Eli5: What is modernism and post-modernism?
In: 81
Modernism broadly refers a set of beliefs that became dominant in the late 19th century and continued through most of the 20th century. These beliefs were generally that logic, science, and reason could help us learn from the mistakes of the past, and using what we learned, come to a deeper understanding of ourselves and of the meaning of human life. There is usually some sort of vibrant optimism in modernism, at least as far as the idea that if we just think hard enough and look deeply enough, we can make things better (at least understand things better).
Modernism took a pretty hard hit following World War II. Titanic changes occurred in everything everywhere all at once: there was widespread economical and political restructuring as great empires vanished and new nations were born. From that point through the rest of the 20th century, there was widespread reshuffling of the world order, with technology gradually emerging as the primary force in society. With this, there gradually came a set of ideas that are suspicious of logic and reason, particularly in the sense that they are sometimes used to merely rationalize some pre-existing social order.
Modernism thinks human civilization can be perfected, but postmodernism is a lot more doubtful about this.
Modernism thinks that eternal concepts like truth and beauty can be investigated and defined if we work diligently, but postmodernism thinks this is a pointless exercise and mostly doubts that such things really exist at all, or at best are defined only temporarily.
Modernism is *Star Trek*. Postmodernism is *Cloud Atlas*.
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