What is modernity?
Modernity is an ideology based on a rational and utilitarian approach to life.
Modernity means decisions and choices should be explainable, justifiable, argued according to logic and utility.
In any circumstances, the best option is the one based on reason and utility.
If you cannot justify, explain or ague anything rationally, therefore you are not modern or the thing is not modern.
That’s what modernity is.
Contrary to popular misconception, modernity does not mean European culture or customs.
Any culture or country could qualify as modern as far they function according to rational and utilitarian principles.
The 20th century had adopted modernity as the golden standard for organizing society. Any society which is not modern is therefore considered backward, primitive or a shithole.
The Frankfurt school of critical theory with the book ‘The Dialectic of Enlightenment (1946) by Horkheimer and Adorno, Heidegger’s Being and Time (1928), Harendt’s The Human Condition (1958) and the works of Habermas and Foucault did a great job showing us the limits of modernity and the enslavement shackle it has thrown on humans.
A contemporary author, Nassim Thaleb, said ‘modernity is a preventable chronic disease’.
But why?
No one discounts the achievements of rationality and utilitarianism. However one could not talk about any medicine without mentioning its side effects or negative effects.
If the negative effects outnumber the positives ones, that medicine should be questioned or retired.
That’s what is happening to modernity.
Here were I live, everyone thinks modernity is westernization. Which is a big misconception.
In the name of modernity people have rejected their culture and traditions. They have even rejected their own bodies as they don’t look like in the magazines!
They have rejected food that is not industrial. They have rejected activities that are not mediated by a machine.
If a doctor would examine a patient without any machine, people would say that doctor is not competent or not modern enough to be trusted.
If one would walk instead of taking a car, one would be judged as poor and not modern, one social status will be lowered.
If one would grow food without using machine and the tomatoes would not be perfect size, the farmer would be seen as peasant, negatively, and supermarket would reject his fruits and vegetables.
If one would sing without a microphone and voice synthesizer, that singer would be looked upon as traditional music practitioner, not worth much attention, and no label would produce a human without a machine.
In summary, modernity requires the extension of human with machines to make them worthy.
A human without a machine is not worth much. Human accreditation requires a machine validation. Humans alone are so antiquated and obsolete.
A person working with his raw physical force would be less paid than the person doing the work with a machine.
Such a conception of life had only benefited machines while the human mind and body are sicker and sicker every day, while machines are more and more worthy than humans.
In the end, It’s a machine world we come to live in. Without machines humans had become worthless.
Slowly machines are taking over, and like some think god created humans, but humans have killed God, the same is going right now for us: Humans have created machines and machines are killing humans and would soon reign supreme.
Truck drivers here are often quoted saying ‘I prefer to kill someone than to lose my truck’.
The truck company manager would say they prefer to lose the driver than a truck.
The investor in the truck company would say they prefer to lose the manager than to lose money.
Parents beat kids if they break a machine or a thing. Because it’s cheaper to make a human than to buy a machine.
People spend more money on their car and house than on their health, because deep down they feel their body and mind are less worthy than their car. Their kids could go hungry, but he would take the money to repair his car.
What is that madness?