The First Critics of Modern Life
foreign we've always been interested in the history of modernity in the growth of science technology urbanization and industrialization because I think through it we can Define analyze and interrogate how we think and how we do things today we can look at where our attitudes our sensibilities and our beliefs come from why they emerged and whether they're useful or not we can denormalize what we think of as being normal because it's not just the past as James Baldwin said history is not the past it's the present we carry our history with us it's the totality of how you feel your routines what you're doing how you perceive people friends family the world what our cultural perspectives are right now and tomorrow we use the past to answer questions about the present that guide us into the future but at the moment I have a different reason for thinking about Modern Life after living in London for quite a long time now we're thinking of leaving so I find myself thinking about the city with a sense of urgency what if anything have I learned [Music] modernity is a Battleground for historians some most in fact would probably agree with historian Joel mocker when he says that material life is far better today than could have been imagined by the most wild-eyed optimistic 18th century philosopher and that most economists today would regard the industrialization of the 19th century as an undivided blessing but that phrase undivided blessing has come under quite a bit of criticism what about inequality and isolation Stress and Anxiety what about environmental degradation pollution what about the dissolution of traditional familial community and religious ties what about mechanized Warfare and modern colonialism foreign [Music] of course science Industry technology have given us so much but factoring in the whole package as historian Jeremy carradonna points out it begins to look like at best a mixed blessing that our shift to a modern world contains at least some downsides should be obvious to anyone who has been stressed by monotonous cramped commutes been disheartened by the sight of sludge in a once beautiful River or had a front row view of the first nuclear bomb being dropped on Hiroshima that shift to Modern Life really began around the turn of the 1800s and what's interesting about looking at those first critics is they were talking about people who had one foot in the past the past irretrievably lost to us real agrarian lives that were simpler who could rarely write about themselves who left a few words only faintly that hinted that whole entire worlds that we've lost underneath to look at what critics of modernity argued is not to idealize a simpler pre-modern life one thing that stands out from many Diaries of the period is that people were often thankful for the new work in factories and Industry that were beginning to spring up and describe work in the field is just as bad as well as being irregular and toiling one working-class diary for example recalls that as a minor I did very well but as we know from the emergence of the internet historical shifts usually always bring surprises both blessings and curses in the 1880s Arnold toynbee wrote of the period some 80 years before that we now approach a darker period a period is disastrous and as terrible as any through which a nation ever passed disastrous and terrible because side by side with a great increase in wealth was seen an enormous increase of Corporation these critics weren't all doom and gloom they often struggled with the relationship between the benefits and the costs of moving into a more modern and industrialized World they weren't all just blind critics of the satanic Mills in blakeswood in fact Blake himself was critical but forward-looking he didn't just idealize the green and pleasant lands of Finland he strangely argued that where man is not nature is barren he said nature is miserably cruel wasteful purposeless chaotic and half dead it has no intelligence no kindness no love and no innocence how complex say this when he's also known as one of our most fervent critics of dirty and dehumanizing factories in fact Blake chose to never leave London he was buried here in an unmarked grave forgotten and unknown in 1827 and until his death he believed that London could become a New Jerusalem a kind of Heaven on Earth he said I will not cease from mental fights nor shall sword sleep in my hand till we have built Jerusalem in England's green and pleasant land I think this makes Blake a unique critic set apart from many of the thinkers of the period but before we return to Blake's solution let's look at what others were saying about an emerging Modern Life foreign Marx's longtime collaborator Frederick Engels sent by his father from Germany to manage a factory in Manchester complained how badly the towns were built the quote foul courts lanes and back alleys re-king of Cole's make and especially dingy from the original bright and red brick turned black with time he wrote about how the foul smelling stream was full of debris cold black with blackish green slime pools and Bubbles of myasmatic gas producing an unendurable stench and later John Stewart Mill while applauding the progress of industry also said that I confess I'm not Charmed with the ideal of Life held out by those who think that the normal state of human beings is that of struggling to get on that the trampling crushing elbowing and treading on each other's heels which form the existing type of social life are the most desirable lots of humankind but both were criticizing industrialization that was beginning to look like this around the middle of the century however some 50 years before it if not longer others were beginning to notice and comment on the signs of what was starting to spring up and spin the really dirty smoggy blackening factories that we associate with the Industrial Revolution hadn't quite sprang up yet or were only just beginning to but there were signs of the new mechanized way of life everywhere new clocks and more pocket watches spinning jennies and water meals used to make fabrics and Yarns the first basic steam engines Railways and canals the first seed drill to sow seed not by hand but by a machine drawn by a horse these new technologies of the Enlightenment the writers and critics thought were changing the very way people thought they were changing their psychologies [Music] people many noted were beginning to look at the world and relationships not as sacred not as ideals