Contemporary South: Mind Over Reality
Many people who are asked to describe the South tend to imagine an over generalization of the South based on their knowledge of the media and their depictions of the South or through the education systems limited discussion on how the South shaped modern America. Similarly, just like other countries that are going through constant change due to this world’s newest demands the South is always changing therefore, the South that one creates in their mind is not the one true South. An ideal image one person may have in mind is usually only a fraction of what the South was originally like. The South that we presently see has been a construct of the past and is developing through the many phases it has already
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The kind and chivalrous view of the South, in a way has not changed but due to the adapting trends and customs of our Modern environment some mannerisms are different. The association of Southern gentility was related to the chivalrous acts that one may encounter in daily Southern life in the past such as men on their horses asking for courtship of a beautiful damsel or the social parties thrown by the neighborhood. Nowadays the South is still considerably kind and much more by comparison than most Northern states with few gestures that are typically not felt up north such as holding doors and greeting anyone who enters a room or establishment. Although, by comparison the Old South is obsolete by the introduction of technology, the culture to remain polite and beautiful to those in the immediate area still stems from the “genuine” Southern feel. Although, this ideal of the portrayed existed briefly the South and was less or aristocrats and more of the “… people [that] has any sense, nor any initiative” (Agee 578) and even now when “Southerners do not behave in these ways, they are deemed less Southern, less fitted to the place where they live, exceptions”(Ayers) to the Southern