Watching this videos - of a time just outside of my memory but one I know the echos of - I suddenly realized just how out of the times I really am.
Looking at these pictures of stores and brands that existed into my own time, of cars I remember still seeing on the road occasionally or in a friend's relatives' garage, I am struck of how long ago and far away all of this really seems.
I compare this to the any urban center or even large town - or small town anymore - and the comparison is simply not there. Everywhere looks and seems the same: same brands, same cars, same crowds. Everywhere you go that is different, the more the same you realize that it is.
The modern era continues to bring a certain crassness and depression to every sort of interaction it seems to carry. We are always in a rush to get things done, to pack more in. We have turned our every waking moment into an information overload, to the point that if we are disconnected we somehow worry that the world or our work or our children/friends/spouse will fall apart.
The modern era bears with it as well an "In Your Face" attitude that has destroyed any sense of graciousness or long suffering that used to exist. I need to be embraced - celebrated - for who I am - not in the sense of my preciousness as a creation of God but because I am damn well sure that I am completely right about what I believe and who I am. My God given right, you see (from a God that most do not believe in or if they do, only as a pale image of His actual self).
I am tired. Tired of fighting such things, tired of arguing such things, tired of watching the world around me - the world that I knew - slowly crumble into piles of dust to be blown about by the next great social wind.
We are the People of Yesterday, rapidly turning our sights from the outer world of the now and the overwhelming presence of technology in every aspect of our lives and the overweening presence of the New Order of Things. You may believe us to be old fashioned or behind the times or prudish or unenlightened, but you dismiss us at your peril. The world without us has no perspective for you, becoming an endless echo chamber of the present with no anchor to the past.
And echo chambers, if you stay in them long enough, will cause you to die looking for a way out.
I am seeing an odd generational blip on this, TB. At least around here. It’s odd: guys our age (50’s, early 60’s) - are tired and fed up. But a lot of the oldsters are hellbent on wiping the old world away. They will fall in with their grandkids with the cultural fascism. When they find those spaces and people trying to hang on to something of that world... they try to destroy them. If you don’t agree with them it’s because you’re bigoted and intolerant and intolerance won’t be tolerated.
ReplyDeleteThere is a growing quiet fury starting too. I don’t think this brave new world is going to hold for long.
Glen, I do not disagree with you. I think there is a segment that is trying to be culturally relevant. The same issue as with churches trying to be culturally relevant: they desire to be liked and approved.
DeleteAnd yes, I think this Brave New World quickly dissolves into something far worse. Slouching towards Gomorrah indeed...