or guides not as valuable in themselves or for reasons unseen but primarily in terms of usefulness enlightenment philosophers and mathematicians like Francis Hutchinson and Daniel Bernoulli believed that usefulness could be in Hutchinson's words computed that usefulness was like a mathematical formula the German novelist philosopher and poet Frederick Schiller said that utility is the great Idol of the age to which all powers are enthralled into which all talents must pay homage Wade in this crude balance the insubstantial merits of Arts scarce took the scale and bereft of all encouragement she shuns the noisy Marketplace of our century art shuns the noisy Marketplace of our century in other words real art mysterious art of some reason it's pushed out cried it out not deemed useful enough the poet and novelist Ludwig teak wondered what utility even meant is everything just about food drink clothing running better ships and building better machines only to eat better he said that actually what's truly exalted neither can nor should be of use in his novel France sternbold's Journey teaks protagonist argues that the Divine cannot be used up some things aren't for Humanity's vulgar bodily needs in a materialistic utilitarian World our needs are often thought of as needs that we create to feed our bodily desires at the expense of the mind but he reminds us the Mind shouldn't be the servant of the body it should be the other way around the mind is what connects us to the Divine through its imagination because it's infinite that's why teak says that art which should be a response to a world based on utility art is the Pledge of our immortality navales said that modernity converted the infinite creative music of the universe into the uniform clattering of a monstrous Mill and Ernst Hoffman wrote a novel in which the Science and Industry of the Enlightenment was being brought to a small country that was a splendid Garden full of fairies then the forests were being cleared the river made navigable potatoes planted the Village Schools improved roads laid down and carry pox inoculated but the fairies couldn't be converted into useful citizens because they practice a dangerous trade in the miraculous nor do they shy away from spreading under the name of poetry a Secret poison that renders people completely unfit for service in the enlightenment what was emerging many thinkers thought was a kind of one-dimensional existence that pursued usefulness utility and commerce above all else but this itself leads to a question what was it that was being excluded what was not included in this Pursuit this one-dimensional pursuit of utility and why when Wordsworth said that the world is too much with us late and soon getting and spending we lay waste our powers he was saying that some part of our potential seem to be being wasted Dickens was getting at this too when he started his novel Hard Times by complaining that Victoria England's schooling was about facts facts facts at the expense of all else Shelley also said that real art was being concealed by the accumulation of facts and calculating processes points something about art and nature wasn't couldn't be reduced to utility but why [Music] foreign tics who I talked about during a trip to Germany in the last video complained that the new style of architecture that was taking over Europe was supplanting traditional architectural Styles up to the point that everywhere seemed to look and feel the same they like to tour and loved the old medieval towns and cities of Southern Germany and Europe they got lost in the Alleyways and admired the Crooked buildings is this why we too love to go to these old European towns with narrow labyrinths of Alleyways the feeling of getting lost or stumbling Upon A View a bar a museum a quirky unique building what all of this has in common is that doing everything by utility means going in a straight line building on a grid forgetting something that makes us human play [Music] what seemed to them to be being sacrificed at the altar of modernity were creativity spirituality community and something that seemed to be the opposite of utility uselessness things like play Whimsy Randomness experimentation sitting around and daydreaming playfulness someone like Schlegel thought was the very basis of art takes said that the straight line because it's always the shortest distance between two points because it's sharp and definite seem to me to express requirement the primary prosaic fundament of Life while crooked lines represent inexhaustibility of play of adornment of Tender Love what's ironic is that these things aren't necessarily anti-utility it's just that the utility from them might take longer to develop the dividends longer to appreciate the Harvest longer to reap anticipating nature some decades later navalis said that where there are no Gods ghosts rule sacrificing these important things things like spirituality and community and tradition and language and the Mysterious would leave a gap in people a longing an illness even waiting for something monstrous to speak to it waiting for someone to take advantage of it people they thought felt alienated The Pursuit Of Money Above All Else pushed out all other needs Shelley said that Commerce has set the mark of selfishness the Signet of its all enslaving power upon a shining ore and cooled it gold in the mask of Anarchy he argued that for the tyrants used to dwell so the E for them are made Loom and plow and sword and Spade with or without your own will bent to their defense and nourishment test to be a slave and soul and to hold no strong control over your own Wills but be all that others make of you at the same time they noticed that the world was becoming over stimulating moving faster and faster changing quicker and quicker Wordsworth noted that a multitude of courses are known to former times and acting with a combined Force to blunt the discriminating powers of the mind and unfitting it for all voluntary exertion to reduce it to a state of almost Savage torpa torper mental lethargy tiredness fatigue again he was pointing to this idea that keeping up with being productive in the factory or the city or with quickly moving times and being surrounded by new demands blunted in his words a part of the Mind navales complained that the Restless tumult of distracting social occasions leaves no time for quietly Gathering one's thoughts or for the attentive contemplation of the inner world this was not to say that they all believed that the natural