Somewhere In Time?

I love movies and books. In books, I'm a bit of an English major snob - my favorite writers are Dickens, Hemingway, Atwood, James, Doig, Banks, Kundera, Faulkner - with Bernard Cornwell, Patrick O'Brien, and C.S. Forester thrown in for good measure. I am particularly taken with the 19th Century and even Edwardian 20th century. The same holds true for movies - I am a sucker for a costume drama, period piece. Every time Sug' Avery hugs her Papa in the church and he hugs her back when I watch The Color Purple, every time Emma Thompson finally figures out that it isn't Hugh Grant that has married in Sense and Sensibility - tears and chills! I believe I am drawn to this time period and representations of this time period because of the manners of the time. It seemed that all social interaction had a set of rules, guidelines and expectations that helped you to maneuver through society. I am envious of that kind of social organization. I realize that I can harbor such a fantasy because I am a white male. That same social organization kept women, people of color, and the poorer classes subjugated - so I realize that there aren't "issues" with my fantasy. I often feel overwhelmed by people and expectations and manners (or the lack thereof) in our modern culture. By nature I am gregarious and friendly and compassionate. I find it very easy to reach out to people - and living in the Upper Peninsula that includes complete strangers. It is not uncommon up here to greet complete strangers on the street, in the halls of the hospital, or even while hiking the trails in the woods. Yet once an individual becomes part of my regular circle, life seems to get infinitely more complicated and the rules of conduct often seem like "anything goes." If I was living in a period of greater manners, I would know how to react to given situations and most of the individuals that I interact with would also know. Now we tolerate all kinds of behavior and have little or no recourse to put a comfortable stop to offense. Where am I going with all this? Well, I could start harping about the rudeness of store clerks and the horrible behavior of teens...those issues, however, have been problematic from one generation to the next. I'm thinking mainly about cyber etiquette. I recently had to "unplug" someone on FaceBook - my friendliness provoked an inappropriate friendship response from someone I hardly knew - I know he meant well, but it was startling and a bit frightening to receive a relatively expensive gift from someone who was essentially a stranger. I have read on Dan's blog of issues he has had with individuals hounding him on FB and he feeling unsure of how to proceed. Most recently I was called an unflattering name in the comments section of another blog where the community discussion can run fast and fierce. The discussion triggered my potato chip posts below and I made reference to my post at my blog in the comments section of this other blog. This individual seems to have taken offense - in cyber land it is even more challenging to catch when someone is "just kidding" - essentially calling me to the carpet for promoting my blog on someone else's blog. I hadn't thought I had done anything wrong and neither did the blog owner. Which gets me back to manners and rules...rules of engagement. As with everything, it seems, these feeling probably contribute to my hermity behavior; why I prefer dogs to humans; etc etc etc. Then again, perhaps I'm just intrigued by the 19th century because everyone had house servants...