I'm not much of an artist. I take photographs and make handmade cards. But I love art. In fact, I've often wished I'd been born at the turn of the 20th century right around 1890 when the elevated values of the Arts and Crafts movement were challenged by industrialization. I've wished I'd been there to try to do something about preserving good design, craftwork, and the movement's appreciation of quality which were overwhelmed by our romance with mechanization.
Over time, as I've revisited that thought, I've looked at it with new eyes. I've learned now that one man can't stop the momentum of change though many have tried. I've taken a good look too at the reality of the wish and questioned myself. Would I really trade my 21st century comforts and freedoms for a life in the 1800's? If I'd lived then would I have had the passion to fight the tide of history? Would I even have seen it coming in time to fight it?
Yet every time I run into a quality versus quantity example or find myself buying a product again because it seems to have been made to break in two years I go back to that dream of being there to turn the tide of history and preserving quality and craft. Of course the outcome in my imagining, like the outcome in the ideals of the Arts and Crafts movement, is bigger than art it's a more thoughtful and beautiful world; the world I want it to be.
Last week my thinking evolved when a national crafts store, where I buy my cardstock, sent me an e-mail that they are going out of business. The store was packed with frantic people stocking up on fine stationary and scrapbooking paper and talking to one another about the loss of this resource and where on earth they were going to go now. I suddenly realized I don't have to go back in history. I'm living at an equally important crossroad in time. The economy is accelerating technological transformation and sweeping change is upon us. Letters or e-mail? Paintings or photoshop? Radio or Rhapsody? Local stores or Online shopping? Things I care about are being left behind.
"I don't have time to write a letter. Let's e-mail" or "Why don't you buy that online? It's cheaper." sounds so trivial in the scheme of things but those actions have unintended irreversible consequences in our daily lives. History isn't only a tide washing away the past it's also a record of the collective moment to moment decisions of people like you and me. Technology, like mechanization before, has the romance of newness and the lure suggesting it will improve our lives. At this crossroad in time, though, I want to think about what I'm trading away when I fully adopt technology and unconsciously neglect arts, structures, and services that sustained me all my life. How I react to and use new technological tools will determine whether I'll live in my imagination wishing I could change the past or whether I'm fully awake in reality making day to day choices for a better world tomorrow.
