OF A GOLDEN AGE

Oh, email, how often you frustrate us:

“The Internet is something very informal that happened to a society that was already very informal,” said P. M. Forni, an etiquette expert and the author of “Choosing Civility.” “We can get away with murder, so to speak. The endless amount of people we can contact means we are not as cautious or kind as we might be. Consciously or unconsciously we think of our interlocutors as disposable or replaceable.”

That New York Times article (which I recommend) focuses on why people don’t answer emails, but P.M. Forni’s comment on the informality of modern Western society is the real kicker. We ARE an informal society but I never thought of it so succinctly. There is some measure of old-versus-new involved in these complaints — “Why don’t you send thank-you notes?” may be the prototypical example for my generation (p.s. I do) — but is there a downside to losing even our vestigial traces of formality?

I don’t know, I don’t know. My inclination is always to let people live as they want to live with as little interference as possible, that they may distinguish themselves in whatever ways they see fit. Earlier a friend sent me to this topical piece on the threat new media poses to old, and the decline of a certain kind of traditional narrative. How can the world go on without clear beginnings and endings? Somehow:

This moment of anxiety and fear will pass; future generations (there’s now one every three or four years) will have no idea what they missed, and yet they will go on, marry, divorce, and own pets.

Perhaps we’re growing out of the denouement. My mean seventh-grade English teacher is already disappointed, I’m sure.

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