In the film rendition of Band of Brother, the Dick Winter character (the
central figure) notes in a voice over that, after D-Day, he promised
"himself and God" that if he survived the war, he'd find a piece of land
somewhere and "live a quiet life". The book, which does depart from
the film somewhat, also notes that. I haven't read the book in some
time, but if I recall correctly, what he actually desired to do was to
find a farm somewhere.
In actuality, Dick Winters did find a farm, but not until after the
Korean War, some years later. Between World War Two and his farm
purchase, he was in business and in the Army, a second time, during the
Korean War. When he entered farming, he also started a successful
business selling animal feed.
The Ambrose book on his unit somewhat overemphasizes his post war business career, underplaying his later farming life.
I note that as I think Winters desire and the portrayal of his desires
gives us an interesting insight into the bipolar nature of the American
psyche. On one hand, a lot of people desire a quiet, rural, life. ON
the other, we're constantly bombarded with the message that our goal in
life should be "success" in a "career". It's an interesting dichotomy.
This has always been the case, but earlier on, before World War Two, the
big "success in a career" stories were really exceptions to the
American rule. While we aren't living in that era, and while it was
very imperfect, what seems to largely have been the case is that the
primary concern for most men and women were family related concerns.
Most men and women married, and most of them worked towards a quiet
family life. You don't really find a large number of "success in a
career" type stories. Even businessmen of the pre 1940 era often had
fairly low key lives, and were basically middle class. If a person was
in the middle of the middle class, the were regarded as quite
successful. Family, church, community, and the local life was typically
a big deal for them.
Somehow, and increasingly the case, after World War Two "success in a
career" really became a big deal. Now it absolutely dominates, and
beyond that a "successful economy" is a huge deal. A successful economy
is supposed to mean an ever growing economy.
What this means is that we now expect our children to go through college
(and they nearly have to, I'm not saying otherwise), pick a "career",
and do whatever it takes to succeed in that career. If that career is a
"high powered" career, so much the better. This is supposed to mean
that you'll move wherever the job takes you, go from town to town and
city to city, and like it. You'll be compensated by one measure only,
that being money. The more money the better. As this type of career
means you will have no roots, or even connections, in where ever you are
temporarily working, you'll are free to buy a parcel of property and a
house that the local infrastructure cannot support long term, and which
is actually destructive to any rural base the local community has, or
once had. No connections with family, church, or community are expected
to be predominant, or even exist. All relationships, even those
between man and woman, are merely temporary and expedient, all designed
to support your "career".
Indeed, the entire economy is now supposed to support this goal. We are
told that the continued importation of immigrant labor is "necessary in
order to support growing our economy", even at a time when we have an
effective unemployment rate of 14%. We are told that the development
of land is necessary to support the housing industry, a "key sector of
our economy". We are told that the exportation of jobs that were once
solid middle class jobs here, to foreign nations, is necessary in order
that we can "grow the economy" by replacing production jobs with
consumption jobs, with "low priced" consumption" itself necessary to
this economy, as in the end, people don't really need all that much and
can otherwise get along with a lot less.
This is largely the antithesis of the general culture before 1940, somewhat.
There was, to be sure, always a lot of movement in the American society,
but what seems to be the case is that people basically aimed for
stability in economics in order to support their families, which were
central to their lives. We've exchanged that for a system
that is obviously self restricting at some point. For real lives in a
real community that we're really connected with, we've substituted
lives based on principally on the acquisition of money. Deep down, however, most of us
know that this isn't satisfying, which is amply evidenced by the desire
to try to satisfy that gaping hole by getting more, and more. We still
yearn for the life our economy left behind. But that won't work, as
what most, or many, of us really want, is that "quiet life". Indeed, in film portrays, we interestingly sometimes still portray things that way, but not always, of course.
