Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec: The Modern Worker (1894)

"Modernity always promised much more than it ever once delivered."

As near as I can determine, Modernity must be in the eye of each beholder. I suspect that every generation stretching back to before recorded history believed itself to be the very soul of Modernity, for how could that not have been? Each successive wave represented the most advanced one to date. There were, in fact, none more current than whichever one was present, even when The Dark Ages overtook previous pinnacles of civilization. Those apparent retreats, too, represented an alternative form of advancement. Progress only sometimes moves forward. Some failures seem like an inescapable part of success.

Most of the history I've been reporting here occurred in a world lit only by fire, an almost unimaginably primitive state for those who have more recently arrived. Flipping a switch didn't exist until a few short decades ago, yet those who fiddled with matches or flint to light a lantern might have felt more modern than the best of us today. When I was very young, back in the nineteen-fifties, the future I inhabit today looked much brighter than it seems to have turned out. Those were the days that promised flying cars. It's likely flying cars will never arrive, or certainly not in the way envisioned back in the day. A world overfilled with positive promise might represent the most Modernity any world could offer. Now, my youthful dreams have become better informed so that not nearly as much seems possible now as seemed inevitable then. Potential represents much of what true Modernity must promise.

As I enter my elder years, I no longer seek acquisitions. I avoid improvements, preferring traditions. Whatever new appliance appears seems like just another tin whistle here, a single-use solution of narrow utility. An air fryer. A Microwave. These seem to be the soul of backward progress. Anything taking up more counter space might be steam-powered for all the usefulness it promises. I can't accomplish anything on my countertops now. True Modernity would be countertops free of every gismo, save a worn cutting board and a slicing knife. I ache for a tinier television that only displays in black and white. Every time I upgrade an operating system, I revisit The Middle Ages for a day or two. Todays futures seem only like lame gateways to some too-familiar past.

My forebears were experts with horses. They'd mastered every skill mentioned in The Whole Earth Catalogue. For them, Modernity often came as some form of dominion, a battle won, or territory conquered. Today, those endless tussles seem more evidence of unenlightenment than wisdom. All the ancient effort to subdue the pagans might have been essentially wasted. Once conquered, the pagans so profoundly influenced the "moderns" that the winners became what they ate rather than the other way around. Our modern democracy was deeply influenced by philosophies the Pilgrims found offensive. We have English Common Law as interpreted by Seneca. Modernity always produces such strange bedfellows. It's rarely made up of additive progressions but odd improvisations. Traditions dressed up in what initially seemed like strange decorations, garish colors, and sketchy shapes. They became regular with iteration, never perfection. Modernity always promised much more than it ever once delivered.

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