The Shock of Modernity
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 26 ก.พ. 2020
- What is modernity? The end of the nineteenth century was a period of unprecedented upheaval. Factories sprouted in masses, railways were laid at great length, urbanisation sprawled and beckoned, and masses organised capitalistically and politically.
All of this happened at dizzying speed. This was the moment the modern world crashed together and dragged people from the fields to the factory floor.
Within a generation, the entire consciousness of life had changed.
In this video, I look at how consciousness was affected by that change. I look at industrialisation, the move from the country to the city, neurasthenia, kierkegaard and the concept of anxiety, Nietzche, Darwin and the death of God. I also look at the birth of the railway, Dickens, and sensation novels. All of these things contributed to what has become modernity.
People were nervous, literally - a new diagnosis became popular amongst America’s elites: neurasthenia.
It was a contemporary form of stress, characterised by symptoms like fatigue, headache, and irritability.
Neurasthenia, according to physician Charles Beard, was the result of a depletion of nervous energy, but was becoming more common as a reaction to the anxieties of the modern world and of the demands of American exceptionalism. Neurasthenia was almost a fashion. Adverts appeared selling ‘nerve tonics’, self help books dominated the shelves, even breakfast cereals claimed to be able to cure ‘americanitus’.
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Sources:
Allan V Horwitz, Anxiety: A Short History
Nicholas Daly, ‘Blood on the Tracks: Sensation Drama, the Railway, and the Dark Face of Modernity’, Victorian Studies, 42, 1, 1999, 47-76
Charles Beard, American Nervousness
Mark Jackson, the Age of Stress
Schuster, David G.. Neurasthenic Nation : America's Search for Health, Happiness, and Comfort, 1869-1920. : Rutgers University Press
Nicholas Daly, ‘Railway Novels: Sensation Fiction and the Modernization of the Senses’, John Hopkins University Press, 66, 2, 1999, 461-497
This video reminds me of Mark Fischer’s claim that mental illness should be looked at from a standpoint of “what is causing the depressed person to be depressed on a societal level” rather than “what is physiologically wrong with the depressed person and how can we fix it individually.” Anyways, great video!
hello, could I ask what Fisher text this came from?
Ianna Rallonza capitalist realism
frankie wilson Excellent point ... including phenomena like child abuse, domestic violence, and the like. Foucault also treats these claims, as does Maté’s insistence that capitalism makes us sick, as well as addicted. Thanks for posting the video. Would love to see more like it ☮️💚
@@toadfrowns
Fisher writes about depression in an article titled: Good For Nothing.
@@cloudmonkeys Is it worth delving into?
Criminal that this channel doesn't have more subscribers and it's not like I am the first person to make this point.
I completely agree, right now its one of youtube's hidden gems. Perhaps its time to start sharing these videos on other social media sites to get the word out
@@SingularityasSublimity absolutely. Great idea!
Criminally underrated channel
Nite Owl: "What happened to the American Dream?"
Comedian: "It came true."
-"Watchmen"
I feel like I've faced a lifelong battle against this imposing energy that continues to this day. It's weird to notice how much this force seems to capture everyone, especially when you're able to find some of that "peace" while people nearby can't help but generate and execute empty tasks that give some illusion of "productivity".
Ugh you desperately need more exposure this is some of the best free content out there.
Your work is incredible. Amazing and needs more attention!
Sign me up for this cult!
I remember once camping out in the desert in Morocco. Waking up in the morning, and pulling the sleeping covers away to find a scorpion that had been hiding there with me while I slept. I was very calm. Much calmer than the guide I told about it (I later learned it was lethal - as it was small, and the smaller the scorpion the more deadly it is). Maybe more time out in such a beautiful location could have brought me more to my senses - to have felt more in that moment. But I was safer than back home.
This channel has the kind of content that the specialisation of modernity has mostly overwhelmed; an interdisciplinary, historical worldview approach. Constantly it is about the big picture and the interrelations, the totality of the human condition. Since you are a historian, if you made videos on the socioeconomic and political history of this amazing time with the same calibre of research and production quality, your channel would be beyond the gold it already is.
