint public to friends or family so it has social weight. The aim is to force trade offs that reveal what matters. You will feel awkward. Good. Discomfort is the diagnostic stage.
Do limits reduce creativity?
Limits can increase creativity by forcing constraint based problem solving. However oppressive limits can also stifle imagination. The balance is subtle. Choose constraints that encourage recombination rather than rigid conformity. A limited palette often provokes ingenuity. The trick is to select limits that sharpen intention rather than enforce obedience.
Is this about rejecting technology?
Not at all. Technology is a tool. The question is how we orient it. Use technology to enforce useful limits when it helps rather than to dissolve all friction. Boundaries implemented by software can be helpful if they reflect human priorities rather than corporate incentives. The deeper point is to treat limits as choices you control not as burdens you inherit.
How do social limits scale to politics and institutions?
Institutions can adopt limits through regulation design and incentives that protect public goods. Scaling limits requires transparency and democratic conversation so boundaries are accountable. The 70s had institutions that sometimes worked and sometimes excluded. Today we must craft public limits that protect commons and still allow mobility and justice. That is a political project not a nostalgic one.
