Apply heat to water and…well, it gets hotter. Heat it up some more and it gets hotter still – but is still water. But go on heating it up and there comes a point at which it changes into gas and water vapour. Perhaps something similar is happening to history right now. Perhaps we absorb development upon development at ever increasing speed as the centuries pass until there is a step change and…..well, that’s what this thread is all about.
John Lucaks (“At the end of an Age”) thinks so, anyway. This thread is not a reprise of his ‘Jeremiad’ but I do acknowledge it as my starting point and the inspiration for my thoughts.
Lucaks starts by referring to the traditional division of history into ancient and modern with the middle ages, or mediaeval period separating them. We assume, he says, that every age brings increased wealth, happiness and knowledge and that the modern age will somehow go on for ever and ever with everything getting progressively better. Suppose, as he does, that this is a false assumption and that the modern age began about 1480 and ended around 1980. Without being aware of it (how can one be, except in retrospect?) we may already be living in a transitional stage.
I think that he is on to something. I have for a long time thought that modern history has seen – has maybe been defined by – a series of issues which have now mainly resolved themselves. If so, it’s time for history to move on.
For example, the modern age was, really, the European Age. Powerful European nations largely discovered and dominated the rest of the world and created great Empires. That part of the story certainly came to an end with World War II when Europe had to be rescued by two non-European countries and then, with almost indecent haste, liquidated her colonies.
Strong, stable governments (often monarchies) provided the conditions for the development of flourishing middle classes which helped to make the modern age what we know it to have been with the replacement of aristocratic by constitutional government, the expansion of the State, the development of industry, the growth of towns and cities, the provision of an extensive system of state education, the ‘age of the book’ and so on. That was then. Nowadays the term ‘middle class’ is almost meaningless and the bulk of its achievements are under threat.
The State itself, which grew so large, especially in the twentieth century as it turned its attention to improving the conditions of life for ordinary people, is now in decline, partly due to the emergence of supra-national institutions like the EU and partly because so many of its functions and services have been privatized. The people are discontented and the State is being cut down to size.
A thread running through the modern age has been the struggle for democracy. We can say now that history is no longer made by and in the interests of minorities but at least in the name of majorities. In one form or another democracy prevails in most of Europe and in many other parts of the world.
The better off have moved out to the suburbs and beyond while town centre shops are menaced by the internet and by out of town shopping centres; and towns and cities, which expanded so greatly throughout the modern age, are in decline.
The majority of people are now employed in services industries and in administration and the industrial age, as measured by the proportion of the population employed in it, has passed, having lasted barely 130 years.
Women, who throughout much of the modern age lacked legal and political rights but were seen as mothers and home-makers to be protected, have achieved the right to careers of their own and to control of their own bodies – and are left to fend for themselves. Access has been won to divorce and abortion while marriage and the nuclear family have become weaker. Women no longer have the respect formerly automatically accorded them.
Art and literature, sculpture and architecture, have gone from being matters of re-presentation and beauty to expressions of the imagination – and ugly.
Finally, in this far from complete list, is the written or printed word. The beginning of the modern age pretty well coincided with the invention of the printing press. ‘Inflation’ in the amount of reading material available has since gone hand in glove with a reduction in quality; while the incorporation of more and more pictures, the arrival of films and T.V. have given us minds more attuned to the graphic than the verbal. That, plus a decline in people’s attention span, has led to a decline in the influence of books. More adults have difficulty with reading nowadays than they did in the nineteenth century, before the introduction of compulsory education (Ducaks).
The modern age, as defined by its principle features, is crumbling about our ears. It has run out of steam. What will follow it? History does not go in straight lines and Gibbon told us that things do not always get better.
One thing is clear which is that, whatever else it turns out to be, we are entering a global age. Travel, communication, trade (and one hopes co-operation) are now all on a global scale. We are ill-prepared for it. We may fly to foreign beaches but we are not, like other European peoples, used to travelling, working and living across boundaries. We should be teaching our young to speak two languages, fluently and to visit and get to know the customs and ways of other nations. We cannot afford to be insular. Those days are past. We must learn to think of ourselves as world citizens, to co-operate with other nations and welcome incomers - and forget the misleading siren calls of former glories to ‘go it alone’.