Modernity: An Analysis

what makes us modern we know that modern means technology industry cities cars but might that be a modern attitude a modern psychology what differentiates us from pre-moderns can we even imagine what a traditional anklet might feel like traditional life was circular we were tied to the land day after day month after month the idea of improvement or of relationships socially with the outside world people that weren't there that had different ideas was largely non-existent how did we get from this to this the philosophers of the enlightenment kant marx mill bacon were motivated by a powerful idea that we could rationally understand the world and use the world to shape our own history they were all in varying ways about ordering the world putting things in their place making it predictable usable so what makes up this modern attitude this attitude and psychology that's in all of us [Music] [Music] think about a world before clocks before maps and zip codes before calendars and timetables what would it have been like well time and space were one and the same they were intertwined the sun went up you moved to the field and began to play life was predictable circular each day was largely the same the clock changed this the clock disconnected time from space it represents time abstractly it's standardized time so that it's the same for everyone a map does something similar it represents space in a universally recognizable way the sociologist anthony giddens calls this the separation of space and time clocks maps rulers and calendars mean people can think more precisely about when and where then share that information with others it means you can communicate with other people in a way they can understand what's significant about this well we can plan with each other we can synchronize our activities for the pre-moderns planning and synchronization were difficult you could roughly say when the sun's at its highest or in four days from night but these modern inventions were a game changer they make time and location communicable universalizable and standardized [Music] the cartographers explorers colonizers and printers of the enlightenment produced maps on a grand scale the british navy won the battle to define time zones like clocks this removed place from its physical location and represented it so it was communicable to all our modern understanding of geography history science with dates times and other measurements is only possible if we can communicate those things to one another in a universally agreed way these things more than anything else allow us to understand one another and plan with each other i can only organize transport and building for example if i can communicate times of arrival and point to where we should meet trains only make sense if i know what time they're leaving when they're coming back and where the stations are as clocks were developed medieval merchants began using them in town squares with bells to call others to market to laborers to work medieval cartographers had been more interested in experiencing locations from many angles so that they could illustrate a location truthfully ratios and measurements weren't important to them only with the enlightenment do we find a concern with a single objective perspective an ordered grid and a specific ratio meant coordinates could be fixed in place and distances accurately measured this was the period when the makita map the world map as we know it today was first produced [Music] military leaders paid fortunes for accurate maps an author said she saw rockefeller bent over a map and with military precision planned the capture of strategic locations on the map of east coast oil refineries balloon travel and photography of the earth from the air shattered people's subjective perceptions of the world radio compressed time and space so that people everywhere could listen to the same thing as time and space compressed in on itself flaubert became fascinated by the implications for art he wrote everything should sound simultaneously one should hear the bellowing of the cattle the whispering of the lovers and the rhetoric of the officials all at the same time [Music] what does this mean for our modern attitude well we think more long-term in standard measurements that we must learn and we do this in tandem with others it is almost time for this passenger train to leave the station and the passengers are hurrying along the glistening sides of its coaches the train will be pulled by this big streamlined diesel electric locomotive its engines are warming up and inside the cab sits mr schroeder the engineer who has driven locomotives for many years [Music] giddens uses another phrase to describe this the disembedding of social systems these time and space tools mean we can organize things with people that we wouldn't be able to without them we can say this should happen there at this time we should plan to do some activity at that point after the hands on the clock have spanned that many times before we could only do this in the village with the person we knew meet me at the oak tree tomorrow morning but the time and space tools lift activity from the immediate social context they dis-embed us giddens writes the level of time-space distinction is much higher than in any previous period and the relations between local and distant social forms and events become correspondingly stretched i can communicate to someone that i've never met halfway around the world the exact time and place to meet anywhere else and at any other time what does this mean for our modern attitude we think more globally stretched as gideon says we can think about planning with more [Music] this people shop is where tom haven works after school and on saturday life today is too complex people are too dependent upon each other jobs are too highly specialized that's why we depend on money as a quick and easy medium of exchange how is money similar to clocks maps timetables and calendars and other disembedding tools well in the same way