The War on Earnestness

Roller coasters, Abe Lincoln, hipster irony

On Saturday evening, while waiting for an overworked waitress in an understaffed small-town steakhouse to take my order, I watched an old man get up from his chair with some difficulty. He'd caught the eye of another man, someone he knew, and he traversed the space between them to extend a hand. “Good to see you,” he said jovially, and the two exchanged pleasantries for a moment before returning to their respective dining companions.

It was heartwarming, I thought, even as a flood of modern cynicism rose up to challenge my sentiment. Two old white guys they were, probably Republicans, sharing a germ-infested handshake on the heels of a global pandemic. Is it really so noteworthy that a couple of country folk should be glad enough to see each other to rise and speak?

Indeed, that I was touched by such a mundane scene is a testament to how far down the Internet-mediated rabbit hole of contemptuous isolation we've collectively tumbled.

I had dragged my ever-patient partner to Santa Claus, Indiana for my birthday, to indulge a bit of nostalgia for a place significant to my childhood. We rode a roller coaster at Holiday World, walked the grounds of Lincoln Boyhood, and camped—a fool's errand in July, but you can't tell me.

Much had changed since the old days. The amusement park, once called Santa Claus Land, was a favorite spot for me and my favorite cousin, the one who died young. The park was smaller then, and unapologetically Christmassy, with no water park and no “oasis stations” of free Pepsi. Lincoln Boyhood had been the site of several of my grade school's field trips. Back then, it was a living historic farm, staffed with blacksmiths banging hot metal into hooks and women in bonnets hand-dipping beeswax candles. I remember the place for its smell as much as its demonstrations, a pungent stew of greasy lanolin, damp hay, freshly-tanned leather, smoked meats, warm horsehair and bubbling sassafras tea. Today it can barely maintain its one volunteer, a history buff who travels two hours to mind a table of cornhusk dolls and textiles that visitors can learn about and handle.

The memorial to our sixteenth president still stands, of course, and its expansive educational display better held the attention of fifty-something me than kid me. Still, modern discourse forbids praising Abe too highly for his role in abolishing American slavery, because something something political pressure. So I was surprised to learn that he argued against the practice during his bid for the senate several years prior to his presidency, and unsuccessfully—somewhat exonerating his motivations. Also, can we take a moment to appreciate the end of American slavery? While the continued presence of racism demands our diligence, its victims are significantly better off unchained than chained. We have the work of imperfect but compassionate people like Lincoln to thank for these and other advances in human rights.

Christy Wampole observes that “irony is the ethos of our age” and the modern hipster “a walking citation” whose interests (“the mustache... the portable record player”) are not sincere, but curated. This “defensive living,” she muses, thrives where “everything has already been done” and moral relativism leaves believing in something vulnerable to societal judgment, “laughable at best and contemptible at worst.” Blocked and Reported podcaster Jesse Singal once cited an individual's “earnestness” as the inciting factor for the Twitter pile-on against him.

This too-cool-for-sincerity posture has resulted in a societal cowardice toward staking moral claims, much less defending them—even in the face of the widespread exploitation of children. It culminates in the “yawn” of the sophisticated class described by Jacob Siegel in The Scroll, a technique for deflecting the “loss of status” incurred by acknowledging uncomfortable truths.

While waiting in line for the roller coaster, I met a boy yet untouched by the war on earnestness. “This thing is fast,” he told me, with unmitigated zeal. A toothy smile adorned the round, ruddy face—the likes of which I'm sure I've seen in a 1950's ad for biscuits. In energetic bursts, he extolled its heights and abrupt drops, waving his hands in demonstration, now and again glancing toward his dad for confirmation. I experienced the ride more in terms of a head rush and an injured hamstring. But the sight of such unbridled enthusiasm rendered it all worthwhile.

In the latest essay of the nonfiction series “Beautiful Things” in the journal River Teeth, author Rebecca Turkewitz recalls the “wonder and surprise” her dad managed to conjure for mundane tasks. She admires his attitude. “Because isn't it a triumph,” she writes, “to have scaled, together or alone,” the daily business of living? Earnestness is indeed an endangered and Beautiful Thing.