{"id":46702,"date":"2019-01-30T05:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-01-30T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=46702"},"modified":"2022-03-30T13:44:03","modified_gmt":"2022-03-30T17:44:03","slug":"the-past-is-a-foreign-country-part-umpteen-and-one","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2019\/01\/30\/the-past-is-a-foreign-country-part-umpteen-and-one\/","title":{"rendered":"The past is a foreign country, part umpteen-and-one"},"content":{"rendered":"

At Rotten Chestnuts<\/em>, Severian<\/a> tries to gin up some sympathy for Millennial snowflakes, who feel cheated by fate (and their parents’ generation, but mostly their parents’ generation):<\/p>\n

One of the toughest parts of looking at The Past (note capital letters) is grasping the pace of change. Oversimplifying (but not too much), you\u2019d need to be a PhD-level specialist to determine if a given cultural production dated from the 11th century, or the 14th. The worldview of most people in most places didn\u2019t change much from 1000 to 1300. Even in modern times, unless you really know what you\u2019re looking for, a writer from 1830 sounds very much like a writer from 1890.*<\/p>\n

Until you get to the 20th century. Then<\/em> it\u2019s obvious.<\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t \u201cpresentism\u201d \u2014 the supposed cardinal sin of historical study, in which we project our values onto the past.** It really is obvious, and you can see it for yourself. Take Ford Madox Ford. A hot \u201cModernist\u201d in his day \u2014 he was good friends with Ezra Pound, and promoted all the spastic incomprehensibles of the 1920s \u2014 he was nevertheless a man of his time\u2026 and his time was the High Victorian Era (born 1873). Though he served in the Great War, he was a full generation older than his men, and it shows. Compare his work to Robert Graves\u2019s. Though both were the most Advanced of Advanced Thinkers \u2014 polygamy, Socialism, all that \u2014 Graves\u2019s work is recognizably \u201cmodern,\u201d while Ford\u2019s reads like the writing of a man who really should\u2019ve spent his life East of Suez, bringing the Bible and the Flag to the wogs. The world described in such loving detail in a work like Parade\u2019s End \u2014 though of course Ford thought he was viciously criticizing it \u2014 might as well be Mars.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re in the same boat when it comes to those special, special Snowflakes, the Millennials. A Great War-level change really did hit them, right in their most vulnerable years. While we \u2014 Gen X and older \u2014 lived through the dawn of the Internet, we don\u2019t live in the Internet Age (TM). Not like they do, anyway.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

He does a bit of a Fisking (that’s an olde-tyme expression from when we used to knap our own flint, kiddies) of an article by a Millennial writer trying to make the case that the plight of the Millennials is comparable to that of the Lost Generation. But some actual sympathy is eventually located and delivered:<\/p>\n

I titled this piece \u201cSympathy for Snowflakes,\u201d and finally we\u2019ve arrived. The days of life on the cul-de-sac with the white picket fence are indeed gone\u2026 but they\u2019ve been gone for thirty years or more. They were in terminal decline since before Rush started singing about suburbs<\/a> \u2014 that was 1982, if you\u2019re keeping score at home \u2014 and what awful conformist hells they are. Ever heard the phrase \u201csour grapes?\u201d I\u2019m not going to say we invented that \u2014 after all, anything worth saying was already said by Dead White Males hundreds of years ago \u2014 but that\u2019s why Gen X pop culture is full of rants against \u201cconformism.\u201d Slackers<\/em>, Mallrats<\/em>, all of it \u2014 sour grapes, buddy. If you in fact grew up on a cul-de-sac behind a white picket fence, your parents, who must\u2019ve been early Gen Xers, were among the lucky few.<\/p>\n

The difference between your generation and mine, Mr. Lafayette, isn\u2019t what we wanted once we matured enough to start actually knowing what we wanted. It\u2019s that my generation received rigorous-enough educations to figure out that the house on the cul-de-sac with the white picket fence is an aberration, just a flicker of static. Only one tiny group of people \u2014 middle class Americans, born roughly 1945-1965 \u2014 ever got to experience it. Young folks in the 1220s probably lived much as their parents did back in the 1180s, but modern life doesn\u2019t work that way. These days, everyone makes do with what he has, gets on as best he can. Your generation, Mr. Lafayette, was taught to regard The Past as one long night of Oppression, and because of that, you never learned to take any lessons from it.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s why I\u2019m sympathetic, even as I\u2019m mocking you (but gently, lad, gently). That\u2019s the real<\/em> parallel between yourselves and the Lost Generation \u2014 it was done to you. You had no choice, and unlike the Lost Generation, you can\u2019t even pin the blame anywhere. It just\u2026.kinda\u2026 happened<\/em>. No wonder you feel adrift and powerless. No wonder \u201cstand up straight\u201d and \u201cclean your room\u201d seem like adages of life-altering wisdom.<\/p>\n

So take an old guy\u2019s advice, and READ. Read just about anything, so long as it\u2019s published before 1950. Don\u2019t think, don\u2019t analyze, don\u2019t snark, just read<\/em> it. The change will come.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At Rotten Chestnuts, Severian tries to gin up some sympathy for Millennial snowflakes, who feel cheated by fate (and their parents’ generation, but mostly their parents’ generation): One of the toughest parts of looking at The Past (note capital letters) is grasping the pace of change. Oversimplifying (but not too much), you\u2019d need to be […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,4,7,13],"tags":[407,1205,956,772,1462,1138,134],"class_list":["post-46702","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-britain","category-history","category-usa","tag-babyboomers","tag-generationx","tag-millennials","tag-rush","tag-severian","tag-thepastisaforeigncountry","tag-writing"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-c9g","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46702","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46702"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46702\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46704,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46702\/revisions\/46704"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46702"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46702"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46702"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}