Sometimes I hear about a past America where people wrote better (stylistically and vocabulary-wise) and people were more interested in culture that went beyond their narrow life experiences. I wonder if it's true. Maybe I'm imagining things or being nostalgic. Yet a recent New York Times op-ed piece seems to corroborate my feeling that popular culture was different a couple generations ago.
I lamented the decline of writing skills a while ago in a February post. Imagine a society where middle-class people spend their leisure time reading literature and find world politics interesting. Why has that world disappeared? Part of the reason may be economic. It seems like many middle-class families have parents who both work full time, perhaps even overtime. After taking caring of the kids, there isn't much time left. I think another reason may be the career-driven, goal-oriented nature of today's society. We're too busy trying to match or better the living standards of our parents, trying to be as successful as the people we see on TV and read about in the papers. And there's the backlash against the American melting pot. Maybe people are sick of hearing about diversity and the rehashed mantra of learning about other cultures. Maybe they just want to protect what they know.
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