Years
ago I read Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina as
a school assignment, and while I greatly enjoyed it, I’ll admit that I didn’t
get as much out of it as I wanted to. Since then I have been looking for an
opportunity to spend the time to reread it and really come to understand the
complex issues I probably missed when I was fourteen. Tolstoy’s writing addresses
numerous complex issues from divorce, to social change to technological advancement,
which make it a fascinating book for today. Not to mention there is soon to be a
new film adaption.
But even
more than that, Tolstoy provides a useful framework for understanding the
change in our world, whether he was addressing yesterday’s problems or the
problems of one hundred years ago. His vividly depicted characters, who are
torn between right and wrong, and change and tradition, become the watermark
for seeing our own culture and its unique problems. Through each difficult,
conflicted decision that Tolstoy portrays, the author’s voice reaches across
the years with a voice of warning, caution and hope.
Now
while Tolstoy definitely wasn’t writing about the digital age, I see that he
was providing clear guidelines as to how to deal with the social aspects, as
well as the other symptoms of change, that occur within our rapidly evolving digital
society. The most noticeable of these social aspects is different family and marital
relationships around which the book is based. Most obviously is the failing
relationship between Anna and her husband, which is contrasted with Levin and
his new wife. Interestingly these relationships strengthen or fail in response
to the degrees of cultural isolation or over-exposure from the rapidly evolving
world of Russia in the late nineteenth century. I think it is very telling that
Anna ends her own life through the means of one of the most important
technological innovations of her time: the train.
Although
this is just scratching the surface, Tolstoy is sending some sort of message of
the dangers of over-exposure and the need for preserving a sense of balance. Through
the success or failure of each character, Tolstoy illustrates a clear message
for today of where we need to draw the line to preserve our literal and digital
sanity.
Somebody's gotta mention the most famous quote ever:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.quotationspage.com/quote/27719.html
Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, Chapter 1, first line
Russian mystic & novelist (1828 - 1910)
Some thoughts:
This quote is both digital (1/0) and analog (many ways) at the same time!
Just what is the digital age and when did it start exactly? 1980? 1993?
How did our age become the privileged point to view history?
And why is our age any more digital than Tolstoy's? I would imagine the printing-press and the printed word were causing great upheavals of social equalization and revolution.
A cynic might say that Tolstoy just wanted to sell copies and making his families unhappy gave him an unlimited market?
Who was Tolstoy's audience and was he writing to uplift them or entertain them? Did the availability of a print mass market cause him to write the way he did?
Could the typesetting print industry be digital in its own way?
Dad
What are some impacts of family social change in the digital age?
ReplyDeleteWe have a tradition at our dinner table that if you are caught texting then you must do the dishes?
I talked to one of my children about 'sleep-texting', which is a probably made-up danger invented to sell magazines; it involves leaving your phone next to your pillow so that you could wake up and respond even in mid-sleep.
My son had an interesting social interaction at school last year concerning his phone. A friend or associate remarked that he should be having an iphone as a phone because he was 'rich'. He asked: why do you think I am 'rich'. The answer was approximately that he wears brand label clothes. Well, he didn't have an iphone because in our family if he wants one and the data plan along with it, he can pay for them himself. So it is a minor challenge in our family life that what kind of phone device they have, and what kind of _phone plan_ they have (not having unlimited texting is a social limiting situation), are considered critical to their perception.