Hey dawg, ya know, I get what you mean.
Growing up, I loved all things Victorian. I loved the poufy dresses that were so elegant and romantic. I loved the stories of how women were ladies and men were gentlemen. I loved the frills and laces and big bows atop the heads of little girls with page boy haircuts. Life seemed so much more genteel and community based.
But ya know.
After a little (or a lot of) thought, I realized that them good ol' days were not so grand. Especially for women and minorties. Between what was "customary" and "proper" to the important issues of freedom and slavery and voting, life was not so great. Life was pretty damned hard back in them good ol days. Communities, were likely fraught with internal problems and issues that they did not have the information or experience to deal with. To begin to enumerate how far society has come, because of technology would take days.
That sense of community that many are missing does not need to be lost. A close friend of mine has developed an awesome neighborhood community just from simply talking to people and asking if they want to stop by for a beer on the porch later. We know most of the people in our neighborhood and do our best to be there for one another and watch out for each other.
It is possible to have that close knit community and even better we are doing it in an age where people are much more educated and less ignorant of what is going on around them and therefore opening the lines of communication in a way that is more important now, than quite possibly ever before.