Completing my Master’s in History required defending my thesis. This basically means you sit at a table with 4 Ph.D. professors and for roughly two hours they make you feel like the schmuck that you are. In preparation for this intellectual colonoscopy, each student is allowed to sit in on their classmate’s defense, in hopes of gaining perspective and insight on your coming fate. I chose to attend Julie’s defense, as her thesis on Modernism was a precursor to my topic. Arriving early, I made my way to the back of the class past the table filled with her thesis committee. Julie came in with the look of a Christian entering the Coliseum and I remember thinking this may not go so well…Dr. Fritz summoned the meeting to order, looked straight at Julie and asked the first question. “Please define modernism for us”. There was a pause, followed by seconds of incredibly awkward silence, then sobs. She lost it. I wanted to run, it was guilt by association and I wanted nothing to do with this train wreck. The poor girl had written over 200 pages on the topic and in that moment she couldn’t even summon up a second grade definition. Ten years later, I’d like to take a crack at answering Dr. Fritz’s question.
Historians disagree on the genesis of modernism. Some date her birth back to the Renaissance, while others believe it germinated during the Age of Reason. Regardless, this melioristic movement places man and technology at the center of all things. Modernism, as a movement, rejected Greco-Roman ideals and the Judeo-Christian past in order to form a new and entirely secular view of life. Reason replaced revelation as the sole source of redemption. Self-government, new technology, advances in science and the rise of the middle class led to the widespread belief among Europeans that the human race was entering a golden age of peace and prosperity, led by unlimited moral and material progress. The invention of electricity, the use of oil as a new energy source, the refrigeration of food, the rotary press and ready to wear clothing increased wealth and meant more leisure time for most of the bourgeoisie. Because of these scientific and technological advances, there was a general sense at the turn of the 19th century that the golden age of man had finally dawned. Ultimately, this era is characterized as a secular age of mass movement and mass media where the only savior left alive is the state. It is no surprise that during modernism’s zenith, nationalism and totalitarianism were political mainstays on the European continent.
While the movement was gaining speed throughout the 19th century, it took on new life with the publication of Charles Darwin’s Descent of Man in 1871. Applying his theory of evolution to humanity, Darwin set about destroying the belief that man was made in the image of God, instead proclaiming man to be the outcome of random, mindless forces over a period of millions of years. Human beings therefore are monolithic creatures made purely of matter and energy. They have no immortal soul; they possess no higher purpose in life and do not have free will. Man is just a complex machine, without inherent distinction from any other animal on earth.
However, the coup de grace came at the end of the 19th century when Frederick Nietzsche wrote:
“God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers…who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?
Now that man had finally knocked off God, he was free to live for himself. Nietzsche went on to say that with God’s ultimate demise, a new breed of man, the Ubermenschen, or Supermen, would arise with the “will to power” to live outside of the herd of humanity and beyond good and evil to create his own version of morality, finally unchained by societies mores. Jewish philosopher Malcolm Muggeridge understood the impact of such a philosophy by stating, “If God is dead, somebody is going to have to take his place. It will be megalomania or erotomania, the drive for power or the drive for pleasure. The clinched fist or the phallus: Hitler or Hugh Heffner.”
Virtually unknown until his death, Nietzsche was a giant in philosophical thought during the first half of the 20th century. Nazi Germany comforted themselves with this new version of morality and used his writings to justify their theory of Aryan supremacy. Realizing they had pried open Pandora’s Box, Nietzsche and Darwin prophesied on the affect their theories would have on human nature. Darwin went first saying that if his naturalistic philosophy was used as scaffolding for metaphysical extrapolations, the violence that would break out would be unprecedented. Nietzsche followed by foretelling that the 20th century would become the bloodiest century known to man. Modernism gives us a staggering body count. It does not take a vivid imagination to discern from the short list below the immense weight of human misery brought on by these ideas.
An Edited List of Deaths and Murders in the 20 Century by Nation or Conflict
First World War: 15 million Stalin’s Regime: 20 million
Second World War: 46 million Hitler’s Germany: 9 million
Mao Zedong’s China: 40 million Congo Free State: 8 million
Armenian Massacre: 1.5 million Rwanda: 1.35 million
Korean War: 2.8 million Cambodia: 1.65 million
Afghanistan: 1.8 million Kinshasa, Congo: 3.8 million
Sudan: 1.9 million Nigeria: 1 million
Mozambique (75-92): 1 million Iran-Iraq War: 1 million
Somalia: 400,000 Idi Amin’s Uganda: 300,000
In a 2005 interview in Toronto on how man got to this point in our history, Ravi Zacharias said, “We didn’t get here overnight…we got here by killing god, then by killing ethics, now we are killing man.”
I now understand why Julie was crying.
