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For example, we assume that technological change will inevitably be accompanied by loss, and we tend to romanticize past machines such as clipper ships, old handicrafts, even old towns. But the rosy image is rosy. The tall ships were inhuman work environments, dangerous and physically debilitating; old crafts often involved mind-numbing labor, and the beautiful objects that we admire in museums were available only to a wealthy few; and the old towns that we visit while on holiday lacked the technological amenities—running water, flush toilets, central heating—that we take for granted today. I think we can blame a good deal of this romanticizing tendency on the movies, which have portrayed history in highly selective ways. In truth, Robin Hood and his Merry Men endured lice and continual tooth-aches; the noble cowboy loners portrayed by Gary Cooper and Alan Ladd were illiterate, crude louts; the Edwardian swells portrayed on Masterpiece Theater suffered from gout, rheumatism (damp, drafty houses), and venereal disease.

Prevailing Over Technology | The Prevail Project Via Reihan.

I grant Rybczynski this point. I would find myself shockingly inconvenienced were I to suddenly find myself in the old West or Merrie Olde England. One tryst with the wrong poxy strumpet, and I’d be all “get me back to the future, Doc Brown!” Premodern living was dangerous, capricious, and, what with the shoes and the wool undergarments and the vermin-breeding wigs and the toothaches and the rheumatism and the pre-automotive lifestyle, probably encouraged a perpetual condition of functional alcoholism and existential surliness.

But despite this ambient discomfort, we have reliable evidence that many of our predecessors somehow lived remarkably fulfilling lives, and their societies occasionally burst forth in remarkable cultural efflorescence. The fact that ownership of Turner’s paintings was restricted to a wealthy elite does nothing to discredit his talent or the culture that produced him, and Montaigne’s essays only become more impressive if you insist upon imagining his restroom facilities.

I might be an outlier, but I don’t grieve for a moment over the life-changing amenities I’ve missed by being born too soon. Projecting such future-envy onto previous generations is solipsistic and oversells our own culture, which is handing down to future generations an exhaustively thorough account of its every hangnail, but without leaving a comparable share of Turners or Montaignes.

“But… Steve Jobs!”

Shut up.

People of tomorrow; here is our legacy. Know that any attempts to romanticize us are futile. Enjoy the Jeff Koons.

Update: PEG, of course, has promptly replied.

Notes

  1. danup reblogged this from pegobry
  2. pegobry reblogged this from mwfrost and added:
    argument makes me uncomfortable. “Sure, the Middle Ages were horrible, but they built the cathedrals!”
  3. mwfrost posted this