Modernism

This is a cool website about Modernism in home items through America and Europe that I found researching the period.

And I found an interesting site... not interesting as in I dig it, but interesting as in I can see why you would take this view point. This post is a proclamation that Nietzsche was a Satanist.
I can see the view point... partly because his name was supposedly found on a Satanist manifesto, or maybe because he was Russian and every red-blooded American knows those Comrades are all run by Mephistopheles (Red flag - red tailed prince of darkness - the connection is irrefutable), but also it is because he was part of a movement away from structured religion - or more specifically from religion at all. (Lecture notes on Nietzsche)


Modernism was a large questioning of Faith. With new warfare, machines and chemicals destroying the body and warping the mind, the world no longer felt real. These non-human entities that could so easily corrupt the human being left men feeling empty and unsure about their relationship to others and about the truths the felt they had known before. The same old answers from Christianity still left humanity questioning its humanity and new forms of defining spirituality resulted. Many of them were ardently anti-religion.

"Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination."

I study theatre and Acting. One prime example that came to mind was Oscar Wilde. Wilde lived up to and influenced the movement in London towards Modernism. His works are filled with criticism of religion and in Modernism being the only way people should live. He also focused on the kind of groomed lifestyle we see from the rich and famous (Paris Hilton and whatnot). Here is a snipet from one of his famous plays, A Woman of No Importance, I think it sums up a major thrust of the Modernism movement:

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  I suppose your mother is very religious, and that sort of thing. 

GERALD.  Oh, yes, she's always going to church. 

LORD ILLINGWORTH.  Ah! she is not modern, and to be modern is the only thing worth being nowadays.  You want to be modern, don't you, Gerald?  You want to know life as it really is.  Not to be put off with any old-fashioned theories about life.  Well, what you have to do at present is simply to fit yourself for the best society.  A man who can dominate a London dinner-table can dominate the world. The future belongs to the dandy.  It is the exquisites who are going to rule.

And we can find similar backlashes in our own society now... EASILY... but one example is the digital movement against how business and networking is done. We are finding that computers are actually creating face to face interactions rather than stifling them. And movements unthinkable are posible. The "old, traditional" way of doing things (business) is being rejected for the modern (connected online). And you want to be modern, don't you, You person... there.... reading this? Modern is the only thing worth being nowadays.