My life has spanned what may be identified as a revolution in cultural context. It has been uncomfortable and limited, but a revolution nonetheless, and must be both understood and adapted to if the individual is to be at peace and successful in the world of personal/social culture: life (person/family/relationships) work (occupation/funding), society (government/groups) and change (adaptation/education) forming contexts. My own life has spanned contexts that were not greatly progressed from that which the poor in George Washington’s day might experience. Even so we thought we were modern. Modernization tends to arrive in increments throughout history. Time periods for the increments grow shorter and the population growth spreads fresh additions into wider swaths of influence. The start-up period took centuries to gain full speed, with advances accelerated into unbelievable speed in one century (20th) – with velocity increasing. Human questions, which occupy our concern in these Pages, remain to be answered. Are we better off in this awesome speed of development than we were in far more casual eras of presumed forward movement?
At the time of my birth, in 1923, World War I had just ended, and the industrialization born of the Civil War was reaching the common citizens now in full retreat from long hours of manual work on farms to the growing cities gearing up mechanized shops. The first house I lived in used gas lighting, sometime candles. Persons took roles to make effective family life – with mother, father and child doing the chores of life. Homes were cleaned with limited tooling. One of my many chores included emptying the water tub under the icebox that kept food at uncertain temperatures. I walked to high school a bit over a mile away, and jogged home for lunch – then back to school. We did not own a car, until I got one at fifteen years of age in 1938. (It cost thirty dollars, earned in a number of kid’s jobs. The top leaked and the brakes were uncertain of their meaning.) Much cooking was done on wood stoves. (In 1943, my bride cooked on a wood-burning stove. The phone was a “crank box” on the wall.) Household and clothing washes were done on one day of the week and hung outside on the porch to dry. Furnaces were fueled with coal or wood, and we were elated when stokers were introduced so as to require fewer visits to shovel coal. The story is long, and life’s story became hard, by modern standards but routine for us. This was life as given to us, and our elders did not let us know that we were bereft from the benefits of those folks in the big cars.
The speed of travel, especially by air; the increase in efficient electrical appliances; the modern bathrooms replacing the outhouse and washtubs; automatic heating, medical assistance; and, the story goes on and on, conquered what is largely understood as the agricultural life. Time was made available for more than maintenance of daily life. The age of mechanization (industrialization) achieved, in its context near miracles, smoothed out in daily life through business planning related to wealth – accumulations by persons and institutions. Where once a person could self-sustain on a few acres and a modest home, it now takes a social context to make persons feel they have accomplished life purpose. Families became less important in the care of members. Responsibility shifted to government and institutions for the education of children, even their care and culture for services (even breakfast and lunch programs – to retirement programs and senior housing to relieve family duty). This story too can be embellished. Rifts began to develop in society as persons more and more took on attitudes of individuality in personhood so to develop a self-sense that created some isolation – so to turn to gadgets, computers, and a kind of privacy in a world that had lost its privacy, even its respect for self and others – in slavery to things, style, even to self. So in the process the new definitions and interpretations are underway for the meaning of marriage, the family, the relationships, the refinements, the meaning of responsibility to life. In this then the person lives out a life, muffles spiritual impulses, and learns to take life, as long as it can be medicated, and then close down with the individual rationalizing the end of things. Today we find millions latching on to the next gadget before the previous one is outdated. We need to make sure all the changes in self-formation of the last century address the meaning of life in work, culture, love, values and faith. *Mark W. Lee, Sr. — 2016, 2020