Forging Worlds: Modern Losses and New Ways

    Since at least the eighteenth century, Romantics complained about losses incurred as we moved from an agricultural society of an industrial mode of production. We often think romantic criticisms of modernity in the pejorative sense. I shall suggest that we are well advised to reconsider the romantic point of view.

    What characterized the difference between modern and pre-modern societies is the style of organization of human relationships. Before the revolution, children had parents, families had relatives, and groups had communities, in ways associated with specific patterns of behavior that were to change.

    With modernity professionalism allowed every step of human life to be categorized and put at the hands of experts, those paid to do a job. Children are cared for in daycare. Eventually, we go to school. From school they will enter the workplace. When we get sick we are cared for by doctors, nurses, and an entire apparatus of the health care system. As old age takes hold, we are shipped off to nursing homes. Children like the old are often drugged to remain docile.

    We expect that daycare workers will be humane and even caring. The school teacher should have a good command of the curriculum, modes of implementation, and also provide a nurturing environment. Our coworkers and especially administrators are to provide a good working environment, as are we. Once again, experts care for us, those who have studied gerontology, in our old age.

    We are subjecting ourselves to now forms of human relations that are unprecedented in human social history. What is a core cause of high levels of stress of modern society, however, is the lack of meaningful human relations, I think. In days gone past, children were taken care of by parents and an extended family. People worked in associations that related to a social context. When people aged, they too were taken care of by family. The benefit of the joint family system is that people had people that cared about them, which is not the same as when we are treated be professionals, not matter how well intended.

    There are two sides to a coin. Older social systems had their drawbacks, and our present technological successes also carry advantages. My point has not been to suggest a solution to our present predicament. It is not even clear what role we have in shaping the future. Given the immensity of the quiet suffering we subject ourselves and the rest of creation, however, the social order at least requires rethinking, as does our concept of professionalism. We may have to return to some of the old ways, lest we pass unnoticed in the night's sky.