Amazing and very relevant to our era. Referring to Bifo Berardi, the shock of modernity shares a lot of characteristics with the shock of semiocapitalism that we are experiencing. The same cognitive and aesthetic overload, aggravated by the virtuality- the lack of physicality of these stimuli, is producing what Berardi calls the "spasm" (in other words, the global neurosis epidemic). This sounds very similar to neurasthenia, and for the same reason: we are not equipped to adapt so quickly to the changes and to the intensity of stimuli. Thank you very much for this video.
Excellent video, i love the footage of machine processes and the ‘shock’ in the very beginning with the car horn.
Theres a passage in Capital chapter 10 about the railway switch operators causing catastrophic wrecks because, sleep deprived, overworked, they just stop functioning. Its kind of like the merchants who have to keep up with the increasing at rate information reaches them.
IT IS THE EVIL FORCES OF THE MARKET!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
@@fatpotatoe6039 this whole video is about capitalism, get over it.
Picking up some strong Adam Curtis vibes in this... and I dig it. Good shit, man!
Simply put: fantastic work! Will gladly share and support.
Fascinating. Thank you Lewis 👌
Come back to this again and again. Absolutely brilliant. Thank you so much for taking the time to publish these extraordinary essays.
Echo all the points about what great work these videos are - thank you for such thoughtful work!
Always well researched and professionally produced.
This channel is so, so good!
Great video! Very thought-provoking. Thank you
Thank you for sharing another great video and fascinating insight!
i love your videos, ideologically and aesthetically. can't wait for more.
This was a really good one by you, the quality of your videos is top-notch, you really deserve more subscribers!
Awesome job! truly enjoyed it.
your channel is frustratingly underrated
Thank you Then & Now for your effort. I 💜 all your content.
Very well might be your best one yet!
Walter Benjamin (who's always a delight to read) discusses shock in Some Motifs In Baudelaire as well.
yeah I expected this to be about Benjamin's chock when I clicked
also yes he is always a delight to read!
While I agree that we might have lost something when we passed to modernity, we can't really go back. Those who lived those times are dead and the image we have of that era is just an image formed from someone else's memory. To try to abandon modernity to go back to those times will lead us to facism. Yes, there were good things in the past, but running away from modernity is not the answer, we would lose much more.
We need to overcome modernity, subvert technological thinking and transcend to a post-capitalist state of being.
Ender Wiggin nice thought, I also think there needs to be a subversion of technological thinking. How do we transcend to a different mode of inquiry/way of living though? I think a move away from capitalism would help, but am also unsure of what model should replace it.
Abandoning modernity cannot automatically lead to fascism. Why should it? Modernity is not the only path, and i would rather be more afraid of trying to transcend the modern by embracing trans humanism or by ironically further embracing modernity in an effort to escape it.
The mention of the term "Freedom" has me reminded of G.K. Chesterton's quote that went something along the lines of "You can, if you will, free a tiger from his bars, but you must never allow yourself to free him of his stripes; for the might free him from being a tiger." I believe that with the shocking bombardment of modernity, humanity now finds itself suddenly freed of much of the past ideals of honor and purpose. Instead, now, our purpose has become the transformation into machines and sensationalists. In a sense, we have been freed of our stripes and, as such, are freed of being human. We are the children who lived on the small island, who, when we were before under the security of a fence about the island's border, were free to run and bounce about the island all we wanted. But, as soon as we were freed of the fence, we found ourselves huddled fearfully at the island's center, not daring get anywhere near the fulfillment of our fear of falling into the ocean.
Dude I love you work! I'm a huge fan of Spinoza and that video you did on him was fantastic. I love your use of stock footage and quotes from books. Your writing is awesome too. When I think about the kind of content I'd like to produce myself I see your work as inspiration.
You always say something new for me with no pretence or anything annoying at all …
Thank you
Amazing video!
Love your videos so much. I wanted to ask if you could add further reading lists in the description or at the end of your videod for people who want to read more on the subject. I am aware some videos include bibliographies but I have a feeling that more books could be included. Thank you for bringing this content to youtube, it is truly a unique channel.
