Important numbers
Nov. 11th, 2009 12:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
icepixieI just realized that in less than two months, we're going to have an easy way to refer to our current decade: the 'teens. No more of this awkard "2000s" business; we'll have a real decade name again.
That feels a tiny bit shocking. I'm not sure why.
Maybe it's because my immediate assocation with the phrase is with the 1910s, which seem incredibly remote to me. It's weird, but they seem somehow more distant than even the last decades of the nineteenth century, and certainly moreso than any of the decades that came after. The twenties and thirties, I get on a visceral level; I feel like I have enough common referrents with them to understand, more or less, what life was like then. The period before 1900 is so removed from my daily experience as to make any hope of understanding life then impossible, so in an odd way it's easier; I write off the whole enchilada and concentrate on the aspects that are accessible.
The Edwardian era1 doesn't quite fit into either category. It's tantalizingly close--you have the rise of the automobile, the silent movie, the gramophone; not the same as today, but close enough analogues. Even telephones had been around for a few years. But at the same time, you have the crazy hats and hobble skirts of women's fashion; you have the whole social system that made WWI an even bigger mess than it was going to be anyway (for that matter, you have a cavalry in WWI); you have the decade with the greatest percentage of the population having servants or working as servants in 1900-1910; you have women unable to vote in this country; you have the huge popularity of ballroom dancing and vaudeville. These are things I can read about--or even do, as with ballroom--but never really know.
I do think WWI has an incredible amount to do with it; there are echoes in WWII and in the sweeping cultural changes of the 1960s, but nothing really makes a big black uncrossable line across the timeline of the past century or of any century quite like the Great War. (Which makes me wonder why we don't study it more in, say, high school. I knew the dry facts of Franz Josef's assassination and everything, but it wasn't until very recently, when I started reading Eliot and Woolf and other Modernists with people who really know what they're talking about, that I got the true impact of this war on every area of life.) You can go up to that line, you can wave at the people on the other side, but there's no getting over it.
I wonder, though, if it's just the war, and if those two decades wouldn't seem so remote to me if it hadn't happened. Is the horizon of understanding always fixed at ninety or so years in the past? I guess I wonder because I'm curious how our current era is going to look to the people of the 2110s. So much of this decade, at least technologically, has seemed to be refinements of previous technologies--the iPod for the Walkman, 3D movies for 2D movies, etc. Nothing quite like the paradigm shift of the automobile has come along.2
Maybe this century, though, will be one of primarily social and cultural rather than social and technological sea changes. The recent healthcare reform bills, for example. Perhaps the European Union organization and ideal will spread to other areas of the globe; maybe the Vulcans will show up and we'll end up uniting under a world government. Or perhaps in 2083, there will be a law passed that requires all meat to be grown in vats. (I guess that would be both social and technological. Hmm.) Maybe people of 2110 will marvel at a world that had 193 separate countries and where people killed animals for food.
What are things about our current era that you think will be unknowable to the people of 2110s?
* Icon is not related; it's just pretty. How much do I want Ginger's dress? Oh, wait, that would be a whole lot.
1 I'm using the extended definition, i.e., from 1900-1918.
2 Granted, that paradigm took probably thirty years to really shift entirely from horses to cars, but I think you get my meaning. Then again, maybe it's just that we're still riding the wave of the 80s and 90s, with the infiltration of computers into all areas of our lives; the car and the telephone have been telescoped by time into these immediate, sweeping changes, but really they were more like the information revolution.
That feels a tiny bit shocking. I'm not sure why.
Maybe it's because my immediate assocation with the phrase is with the 1910s, which seem incredibly remote to me. It's weird, but they seem somehow more distant than even the last decades of the nineteenth century, and certainly moreso than any of the decades that came after. The twenties and thirties, I get on a visceral level; I feel like I have enough common referrents with them to understand, more or less, what life was like then. The period before 1900 is so removed from my daily experience as to make any hope of understanding life then impossible, so in an odd way it's easier; I write off the whole enchilada and concentrate on the aspects that are accessible.
The Edwardian era1 doesn't quite fit into either category. It's tantalizingly close--you have the rise of the automobile, the silent movie, the gramophone; not the same as today, but close enough analogues. Even telephones had been around for a few years. But at the same time, you have the crazy hats and hobble skirts of women's fashion; you have the whole social system that made WWI an even bigger mess than it was going to be anyway (for that matter, you have a cavalry in WWI); you have the decade with the greatest percentage of the population having servants or working as servants in 1900-1910; you have women unable to vote in this country; you have the huge popularity of ballroom dancing and vaudeville. These are things I can read about--or even do, as with ballroom--but never really know.
