I recall starting a history on private life without finishing. What I recall is how little private life there was then and so little now. Television, fast food, work schedules, and the internet I see as changing private life. Yet, de Tocqueville writes:
...Each of them is willing to acknowledge all his fellow-citizens as his equals, but he will only receive a very limited number of them amongst his friends or his guests. This appears to me to be very natural. In proportion as the circle of public society is extended, it may be anticipated that the sphere of private intercourse will be contracted; far from supposing that the members of modern society will ultimately live in common, I am afraid that they may end by forming nothing but small coteries.
I keep thinking we built ourselves an inhuman culture. I felt that separation from society long before I became a prisoner. I see in de Tocqueville echoes of other writers. Like Tom Wolfe in From Bauhaus to Our House. We were shocked by the rise of social media like Facebook, but is it not understandable when you recognize our alienation from one another and a desire to connect with others? Facebook provides a way of finding kindred souls. That brings to mind Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle and his ideas for drawing together “small coteries.”
Once upon a time, people lived in communities which did a foster a closeness of its members. Ancient Athens had its Agora and Rome it forum where the private and public met. Santayana mentions this in Reason in Society. I see Facebook beginning a return to people not being alienated entirely from society by living in more than one community at a time. I hope this will extend beyond the online world.
sch
[Well, I was certainly wrong about Facebook, wasn't I? sch 8/28/2023.]
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