world was Eden as we've seen Blake was critical and no one was denying that nature could be harsh dangerous and cruel but as Keat said oh ye who have your eyeballs vexed and tired Feast them upon the wideness of the sea the one-dimensional pursuit of utility and the speed of New Sensations and stimulations in urban life that's a one metaphor being used over and over in country after country the Great Wheel of modernity [Music] foreign [Music] life the new spinning jenny the cogs of factories the wheels of trains and later cars the spinning of the newly abundant clocks and pocket watches it's a useful metaphor because it contains so much endlessness Infinity flow the spinning of growth The Continuous line of improvement the circle is both perfect and monotonous at the same time Blake wrote endlessly labor with bitter food void of sleep though hungry they labor anxious they rise hour after hour laboring the whirling wheel many wheels with as many lovely weeping daughters anticipating Marx Frederick Schiller wrote that Modern Life meant that chained to a single little fragment of the whole man himself develops into nothing but a fragment everlastingly in his ear the monotonous sound of the will that he turns he never develops the harmony of his being and instead of putting the stamp of humanity upon his own nature he becomes nothing more than the imprint of his occupation or of his specialized knowledge Wilhelm wackenroder pointed to the ceaseless turn of the Eternal wheel the uniform whirring on of time to an unvarying Tempo gear work in which they themselves were enmeshed and pulled forward an icon door throughout the great cities had caught the old powerful stream and the gears of their machines simply to make it flow faster and faster there in its dried out bed The Wretched life of factories spreads its haughty carpet whose reverse side is nothing but ugly bare colorless patches [Music] if I Condor had lived to see the extent of things like deforestation and climate change he would have been dismayed to have been proven right he continued that man had gone ahead and set up the world for himself as a mechanical self-running clock navalis said that nature itself had been demoted to the level of dull machinery this being taken along like a wheel or a clock endlessly spinning predictably some external idea of mathematical utility the ultimate master of man has another side of being managed by it of routines being predictable to be a slave stood at the controls overseeing a system devoid of life being managed by the system itself foreign London Blake said I wandered through each chartered street where the chartered Thames does flow and Mark in every face I meet marks of weakness marks of Woe he's careful to repeat the word chartered because it means the rights to the streets and the river have been sold but only to certain people in the name of utility to be used for me but not for thee he goes on to describe in every voice in every band The Mind forged manacles manacles being another word for handcuffs people are being trapped to managed controlled but not physically mentally moved on told where and when they can trade banned from begging banned from the common land which was being enclosed and sold off policing was growing permission was required to beg and the impoverished could only do so in the parish they lived in the 1714 vagrancy act had begun to manage people on the streets it banned things like charitable collectors entertainers jugglers minstrels men who had abandoned their wives and children or anyone sleeping or begging and so on point was the places that were long public or natural were beginning to be managed in short all of life was to be subsumed under the Great Wheel of utility or get out of its way so let's go back to why despite a tool Blake believed in the city [Music] I'm at St Paul's Cathedral and about a mile that way is Westminster Abbey and both appear multiple times in Blake's works take a look at this image from his poem Jerusalem Westminster Abbey in light behind what Blake describes as Jerusalem's naked Beauty and some pools in darkness To the Left Behind the shadowy figure of Valor Blake thought that simple's cathedral was everything that was wrong with the geometrical symmetrical repetitive architectural style of the time what was called neoclassicalism while it certainly looks and I think is very impressive many at the time were critical of its simple pale colors it's uniformity it's flatness they thought that that combined with the fact that it was built with vast sums of wealth surrounded by poverty was everything that was wrong with modernity [Music] but moving down the road he loved Westminster Abbey an older Gothic building many of the romantics idealized this older architectural style that they thought was more in keeping with nature inside old churches they likened the pillars to tree trunks the architecture to overgrown forests they loved the asymmetry the French romantic Francois Renee Chateau briante likened the experience of being in a cathedral to the sublime labyrinths of a Dark Forest Cathedral architecture he said originated in the woods [Music] unlike other Romantics Blake places his ideas about Redemption squarely in the middle of London in this way he despise how the traffic in London had developed but would probably be happy with some emerging Trends solar and wind energy no traffic neighborhoods City Farms prioritizing parks and green areas ruse and the sides of buildings covered with Greenery but I don't think he'd believe that we'd gone anywhere near far enough in other words nature and civilization nature and culture natural and artificial they shouldn't be antithetical to one another it's not even that they should coexist they should be one and the same synthesized the same side of one coin even it's a reflection of the beautiful romantic notion that the Romantic writers and ourselves weren't people thinkers writers reflecting on nature but were nature reflecting on itself thank you as always for watching and a huge thanks of course as always to my patreons without which this just wouldn't be possible so if you want to see scripts if you want to chat in the Discord server if you want your name in the credits but most of all if you just want to help support make this content then click the link in the description below if not you can like you can share you can leave a comment all those things that help the algorithm thank you so much and I'll see you next time foreign [Music]
2022-11-10 06:55
