IDEALS AND NECESSITIES

I looked on the internet for images from 1913, the year my Father was born.  Should I have been shocked that it seemed like such another world?  Not only was it unlike today, it was totally unlike the year I was born, 1945.  I am not as impressed with the machinery, prices, or styles as I am that the entire way of life was obviously different. 

Most people still lived on their land.  Even so-called townsfolk had large lots, gardens, chickens or a milk cow.  If one wanted chicken, they had to raise their own, or buy from a neighbor.  There was electrical refrigeration so there was no way to keep meat, eggs, or milk fresh.  It all had to be pretty much local.  That means that most people participated in agricultural activities, or in other words work.  And since physical labor was needed, families had to work together.  The home wasn’t a place as much as a series of events that required cooperation and participation.  This was not some idyllic existence.  This was necessity. 

But then things changed, and what was necessity became less necessary.  Government policy encouraged large farms.  People moved to the cities.  Cars made it possible to work ever farther away from home.  Television made the idyllic seem trivial.  And public education took our children away from home.  Education is good, of course.  But does it really take as many hours of the day as it presently takes.  Or is it, perhaps, that school is more about watching the children while parents work (and play)? 

Now, we worry because the family doesn’t work together.  If we try to work together it must be before early morning when the bus for school leaves, or late afternoon after the school activities.   We pay for gym memberships because we don’t do enough physical labor.  And we’re never quite sure if our food is good for us or not.  The tendency is to think of the way it was then to be an “ideal”.

But as the idyllic has become less necessary, it has also become less possible.  In 1913, the benefits, and difficulties, couldn’t be avoided.  Now the ideal would have to be upheld mostly by will.  There is no necessity for such a way of life, and that makes it very difficult to create or continue. 

That does not mean it is less important.  It doesn’t mean it’s impossible.  It doesn’t mean one shouldn’t try.  It’s just that government and culture will not help you.