A Gens or a Jenner

In our time, we feel ever so disconnected from our ancestors. Time is as potent as distance in making a foreigner, and time feels somehow multiplied by the rate of change. It’s often repeated that the technological and cultural rate of change today has never been quicker in all human history—and it’s true.

Behind the scenes of Megalopolis, 2023, photo courtesy of Christopher Oquendo. © All rights belong to their respective owners. No copyright infringement intended.

It’s hard to bridge the gap between the world I know from experience with the one I’ve read about in history books. Does “modern man” with his international corporate job, iPhone, and long life really trapse about the same Earth that carried Romans marching in Phalanx and a billion devotees of long-forgotten religions? It doesn’t feel like it, does it?

There’s a very special pleasure in standing among the ruins of a castle or some hardy ancient structure and feeling the activity that once took place in it. If you dream hard enough, you can feel as though you’ve given it a spectral repair. This moment of reflection proves that the extraordinary past really happened. It’s like stripping the paint off the door frame and finding a ladder of height marks etched in pencil on the wood. Name: unknown.

You have to try to find these experiences. In the mundanity of typical life, few things that we interact with have a potent historical connection. In the case of buildings or ballet, we tar it with the stylings and voice of modernity so that we feel they are our own products. It’s not a bad thing. Historic ceremonies like the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace beguile the curious tourist but bore the residents because it hasn’t kept up with modern sensibilities.

But there is one category of thing which is abundant, of great personal interest to us, and as ancient as anything else in civilization. People.

Contemporary painting of ancient Mesopotamian people by Nikolay Sologubov. © All rights belong to their respective owners. No copyright infringement intended.

I wholeheartedly recommend a photo series of “spy” pictures taken by Carl Størmer (1874-1957) in his hometown of Oslo (then Christiania). He roamed around the streets with a C.P. Stirn Spy Camera poking out of a buttonhole in his shirt and captured Victorian-era people in perfect candidness.

What’s so striking about his photos is how everyone looks like modern people but in costume. Stretching this revelation out further, it’s obvious that we have always looked like this. I see a King Henry VIII in every pub after 6. This sameness with our ancestors goes deeper. Graffiti and diaries are my favorite sources of historical connection.

2000 years ago, the ancient tomb of Ramesses V was open for tourism. Many Greeks and Romans came to visit, and this is what some left carved into the walls: “I visited and I didn’t like anything but the sarcophagus,” “I’m Ammonios, from Italy. I was here and liked what I saw,” finally, my favorite: “I can’t read the hieroglyphs!”, and under it, a reply: “Why do you care that you can’t read the hieroglyphs? I don’t get the problem.”

Beyond that, there’s immortal poetry, transcendent plays, novels, speeches, philosophies, epitaphs, etc., that capture the unchanging, and unerringly funny thing it is to be living as a human.

I pondered this recently after watching Megalopolis, the new Francis Ford Coppola film, in which a notable theme is: “America is like Rome at its most hedonistic and cutthroat.” The depictions of parties, drugs, and sex called back to anecdotes I knew about the lascivious ancient Athenians. The powerful men in suits rhyme with the mobs of patricians who conspired against Caesar. The stealthy women who seduce and control are of a kind with Mata Hari. The crowds clamoring to put an ear to the window for a bit of spicy intrigue are—eternally—us.

I took a special interest in the side characters. Not the singular figures who could move mountains, but the small fish. The ones on magazine covers and frequently at parties. The ones who wielded moderate power. I saw in all of them the faces of influencers, celebrities, artists, industrialists, aristocracy, church clergy, and patricians. It was obvious that these were all the same people, despite their distance in space and time. They are the cultural elite and by some flaw in human character, they all wind up the same: partying, lying, cheating, killing, conspiring, and all the rest of it.

Every era has its own cultural elite who define the manner in which we behave and express ourselves. We are endlessly fascinated by them, whoever they are, from whichever populations they’re sourced. Even when an institution holds chastity and temperance as sacred values—as the church does—the shine and glitter of cultural dominance brought fame and all its pitfalls.

It was surprisingly common for some priests to gain a female following if they were handsome, charismatic or, God forbid—both. Sexual scandals were frequent, as were parties, and embezzlement of church funds. This is far from all that the church was, but it’s interesting nonetheless that even it had its rock-star era.

The church fell from prominence, and eventually, the parties, and the scandals, and the public interest fell with it. But that reverence needed a new home, and it found it in industrialists, aristocrats, and poets. There is an interesting interplay between growing middle classes, industrialization, city-living, and the reverence of irreligious figures in our history, but we don’t have time for that, and I haven’t figured it out.

It seems like whatever the rules of society are at that time, whoever succeeds is a de facto celebrity. When the church ruled at every level of society, to be a high-ranking member of it made you something of a celebrity. When the industrial revolution made millionaires of ordinary men and women, and further enriched the aristocracy, it showed a new, intelligent, fashionable path to success—and the best of them became celebrities.

via IG @Kyliejenner © All rights belong to their respective owners. No copyright infringement intended.

In this era of mass media, a new path to success has arisen. The fascination, tabloid stories, and public adoration are lavished on the media figures, from actors to singers to influencers.

Whatever the rules of the game are in your time, it’s the winners who are famous, and they’re all the same, from a Gens to Jenner.