money is disembedded from time and place it's an abstraction imagine a world with no money a farmer friend gives you some crops and you register that he did you a favor this involves trust it involves knowing the person it involves being local this dynamic falls apart with strangers money depersonalizes however like time and location it requires standardization everyone needs to be reading from the same script understand the system have trust that everyone will accept the currency what does this mean for our modern attitude we no longer think in terms of value of people that filter everything through money through commodities [Music] okay so we're focusing a lot on abstraction using symbols tokens plans or machines to represent time space and value so that we can standardize that we can communicate with each other and plan together we all use abstract systems when you get on a plane not only are you reliant on clocks and timings and laps of money but there's a whole system of clouds and blueprints that go on behind the scenes the [ __ ] systems the engines and the control towers ridiculous the airplane symbol of our mastery of the skies is spanning oceans and continents in ever-dwindling hours bringing new hope to the people of the world new horizons to industry and new careers to youth for air transportation has proved itself a vital factor in the social and economic life of modern civilization it is a rapidly expanding industry embracing many trades and professions an industry employing thousands of persons in fact everyone makes use of experts relying on what they do without asking too many questions professionals lawyers architects doctors pilots are consulted by lay people [Music] i might understand and communicate some of the phenomenon that allow me to fly across the world but abstract systems quickly become complex i know what time the plane might leave i know it uses engines of some sort i know where on the map i'm going but the pilot knows the exact location the airport knows the take-off schedule the engineer understands the blueprints of the engine and so forth the pre-moderns were experts in their locations everyone shared a general knowledge base there are no need for specialists in specific areas i'm an expert in my own house though however i know little about the building codes that built it the medicine the doctor prescribes me or the industrial process that provides my food whether we're getting on a plane or investing in a pension or using a bridge making a phone call or turning on a tap all these things are developed by abstraction by professionals who know more than us and require us to accept that the things are safe and will work what does this mean it means modernity requires faith requires trust in people we don't know it also requires us to always be learning to choose an expert system to contribute to to be the person in the know about something and because no one can learn everything it requires more than ever choice [Music] it also means that it's not the individual that matters but the overall routine the set of processes the abstract system getting on a plane is to take part in an activity that requires engineers mining weather predictions food suitcase production coordination between countries everything is taken out of the hands of any one single individual or group our lives become truly global in that one thing on one side of the world affects many things on the other global events affects local events we're pulled and pushed around like puppets gideon's right the most intimate say nursing a child and the most distant most general say a reactor accident in the ukraine energy politics and i suddenly directly connected it also affects what we think about what we read in the news what our conversations are guden says when the image of nelson mandela may be more familiar to us than the face of our next door neighbor something has changed in the nature of our everyday experience you can be closer to a person on the phone on the other side of the world than you are to the person in the same room not talking to you [Music] what happens when these disembedding tools and abstract systems become complex what happens when building a house is no longer as simple as finding local stones and building a shelter things start to require specialized knowledge knowledge that we all don't have ourselves this requires trusting that someone else knows what they're doing trust is integral to modern life the oxford english dictionary describes trust as a confidence in or a reliance on some quality or attribute of a person or thing or the truth of a statement in fact trust is everywhere cars traffic lights medicine food television internet taps drugs pharmaceuticals none of us know how every part of all of these things work even doctors don't know how the pharmaceuticals are all manufactured but what's the other side of trust risk trust always involves risk it involves weighing up the risks and trusting that the outcome is worth the small risk in placing the procedure in someone else's hands like our disembedding tools and systems trust involves an absence from local tradition the person or the process is not always there in front of you things are going on behind the scenes where you can't monitor them see what's going on we have no real idea what's going on with our money when we put it in a bank or a pension fund but we trust that the professionals know what they're doing flying seems ridiculous impossible scary but we trust that the engineers and pilots understand what's going on more than we do modernity means that we must interact more than ever with strangers gideon says that the nature of modern institutions is deeply bound up with the mechanisms of trust in abstract systems he continues that codes of professional ethics in some cases backed by legal sanctions form one means whereby the trustworthiness of colleagues or associates is internally managed we trust professionals to manage every part of our lives haircuts food providing us with news entertainment so many