Музей «Уолтонов» в Вирджинии: как сериал о Великой депрессии учит ценностям в эпоху потребительства

Commentary In Virginia for a Brownstone event, I took extra time to visit the Walton’s Mountain Museum in Schuyler, Virginia. It’s not on every vacation destination—it’s not the National Gallery of Art, after all—but it is very satisfying for fans of the TV show from the 1970s. I’m a huge fan and consider it one of the greatest shows ever, a genuine achievement in historical recreation. Set in the 1930s in the Depression years, and featuring daily life of a multigenerational family, “The Waltons” has this ongoing theme that love, family, and community are more enduring than any material abundance. It’s a lesson my grandparents who grew up in those years knew well. Here we are generations later and the lessons are nearly vanquished from American life, and tragically so. The museum is situated in the place where the author Earl Hamner Jr. grew up. There is the main house, which is a bed and breakfast today, the church, and even Ike’s grocery store, which looks today much like it does in the TV show. I had a hard time parsing it all out, however, because the show was not shot on site but rather in Hollywood, as implausible as that seems. It seems hard to believe because everything about the show feels so authentic. The museum was built in an old barn to celebrate the show. When you visit, you are seeing sights that inspired the show and memorabilia from the period in which it was wildly popular in American life. You can watch the entire show now on Amazon Prime without commercial interruptions, which actually makes it much better than when it first aired. The entire ethos might be described as a pushback against the main heresy in American history, a notion sometimes charming and sometimes deeply dangerous. It is this: As a people we tend to believe that anything worth having is commercially available as a consumer product. Not only that; it is our right as a people to enjoy access to this product, without which our lives are meaningless. The show, without being preachy, pushes back on the idea simply because it is set in times of grave material deprivation. The notion that we are saved by consumption traces back to the 19th century. It grew because America was the world’s most productive, innovative, and market-based society ever to appear on planet Earth. We had an invention for everything and reconstituted what the good life meant around those products. There is nothing necessarily wrong with that, but it has become wildly distorted to the point that several generations have completely forgotten the fundamentals. Consider some examples. People assume that being fit and trim is something that should come in the form of a pill or an injection, while health comes from an insurance contract and a gym membership even if you never use it. It’s all preposterous, but here we are. Similarly, we think that high social status is granted unto us by branded clothing, a fancy car, a club membership, and Instagrammable vacation photos. We tend to identify the good life with huge houses in expensive neighborhoods. We think that being educated is something caused by expensive and prestigious schools. We believe that emotional wellness is something granted by a paid therapist. Have a look at our laundry rooms. They are stuffed with products of every sort, which we mistakenly believe clean our clothing. The abundance of household cleaning products boggles the mind, whereas people have no clue how to use a simple bottle of vinegar. Our cosmetic cabinets are stuffed with a blithering array of things designed to make us beautiful but that probably contribute mightily to achieving the opposite. It’s obviously true with our use of healthcare services. We easily have the highest per capita medical bills of any country on the planet while our overall health has declined in direct and inverse proportion. There is nothing wrong and much right about commercial enterprise, of course, and the freedom to buy and sell is a crucial part of what freedom itself means in reality. The rise of the consumer in the 17th century really was a hinge of history and the escape from feudalism. That said, nothing is entirely immune from abuse. We are very good at doing so. And good at letting our material bounty spoil us into a form of insanity. Nothing in the examples I gave is true and yet most everyone implicitly believes these things. Schools don’t educate people. Teachers can only inspire and guide, but it is the individual student who does the work. That work itself comes from thinking and not from a laptop, tablet, or clever game. There is nothing that a GLP-1 can achieve that is not better accomplished with dietary discipline and exercise. No therapist has ever given anyone emotional health: That always and everywhere comes from within. Still, we are suckers for products and purchasable services, so long as the cash nexus is involved. I’m constantly astounded at the plethora of cosmetics at the store, and not just for women. The range of toothpastes alone is amazing, but not one of them is better than a bit of baking soda on a toothbrush. It’s the same with deodorant, shampoo, conditioner, detangler, moisturizer, and so on through the endless list of things. History will record that we built the world’s most prosperous empire and squandered 90 percent of it on nonsense. What would happen to us as a people if all of this were suddenly gone? That’s pretty much what happened in the Great Depression for many people, and this is the subject of the show. They had very little and had to work for each meal. But they had what matters, which is trust, affection, faith, community, honesty, and ideals. That built the virtue of frugality and long-term thinking. Even after the war, this generation saved more than any since. None of these virtues are available in any commercial form, and yet it is what sustains us the most. In one episode, the church needed re-roofing at about the same time that the grandmother receives a note that a relative has died and left her an inheritance. Excitedly, she dedicated a substantial portion of the money to the church roof. The pastor celebrates her as a benefactor. The rest she pledged to her grandkids. In a matter of weeks, another letter arrives that says the entire inheritance went toward paying unsettled debts. There would be no money after all. The grandmother felt foolish having spent money she did not have. Lacking any money at all, men in the community replaced the roof themselves while the kids took odd jobs to earn money. It was a painful episode but repeated the main theme of the show. American consumer culture has never been more advanced. Nearly anything I could ever want can be delivered to me today on my doorstep. Have you ever wondered why such conveniences have not seemed to deliver new levels of happiness? It’s the same with the vast entertainment options we have today. The more we consume them, the less entertained we seem to be. I’ll be forever puzzled by people who long to have four residences and live in palaces when they can barely figure out how to properly decorate and use the space of a one-bedroom apartment. In the end, we can only be in one spot at a time. And most of us neglect the many wonderful public spaces in our own communities, from parks and lakes to walking trails and tennis courts. The cultural pattern is always the same: As a people we have been led to believe that nothing is available to us unless we can afford to buy it. Again, there is nothing evil about buying things, but there is something profoundly distorted about the belief structure that always says that on this path lies happiness itself. It does not, and the more we burrow into this belief, the more miserable we will become. And think about all the rapacious industries that have exploited this cultural habit, from usurers charging 25 percent interest because we cannot defer consumption until later to the pharmaceutical ghouls who forever push potions that harm us more than they help. And then you have the money printers who crank up the machines to match our demands for prosperity even as the capital structure is being gutted. This American heresy could ultimately lead to our undoing as a nation, with our addiction to living on leverage, consuming luxury we cannot afford, and electing politicians who care nothing about the debt that is $40 trillion and climbing. This is one reason that I love this show so much. Lacking examples around us of people who live within their means, keep their priorities straight, and remember simple truths (such as that excellence comes from within), a show such as this helps us to remember what really matters. This is why I went to the Walton’s Mountain Museum. I’m glad it is still around. And despite all my raging against consumerism, this is one show that I do think is very much worth the subscription price. It might be a benefit to an entire generation in shock that it is unable to afford the lifestyle of parents and grandparents. This reality has led to demoralization. Better to treat these tough times as an opportunity to rediscover what really matters, just as they did in the 1930s. Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.