Florida Pier : writings and about / jmcvey.net
What is the World Coming To?
“The Gentler View,” Harper’s Weekly (April 20, 1912) : 26
Purdue copy/scan (hathitrust) : link
archive.org : link
There is always a certain section of the community that voices droningly the opinion that the world is not what it was. This is no doubt quite unavoidable, as those who hold the waning ideas are unable to see the rising substitutes. Yet it almost seems as though the present age should escape sad head-shakings and be recognized for what it is, a paragon of seriousness and morality. Our social vices, our extravagances, and our paupers weigh so lightly when balanced against our concern about them. Our gaieties and weaknesses are principally practised by those people who are essentially old-fashioned and conventional. The real modernists are so moral that nothing but their absorption in their pursuits prevents their being overwhelmed at their own exemplariness. Our social vices, our extravagances, and our paupers weigh so lightly when balanced against our concern about them. Our gaieties and weaknesses are principally practised by those people who are essentially old-fashioned and conventional. The real modernists are so moral that nothing but their absorption in their pursuits prevents their being overwhelmed at their own exemplariness.
The writers and wits write plays that are pamphlets of reform, the novelists disclose industrial conditions with the accuracy of Blue Book statistics. The young women want to earn their own living and be well educated. The young men are sociologists and philosophers who reform society from a street-corner soap-box. Even the kings and queens of the various nations are model domestic couples who spend their time seriously instituting Poor Law commissions and making moral remarks.
The funny papers are carrying on campaigns against their pet abominations. The magazines base their financial security on the vigor of their muck-raking, the short stories have ideas in them carefully concealed so as not to attract too much attention, but nevertheless of a contagious nature. Our matrons must be chairmen if they are to be anybody at all, while all their daughters are secretaries to something. Nothing but congenital blindness can account in these days for the cries of, “Is religion on the decline?” “Why is this a material age?” “The thoughtless, selfish twentieth century,” and so on.
Conditions and their readjustments are all that really interest us. We are bored if we are not serious. This is not to say that we are heavy, but that even when we are light in our touch we are still serious. Our jests have psychological point. Our fantasies have philosophy. The worried folk who fix their eyes on musical comedies, and moan: “What is the stage coming to? Is there no longer such a thing as healthy amusement?” are prevented by their mental make-up from seeing the meaning of the meaningful things and so their pessimism results from their limited vision. The serious people are not dull about their seriousness, which perhaps marks them off from the serious people instantly recognized and solidly praised; they are gaily serious, lustily serious, and so much busier than the grave head-shakers that they have no time to retort or explain.
At what other age would you have found large numbers of comely and normal young women discussing prison reform and kindred subjects ably and sanely, because those were the subjects that interested them? When were the wits more trenchantly and constructively moral in their teachings than the ministers. The stage has not always dealt with subjects of great social importance, yet the vital part of the theater presents precisely these nowadays. Drama and literature are so alive that they have thrown away distorting convention and find they must speak in terms of truth and insight. The present age is so alive that the stodgy souls, suspecting live things as they always do, condemn it outright. More than outright — hurriedly and nervously.
Is it unadulterated egoism that doubles our enjoyment of a thing when we in some form constitute one of its chief ingredients? A flower that we planted in a border that we dug is a miracle. We gloat over its existence and are awestruck at its having evolved from the dry little bulb we planted. Other flowers are just flowers, but those that bloom because of us are mystic touches at which we vibrate instantly. Our babies, our houses, our artistic creations and financial successes are marvelous to us, and yet with an outward eye we see them to be not so fair or big or complete or great as the babies, houses, artistic creations, and financial successes of other people. In just so much as we are involved in a thing do we know its processes and in so much as we have caught a vision of processes are we made forever attached to what is more a miracle for having been revealed at various stages. And suddenly what seemed like the vanity of possessions goes and one feels that perhaps our loyalty to our own may be the result of something else. In just so much as we are involved in a thing do we know its processes and in so much as we have caught a vision of processes are we made forever attached to what is more a miracle for having been revealed at various stages.Cataclysms could be taken for granted after a moment if not clearly understood, but slow-hidden development enthralls us. Because we had to do with the rudimentary arrangements and know how bungling and blind was our touch, we are forever beautifully agape that the miracle occurred just the same and that our touch did no apparent harm. Our happy, if consciously absurd, feeling that we alone made a daffodil is based on the long months when other people saw bare earth and we saw a garden of daffodils. We created it then; when it really came we had learned the delightful trick of feeling a creator, and we exhibited it, beaming and flustered, as our own.
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