things yet if this trust is broken for whatever reason we might choose to not trust the system anymore to keep our money under the mattress drink bottled water instead of tap water or even cut our own hair the idea of risk as we know it is a very modern one it was first used by european explorers navigating the globe and thinking about insurance and profit bookkeeping was integral weighing up costs and predicting gains risk became central in banking investment and insurance using mathematical modelling to think about probability and uncertainty traditional society was full of danger and unpredictability but their idea of risk was very different traditional societies were circular the seasons repeated in the same way modern society on the other hand it's about moving towards something improving picking goals that means choosing which risks to accept who to trust and which systems to use think about something as simple as choosing which job offer to accept there are so many unknowns about the people the way they work what tools and software they use in every choice there are elements of weighing up which risks are smaller and what the relative gains might be modern life is a huge pros and cons list [Music] okay let's recap quickly we use disembedding tools like clocks and rulers we think more long-term in standard measurements we must learn and we do this in tandem with others we think more globally we think about planning with more people this all helps us to synchronize our actions with others we use money we no longer think about swapping with or helping neighbors but filter our relationships through money we rely on disembedded abstract systems these are sets of plans and rules and processes and blueprints that are professionalized in for example the architectural profession or the air travel profession but finally this requires trust and risk it means modernity requires a faith in all of this we leave it to the experts who might if asked communicate to us why we should use their services and why we should trust them so how does this determine our attitude and psychology [Music] let's return briefly to our traditional life what does it mean to be traditional well as we've seen it means accepting the routine and experience of previous generations tilling the field in the same way in a way that's embedded into time and space in their local area in your immediate surroundings social life for traditionals is dominated by that simple circular process but modern life is based at its heart on improvement getting better trying to progress for our attitudes and psychologies it requires constant reflection or reflexivity examining interpreting absorbing new information it requires choosing based on calculations whether subconscious or not which expert systems to use and trust and also which ones to join to get a qualification to specialize in follow the crowd get the big money you make a pile and raise a pile that makes another pile for you follow the crowd we've reached a million two million five million watch us grow going up it's new it's automatic it dictates record seals sterilizes stamps and delivers in one operation without human hand what am i bid what am i offered sold who's next the people yes follow the crowd to the empire city the wonder city the windy city the fashion city the people yes the people perhaps [Music] but is this all there is modern life also seems to be chaotic unpredictable an anxiousness inducing time giddens also refers to a concept he calls ontological security that is the confidence people have in the continuity and consistency of their self-identity the reliability of the systems codes people and ideas around them the security they feel getting on a plane choosing a bank trusting the news deciding on a career who am i when will the nuclear bomb hit is this job secure is this vaccine safe will this plane crash will my pension plan appreciate these questions are bound up in trust if the choices we make around them seem to work out if we seem to become happier more content or if we seem to be progressing in some way we have ontological security what's the opposite of this angst dread ambiguity undecidability this is why existentialism emerged at the height of modernity it expresses both anxiety existential dread and the possibility of order security and meaning in a secular world the modern world promised to free individuals from dependence on the land and tradition from an identity they inherited it promised the possibility of self-creation all of these things these devices expert systems and abstract ideas ways to trust others were optimistic yet in many ways they took as much out of our hands as they put in our faith in these modern ideas and systems relies somewhat on someone being in control knowing what they're doing having a plan do you feel that's the case maybe we're not modern at all maybe we're post-modern newspapers magazines mail and messages will be sent through the air at lightning speed and reproduced in the home well talking of tools that shrink time and space there are currently 395 people all around the world that i haven't met that make videos like this possible on patreon i'm so so grateful to every single one of them for letting me go out and make fun videos like this and all i can pledge in return is to try my best at improving them buy more equipment and you know trying to improve the production quality and and the research and all the rest of it so if you want to join those people and get access to scripts and naming credits and the discord server and all of that you can do so in the link in the description below if not like share subscribe hit that bell hit that bell hit that bell and i think you can all probably guess what's coming next i'll see you then

Channel: Then & Now

Views: 59,432

Keywords: anthony giddens, consequences of modernity, modern, modernism vs postmodernism, modernity, the shock of modernity, what is modernity

Id: xcNjVZJI3Bg

Length: 25min 36sec (1536 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 07 2021