The Death of Modernism

August 5, 2020 Hunter Wallace Aesthetics, Culture, History 6

Have you ever wondered where we are at in history?

It is easier to think about the past and the people who lived through it. We think of previous generations as having lived through Antiquity or the Middle Ages or the Modern Era which we divide into Early Modern and Modern. We further divide the Modern world into the Renaissance, Reformation, Enlightenment and Romantic eras. We see these patterns in history. What is our current era though? How will future historians look back on our present age? What will they see as distinct about our times?

Here is a possible sketch of the Modernist era:

1900-1930 (Gestation)

1930-1945 (Birth)

1945-1965 (Youth)

1965-1985 (Adulthood)

1985-2015 (Old Age)

2015-Present (Death)

The Renaissance, Enlightenment and Modernist eras were all forward looking and worldly. The Reformation and Romantic eras were more backward looking and focused on recapturing what had been lost.

Note: Here is a good video on Romanticism which dominated the 19th century and was a reaction to the Enlightenment.

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Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Occidental Dissent

6 Comments

  1. I’ve been musing about the possibility of a return to Greek styled city states complete with high walls.and a sort of a Mad Max world outside where you have to have a high amount of security to travel between them.

    • It seems the opposite of Mad Max is true. Within cities is where the danger is. Traveling the countryside is really rather serene.

    • The death of Modernism and the birth of Covidism Mr. Wallace.
      The world will never return to Modernism after the calamities that such a horrible nasty virus Covid has unleashed upon the unsuspected mankind

  2. The 19th century was both Romantic and Radical. Many utopian social movements like feminism, abolitionism, transcendentalism and temperance became fashionable in the 19th century and many of the degeneracies we see in the modern world had already taken root in that period. The age of Enlightenment was far more socially conservative and traditionalist than the decadent and hypocritical Victorian era.

  3. Off the cuff, what’s your vision of the era after Modernism? What general requirements will it have to meet? I think it will be influenced/constrained by a number of trends:

    1) Growing assertiveness of blacks due to their youth, invasion of Europe, ballooning numbers, and sacred cow status in the USA
    2) The inability to go back, all forms of reaction, conservation, and nostalgia will fail
    3) The accelerating dearth of white people to carry forward any new European project or era
    4) The total addiction of everyone, everywhere, to Internet media, smartphones, and constant engagement. Whatever happens, we can be 100% sure people will remain addicted to their phones 24-7
    5) Horrifying levels of technological acceleration, and the advent, in the very near future, of extremely powerful AI

    I don’t think it will be another variant like the previous eras. I think it will be a quantum shift onto a different level, particularly due to 5).

  4. Technology can not keep going up while IQ declines. There had to be a breaking point somewhere.

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