The Anachronist

I have, this very moment, just finished watching a television program called, “Time Warp Wives”.  The half-hour program focused on four women who have chosen to recreate the 30’s, 40’s, and 50’s in every aspect of their lives from clothes, to décor, to transport, to manners, to values.  The three married women had husbands in the same mould and only the 40’s girl was still single.

In my last article, I wrote about the difference between costumes and clothes.  The primary points being first that clothes are lived in whereas costumes are temporary and for occasions considered appropriate by the norms established by social conditioning; second, that if you believe in your worldview, and your clothes as an extension of that, then others will believe you too.  This is called frame control.  The women portrayed in the program so demonstrated my points that I wish I could post it in its entirety here.  And here it is www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBixE95V43w

Of course the narrator took a more cynical view and was quick to point out whenever the women slipped into the Twenty-first century in mode or technology.  It was as if some grand hypocrisy had been exposed and shown to the viewer with glee.  The hidden microwave.  The concealed the laptop.  The horror of the anachronism.  But I love anachronism.

The past is a foreign country, they do things differently there.  Why?  Because they have a different culture.  That means a different general world view, different social mechanisms, different styles of speech and fashion, different tastes, vales, mores, and customs.  But we do not call these denizens of history foreign.  We consider them to be us.  The fact is that they are part of a different zeitgeist, or Spirit of the Age.  This thing called zeitgeist is the temporal version of what we call, in the geographic sense, culture.

During the first age of globalisation it was considered desirable to be cosmopolitan, that is, a person well versed in not only his own culture but also those of foreign lands.  A person may pick and choose from a variety of cultural expressions and yet never loose sight of his own.  He may travel the world and, like Rudyard Kipling’s Cat who walked by himself, “All places were alike to him.”  He was equally suited to the city as to the country, be it the city of Paris or the country of India or the wilds of the American West.

The opposite of being a cosmopolitan is to be insular, defined as being concerned with local matters with no interest in new ideas or different cultures, also being emotionally detached from others.  For these people, the world of their perceptual cognition is very small and in some cases so small as to be considered juvenile or even retarded. 

In common parlance we might call these people ignorant.  Anything outwith their world is a threat.  It is weird and something to be feared or mocked.  The most obvious manifestation for my British readers is the Scottish ned, the English chav or yob.  But it can also be more sophisticated as seen in the “freak shows” on television purporting to be human interest documentaries.

Just as the cosmopolitan may look to the cultures of the world for insights and inspiration, so too may the anachronist looks to the cultures of the past and find value.  Again, to be an anachronist is fundamentally no different from being cosmopolitan.  The Romantic imagines cultures both of space and time.  Not unlike Dr. Who, he may travel the modern markets of Marrakesh or the fogs of Victorian London with equal aptitude. 

Anachronism is strangely both an understated aspect of the Romantic, and yet still deeply associated with it.  When a person envisions or depicts the past in an idealistic manner we say that they are Romanticising the period by overstating the positives and ignoring the negatives and thus has a delusional perspective.  The Romantic itself is oft seen as nothing more than a Victorian pastiche of the Medieval.  In the same manner the Romantic also creates a personal pastiche of other cultures.  Not out of mockery but through love, respect, and a desire to incorporate what they find there into their world.

In his book, “What is Goth?” the musician Voltaire makes the point that although Goth is often associated with the Victorian, there are also Egyptian and Asian elements present in the idiom.  I disagree.  Yes, those components are present in Goth, but they were also present in Victoriana.  During the Nineteenth Century this was referred to as the Orientalist Movement.  Just as the Medieval manifested physically as seen through the Romantic lens of the Victorians, so too did the cultures of the Empire and the world.  It was seen as part of being cultured.

When people think of philosophy, they generally think of the ideas that people have written down and others either follow or disregard.  True, but I see it a bit differently.  I also see social conditioning as a sort of unwritten philosophy transmitted silently through the generations and from person to person and through time and space.  Zeitgeist and culture are both forms of philosophy.  Perhaps these are not rational, logical, or even conscious, but they are philosophical worldviews nonetheless.

One of my favourite films is “Kate and Leopold”.  The story can be read as a clash of cultures, or more precisely zeitgeists, as a Victorian duke finds himself transported through time to 2001.  One of my favourite aspects of the film was the way that Leopold embraces the modern without fear or ignorance, but with a sense of wonder.  In fact the film makers elevate the Victorians as being our social and moral superiors rather than foolish people from the past to be mocked.  Through Leopold, the Victorians judge us and despite our protestations, we know that it is a fair cop.

The great advantage we have over the Victorians is our technology, but Leopold whisks it away.  The television is no more than an advanced version of the magic lantern and the Mutoscope.  Leopold recognises the modern telephone as Bell’s device from the World’s Fair.  The car is also a logical next step.  He even criticises the lack of functionality of the toaster rather than marvel at it like some savage before a Zippo lighter.

Well, insertion of bread into that so-called toaster produces no toast at all, merely warm bread! Inserting the bread twice produces charcoal. So, clearly, to make proper toast it requires one and a half insertions, which is something for which the apparatus doesn't begin to allow! One assumes that when the General of Electric built it, he might have tried using it. One assumes the General might take pride in his creations instead of just foisting them on an unsuspecting public.

And Leopold shares his view of modern society in general when he tells Kate, “What has happened to the world? You have every convenience and comfort, yet no time for integrity.”

