Old World Again

So I was now just reading over my previous piece Further Elaborations on my Europe Envy, when it occurred to me that for many Americans (early Americans, I mean to say) the idea that someone would be *jealous* of something like, as I put it, a 'medieval town', would be unfathomable, because, of course, in the actual period in which these towns were created, and even very much still in the 17 and 1800s, when the States were beginning, these 'medieval towns' were unbelievably threatening.

Everyone could not wait to leave them, because for the commoner they were indeed often hellholes and the King was a lunatic who couldn't wait to kill you, or get you killed....

 And yet now, here we are, in the year 2017, the vicious Kings and queens are long gone (generally speaking) no one in France is using the guillotine anymore, no one is put in the pillory anymore....and so, what has happened but that these old towns in Europe....have now all become almost just like  pretty little theme parks, displaying this pretty and quaint little "inspiring" past and are therefore enviable.....

This is really strange in a way when you really dwell on it, I think, because it goes to show you how Time (and yes, I feel I must capitalize Time) very much warps things so greatly to the point where, well, they are no longer the same things you thought they were, once you wait long enough to see them again. This is a very big point to make in the American study of the European continent, I feel, because in many ways all of us are *still* trying to pretend that Europe is  that same old place it was in the 1600's, even though it is not that place at all anymore - and has not been for quite a long while now. Like I said, the Europeans now have everything we have, on top of what they already had. They have two worlds, one the old foundation, and the other the new one, that we taught them to build. Alas, we don't want to see this, because it is discomforting, since we are lacking the foundation ourselves....

We therefore insist, some part of us does at least, on seeing the continent in this negative light still, because, like I said in the last piece, it benefits us to see Europe in this negative and old fashioned manner. Aftr all, if we don't see it in that way, then we have to accept that its old towns are interesting and beautiful and inspiring, and once you do that, you wind up feeling that sadness I put on display in the last article, because then you realize you are missing out on what is really, rudely assuming you are someone descended from European stock, your own deeper cultural history. You are missing out on these beautiful places that the European can enjoy for next to nothing but that you must pay thousands of dollars in plane tickets and hotel fees to merely glimpse for a week.

Now it might sound silly, but a friend I was discussing this with a few months ago described all of this "relationship between the continents" in a rather comical way during one conversation we were having, by comparing it to  World of Warcraft. I know - how could it compare? - but it actually does. For, you see, in these online worlds, there is always the original world that the programmers have created for you, in the first package you'll buy, and then oftentimes, if the game keeps going, aftre about a year or two, an expansion pack will be released (with a whole new continent in it, and new places to explore) that almost everyone who knows the game well will go absolutely insane for, and begin to obsess over. Typically, after that expansion pack is released, you'll see that all of the "old zones" that you first explored a year prior, upon the games release, become rather vacant, since eveyone gets so excited for the new ones, and oftentimes, especially in a game that lasts, this hopping from expansion pack to expansion pack keeps going and going, and in a game like Everquest, for example, you'll actually find that so many expansion packs have been released that now the original zones are all but completely empty. The zones I explored in the first days of EverQuest, when I was a boy, are now literally worthless. No one is in them. No one at all. Many new players, in fact, if they only logged on in the middle of Everquests life, **do not even know they exist and have never seen them**....

What's so intriguing, however, and what my buddy made it a specific point to say, is that, in recent years, as development for games like EQ and WoW has dried up, and no new expansion packs have come out, the player base seems to have started to experience a rather notable interest in heading **backwards** to the old zones, to go explore all of that long lost romance from once upona time. And this point my buddy made kind of brought us to an interesting point in the conversation: Is it perhaps possible that our longing, as two American kids, for Europe, in the early 21st century as we are, is it maybe the case that  this is a foreshadowing of what is to come next for many people, as this century marches on and the collective consciousness gradually begins to realize that, well, there is no where else to go now (besides space)? After all, if you look backwards in my own family line even just a generation, you'll see that next to no one seemst ohave even the slightest desire to live in Europe, mostly because they lived their entire lives under the now impossible to shake false idea that it was a horrific place where only horrific things happened, etc. They're like the players who came up halfway through Everquest: they have never played the old zones, and have only heard vague stories about weird they were, and so they don't care of them. But... if my pal and I feel this way about Europe as two American kids, just after reading its history on the Internet and watching shows.... certainly there have got to be others....and certainly, as time goes on, there will be more.... which kind of makes me wonder ,again, if this is all just a foreshadowing of what is to come. If there is going to maybe be some sort of, I don't know what you would call it, but a "re-exodus" **back** to Europe by large numbers of Americans in the future.

Because again, it really cannot be stressed enough: the original purpose to come here for those of us who were of European descent is now no longer relevant. The tyrannical kings are gone. Feudalism is gone.  The Europeans are doing fairly well. In Denmark the minium wage is $20.00 (andyes it is relative to our own money). Therefore, every single one of the reasons that many of us came here are gone, and as you can see, if you look at the Trump side of things, many poeple on that side of the aisle seem to be getting increasingly aggravated with how this country is becoming more and more diverse. They are also, I have noticed, frequently discussing Europe too. Alas, they are not discussing anything to do with its history like I am here, but rather how they want to stop migration of "infidels" there.

Which is why I say: Interest in the old continent does seem to be peaking for many Americans now, and one can't help but wonder what it means. Is it like Everquest? Where it has been so long since the last good expansion pack has been released that we now feel we must yet again make another run back through the Old World, and re-unite with all the old legends and locales....???