When Romantic Ideals Begin to Come True

At the very core of Romanticism is a yearning for the unknown, the unattainable, and the incomprehensible. And while the movement to spread these ideas began relatively recently, in the last few hundred years, many concepts dubbed "unattainable" had eluded mankind for thousands of years before the Romantic Era. Mysteries such as flight and lightning have consumed the imagination of men for as long as history has been recorded. In the late 19th century, however, things changed. 

Some awe-inspiring lightning

With advances in industrialization came advances in technology. Suddenly, we discovered how to capture lightning, how to harness electricity and put it to our own deliberate use. We finally conquered the air and learned how to soar through the sky without meeting the ground in an unfriendly manner. Almost overnight (in the grand span of time), things that people had romanticized about for thousands of years became possible and even accessible. The question I ask is: how did achieving some of our wildest dreams affect society?

Thomas Edison's Laboratory

Some might say that once a person fulfills a deep desire, that person loses purpose and becomes bored. I've definitely seen examples of this in my own life, such as finally finishing a puzzle and suddenly feeling let down because I've lost a sense of direction. On the other hand, however, I've also had experiences in which I've seen fantastic technology, been filled with awe, and immediately filled with even more questions and ideas than before. 

As we can see from history, progress did not stop in the 19th century. Perhaps some people felt a loss of direction during the Gilded Age; it is well-known that the U.S. Patent Office closed down in 1899 because someone apparently thought everything had been invented. But the evidence shows that technology continued to flood the world and advanced at a unprecented rate. 

In short, I think this quote by Walter Ong describes accurately the relationship between the Gilded Age and the Romantic Era which preceded it: 

From man’s beginnings perhaps well over 500,000 years ago until recent times […] knowledge had been in short supply. To keep up his courage, man had continually to remind himself of how much he knew, to flaunt the rational, the certain, the definite and clear and distinct. Romanticism and technology appear at the same time because each grows in its own way out of a noetic abundance such as man had never known before. Technology uses the abundance for practical purposes. Romanticism uses it for assurance and as a springboard to another world. (Walter Ong, Rhetoric, Romance, and Technology: Studies in the Interaction of Expression and Culture) 

Image Credits: in the public domain and licensed through Creative Commons