FREE ESSAY ON MODERNITY - TRANSFORMING PROGRESSION OF HUMAN LIFE - FREE TERM PAPERS, BOOK REPORTS, ESSAYS, AND RESEARCH

MODERNITY - TRANSFORMING PROGRESSION OF HUMAN LIFE - FREE TERM PAPERS, BOOK REPORTS, ESSAYS, AND RESEARCH

Modernity: A transforming progression of human life
Mankind is always transforming, moving progressively in a direction that modernizes the
very fabric of being, ultimately impacting the socioreligious, cultural, economic and
geopolitical aspects. Modernity, as a whole, is a reactive force--a reaction of
comparisons and contractions to that which existed before. Some institutions and values
of society are carried through modernalistic changes, often those notions thought to be
progressive and valuable to the new transitional society. Resistance to modernity is
evident, but inevitably any resistance will end in failure.
Modernity, as defined by Webster's Dictionary, is the state or quality of being modern.
The human process of modernity has always been constant, if though at times subtle;
examples of modernity have come in the form of such things as simple stone tools, the
plow, and the stirrup. However, not until the 16th and 17th centuries did a great leap of
modernization occur.
Scientists do not wholly understand what caused the lead to modernity or really why it
occurred in such a defining way. What is known is that it happened between the 16th and
18th centuries. What information also known is that modernity first began in the
northwestern countries of Europe, mainly; England, the Netherlands, northern France, and
northern Germany.
Northwestern Europe in the early 16th century, to put it nicely, was rather backward,
both culturally and technologically. The countries therein absorbed most of its
innovations from surrounding countries, primarily Spain and Italy. Realistically,
northwestern Europe did not seem to be a region that would become the economic and
modernistic leader of the rest of Europe.
In the 16th century of northwestern Europe changes in religion were occurring. It was in
the Protestant Reformation that modernalism was setting in to take place. Protestantism
broke down the distinction between the religion and the rest of the world: between the
church and the marketplace. Protestantism valued the aspect that everything man did was
in sight of God, and therefore man should take a greater initiative in his work and work
ethics. Work was to be pursued with a fitting seriousness and order, in a spirit of
rational enterprise that eschewed waste and frivolous adventurism (Britannica.com). The
Protestant reformation in a sense was the launch of modern capitalism.
The Protestant Reformation can also be attributed to the underlying start of the advanced
development of modern science. In this time, people began to steer away from religion and
religious based thinking and looked towards science for answers. Effectively, it is in
the shift from religion to science that was fuel to the leaps of modernity. Scientific
methods of observation, experimentation, theory and discovery were practiced--thought, at
first, not considered beyond skepticism and scrutiny by most of society. These scientific
changes and advancements allowed people to expand and modernize--to look out
progressively.
Modernity impacted all realms of society. A transformation was made in the basic core
structure of modern society. Rather than the group or community, it was the individual
that became most important. Where one would once have thought about the good of the
village, that person might then be thinking about the better good of himself. Another
change occurred in the division of labor. Which once was the main unit of production, the
family (in peasant society) transformed and shifted to modern institutions that performed
specific and specialized tasks. Society also underwent the establishment and impact of
governing institutions. Rather than persons being guided by custom or tradition, modern
general rules and regulations were implemented. The legitimacy of these rules stemming
from methods and finding in science (Ibid.). 
Modernity, effectively led to and was in the pnumbra of the industrial movement. With
industrialization, the economy took off into a self-sustaining growth. Investment,
output, and growth took a drastic leap and the industrial system itself produced many
technological changes.