Modernity as a shaping force in nineteenth-century.

Europe and North America started to prosper during the age of industry (1850-1910). They entered a new age of material production and commodities. Rural areas and small towns turn to big cities, and utilitarianism philosophy spread across the west. Despite economical/technological advancement many artists and philosophers started to criticize this new era, addressing problems such as unfair social stratification, human alienation, and spiritual costs of materialism.

Evolutionary theories of Charles Darwin changed the biblical view of creation and were used as a confirmation to the Victorians creed of social progress. Paintings evolved from realism to impressionism and then to variations of post impressionism and Art Nouveau. Music gradually transformed from majestic operas of Verdi and Wagner to atonal and dream-like symphonies of Debussy. Urban planning and building defined the spirit of modernity. New cities were built from scratch, and old cities went through infrastructural changes. Architectural designs were changed drastically in order to serve the new urban images. The new steel cage skyscrapers of Chicago became popular in New York City and still industry went booming.

  The dark side of modernity was its unfair social stratification. Novelists such as Dickens and Flaubert depicted the injustice and hypocrisy of middle class society and desperate lives of ordinary citizens in their novels. Dramatists such as Ibsen and Chekhov exposed the alienation of middle class society and the complexity of human character using the devices of realism. Dostoyevsky in his novels implored moral freedom through darkness of materialism whereas Nietzsche rejected traditional morality and declared the freedom of self-defining ‘superman’.

Some philosophers believe that the agricultural revolution was the worst mistake in the history of human race because it created social stratification and epidemic diseases. Similarly, industrial revolution and modernity have been criticized for they changed traditional morality and caused alienation for ordinary citizens. However it is fair to acknowledge that we could never reach where we are today but going through industrial revolution and modernity.

Resource: Bishop Philip E. Adventures in the Human Spirit prentice Hall, Pearson .Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: 5^th Edition.