Victorians loved technology.  Millions of people visited the Crystal Palace in 1851 to see the marvels of the age and be amazed.  This set the precedent for the once popular World’s Fairs where our ancestors revelled in our achievements as a civilization.  Is there any reason to suspect that a Victorian time traveller would not embrace the technological achievements of our age?  But as Leopold observed, I suspect that they would have the capacity to use the technology for convenience and comfort rather than being used by the technology and loose their integrity. 

Many people today use technology to escape reality rather than to engage it more effectively thus inhibiting conscious living through the separation between the Subjective and the Objective Realities.  In other words, we get so caught-up in our thoughts and feelings that we do not truly experience the world outside our heads – outside our presumptive cognition.

The Victorian vision for the future is not much different from our own.  The early Science-Fiction stories imagined a world where technology freed mankind to improve himself and cultivate virtues.  This same vision is seen in the Star Trek universe.  Work time is for achieving personal goals and free time is for physical recreation, socialising with friends, and reading.  Neither vision included couch potatoes and mindless media consumption.

One of the recurring themes in the program “Time Warp Wives” was this idea of escaping from a corrupt modern age and retreating into this little universe of their own creation.  I appreciate the sentiment and I’ll admit to doing the same; however it is not something that I would condone.

This notion of escapism applies to the idea of perceptual cognition, how you think about the world as you imagine it to be.  For most of my young life I was in love with my idea of Scotland.  I was not completely ignorant of life in Scotland or Britain in general. I had lived in South Kensington in London for several months during my time in university.  Now that I write this I remember feeling a connection with Britain as our bus moved through the snowy streets to the building that would be my London home.  But not to be distracted, it was Scotland that I loved, or at least my idea of it.

Whenever I felt lost, confused, or misunderstood, I believed that there was a place where “my own kind” lived.  There was a place where I would fit-in and belong.  Americans found me too proper and a bit too straightforward.  I filled my life with traditional Scottish, stories, music, and even modern bands such as Runrig and Big Country.  Even my religion as a Celtic Christian focused on Scotland.  Scottish culture was my obsession and I loved it.  It made me feel whole, complete, and alive.  Eventually I met a Scottish girl and after a two year long distance relationship and annual visits we were married and I emigrated.  My dreams came true.

I remember once when I was still living in Portland, Oregon I complained to my then fiancé on the telephone of a man I saw spit on the bus without a care.  I was no ignorant, idealistic, Scottish-American, but I certainly did not believe people in Scotland would be so crass.  Since moving here over twelve years ago, I have seen people spit on buses, vomit on buses, smoke pot on buses, drink on buses, pass out on buses, physically attack me on buses, verbally abuse me on buses, and throw stones at the buses.  Far from being my salvation, Scotland has, at times, been a nightmare. 

My dreams collapsed and died.  The marriage failed after eighteen months.  I was abandoned and alone thousands of miles from home feeling like a pilgrim in an unholy land struggling to survive physically and emotionally.  The place I had loved only existed in my imagination.  I’ll add that I am generally quite happy now and I cannot imagine returning to America, but it was a long, hard process of disillusionment.

It was easy for me to love Scotland and imagine its nature when I lived 6,000 miles from it.  Likewise, we may love some historical niche when we live fifty, seventy, or over hundred years from it.  In the realm of our perceptual cognition we can create whatever pastiche we desire and like Pygmalion we fall in love with our creation only to find the love is unrequited should it ever come to life.

Today, I am considered quite intelligent by many; however, I believe that should I find myself in the Victorian era, I would be considered a moron.  First, there is the practicality of day-to-day machines I may not be able to operate.  Second, Victorians were highly literate and skilled in the arts of conversation, attune to the subtleties of language, more so than we are today.  Then there are the judgements of social norms that I have not been properly conditioned towards.  Finally, I believe that people today are generally weaker, less hardy, than the Victorians, especially those in rural areas, such as the American West.  I would struggle to be a good Victorian.

As Jesus said, “Be in the world but not of the world”.  Anachronism allows for this.  Life becomes an incorporation rather than an exclusion. We can bring our ideas of other times into this point in time and change today rather than waste time longing for a past that we can never truly know.  This is the whole point of Neo-Victorianism: the Nineteenth Century zeitgeist in a post-modern world.

This is also where Steampunk comes into the picture.  Victorian values, virtues, zeitgeist, and aesthetics but with modern technology.  What would a Victorian mobile phone, laptop, or microwave look like? I have seen pictures of such clever creations, but I want them for daily use.  Another aspect of this is hiding the technology.  Imagine how to incorporate or conceal a flat screen HD television in the Victorian parlour.  Imagine a gentleman’s walking stick that doubles as a high voltage cattle-prod.  I have.  We have the power to create a Steampunk world and live in it.

I will add that living in Glasgow gives me advantages in this regard.  I live in a building erected by Victorians; I also work in their buildings, walk their streets, drink in their pubs, see their statuary, and ride in their underground system.  Perhaps that is why I stay in Glasgow.  I often joke that it is because I do not clash with the buildings.  It suits my anachronistic, Steampunk, Neo-Victorian sensibilities more than my homeland of strip malls.

I do not see anachronism as a sin anymore than the many multicultural experiences I have everyday.  Anachronism, like cosmopolitanism, is a quality worth cultivating.  It broadens the mind, the soul, and opens possibilities and I enjoy that richness, variety, and the sensations.  After all, that is what being a post-modern Victorian is all about.