I can offer a few recommendations that broaden/deepen some of the arguments in this video:
Borch-Jabosen, M (2009) Making Minds and Madness
Crary, J (1999/2001) Suspensions of Perception (would love to see T&N tackle Crary at some stage)
Massumi B (ed) (1994) The Politics of Everyday Fear (in particular, the chapter from Gregory Whitehead)
Purnell, C (2017) The Sensational Past
Simons, RC (1996) Boo! Culture, Experience & the Startle Reflex
Paul Virilio?
Great content, thanks.
Anxiety or Depression, which will it be today?
really man makes some of the best videos out there that I wish he didn't have a lot of subscribers and viewers so that I can keep the cheat sheets to learning about Phil to myself
Wow, that was really really good
Nice companion to Patience: After Sebald
This was so fucking good. How did I not know about this channel before?
Thank you!
Here because of Morgoth. Why is this channel not better known? top quality stuff
Thanks!
nice one
*One* *of* *the* *greatest* *essays* *ever* *written.*
One of your best!
The earlier definitions of nostalgia may be applicable here, with that being acute homesickness. Though more grounded than temporal this definition is still a vector, an orientation in space and time as illustrated in The Poetics of Space by Bachelard. Maybe it is because I'm manic, but I think this loss is to negative and distracts from the notion of periodicity that preceded the Modern. That longing for the past seems to me as a symptom of the general inability to cope with the present. Mythology around the concepts and romanticisation of the past seems to be as much an psychological state than a logical position. My think is that this video could have be much longer............
Thank you ❤️
One word: Sublime
Beautiful
so good
top
notch
There are many things I take for granted, like just how big the impact of the locomotive was.
whats the piano piece at the very beginning called its so nice
Relax Against the Machine.
Once again, an excellent video essay! I've been a gigantic fan, not in actual size, mind you, but insofar as a love for how you convey your information and as well the quality of your videos and your interpretation of the philosophers writing's that you've covered. I've learned a great deal since I've started watching. I think that it was Todd May who said, and I am paraphrasing here, so bear with me please; "one day all of these things and concepts and writings that your finding hard to understand, one day, all of a sudden the clouds will part as streams of sunshine will break though and you'll get your own moments of "awe", the true value of what's being said will come out." And that brings me to my point, the very first "awe" and "clouds parting" moment was with your Nietzsche genealogy of morals video essay, on the slave master relationship, as well the original concepts for "good and evil", good being the strong ones and evil being the poor and weak, and off hand I think that it was the part two episode. Nevertheless, your channel has had a paramount affect in my development of that style of understanding, in general and the "awe" moment, that is so, so great to have. It's been a two and a half year journey, since the inception of my self study, so far, with, what I hope will be countless more videos as well "awe" moments to come, and these days have not been a waste whatsoever! Love this stuff (Philosophy) and your channel and as well, these entities, together make it possible for a better comprehension of the world's greatest discipline. Last but not least, what is your educational background, not that, "that matters", just for the sake of knowing, who knows maybe one day my dissertation, as I will be pursuing a PhD, will be on "you" and your philosophical prowess!
I want the music that is playing at the start, as the poem is recited, so bad. Someone know it?? :(
Anyone know the source for what is played at approximately 8 minutes in?
i am willing to bet that we all love you *personally*
Briliant îs overused, but this is truly brilliant. Thank you.
Had this video been posted somewhat 5 days early and it wouldve helped me a lot with my project, too bad i already submitted it
Please, could some one to bring a spanish version of this very important piece of wisdom? It would bring a so much needed light in LatAm crossed by
all sort of Cross destructive winds
10:49 omg!!!
I can’t help but wonder when we hit the limit on the human capacity to function so quickly, even with the aid of technology.
Let's go!
But how do you stop thinking.
If a country is most representative of this nightmare it can be founded in the daily news from Colombia
Would be very nice to see credits for the film clips. Wouldn't that improve the production?
I would guess it's all Pathé archive footage
although the car horn was dubbed over... not the actual sound on a silent film.
Music is too loud. Have to strain to hear you.
Greetings from the Neoreactionary dissident-right! We have more in common than you would think!
Would love to see one on meta-modernism.
What is the text you’re reading in the introduction?
William Blake's 'And did those feet in ancient time'.
Benjamin De Roover thank you :)
brlliant!
If the invention of the locomotive had such an effect, the internet must have totally fucked us up.
soundtrack plox
can i please get the name of thee Irish playwright?
