modernism

I have already posted some thoughts on postmodernism. To give context to those posts we should talk a little about about Modernism. This is an even more daunting task; summarise the history of thought, culture and technology in the Western world for the last 500 years.

"I strive to be brief, and I become obscure."


Instead of trying to work up a tight definition of Modernism
while delineating modernity from the Modern Project, and in turn from the Enlightenment this post look at the kinds of stories which Modernism tells to justify its existence.

Perhaps you feel some anxiety at this departure from, how can we understand something, you might ask, without beginning with a set of definitions, and then proceeding by way of constructing propositions to a rational conclusion. If this is your anxiety then this blog post might upset or simply irritate you. The use of definitions and propositions is simply a convention, a particular way of telling a story, which while well suited to many contexts, is not the only, or
even the best way to tell a particular story.

The stories which Modernism tells us about history, especially its own history do not always admit their own nature as stories, instead claiming to be bare narrations of ‘the facts’. The ‘facts’ those impossible fictitious beast are far less likely dragon existing only in the mythology of Modern Man.
Stories of armored beasts of many tons that could fly, and generate flame in their internal organs without injury to themselves involve only the violation of a few laws of physics.
But claims to possession of ‘the facts’ threatens to destroy the credibility of the claimant altogether, as they require belief in a whole slew of onicompetent, disinterested observers.

One of the stories of Modernism is the march of Progress.

According to this myth, human beings during the Middle Ages were little more than animals, perhaps a step from cave dwelling Neanderthals, living in conditions of appalling squalor, ignorance and superstition. According to the myth of Progress, into this darkness came the light, not of divine revelation, but instead of Reason, which threw aside revelation in its triumphal march.

Reason in its manifestation as scientific methd, we are told, unlocked the wealth of the natural world, enabled breathtaking technological advance until today we stand on a pinnacle only to be topped by the next great advance.

This history ignores that it was the work of men and women motivated by revelation who preserved the learning of previous civilizations, and added considerably to it. It ignores the inventions of the Middle Ages, such as clocks. Originally invented to call the faithful to prayer, clocks are now essential mechanisms for the cultural generation of a sense of time, and its organizational efficiencies.

The assumptions of the myth of Progress are that technological sophistication is an unalloyed good, that with increasing technological complexity people are necessarily happier and wiser. The increasing stresses, the destruction of natural resources, the virtual elimination of natural rhythms from people’s lives, enormous alienation from the natural world, the reduction of almost every human relationship to materialist transactions is considered a small price to pay for television and MacDonald’s fries.

"But for my part I will risk no hurt to this thing: of all the works of Sauron the only fair. It is precious to me, though I buy it with great pain."

Is the price of modernism worth paying?

At this point someone almost always suggest that indoor plumbing is a good thing, that he (its always a he who makes these kinds of interruptions) for one would like to see those latte-sipping pomos trying doing without it.

And so, he suggests, Modernism, the great benefactor without which there would be no indoor plumbing, made this discussion possible, which for some reason never stated places it beyond criticism.

I suspect that I value indoor plumbing more highly than most, especially when I return from traveling to places in the developing world which lack it. I could tell some stories…

Other civilizations than ours have developed indoor plumbing, what they’ve lacked is the suggestion that this development is due to the benign influence of the deity of Reason. This to me seems to be one of the distinguishing marks of Modernism, not the employment of reason, which is no longer taught in schools in this Modern era as it was in the Middle Ages, but only the veneration, the invocation of reason.

I have found sadly that many of those who spring most eagerly to a defence of reason as the only arbiter of the true and the good are not especially good at reasoning. While they insist with ritualistic intensity on the conventions; use of definitions, a reduction to propositions, a disdain for self proclaimed stories, they all too quickly rely on arguments from authority, or attack only absurdly oversimplified caricatures of their opponents’ arguments. I might be accused of doing the same here, to which I reply that a blog post is not a thesis, and that I do not claim to be doing more than telling a story from my point of view.

What does the myth of Progress validate? The myth tends to separate the world, and history into two categories, on the one hand is Progress, the reward it is suggested of venerating reason, and on the other are the representatives of irrationality which would rob us of the cherished fruits of progress, in this story the Middle Ages. This creation of two categories into which all the world must be fitted, is a common feature in the stories told by Modernism. It is repeated in the story of colonialism; how the white man triumphed over the ignorant savage, somehow to the savage’s benefit, it was repeated in the stock justifications of patriarchy and racism, until they became unfashionable, that men are more rational, or that a particular race, is superior. It is repeated in the stories of the triumph of Man over Nature, science over ignorance, skepticism over superstition.

It is important to note that this classification is hierarchical; the Modern center is clearly demonstrated as superior to the “Other”. At the same time the Modern center is oddly dependant on the other, since it defines itself in opposition to it.


I’ve suggested a different story, a counter story, that Progress, far from being an unmixed blessing is a devils bargain, with hidden costs, and yet one that cannot be easily unmade, even by those who have resisted it, just ask the Lakota Sioux. What alternatives does Post-Modernism offer?