Is modernity an illusion?

For the past couple centuries, we've believed ourselves to live in a modern, humane, enlightened age - but have we ever really left medieval times?

Most people don't have much technology aside from a few Western trinkets like cell phones, and live an average of 60 years.

Originally posted by Donnie Darko
For the past couple centuries, we've believed ourselves to live in a modern, humane, enlightened age - but have we ever really left medieval times?

Most people don't have much technology aside from a few Western trinkets like cell phones, and live an average of 60 years.

I believe it is only a reconstruction of a lost era. Only a remodification of the past years. We seem to advance but essentially since advancment is only an abstraction of reality it is fair to say that humanity itself is no more advanced the most barbaric people. Man is the same no matter the time.

Originally posted by Donnie Darko
For the past couple centuries, we've believed ourselves to live in a modern, humane, enlightened age - but have we ever really left medieval times?

Most people don't have much technology aside from a few Western trinkets like cell phones, and live an average of 60 years.

I believe it is only a reconstruction of a lost era. Only a remodification of the past years. We seem to advance but essentially since advancment is only an abstraction of reality it is fair to say that humanity itself is no more advanced the most barbaric people. Man is the same no matter the time.

Adbusters: The Post-Postmodernism Issue

Of course it is. People are getting more free as control cannot keep up with technological innovation, but 'moderity' itself is just an ambiguous title.

We are not more humane because we still believe in the traditional paradigm of Lord and serf. We just mask it with faux participation (democracy) and a feeling of self-ownership of our own enslavement. i.e. the phrase "I am an American". (America, as an example but replace American with any other nation)

Let's look at what it means to be 'an American' and to own ones American-ness.

What is America? Some like to define it as the 'people'. Is it? I argue that America is an ambiguous Group defined by ones geographical place of origin, or adopted place of origin. What creates this America boundary? The State. Without the state itself, all abstract views of America become moot. America would not exist without the violence inherent in the state system. Remove the state, all you have is individuals. All ideals (what it means to be an American in a positive sense) are just virtues that have been somehow hijacked as products of America itself. An example of this is the term 'American Ingenuity'.

What is one actually saying when they state that they are American? In my view, based on empirical observations and historical record, to proclaim ones American-ness is to take personal stock in violence. Violence being the very basis for what America is because the state itself is a system that exerts control over people through force.

It is like a slave, praising his master because the terms of his enslavement are preferable to others, Stockholm Syndrome. America seems more enlightened because the level of violence is less, or at least less obvious to passive observers.

But that is like saying Rodney is enlightened because he beats his wife much less often and less publicly, than Stew.

Just like a paradigm we moved away from in the 20th century of the wife being subservient to her husband, we need to move away from the paradigm of 'the people' being subservient to the state (a more private, entrenched group of people with authority to commit terrible acts for a well-meaning, though misguided sense of greater good).