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The Times They Are A'Changing
Wednesday, November 27th, 2013 11:13 pmEvery so often I catch myself getting frustrated at individuals, groups or societies who don't seem to have cottoned on to the 21st century. It can be a small slip into the last century, like the university authorities insisting on our being physically present in our offices during the holidays to ensure that we are "contactable". It could be a dramatic throw-back to the Paleolithic, like Syrian rebels munching on their victims' internal organs. It could be something in the middle, like Russia's anti-gay legislation, or Christian groups trying to ban dictionaries that contain the phrase "oral sex". My reaction is always the same, though: I want to scream "Come on guys, it's the 21st century!"
This is a silly reaction. Of course we are in the 21st century, but that century is in its infancy, and in any case, a century is not really a long time. Forget the information age, the pace of change over the last two centuries has been dizzying, so it's not surprising that a lot of people haven't kept up. (In case anyone is about to protest that this implies a linear view of history, yes I do have a more-or-less linear view of history. Anyone who thinks progress is a myth should be put in a time machine and dumped in the middle of seventeenth-century Europe, preferably as a woman with a suspicious-looking black cat.) Anyway, this got me musing about what was going on, and what hadn't yet happened, in the year I was born, which in turn got me thinking about the world when my mother was born, and so on.
When I was born, the cool kids were listening to Elvis (and the cooler kids were listening to Blues), television was the big new thing but was in black and white, Blacks and Whites could not marry in South Africa and 18 US states, sodomy was illegal in the UK and all US states, a woman could legally be paid less than a man doing the same job, computers were giant pocket calculators, calculators were machines you worked with a handle, and no one had been to the moon.
When my mother was born, the cool kids were listening to Louis Armstrong, radio was the big new thing, alcohol was illegal in the USA, unmarried mothers could be put in mental asylums, the sun never set on the British Empire, it was socially acceptable to be anti-Semitic (though perhaps not quite as much as that young Hitler chappie), and no one had climbed Mt. Everest.
When her mother was born, the cool kids were listening to music hall songs, moving pictures were the big new thing, there was a tsar in St. Petersburg, a sultan in Istanbul and emperors in Beijing and Vienna, women couldn't vote, Roosevelt had just become the first American president to ride in a motor car, and no one had been to the South Pole.
This is a silly reaction. Of course we are in the 21st century, but that century is in its infancy, and in any case, a century is not really a long time. Forget the information age, the pace of change over the last two centuries has been dizzying, so it's not surprising that a lot of people haven't kept up. (In case anyone is about to protest that this implies a linear view of history, yes I do have a more-or-less linear view of history. Anyone who thinks progress is a myth should be put in a time machine and dumped in the middle of seventeenth-century Europe, preferably as a woman with a suspicious-looking black cat.) Anyway, this got me musing about what was going on, and what hadn't yet happened, in the year I was born, which in turn got me thinking about the world when my mother was born, and so on.
When I was born, the cool kids were listening to Elvis (and the cooler kids were listening to Blues), television was the big new thing but was in black and white, Blacks and Whites could not marry in South Africa and 18 US states, sodomy was illegal in the UK and all US states, a woman could legally be paid less than a man doing the same job, computers were giant pocket calculators, calculators were machines you worked with a handle, and no one had been to the moon.
When my mother was born, the cool kids were listening to Louis Armstrong, radio was the big new thing, alcohol was illegal in the USA, unmarried mothers could be put in mental asylums, the sun never set on the British Empire, it was socially acceptable to be anti-Semitic (though perhaps not quite as much as that young Hitler chappie), and no one had climbed Mt. Everest.
When her mother was born, the cool kids were listening to music hall songs, moving pictures were the big new thing, there was a tsar in St. Petersburg, a sultan in Istanbul and emperors in Beijing and Vienna, women couldn't vote, Roosevelt had just become the first American president to ride in a motor car, and no one had been to the South Pole.
