A different Postmodern

In It's the End of the Modern Age (found at A&L Daily), Professor Emeritus of History John Lukacs writes a thought-engaging, sweeping, necessarily overgeneralizing (and Western-focused) article reflecting on where we are in history now. Though a couple of his points missed the mark for me, I thought it overall a good summary. You? Discuss

1/3 of the way into it, after laying an historical foundation for his proposed name for the fading era -- "The Bourgeios Age" -- he states his thesis:

The Bourgeois Age was the Age of the State; the Age of Money; the Age of Industry; the Age of the Cities; the Age of Privacy; the Age of the Family; the Age of Schooling; the Age of the Book; the Age of Representation; the Age of Science; and the age of an evolving historical consciousness. Except for the last two, all of those primacies are now fading and declining fast.

He then provides broad examples of how the designated qualities are in decline. A couple of highlights:

Income is more important than capital, quick profits more than accumulation of assets, and potentiality more than actuality -- that is, creditability more than actual ownership. What has been happening with money is, of course, but part and parcel of a much more profound development: the increasing intrusion of mind into matter.

It may be said that the production of consumption has become more important than the production of goods.

The summary:

A great division among the American people has begun -- gradually, slowly -- to take shape: not between Republicans and Democrats, and not between "conservatives" and "liberals," but between people who are still unthinking believers in technology and in economic determinism and people who are not. Compared with that division, the present "debates" about taxes and rates and political campaigns are nothing but ephemeral froth blowing here and there on little waves, atop the great oceanic tides of history.

May 01, 2002 01:15 PM