Published on August 2, 2024 3:31 AM GMT
Although aspects of it trace back hundreds of years, what I call “modernity” emerged in the 20th century, in the West. As I define it, modernity includes the following:
- Industrialization and mechanizationUrbanizationAbundanceLow child mortalityLow fertility
In this essay, I will describe some of the major advances that created modernity during the middle part of the 20th century. There is no right way to divide up history into chunks, but because it is early 2019 as I write this, I am going to consider the hundred-year period from 1918 to 2018, and I’m going to divide it into two 50-year periods, with 1968 as the dividing line.
These two chunks correspond roughly to (1) the emergence of full modernity, and (2) late modernity (sometimes called “post-modernity”). In 1918, the West was modernizing, but it was not yet modern in many ways. By 1968, the West had attained full modernity, as I define it. Since 1968, the condition of modernity has been maintained in the West, but progress slowed down significantly. During that period, we ran into some of the problems with modernity, such as limited resources, an exploding population in the third world, below replacement fertility in the West, social and psychological alienation of various types, and the threat of technologies that humans can create but have difficulty controlling.
This essay is not about the future, but I will make a very brief prediction. I think the next 50 years will be a period of decline in the West. That period might end in the collapse of modern civilization.
In this essay, I will be talking about the West and specifically about the United States. Modernity emerged later in other parts of the world, and some places, such as China and Africa, are modernizing today. When I give statistics, they will be for the United States unless I specify otherwise.
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