It’s a sunny Thursday, and I’ve been watching a Kdrama called Dare to Love Me. It’s not the best I’ve seen; it’s not the worst either.
Overall, a pleasant watch, which is what you want in escapist television.
But one of the aspects of the plot strikes me as particularly relevant. In this show, there is a village where people live as though living in the past, doing things the way they used to be done. I can’t really tell if it’s based in any truth, because while I’ve found some traditional villages, it’s not clear if people have lived in them for generations upon generations, like the show.
Within the show, the social hierarchy also remains, including the concept of nobles and servants. In one of the early scenes of the show, either it’s the young lead or his grandfather, can’t remember which, smiles benevolently, strolling around the village, watching women pound laundry against rocks.
And I cannot, for the life of me, understand why anyone would want to live that way, down to the same social dynamics, in the 21st century.
As you can imagine, we’ve just hit the point of relevance.
People have such romantic notions about the past, almost anywhere you could set your finger on the globe, but people also seem to assume they’d be one of the nobles and not one of the servants. And given the odds, that’s not the case.
So here we are in a country where an entire political group is trying to propel us backward in time. Republicans–or the grand “OLD” party as they like to dub themselves–don’t want women to vote; they’re openly, virulently racist and bigoted; they believe, firmly, that “workers” are not independent people capable and entitled to their own lives and beliefs, but buds that can be cut off the plant at any time for any reason.
We would not be the nobles, my friends. Not by a long shot.
The past was not idyllic but difficult, and that is why culture and technology evolved. That is why medicine evolves; that is why thinking itself evolves. What was good was only good for some, and hugely disproportionately.
That’s what they want back. They want to smile benevolently at women pounding laundry against rocks so women don’t have time to pound truth against rhetoric.
Anyway, that’s it for me today, I hope your Thursday looks forward and not backward.
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