A Digital Age Babbitt

Every age has its Babbitt. 

The titular character in Sinclair Lewis’s searing satire of middle-class, suburban, post-industrial America has come to symbolize the unimaginative consumer: narrow-minded, listless, and utterly lacking purpose or direction. Written in 1922, Babbitt is a disquisition on the gnawing restlessness among the post-industrial American middle class, one whose values were largely grafted onto—and inseparable from—the ornaments of material wealth: cars, houses, country clubs, professional and civic affiliations. 

The novel opens with George F. Babbitt, a middle-aged, upwardly-mobile real estate agent starting his day in his well-appointed home in the affluent suburb of Floral Heights. Throughout the book we learn more and more that Babbitt’s life is steadily unraveling, though we (and he) know not why. We see his marriage crumbling, his adolescent children’s development arrested, his friendships treated, not as a joy in and of themselves, but as an escape from the boredom and burnout he faces in his daily tasks and responsibilities. Lewis writes of Babbitt’s interior thoughts toward the end of the novel: 

He was conscious of life, and a little sad … he beheld, and half admitted that he beheld, his way of life as incredibly mechanical. Mechanical business—a brisk selling of badly built houses. Mechanical religion—a dry, hard church, shut off from the real life of the streets, inhumanely respectable as a top-hat. Mechanical golf and dinner parties and bridge and conversation … He saw the years, the brilliant winter days and all the long sweet afternoons which were meant for summery meadows, lost in such brittle pretentiousness.

One hundred years later, we’re staring down something similar, though probably even worse. In Babbitt’s world, the massive disruption of industrialization just a few decades before completely reworked the collective understanding of what was valuable, what was meaningful. The paradigm of work and home life shifted beyond recognition; life improved by virtually every metric, but, strangely, happiness and contentment declined commensurately. Today, we face a similar disruption in our understanding of life and value and relationship and meaning: the rise of AI and the ubiquity of technology have improved many things, but also thrown us into a similar happiness crisis: marriages and birthrates are crashing, young people report more loneliness than ever before, pornography has replaced meaningful romantic relationships, and mental illness skyrockets. 

If Sinclair Lewis were writing today, would Babbitt look markedly different? I asked the scholar Charles Rubin, and he doesn’t seem to think so. In fact, a post-digital Babbitt, today’s archetypal secular, materialistic consumer, would probably face a similar crisis of meaning, though without the original Babbitt’s self-awareness that he is facing such a crisis. The backdrop would simply be different. For the original Babbitt, gatekeepers of meaning might have been what Lewis described as “the Boosters,” “the priests of the Presbyterian Church,” “the senators who controlled the Republican Party” who “decided in little smoky rooms in Washington what he should think about disarmament, tariff, and Germany.” For the post-digital Babbitt, it could be AI bots, social media, the mob. It could be luxury beliefs or red pill conspiracy theories. Regardless, Sinclair Lewis could just as easily have been writing for the consumer in 2026 as in 1922.

Now, here’s Charles Rubin’s Digital Age Babbitt.

 * * *

George Babbitt woke up to another hot and dry day in Zenith, Texas, the fastest growing city in the great state of Texas and the whole US of A! He’d had another good night of dreamless sleep; the new supplements and the brown-noise machine must be working. Already smelling the coffee being brewed by his Miele CoffeeSelect, Babbitt allows himself a moment to lounge in bed and examine his life. 

Babbitt is not a native of Zenith, but then again hardly anybody is. Ironically, Babbitt had arrived after graduating from State in order to escape the doldrums of once-proud Zenith, Illinois. He’d moved to Texas with little more than his business degree, ambition to get rich and a gift for gab, so selling McMansions to the many tech bros who helped swell the population of the hitherto cow town was a natural move for him.   

And he’d done well! He’d married Edith Fine, like himself a transplant, but with a law degree, had two children, and traded up houses twice so that now they had a hilltop residence in the very newest development, Loch Awe. The kids both go to the brand-new high school; they will start doing college visits for Danny soon. Life is good! 

Not that he hasn’t faced challenges! Things with Edith are not always easy. She’s certainly successful at work, and a great mother to the kids, but Babbitt has come to think that maybe there should be more going on in the bedroom? Babbitt would never be unfaithful to her (those terrible STDs!), but every now and then he comes across something online that makes him worry about how much porn he streams. And just yesterday he had a big argument with Danny, who announced that some videos had convinced him he did not need to go to college after all if he wanted to be a tech-entrepreneur. Secretly, Babbitt fears he might be right and, just as secretly, he wouldn’t mind saving the money. He is more torn than he let on to Danny. The kid should go to college! But you just want your kids to be happy! Isn’t that what everyone wants? 

