Satisfaction Not Guaranteed: Dilemmas of Progress in Modern Society

5 False Starts and Surprises: Making Modernity More Difficult

69   5 False Starts and Surprises Making Modernity More Difficult This chapter deals with four aspects of modernity—gender, sexuality, aging, and eating—that incorporate immensely promising changes away from traditional patterns. In contrast to the trends of war or environmental degradation, we’re not discussing measurably “bad” outcomes. Nor, however, are we focusing on unproblematic results, like the rise of comfort, which most people have assimilated (where available) without major difficulty. Prospects for food and longevity were highlighted in Enlightenment optimism, seen as sources of happiness and progress. Gender and sexuality had their heralds as well, though they were less mainstream. All four areas have in fact registered changes that many people today would clearly regard as desirable, even actively conducive to happiness. But all four areas turned out to involve deeply rooted cultural assumptions that were at some variance with modernity and proved hard to change; many of these assumptions indeed initially intensified in response to the magnitude of modernity’s transformations. All of the changes in these areas, as well, involved some immediate problems and opportunities that could distract from objective or longer-range assessment. As a result, all four areas generated false starts that complicated reactions to change and created divisions and diversions that still bedevil responses today. The result is often polarizing debate, prompting discomfort or uncertainty about modernity for various groups and generating new sources of guilt even for people who embrace the more modern behaviors. There’s a direct link, in other words, between the inability to identify modern potential fully at the outset, and the constraints on happiness in modern societies today. Where sometimes bitter arguments still cloud gender adjustments, or where it remains impossible to advance suc- 70  maladjustments in modernity cessful tactics to handle modern eating problems, modernity has clearly roused hesitations that the heralds of progress simply could not foresee. For gender and sexuality, false starts—that is, the inability at first to see or accept the implications of the modern context—surfaced early, and more recent decades have seen important readjustments. Here is in fact a hopeful sign, showing that innovation can address modern complexities even after the process of change is well underway. But the earlier false starts have left no small legacy, and they help explain some of the discontents modernity still inspires. Modern issues of aging and eating emerged clearly only by the later 19th century, making it less surprising that uncertainties continue to shape both policy and personal satisfaction. None of the four false starts is free from controversy. Even labeling reactions as mistakes risks offending certain groups, and indeed each of the false starts was quite understandable at the time. It’s contemporary hindsight that provides a clearer vision. But this claim too—that we now have a firmer sense of what the modern path should be—involves evaluations that could and should be discussed. Even modern obesity generates a surprising amount of dispute. Still, the realization that modernity produced responses we can now regret should be no surprise. Any change in historical direction—and modernity was certainly that—carries these risks. Some problematic first responseswererealizedfairlyearlyon,andhavelongsincebeenresolved.For example, the initial stages of industrialization almost everywhere generated an impulse to attack traditional forms and levels of leisure, on grounds that more assiduous work was essential. Moralists and officials alike reproved many leisure customs on this basis, and some, like the community festival, have really never recovered. But within a few decades it was clear that systematic opposition to popular leisure was a mistake. Workers pressed for new recreational opportunities, and employers themselves realized that a bit more leisure might improve job performance and also provide more opportunities to sell goods. Modern leisure was different from premodern forms, involving for example more commercial provision and more spectatorship, but its abundance has clearly reversed the early industrial impulse. Other false starts, however, have not been so easily fixed, and the legacy is accordingly more complex. With gender and sexuality, there has been enough time for considerable review, though amid ongoing tension. With eating habits and old age, we are much less far along in identifying and revising the initial responses today. In all four cases, confusions surrounding missteps directly affect ongoing responses to modernity. False Starts and Surprises  71 Gender From early on, the logic of modernity argued for a substantial reduction in differentiations between...