The Victorians worried that increasing wealth and education, with all its good effects, would also make them soft. Upper class men, in particular, worked hard to avoid this by engaging in “manly” practices such as boxing. Parents of upper class children knew the disease of idleness and spent a good bit of time trying to make sure children did not find that comfort made their children unable to handle the rough and tumble of life. They understood that there were virtues that were easier for the poor to gain. They believed that a hard life, if not so difficult as to sap energy, gave a certain robustness to life. In short, many believed a moderate life that steered clear of the debilitation of grinding poverty and the softness of wealth was best. Teddy Roosevelt, heir to fortune and self-created cowboy, is a good example of the practice of avoiding “softness.” He went to Harvard and did punishing labor. He feared the debilitation of a soft life.
It is easy enough to ridicule such fears, but perhaps the Victorians were right. Wealth has spread so quickly that combined with miracles of technology many folk now can live like the wealthy of that earlier era. The difference is that the wealth came fast enough that the social lessons of the wealthy did not have time to spread with it. Social norms spread less quickly than the X-box. Parents do not realize that they are raising their children in a child-centered way that would have horrified the Victorians. Surely the notion that idle hands are the “devil’s playground” does not seem so foolish when we look at the hours youngsters have to waste on self-indulgent “my space” work. Even many home school parents help their children avoid the manual labor that may, in fact, teach some good lessons. At times, I think my children the only Anglos in a five mile radius who cut their own grass and weed their own lawn. Do we see signs of this softness in our fear of any but the slightest discomfort or failure? In our desire to have government or anybody act as our nanny and make the problems go away? In our impatience with an task that takes longer than days to solve?
I don’t know, but it seems worth thinking about to me.