HISTORY OF IDEAS - Modernity

since the middle of the 18th century beginning in northern Europe and then spreading to every corner of the world people have become aware of living in an age radically different from any other in which they have called the modern age or more succinctly modernity we are now all inhabitants of modernity every last hamlet and remote island has been touched by the outlook and ideology of a new era the story of our emergence into the modern world can be traced in a number of fields in politics religion art technology fashion science all of which have ultimately contributed to an alteration in consciousness this is some of what becoming modern has involved perhaps the single greatest marker of modernity has been a loss of faith the loss of a belief in the intervention of divine forces in earthly Affairs all other ages before our own held that our lives were at least half in the hands of gods or spirits but we have put our energies into understanding natural events through reason there are no more omens or revelations our futures will be worked out in laboratories not temples God has died and modernity has killed him pre-modern societies envisaged history in cyclical terms there was no forward dynamic to speak of one imagine that things would always be as bad or as good as they had ever been but to be modern is to believe that we can continually surpass what has come before national wealth knowledge technology politics and most broadly our capacity for fulfillment seem capable of constant increase time is not a wheel of futility it is an arrow pointing towards a perfectible future we have replaced gods with equations science will give us mastery over ourselves over the puzzles of nature and ultimately over death it is only a matter of time before we work out how to be immortal to be modern is to throw off the claims of history precedent and community we will make our own identities rather than being defined by families or tradition we will choose who to marry what job to pursue what gender to be where to live and how to think we can be free and at last fully ourselves we are romantics that is we seek a soulmate an exemplary friend who can at the same time be an intrepid sexual partner a reliable co-parent and a kindly colleague we refuse to remain in unhappy unions that no longer possess the thrill of the early moments we've had enough of the narrowness of village life we don't want to go to bed when the Sun sets or limit our acquaintances to the characters we went to school with we want to move along with up to 85 percent of the populations of modern nations to the brightly illuminated city where we can mingle in crowds observe faces or underground trains try out unfamiliar foods and sleep with strangers pree moderns lived in close proximity to nature they knew how to recognize shepherd's purse and make something edible out of pineapple weed they venerated nature as one might a deity but modern people don't tremble before the night sky or Fela needs to give thanks to the Rising Sun we have freed ourselves from the previous or at natural phenomena the emblematic modern location is a 24-hour supermarket brightly lit and teeming with a produce of the four continents proudly defying the barriers of geography and of the night we will eat pomegranates from Arizona and dates from the Sahel for most of history the maximum speed was set by the constraints of our own feet or at best the velocity of a horse or sailing ship it might take three weeks to from London to Edinburgh four months to sail from Southampton to Sydney now nowhere on earth is further than 26 hours away from us the contents of a national library can fit onto a circuit the size of a fingernail and the Voyager 1 probe hurtles at 17 kilometres per second through interstellar space 20 1.2 billion kilometres from us we are modern because we work not only to earn money but to develop our individuality to exercise our distinctive talents and to find our true selves we are on a quest for something our ancestors would have thought entirely paradoxical work we can love much of the transformation of modernity has been exciting thrilling even the word modern still rightly suggests a state of glamour desire and aspiration but the advent of modernity has in many ways also been a story of tragedy we've bought our new freedom at a very high price indeed we can pick up aspects of the modern catastrophe in a range of areas it was the French late 19th century sociologist Emile Durkheim who first made the sobering discovery of an essential difference between traditional and modern societies in the former when people lived in small communities when the course of one's career was understood to lie in the hands of the gods and when there were few expectations of individual fulfillment at moments of failure the agony new bounds reversal did not seem like a verdict on one's value as a whole human being one never expected perfection and didn't respond with self-hatred when problems occurred one simply fell to one's knees and asked the gods but Emile Durkheim knew that modern societies were far crueler no longer could people who had failed in them blame the gods for their troubles it seemed as if there was only one person responsible and sometimes only one fitting response as Durkheim showed in perhaps the largest single indictment of modernity suicide rates in advanced societies are up to ten times as high as those in traditional ones modern people are only more in love with success they are also far more likely to kill themselves when they fail but Derna tea has told us that we are all equal and can achieve anything boundless possibility seems to await every one of us we too might start a billion-dollar company become a famous actor or run the country no longer is opportunity and fairly restricted to just a favored few it sounds charitable but it is a fast route to an outbreak of comparison and its associated pain envy it would never have occurred to a goat herder in seventeenth-century picker d2nv louis xiv of france the king's advantages were as unfair as they were beyond emulation but such peace is no longer possible in a world in which everyone can achieve whatever they deserve why do we not have more if success is merited why do we remain mediocre the psychological burden of a so-called ordinary life has become hugely harder even as its material advantages have become ever more available modernity has in a practical sense connected us to other people like never before but it has also left us emotionally bereft perhaps late at night on our own in a corner of a diner like a figure in an Edward Hopper painting the belief that we deserve one special person has rendered all our relationships unnecessarily difficult the first question we are asked in every new social encounter is what do you do and we know how much an impressive answer will matter we fall asleep in high-rise apartments and wonder if anyone would notice if we died if it were not already so difficult we're asked on top of it all - smile continually to hope against hope to have a nice day to have a lot of fun to share on holiday and to be exuberant that we are alive modernity has stripped us of our right to feel melancholy unproductive surly in despair and Confused not for nothing did Theodor Adorno remark that modern America had produced one overwhelming villain Walt Disney though modernity may have made us materially abundant it has imposed a heavy emotional toll it has alienated us bred envy increased shame separated us from one another but wildered us and left us restless and enraged fortunately we don't need to suffer alone our condition is at heart the work of an era not just of our own minds by learning to diagnose our condition we can come to accept that we are not so much individually demented as living in times of unusually intense and socially generated trouble we can accept that in many ways modernity is a kind of disease and that understanding it will be the cure our book a replacement for religion lays out how we might absorb the best lessons of religion update them for our times and incorporate them into our daily lives

Channel: The School of Life

Views: 260,806

Keywords: the school of life, schooloflife, education, relationships, alain de botton, philosophy, talk, self, improvement, big questions, love, wellness, mindfullness, psychology, how, to, hack, history, history of the world, history of japan, history channel, modernism vs postmodernism, modernism in literature, modernism music, 历史-现代主义, HISTORIA - Modernismo, इतिहास - आधुनिकतावाद

Id: HIdflecvQG8

Length: 10min 47sec (647 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 24 2020