Remembrance

November 9, 2013

     It has occurred to me of late that the shape of the world I live in has changed significantly not once, but twice in my lifetime.

     As a child born in the 1950s, the world my parents inhabited was one of Jello, Nescafé and network television, in which respectable people dressed modestly, and the United States was the only place in the world where freedom and prosperity went hand in hand.   Coming of age in the 1970s that all changed: respect was not what you got for a life of Babbitry, but of non-conformism.  Government was discredited after Watergate, journalists became media figures and breaking the law no longer meant social banishment, provided the law was broken over a matter of principle.  It was a new age.

     I think that since the 1970s the world has changed again, in a way that would be largely mystifying to my parents, because it mystifies me a bit, I admit.   Although my father seemed to sense a new world was in the offing:  He once asked me "Did I think human nature could be changed, could values long-held and on which societies were built, could they disappear and a new man appear?"  That was a theoretical question in my father's time.  Now it is a certainty.

     The world I live in, an affluent, educated one, has embraced non-traditional ideas about what a family is or ought to be, for instance.  Family ties are weaker, individuals have more ambit to select the lifestyle that suits them, and the world is "globalized".  We are all connected, but it seems we listen to each other less.  We are too busy, too preoccupied with ourselves to spend time with each other.  And I have grown older.

     I still think of myself as young.  That is to say, what physical restrictions I have are minor and I continue to live actively.  Yet in a subway car, college co-eds ask me whether I would like to sit down before they take the empty seat.  And I gratefully take them up on their offer.

     We are, most of us, resigned to the ever-increasing pace of life: we must all keep up with the new technological developments the way our parents used to worry about keeping up with the Joneses.  We spend a lot of time shredding paper, making sure we have the latest version of Spyware and anti-virus software and worrying about whether economic catastrophe is not just around the corner.  Whenever someone sends us an alert about a computer virus, we forward it to our friends and family, the way a password for a speakeasy used to be, as quickly and quietly as possible.  At the back of our minds as we do so is the thought: "What would happen to my life if my computer, with all the information I have on it, became the property of others?"  We educate ourselves as to how to identify the virus in an e-mail attachment, how to install the new anti-virus software, and doing so, hope we have saved our computer from foreign takeover.

     Are we having any fun?  Or have we moved seamlessly from the world of the counterculture, with its promises of a new dawn ("The Age of Aquarius"), to the Orwellian one without noticing?  It's a problem of middle age, perhaps: The young have their animal spirits and capacity for enthusiasm, while their elders are chastened and more timid.  There are, however, alternative cultures to the digitalized one that dominates our lives, cultures that do not exclude on the basis of age:  The vogue for "Steampunk" --crafts and clothing directly inspired by life before the steam engine, has been taken up by people disaffected with the digital world, even if the craftsmen still need the Internet to sell their wares on Etsy.  At flea markets, dealers in manual typewriters, and even IBM "Selectrics", are doing a good business, evidence of an undercurrent of skepticism about making all communication paperless.

     So you have a choice:

     Instead of sending your lover an e-mail, you can send a typewritten letter replete with smudges created by typewriter ribbon, and your signature in ink, all of it written on old stationery.

    --Or you can send an electronic card, complete with fluttering digital hearts, and a Cupid that will shoot an arrow into a cartoon heart, a cheap, quick expression of your deepest feelings.

        Which will your lover remember?