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61   4 Modernity’s Deficiencies We’ve touched already on some of the key reasons modernity can go a bit stale after initial enthusiasms. Ingratitude and what-are-youdoing -for-me-today expectations are high on the list, but the small but pressing agenda of modern missteps looms even larger. Major historical change always has down sides. In the case of modernity, though they can be briefly stated, the minuses can be agonizing. Two centuries into the modernization process, it’s hardly surprising that most people have only a dim sense of how much better modern societies are than their premodern predecessors, in areas like longevity, and therefore retain no active sense of gratitude. To be sure, the initial shock of modernity has ended, which cushions ongoing response, but awareness of contrast has faded by the same token. More inclusive historical training, that would explore a wider range of human experiences before modernity, might help a bit, and we’ve seen that there is real reason to work on some areas of unwarranted nostalgia. Comparison with contemporary “developing” societies might generate more active appreciation as well, but happily it’s become less politically fashionable to bash nonWestern settings. It’s also obviously true that, as more and more societies move toward the modern, finding comforting contrasts with nonmodern neighbors is becoming more challenging. Politicians still try to assure us that the United States is the best in the world, but probably few nativeborn Americans experience more than a brief surge in their happiness thermometers as a result of this dated rhetoric. The fact is that a waning of active gratitude for modern achievements is a given in the historical process. Understandable lack of historical gratitude couples with another modern human impulse: to want more, and to focus on goals not yet achieved rather than stressing existing accomplishments. Rising expectations—a sense that modernity is not only taken for granted but quickly seems inadequate in light of hopes for further gain—will enter our exploration of a 62  maladjustments in modernity number of more specific facets, like death or childhood. They obviously color reactions to material achievements. Gregg Easterbrook calls the sense that many affluent Americans have, that they are somehow not yet wealthy enough, “abundance denial,” which is not a bad phrase.1 A more nuanced study by Richard Morin identifies four segments of the American middle class,2 even before the 2008 economic collapse: a full sixth, though calling themselves middle class in the best national tradition, actually are poor by modern standards; about half are in fact satisfied, either because they are incontestably successful or because they value less material aspects of their lives; but a full quarter, though well off by any reasonable global measure, just can’t get over a nagging anxiety that they are falling far short of their own aspirations. This intriguing group, more likely to be married than most Americans (thus not, at least overtly, suffering family instability), rates their current standing as medium to low (against objective evidence) and their futures even bleaker. Overall: in the modern context, where vestiges of a belief in progress still linger and people are still urged to become more uniformly happy, it’s particularly easy to find even a fairly full glass a bit empty—another reason for a satisfaction gap. Even more important are the more systematically adverse trends that form part of the modern record to date. There are at least three obvious candidates here (and an active debate on others would be quite appropriate ). We’ve already noted the decline of community cohesion in this passage from premodern to modern societies. While some historians properly warn that this should not be overdone, noting that many accounts have communities implausibly deteriorating every twenty years or so, the overall trend is probably real. Less cohesive and supportive communities probably contribute to higher rates of psychological depression, possibly to more child abuse, certainly to the increase in divorce. The decline in community-based leisure, replaced in part either by privatized enjoyment or by larger, anonymous crowds, is another fascinating aspect of modernity that may factor a reduction in quality of life. It’s not all bad, of course; the same trend of looser community ties promotes greater tolerance , at least in certain respects: traditional community monitoring can be quite repressive. A similar argument about a weakening of extended families is more complicated, at least in Western history, because intergenerational links...

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