A Conundrum of Modern Life

i've been an cybernaut in various 'online' communities for about fifteen years. the geeky obsessive communities that gather the critical mass of participants for long-term survival undergo the same stages of development. both staunchly liberal and staunchly conservative communities exhibit a tendency to express nostalgia for a 'traditional' and therefore more 'authentic' cultural tradition. it is most pronounced around thanksgiving and christmas. at this time of year, established routine dictates that online liberal and conservative communities erupt into frequent expressions of wistful longing for a time when people were more generous, honest, noble, free ... and the list goes on.

today, at the eschaton, a guest blogger floated the idea of organizing a boycott on christmas shopping. the comment thread follows a predictable pattern. once the discussion sufficiently strays from the original topic (it always does), a flurry of posters express their discomfort with the commercialization of modern life. then, a conservative troll briefly wanders in and calls everyone a communist. finally, someone longs for a time when neighbors helped each other build houses, saving most people from a lifetime of servitude to a bank.

conservative political communities likewise express a lot of discomfort with the commercialization of modern life around the holidays. some people lament the glorification of sex, drugs, and rebellion because they blame these trends in popular culture for what they perceive as the cheapening of the moral fabric of society. others bemoan the decline of the institution of the family and the interference of the government in private family matters. eventually, a poster conjures the honorable frontier days when people spent more time with their families, raised their own food, and worked harder than anyone does now.

clearly, both liberal and conservative communities harbor a deep nostalgia for the 'frontier' life. this isn't surprising given america's peculiar fetish for cowboy/pioneer myths. so, let's talk about how 'free' people were in those days.

life expectency was under 50 for more of the 19th century. antibiotics had not been discovered. doctors were scarce, and they really didn't know much anyway. many of them were just as likely to kill their patients as save them. women frequently had as many as ten children. usually, one or more of those children died before the age of five. many women died in childbirth or shortly thereafter. illiteracy was common. corrective eyeglasses were not. the economy teetered between booms and crashes. if one had the unfortunate luck to run into problems with the law, one could look forward to a harsh punishment.

that bygone independence was accompanied by much greater risk and uncertainty. i personally wouldn't trade the life i have now for the nasty, short and brutish one available to my frontier era ancestors in appalachia. that isn't to say that i don't feel a certain tug of appreciation for the disappointments of modern life. in return for the abundance of consumer goods and the availibility of easy, middle class comfort, we labor under constraints both mundane and sinister that americans of the frontier era did not. modern life delivered some mixed blessings. however, on the whole, i'm really thankful that i can easily obtain an affordable pair of eyeglasses. in another era, i'd have been a burden rather than a productive member of society.