Hey everybody! Yes, I'm still alive. Yes, I'm still in a blogging slow-down due to work on two books at the same time. Keep checking in, though! I do have content coming, eventually.
Anyway, I have a point-counterpoint thing today. Point: A couple that has taken their adoration of the Victorian era to really high levels..
Counterpoint: Screw those idiots. (Second article is a tad foul-mouthed.)
I'm of mixed mind on this sort of thing. I honestly tend to default to "live and let live" on stuff like this, but on the other hand, I always have a hard time when people start evangelizing in favor of their time-period of choice, the point on the clock beyond which they think everything started trending downhill. There's a fine line between admiring certain stylistic things about an earlier time, and fetishizing it to the point of cherry picking the stuff we liked.
But then, my mixed reaction to things like this might just be simply because my preferred time period is four hundred years in the future, so there's that.
Thoughts?
The personal blog of author Kelly Sedinger, chronicling the adventures of one overalls-clad wanderer.
8 comments:
I really don't understand all the hate the couple is getting. The only thing I find funny it this:the Victorians were fascinated with new technologies. Some of the greatest changes in history arrived during the Victorian period. Their view of a golden age is certainly Victorian (the Victorian period saw a renewal of interest in the Medieval period and architecture), but their refusal to use modern technology is anti-Victorian and completely against the zeitgeist of the Victorian age. It would actually be more Victorian (slightly at least) to dress in Victorian clothing and still use modern technology.
I can't get past the period between "era" and "so" in the first article's title.
The 2nd author needs to relax. There are real cultural sins. So it's live and let live.
I think it's silly but completely harmless. The emotion expressed in the second article is excessive and ridiculous. If some people choose to live an old fashioned lifestyle for religious reasons why can't people live an old fashioned lifestyle just because it makes them happy? In this context I see no problem with "cherry picking." I ften think it's too bad that we can't keep the good things fom the past and leave behind the bad. For example, why can't we have equality for minorities, women, and the differently oriented and still have the standards of courtesy and decorum and the requirement to dress up for important occasions that we had until the middle of the 20th century?
I have enough problems of my own to deal with without making someone else's lifestyle choice - that has absolutely zero impact on me - into a problem for me.
Frankly, the people who are making it into a problem should thank whatever Higher Power they believe in that their lives are smooth enough that they have the time and brainspace to devote to being meddlers.
(Sorry. It's been a really bad week here.)
I tend to be of the "live and let live" sort but it is clear from the article that they are choosing which bits of Victorian life they want to live with. As long as they, and anyone they proselytize to, realize that they are not really living as Victorians, I will not speak against them.
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