On that score, Babbitt does not know what to make of his daughter Minnie. She seems to be underperforming in school, but claims to be doing her homework and keeping up with classes. At the yearly teacher conferences, Babbitt has given up trying to understand what the teachers are saying. Professionally he’s no stranger to saying things that don’t mean anything, but as far as he is concerned ed-speak takes that to a whole new level. With all her texts and assignments online, who can tell what she’s doing unless you’re standing right over her shoulder watching? She says she has lots of friends, and Babbitt can hear her talking to people through her bedroom door at all hours when she’s home, but nobody ever comes to the house and she doesn’t visit anybody. She doesn’t even go to the mall, although Babbitt admits that it is a mere shadow of what it must once have been. He should probably be happy she is not hanging out there.  

Anyway, one of the voices he hears most sounds like it might be an AI? At least they don’t own any guns (no small accomplishment in Zenith), and the students pass through airport-like security to get into school. He has talked with Edith about putting spyware on Minnie’s phone and laptop, but what kind of parent would actually do that?  

Danny and Minnie are doing fine, but all the same Babbitt is happy he and Edith instituted the “no screens at dinner” policy, the only meal the Babbitts ever eat together. You gotta keep those lines of communication open. Babbitt doesn’t like admitting to himself, however, that he is happy to get back to his phone after dinner; the “conversations” are so often strained and the silences so heavy. To judge by their own recourse to screens after dinner, he imagines the rest of the family must feel about the same. They have a 72-inch TV and super-comfy chairs in the media room, but between the cable channels (maybe it’s time to cut the cord?) and the streaming services there’s really nothing that they all enjoy watching together. 

Despite such challenges (opportunities, really!) Babbitt is confident in his ability to overcome just about any adversity. He is, after all, one of the founding members of the local megachurch, so at least he has God on his side! Pastor Rick and the band put so much energy into the room! And all the contacts have helped Edith build her practice. Still, Babbitt often finds himself watching the service on the TV screen in the coffee shop; the volume in the sanctuary gets pretty hard on his ears. A sign of aging? Babbitt could never wear hearing aids, but he is confident that some invisible implant is just around the corner. 

Of course, the Big Man Upstairs helps those who help themselves. Babbitt has a hard time because he can’t actually talk at all about his proudest accomplishment to date. You see, for a while he has been aware that the hot local housing market is cooling. That’s partly how they got their latest house; Loch Awe looks like it might be overbuilt. So Babbitt has quietly been buying land outside of town, and not so quietly consulting with the local Economic Development agency (one has civic duties!) as they put together a tax incentive package to get a server farm, a chip manufacturing plant, a wind farm, or at the very least an Amazon warehouse to set up shop in Zenith. It’s all good for business! Babbitt has helped them write the RFP and … let’s say, made some friends on the Board to make sure that Fairy Dreams Corp will be seen to offer the best price on the best plots for any of these plans. Even better, he has also made sure it would require more resources than the remnants of local media could ever afford to uncover his connection to FDC. That deal will be the last one before a blissful early retirement! 

Babbitt loves his work, of course. You have to, in sales. While part of him is really looking forward to doing nothing, something deep within wants more out of life. Well, maybe not so much more out of life as just plain old: more life! Tech-adjacent as he is, he’s heard a lot about life-prolongation and is really looking forward to it. Knowing how important exercise is, the once-family-room has been equipped with a Peloton (legacy of COVID-19), a Hydrow Arc Rower, and a Vander Functional Trainer. He uses none of it, but Babbitt is ready to start taking care of himself when he gets the time. Until then, he takes a bunch of really good supplements and, when necessary, he’ll diet. Babbitt loses weight almost as easily as he gains it, so he feels bad for Edith, who like so many women has more of a struggle in that department. But she’s had wonderful results from off-brand Ozempic. His increased desire as a result has not been reciprocated; is it the injection? Anyway, he can’t wait for that longevity pill that the tech bros tell him is just around the corner. 

The world is an amazing place, and Babbitt expects to be around to enjoy its benefits for a long time. Without being a burden on his children, of course! He has made a vow to himself that with more years he will really start something great; he just needs to figure out what that will be…

“…heaven as portrayed by Reverend Dr. John Jennison Drew was neither probable nor very interesting … he hadn’t much pleasure out of making money; … it was of doubtful worth to rear children merely that they might rear children and would rear children. What was it all about? What did he want?” 

…

“‘I’m going to—oh, I’m going to start something!’ he vowed, and tried to make it valiant.” 

Quotes from the original Babbitt, Sinclair Lewis, 1922

Image licensed via Adobe Stock.