The Secular Fundamentalist

Early 20th Century: Modernism Triumphant

Chapter 6: Early 20th Century - modernism triumphant

The question now arises as to how we arrived at this quasi Orwellian world, where diverse big brothers determine what we are, our values, social attitudes and development as characters in a diversely totalitarian world, where we are free to conform spontaneously to the voices in our heads.

I am old enough to remember the last gasp of the world we left behind in the post World War 2 period, that could trace its heritage back into the classical world.  That memory does not represent a sentimental desire to return to the world of my childhood so much as a starkly contrasting model to compare against the extremely radical transformation that has happened since.  What that contrast underlies is how crushing the late modern paradigm has become. Traditionalist domestic, institutional and industrial discipline could be pretty tough, but it was nothing compared to what is now being done to us and everything around us.  The sheer relentless grind of it is starting to wear through its benign face.

So what happened?

“We have brought the whole world into the purview of civilized life, peace and true religion.

Our industries continue to surge.  Science keeps opening new horizons of knowledge and possibilities for action.  Expanding education is enabling unprecedented participation in those possibilities.  The development of modern industrial states has given us the capacity to deliver a panoply of infrastructure and services to much wider populations, rather than a select few, and to give them the opportunity to have, do, enjoy and be things their grandparents could have only dreamt of.
 
There has not been a Continent wide European war since 1814.  We have spread this peace abroad by imposing law and order amongst previously warring peoples.  We have introduced there the light of Christianity, learning and civilized values to the very darkest corners of heathendom, ignorance and barbarism.  We have brought unprecedented relief to the sick through our medicine.  Our Empires have spread our cities, our agriculture, industry and institutions throughout the world, creating vast wealth where there was previously little or nothing.

Today, we enjoy unparalleled power, prestige and prospects for achieving even greater things in the new century.” (Anon)

What followed in the early twentieth century, after a brief first decade Indian summer, was an awesome series of explosions; a parade of destruction, inventiveness & productivity that proved more exciting, frightening & lethal than the wildest dreams of early century observers.  The second decade of the twenty-first century brings with it an eerie sense of déjà vu.

As the European armies mobilized in the late summer of 1914, there was an air of optimistic anticipation.  “We’ll all be home by Christmas”, was the cry.  Most of the men going to the fronts had no presentiment that that ‘we’ would not include most of them, or that it might be the Christmas of another year altogether.

It wasn’t as if there was a dearth of information lying around at the time that would have given people who were looking for it, some inkling of how inordinately destructive modern warfare could be.  It was just that most people weren’t looking and didn’t want to. Thus all sides, at least initially, sent infantry (some still in brightly colored uniforms) in close order march against massed repeater rifles, machine guns, barbed wire and hydraulically damped breech loading artillery. Nor had they reckoned on the accumulated capacity of modern industrial states to waste men and material.

In four years, more soldiers were killed and wounded, ammunition expended and military equipment produced and destroyed, than in almost the entire history of warfare to that time.

The long period of overwhelming European dominance had made everybody complacent in their sense of superiority and capacity to take on any challenge.  So secure were they in this conviction and the belief that nothing could fundamentally disturb the routines of business-as-usual, almost no one was prepared for what followed.  They could not imagine that the crushing forces that they had applied to the less well industrially endowed could be used against themselves, with equally devastating outcomes.

In 1898, at the battle of Omdurman, General Kitchener’s troops defeated a Sudanese army, inflicting twenty-five thousand casualties to the British four hundred and thirty.  Kitchener went home a national hero and the myth that a British soldier was worth ten others was boosted to nearly sixty.

“Now lads, not too many swollen ’eads.  Those kaffirs died like flies and never flinched as the Maxims swept them away.  If they had raked our regiment with those murderous things, I wonder ’ow many of you lot would be ’ere to tell the tale, or ’ow many would’ve stood their ground for a second or third hose down, eh?”

“Aww come orf it Ned, there was plenty enough hot work to do.  We still lost many sterling lads and we won the day, which is all that matters!  But I tell yer what, that bloody Kitchener’s got a swollen enough ’ead, with one-bloody-victory-parade-after-a-bloody-nuvver.  I swear I could’ve won that battle if I’d been in command of the forces and equipment ’e ’ad”.
 
“Awlright General Knowall, since yer such a smart fella, you can stand the next round ’v drinks.”
 
Just over a hundred years later, success and overconfidence were still a dangerous combination because they weakened rational and honest judgment and substituted it with inflated optimism and egos, and weakened moral judgment.  They prompted unduly large leaps of faith, overly ambitious goals, prodigal use of resources and short term thinking.  Success made it is all too easy to dismiss caution as timidity, negativity, conservatism or defeatism.  Gradually the voices of reason were marginalized by the voices of a ‘new paradigm’, characterized by ideological and historical exceptionalism, as the operating culture geared up to walk on water....