We early lets go
Wait,... how did i just get convinced that modernity increased individual freedom ? Didnt modernity increase our interdependancies resulting in having to rely on total strangers more then ever before in history. Can't it be that this responsibility for others and having to trust others be the basis of psychological fatigue, certainly when their culture wasnt at all adapted to the new context wonderfully described in this vid.
I was reading some Locke , and he made the distinction between primary and secondary qualities. Primary qualities being shape, motion,... sensations we can register with multiple senses. Secondary qualities being sensation that we can sense with only one sense like taste , color,
This same distenction can be used to describe or degrees of freedom i believe, while modernity imensly increased our freedom in experiencing secondary qualities it also restricted us greatly in our primary qualities.
My American mother's paternal grandfather left the mediaeval peasant atmosphere of rural Sweden in the 1870s & with the decision to emigrate entered Late Modernity. His son, my grandfather, was born in 1886 as the first one in that family to BE modern his entire life. This was so for his children, too. I, myself, began to notice from about 1980 the material things around us, the motor cars, the buildings, all of that stopped changing; to be sure there was MORE of these things. But the stylistic changes are become derisory. This is so, also, for fashion & already in the 1970s some of the young were already as thoroughly pierced & tatted all over their bodies as, to be sure, far more are to-day. Again, though this is a mere avalanche as to _quantity_. & may be taken to point to an old society's loss of what I should call ''creative nerve', itself possibly as symptomatic of decline as Correlli Barnett's only slightly polemical, extended studies of the late-modern British loss of industrial nerve.
My point, I think, is that for most persons of European ancestry throughout the North Atlantic world, life in actual modernity came late, passed quickly & with the pulling down of 'this wall' in Berlin in the Fall of 1989 was, de facto, over. All of that in a scant four generations, mind you. Although not known to the front of our brains, we ARE no longer a modern people & are merely living the forms on historical momentum of an ebbing wave. This explains why the North American Democrat party, in a telling usage of Disraeli's, is 'transmogrified' into THE conservative party; the Trump riffraff simply are NOT.
The large presence, too, in North American family lines especially of Scotch-Irish mountaineers dating from their arrival in the High Modern 17th & 18th centuries & skipping out westward on their indentures of servitude for passage over the mountains, means there was always a large & growing populace of what T R Fehrenbach has described at length as 'barbarised whites'. These gentry were never 'modern' except as to NASCAR & the plangent discords of the electric guitar. Nonetheless, they are a vibrant taproot of an otherwise aetiolated Post Modern American life & their sheer ardency has much to do with the folkish ease with which so many embrace the Trump swindle.
Given these facts & they of some salience, surely, I would contend that especially in the long autumn of ANY old order in History, the passionate desire for excitement is perhaps the single least-noticed dynamic in History.
or whats it from rather
And did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon England's mountains green?
And was the holy Lamb of God
On England's pleasant pastures seen?
And did the Countenance Divine
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here
Among these dark satanic mills?
Bring me my bow of burning gold!
Bring me my arrows of desire!
Bring me my spear! O clouds, unfold!
Bring me my chariot of fire!
I will not cease from mental fight,
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand,
Till we have built Jerusalem
In England's green and pleasant land.
William Blake
from PERSIA ArmeniA Israel with Passion
Guys, check out the channel "Like Stories of Old." You won't thank me, but your soul's new found relationship with cinema will.
Weeeeeelllllllll dooooneeeeeeeeeeeee
Who wrote this who?
Ok toys and squirrels, if you have the time to comment, then you have the time to contribute. So do it! I just did! Boom!
Good God! 6000! It's a sad commentary on 21st century life---societal priorities, tastes and preoccupations
when absolute drivel and end of times videos receive more views.
En-vel-upd not En-Ve-loped. Just sayin.
2 views 4 likes. Interesting.
Interesting? Potentially scandalous more like it... Perhaps there were some pre-emptive likes and the viewings were still ongoing when you saw the score. I tend to pre-emptively like channels with a solid track record (such as this one), for fear that if I don't get it out of the way before I start viewing then I might end up elsewhere and forget to offer my humble endorsement... even better if I can find some reason to comment in order to serve the engagement metrics.
Thanks!
Thanks!
Thank you!