Flight from normality

I am re-reading Our Village [by Mary Russell Mitford]: with the possible exception of Cowper, I don’t know anything in the language which so vividly expressed the sheer joy there is to be got out of the little apparently trivial things of life…Any educated person can appreciate the “de luxe” scenery or weather, but it is not so easy to keep tuned up to the Mitford pitch of finding beauty in the ordinary countryside on every day of the English year. I never read this book without acquiring a keener eye for the attractions of whatever part of the country I’m living in. Brothers and Friends: The Diaries of Major Warren Hamilton Lewis (Harper & Row 1982), 64-65.

After supper I began [William Morris’s] the Glittering Plain; it is really unfair to both to compare Tollers [nickname for Tolkien] and Morris, as the Inklings so often do. The resemblance is quite superficial. Morris has his feet much more firmly planted on the earth than Tollers; Morris’s world is an agricultural and trading one, Toller’s is one in which (except for a little gardening), the soil is not the source of life, it is scenery: then again, Tollers is an inland animal, whereas you can’t wander far in Morris without hearing green waves crashing on yellow sand (ibid. 206).

Warnie Lewis was the older brother of C. S. Lewis. Although he’s overshadowed by his more famous, more gifted brother, he was a scholar in his own right, and a regular at meetings of the Inklings (frequented by Tolkien and Charles Williams, among others).

Here, Warnie talks about savoring and cherishing the mundane. Cultivating an appreciative eye for the good in the ordinary experiences of life. Natural, daily blessings.

It’s striking to compare that attitude with so much contemporary film and TV fare. There’s an increasing proliferation of films and TV dramas involving vampires, werewolves, zombies, witches, wizards, aliens, time travel, parallel worlds, serial killers, botched supersoldiers, mutant superheroes, &c.

Perhaps it’s not coincidental that at the very same time the power elite is promoting homosexuality and transexuality.

Mind you, we’ve always had movies and TV dramas on these themes, but I don’t recall a time when there was such a concentration of movies and TV dramas on these themes.

It seems as if there’s a popular flight from normality. That many American consumers of pop entertainment don’t find normal human existence interesting or satisfying.

Compare this to how many Americans lived a hundred years ago. Many Americans lived in small towns or farming communities. They lived on farms, ranches, or tree-lined neighborhoods where everyone was within walking distance of everyone else.

They had large families, with several brothers and sisters. They had extended families living together or living nearby, viz. aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents. They had friends they knew from the cradle to the grave.

They went hunting, fishing, and swimming. They married their high school sweetheart or the girl (or boy) next door. They played intramural sports. They went to church. They found personal fulfillment in the little things in life.

I wonder if many contemporary Americans have forgotten what it means to be normal. With nuclear families, broken homes, blended families, a transient lifestyle, I wonder if many Americans don’t even remember what it’s like to have a natural, normal lifestyle. Don’t know what they’re missing. Don’t find normality satisfying because that’s an alien experience to their generation. A loss of cultural memory.

There’s nothing wrong with the life of the imagination. Nothing wrong with fiction. Nothing wrong with a dash of escapist recreation. But it seems as if many contemporary Americans suffer from a deeper discontent or alienation.