I've given a lot of thought to this notion over the years.
There us a part of us, as a society, that refuses to view past wasy of living as being intrinsically incorrect.
We have cars for transport, but these only replace transport that we previously used. We have telephones, TV, medicines and so on. Each updates of what we previously had.
But fundimental preconceptions remain. What is is to be a man or a woman. Homosexuality.
If I had lived, say 100 years ago, or 200, 300, 400 years ago, would I have managed to survive any better than I am now?
I have to conclude that, in the past, I probably wouldn't have made it to adulthood.
If I consider the sources of my own difficulities with daily life, my innate effininacy, my sexuality, my continuing attempts to act out a part. The last of these, which has more or less, defined my own life, would have made it almost impossibe to function within the ordered existance of working class people in a society dominated by a social elite.
As someone born in the post WW2 world, I have been able to take advantage of the social breakdown of the old orders. The needs of an economy that could no longer cushion its limitations with the production of Africa and Asia meant that it became an imperitive to expand the entrepunerial pool to include those born in the lower classes. The priveledges of the social elite needed to be broken. Most of them seem to have retired into a sort of self imposed social exile. Living out their own pretensions, financed by their control of the profits from which they skimm their living.
This is a virtual mirror of the aristocricy, of course, many of whom have been living this way since the 17th century. Though, of course, they did so with the full agreement of the suceeding generation of social elite.
The opportunites are there for us. They aren't easy, nor are they free. They are certainly not an easy option.
We can reject a telephone, we can reject a car, a TV, electricity. We can reject the opportunity to change our gender.
But the question is, why?