I do think WWI has an incredible amount to do with it; there are echoes in WWII and in the sweeping cultural changes of the 1960s, but nothing really makes a big black uncrossable line across the timeline of the past century or of any century quite like the Great War. (Which makes me wonder why we don't study it more in, say, high school. I knew the dry facts of Franz Josef's assassination and everything, but it wasn't until very recently, when I started reading Eliot and Woolf and other Modernists with people who really know what they're talking about, that I got the true impact of this war on every area of life.) You can go up to that line, you can wave at the people on the other side, but there's no getting over it.
I wonder, though, if it's just the war, and if those two decades wouldn't seem so remote to me if it hadn't happened. Is the horizon of understanding always fixed at ninety or so years in the past? I guess I wonder because I'm curious how our current era is going to look to the people of the 2110s. So much of this decade, at least technologically, has seemed to be refinements of previous technologies--the iPod for the Walkman, 3D movies for 2D movies, etc. Nothing quite like the paradigm shift of the automobile has come along.2
Maybe this century, though, will be one of primarily social and cultural rather than social and technological sea changes. The recent healthcare reform bills, for example. Perhaps the European Union organization and ideal will spread to other areas of the globe; maybe the Vulcans will show up and we'll end up uniting under a world government. Or perhaps in 2083, there will be a law passed that requires all meat to be grown in vats. (I guess that would be both social and technological. Hmm.) Maybe people of 2110 will marvel at a world that had 193 separate countries and where people killed animals for food.
What are things about our current era that you think will be unknowable to the people of 2110s?
* Icon is not related; it's just pretty. How much do I want Ginger's dress? Oh, wait, that would be a whole lot.
1 I'm using the extended definition, i.e., from 1900-1918.
2 Granted, that paradigm took probably thirty years to really shift entirely from horses to cars, but I think you get my meaning. Then again, maybe it's just that we're still riding the wave of the 80s and 90s, with the infiltration of computers into all areas of our lives; the car and the telephone have been telescoped by time into these immediate, sweeping changes, but really they were more like the information revolution.
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no subject
Date: 2009-11-11 06:23 pm (UTC)Is the horizon of understanding always fixed at ninety or so years in the past?
I doubt it, both because you say you feel the late 1800s are less distant these two decades (not surprising--Civil War and its aftermath means you spend more time there in history class), and because I'd say that period feels just as remote to me now as it did when I was in school 20+ years ago.
no subject
Date: 2009-11-12 02:11 pm (UTC)I get that impression as well. Actually, I seem to remember reading that at some schools in the UK they spend a semester on the years 1914-1939, or something like that.
Doubtless this is the result of the fact that we did not so much ride in with the cavalry, having been pulled into the war kicking and screaming, and save everyone's arse like we like to think we did with WWII.
Indeed, indeed. I do remember studying the buildup quite a bit in my AP European History class, and I'm sure it was treated in my Modern France class in college, but we spent more time on WWII. I do feel like it might have been profitable in at least the AP class to look at Modernism as a reaction to the war, because that's where it's easy to really get them impact it had.
I doubt it, both because you say you feel the late 1800s are less distant these two decades (not surprising--Civil War and its aftermath means you spend more time there in history class), and because I'd say that period feels just as remote to me now as it did when I was in school 20+ years ago.
I was thinking it might be that. (Although the 1800s are still distant, just in a different way, if that makes sense. The impossibility of understanding them is so stark that somehow those pieces that do ring bells seem that much closer. I was trying to articulate that in the post, but may have missed the mark.)
no subject
Date: 2009-11-11 10:53 pm (UTC)As for 2110, I wonder if we'll make strides like we did in the 20th century with planes, phones, computers, into space....
I think about how people thought, even in the 70's, what the year 2000 would look like and how way off the mark they were (though Star Trek had it right with the "flip phones" and scanning diagnostics. *g*). I mean, people thought we'd have flying cars, be going deep into space and colonizing, etc.
I'd hope that, by 2110, we will no longer be using fossil fuels and will able to rely on cleaner, more efficient modes of energy. We're making in-roads into that now, but we still have a long way to go.
I wonder if we'll continue to fight wars over religious ideology or if people will "live and let live" for once. But since we've been fighting for 2000+ years over that stuff, I'm not so sure. For things like that to change, it seems that something cataclysmic has to happen to get people to wake the hell up.
I'd also like to hope that concepts of skin color and sexual preference will be something totally unknown. I also like your concept of eating pseudo meat. I'm not a vegetarian, but it would be nice to no longer grow/breed/kill animals for sustenance. In fact, interesting you'd bring that up because I was really wishing for a food "processor" in the wall in our lunch room so I wouldn't have to keep taking lunch to work or ordering out.
no subject
Date: 2009-11-12 02:17 pm (UTC)That's mostly what I remember as well. I do remember spending a lot of time on the buildup to WWI, but afterwards it was like, "Okay, Roaring Twenties, go!"
