Time to Look for the Genuine
A real life awaits
“Something hidden. Go and find it. Go and look behind the Ranges –
Something lost behind the Ranges. Lost and waiting for you. Go!”
- From “The Explorer” by Rudyard Kipling
Consider this scenario from several decades ago:
A suburban neighborhood that has affordable homes. Walk down a street and although you probably won’t find the racial/ethnic diversity of today, you can find the residences of a microcosm of professions: plumbers, managers, small business owners, sales reps, electricians, factory workers, postal workers, cops, firefighters, secretaries, accountants, government workers, truck drivers, telephone repair technicians, and contractors. You may also find some doctors, lawyers, and judges. Most of the retired people stay on in the neighborhood.
Many of the residents landed their jobs through a simple procedure: an application form or a resume that was mailed in or handed to a person at a front desk. This is not unusual. The hiring process is often very informal. Call into a business with a question and you usually can reach a person with answers.
Calling itself requires a home phone, a business phone or one of the ubiquitous public phones located on corners or at organizations and businesses. There is only one phone company, and you don’t even own your phone. All of them have dials. Smartphones are far off in the distance.
The neighborhood has a mixture of Republicans and Democrats and a lot of veterans (the draft is still active for men). There are members of a variety of service clubs such as Rotary, Lions, Elks, Shriners, and the local chapter of the General Federation of Women’s Clubs. The YMCA and YWCA are popular. So are the Boy Scouts and Girls Scouts.
Scattered about are churches, temples, and synagogues. Attendance at their services is high. Formal public meetings are often begun with a prayer. Many businesses are closed on Sunday.
Marriage is common. Divorce is rare, in part because in many places it is difficult to obtain. No-fault divorce laws have yet to become common. Families often get by with one paycheck and one car. The birth control pill has yet to arrive.
Most cars have stick-shifts and no air-conditioning. The glovebox may have a folded map or two.
A few homes have swimming pools, but most people go to the public pool. Bowling clubs are popular. So are public golf courses. Few people, if any, in this neighborhood belong to a country club. No one jogs.
There are, however, some common reading habits. Most homeowners subscribe to the local newspaper. LIFE, Look, Reader’s Digest, and the Saturday Evening Post are popular magazines and if you glance at the bookshelves in many of the homes, you’ll see books, such as volumes of Churchill’s The Second World War, that were introductory offers for the Book-of-the-Month Club. There may not be a local bookstore, but the drugstores all have circular racks of inexpensive paperbacks.
Grocery stores often offer inexpensive volumes of encyclopedias with a different volume available for purchase every two weeks. Cereal boxes contain toys, and detergent boxes have towels. And, of course, Cracker Jack boxes have toys.
[“You know when I was a kid, you used to get metal things, like tin whistles and stuff like that. Now you get a picture of a f…king snake.” – Jack Nicholson]
It’s not unusual to see men repairing their family cars in their home driveway or even their front yard. [The term “shade tree mechanic” is popular.] Some people trade in their car every year for a new model, but most hang onto them as long as possible. A few VW Beetles can be seen. Foreign cars are the exception. Detroit rules. Teenagers are eager to drive and don’t postpone getting their driver’s licenses.
Gasoline is cheap. Gas stations provide full-service (gas, windshield, radiator, oil and tire checks) as a standard practice.
Banks have large numbers of bank tellers as well as incentives, such as clock radios, if you open a savings account.
Drugstores have “soda fountains” where employees called “soda jerks” make shakes and serve sodas.
Most of the children go to public schools. If a child is sent to a tutor, it is done to keep the kid from failing a class. [Unlike nowadays, when many children are tutored to increase their chances of getting into top universities.]
The discipline in schools is strict, but not cruel. Extreme or repeat offenders are expelled. There are dress codes. The physical education classes strive to meet the President’s Physical Fitness standards. Parents are inclined to support the teachers in disciplinary matters. Eighth-grade boys take industrial arts (wood-working, repairs, and related skills) and the girls take home economics (cooking, nutrition, sewing, and family finances).
The local elementary school has an annual barbeque and rummage sale for fund-raising. Many of the elementary school teachers are men. The leaders of the PTA include white-collar and blue-collar members as well as many housewives who are also active in women’s clubs.
Children spend a lot of time outside playing informal games, such as “kick the can.” Many young boys own BB guns. Young girls play jump-rope and hopscotch.
There are several radio stations but only three national television stations. All of the TV programming goes off the air at midnight after playing the national anthem. Black-and-white television is the mainstay. The entire family watches the same shows on one television set in the living room or the den. There is no 24-hour news programming. Political talk radio is rare.
Let’s fast-forward to today.
Obviously, there were many things back then that were neither desirable nor admirable. The advances made in civil rights and medicine alone have been enormous.
Let’s consider, however, what we have lost. If I were to put the loss in one word, it would be genuineness. An element of realness or authenticity is missing in a variety of areas.
In those days, you had real meetings, not virtual ones. You lived in a real community, not a virtual one. You sent real, handwritten, thank-you notes, not electronic ones.
And the men and women who attained heroic levels of fame did so because of serious achievements. Leaders were not conjured up out of smoke by image consultants. They were serious people doing substantial things.
At that time, celebrities and anti-heroes had not captured the culture. Children did not list “influencer” as a career goal.
And what do we now have in its place?
Our 24-hour news cycle inflates stories in order to provide a crisis or fear of the day.
Our cancel culture chills freedom of expression and openness; often while expressing a faux outrage which would be missing if a favored side had done the same thing.
Our political debate has escalated debates over right versus wrong to ones alleging good versus evil. A political form of kabuki theater has been developed.
Our litigation-happy society encourages organizations and individuals to clear the bar of legal compliance while other institutions, such as the public-school systems, are reluctant to teach values and guidance on a higher bar; namely, what is the right thing to do?
Our technology has given us speed and convenience. Unfortunately, it has also reduced our attention span as well as the quality of and genuineness of our communication. Many a college student does not know cursive. Many of them, used to texting, even struggle with basic conversations.
The addictive nature of tech will have us scrolling through life; robbed of irreplaceable time that could be more valuably spent with family, friends, and colleagues.
All of the above produces people who sense that their life, and society in general, are lurching out of control.
And when your sense of control shrinks, fear rises.
As the Kipling poem at the beginning of this essay urges, we need to get out into life. Unless we, both as individuals and as a society, start to embrace a genuine existence that brings risks of failure, unpleasantness, and unpredictability as well as achievement, happiness, and love, we will eventually wind up in a very artificial and narrow existence: a prison cell of our own making.