one of the things that crossed my timeline on twitter these past few days was a video of a guy in his late 20s, who basically was an "Office Space" guy (though it seemed he worked shorter hours, and he did have a dog). The video had what a lot of people interpreted as downbeat music and a lot of people interpreted it as depressing.
And I admit I did, too - one thing about the movie "Office Space" that was offputting to me (perhaps it was an intentional choice?) was that the office-worker protagonists seemed not to have much of an interior life - you didn't really see books or musical instruments in their apartments, they don't seem to go in for art or movies. They go to work, come home, drink.....I don't think they even game, though gaming was less common in the early 2000s when the movie came out than it is now. It was like, "what do they do when they're not at work?"
And I also found the video - though the guy there has a nice house, and he seems to love his dog a lot - kind of the same. He doesn't seem to have any friends, he doesn't have family near him.
(Then again: these days most of my friend interactions are online, and I live far from family)
But some watchers took a weird turn, basically saying "Ah, but in the Good Old Days when Men were Men [and implied: "and women knew their place"], he would have led a Roman Legion! Office jobs are bad for Real Men, life is too soft and meaningless now"
On Twitter, this is known by some as the RETVRN mindset (like the kind of typeface of mock-ancient-Roman inscriptions). And it is justifiably dragged by people - for one thing, it's WILDLY inaccurate, I suspect it was perhaps 1% of Roman citizens who were upper-division military, about 20% of the residents of Rome itself were actually not citizens (they were slaves), many people were fundamentally serfs (one step above slaves), and those who weren't were basically peasants. (And the deathrate among babies and children was high, and a lot of women died in childbirth, and a small injury that we'd not even think of now could turn septic in the absence of antibiotics)
But also: I dare say almost every individual who fought in the military in a war, whether it was a Roman legionary or a Napoleonic-era soldier, or my own great-uncle who was in the trenches in France in 1918, would say, if you asked them, that they would MUCH rather have a safe office job, and a home to go to, and enough food (and, ideally: others around who loved him)
And yes, there was also a reference made to the old poem "Miniver Cheevy," which I learned today was perhaps Edward Arlington Robinson poking a bit of fun at HIMSELF rather than turning the barb of his pen on someone he knew.
But yes, as I said: there was still something a bit hollow about the video. Though I also recognize that this is a bit of my usual summer black-dog (it's suddenly very hot and humid here, I'm alone in my campus building most every day - though today, my newest colleague was in, and the student who scheduled a Zoom meeting with her didn't show up and so I could talk with her while she was waiting the 15 minutes to see if they WOULD show up, an that helped a lot). And so, yes, the sort of acedia I've felt since 2020 does tend to set in and strengthen.
I am trying to read. Partly prepwork for the stats class, partly background literature for a research project I want to start in July, but also some reading I want to do but never have the time to during the semester.
Today I started on William Cronon's "Uncommon Ground" (Well, it's a group effort - a series of essays, but he was the editor). I read a shorter version of one of the essays that was published as a paper in one of the journals and decided I wanted to read the rest of the book, partly for my own interest, partly because it may have information I could use in Environmental Policy and Law. I read the introduction and the first essay ("The Trouble with Wilderness," by Cronon himself) this afternoon.
And he's discussing some of the aspects of how we define it. Some I already knew - like, "wilderness" was originally seen as bad and dangerous (the uses of the term in translations of the Bible - usually the place into which Adam and Eve are cast after sinning, out of the Garden, is called a wilderness, and the Israelites wander in the wilderness for 40 years, and Christ is tempted for 40 days in the wilderness....) and it was only once the US was beginning to be comfortably established (and Romanticism as a school of thought was spreading here from Europe) that folks like John Muir and Thoreau wrote approvingly of wilderness. And somehow, the idea got started that wilderness was what might save us from ourselves. And Cronon made the comment that people like Teddy Roosevelt and some of the early industrialists - the people who could afford to go on luxury train or motor tours, and stay in luxurious accommodations - were the ones who promoted the idea that it was more manly for men to go into the wilderness.
And Cronon described how TR and Muir and others seemed to set the "frontier" (the West, once the Native people had been moved out of areas of it and put on reservations, which were usually the most marginal land) was sort of in contrast to civilization, and they saw civilization as inherently feminzing/emasculating, and Cronon notes that that attitude is "a peculiarly bourgeois form of antimodernism. The very men who most benefitted from urban-industrial capitalism were among those who believed they must escape its debilitating effects"
and as I said on Twitter: HOO DOGGIES NOT MUCH HAS CHANGED, EH? and also added "just substitute in "working in an office vs. being a soldier of fortune" for "living in Newport vs. sleeping under the stars and panning for gold" and you've got this week's hot topic."
But yeah. the RETVRN guys are usually comfortably well off dudes, probably many of whom have wives to do a lot of things for them, who probably have assistants at work - again, the beneficiaries of the modern system they see as stultifying and unmanly.
I bet most of them wouldn't last long GENUINELY doing farming. Or physical labor like roofing, even though they often think that that kind of work is "more honest" than what most of us do. (Certainly, construction and the trades are extremely important and valuable and are a good way to make a living if you are inclined to that kind of thing, but they are not "more honest" than office or education or laboratory jobs)
Though also, I do think maybe it's a bit of modern malaise or acedia or perhaps even ingratitude for what we have - I mean, after all, most of us have a good sound roof over our heads, and enough food, and comparative safety. (Compare an average American with someone living downstream of that Kherson dam that was blown up the other day, an I think your average American would realize they're darned lucky).
But yes, once again history doesn't really repeat itself, but there are certainly some threads of thought that weave their way down through the years.
No comments:
Post a Comment