As for 2110, I wonder if we'll make strides like we did in the 20th century with planes, phones, computers, into space....
Too bad things only go faster than light in fiction. *sigh*
I'd hope that, by 2110, we will no longer be using fossil fuels and will able to rely on cleaner, more efficient modes of energy. We're making in-roads into that now, but we still have a long way to go.
I feel like this is pretty well set to happen. Everything I hear about it seems to point to the idea that fossil fuels are going to be too economically infeasible to extract by then.
I wonder if we'll continue to fight wars over religious ideology or if people will "live and let live" for once.
I'm sure some kind of religious conflict will be happening somewhere on the globe in that decade, sadly.
I'd also like to hope that concepts of skin color and sexual preference will be something totally unknown.
Maybe not unknown (I just don't see that happening), but definitely not something worthy of hatred or prejudice.
I also like your concept of eating pseudo meat. I'm not a vegetarian, but it would be nice to no longer grow/breed/kill animals for sustenance.
I woud really love that. I have the temperment to be a vegetarian, but not the willpower. Mmmm, bacon and chicken...
In fact, interesting you'd bring that up because I was really wishing for a food "processor" in the wall in our lunch room so I wouldn't have to keep taking lunch to work or ordering out.
Ohhhh, I want a replicator so badly. I can't even tell you.
no subject
Date: 2009-11-11 10:58 pm (UTC)It's also interesting to see what knowledge and perspectives my students come with. I had a girl from Turkey (went to a Turkish school in Kazakhstan through grade 6, then 7-8 back in Turkey) who asked me what slavery meant. I defined it thinking she just didn't know the word in English, and she looked at me like "WHAT??" Turns out she had absolutely no concept of the very idea of slavery. Which is strange, considering it's not just a US-thing. I had another student from Japan who had learned about the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, of course, but never as... visually as we do. She'd never seen pictures of *people* affected by it, and when they hit that part of the unit, she was pretty stressed out. Poor kid didn't get a lot of sleep for about a week.
2 - When I was in high school, 9th grade (all year) history went up to the Civil War and Reconstruction, then the semester in high school briefly touched on the turn of the century before diving into WWI. Now there's a semester in 8th grade, a year in 9th, and they start the high school semester right before WWII, I believe. And it's not like it was that long ago...
3. What are things about our current era that you think will be unknowable to the people of 2110s?
The concept of restrictions on marriage. We (with the exception of certain JoP's in the south...) are mystified by the idea of not allowing a black man to marry a white woman. Or not allowing a Catholic to marry a Lutheran. In 100 years, I think people will look back and say "Seriously? They THOUGHT that? They had to have like, votes and protests and everything? Crazy." Right or wrong, I think they'll be amazed that our society was so divided over it.
no subject
Date: 2009-11-12 02:28 pm (UTC)I am so checking that out of the library.
Which is strange, considering it's not just a US-thing.
Yeah. I mean...the Ottoman empire was big on enslaving western European sailors and crusaders from the middle ages through the end of the Renaissance.
I had another student from Japan who had learned about the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, of course, but never as... visually as we do. She'd never seen pictures of *people* affected by it
Wow, really? I would think they would concentrate even more on that aspect than we do.
I remember three frigging years of American history in schoole--fifth, eight, and eleventh grades (the last one was AP). We never even got to the Civil War in fifth (I was so sick of the colonials by that point, you have no idea), hit Reconstruction in eighth, and did through the early Clinton years in AP--my teacher was going to get us through the whole book come hell or high water. I think we wrapped up the Civil War the day before Christmas break. I have a feeling we spent more time on Reconstruction than is done up north; we also did a considerable amount in the Articles of Confederation/Federalist period, mostly because none of us had even known there was something before the Constitution, and there was a lot of mythbusting going on.
I had a year of world history in tenth grade (I honestly remember nothing of it, though I have a feeling colonialism was involved) and I took the AP European History course in twelfth because I was interested. That was another backbreaking, but good, class; I think we made it through WWII, at least, which is a bit more impressive when you're starting from the fall of Rome and then going in depth starting with the Renaissance. ;)
The concept of restrictions on marriage.
I think you're right, and I really hope this comes true.
no subject
Date: 2009-11-12 02:35 pm (UTC)The Greco-Persian war, however, that I can tell you all about :)
no subject
Date: 2009-11-12 02:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-11-12 08:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-11-12 08:20 pm (UTC)Wow. My entire historical education was pretty much centered on the post-1400 years; anything I know about the Greeks, Romans, Dark/Middle Ages, etc., comes from my own study. (And, considering I find the most recent six centuries the most interesting, that's fine with me. ;))
The Greco-Persian war, however, that I can tell you all about :)
Heh.