Modernism is starkly contrasted to Empiricism and Romanticism - while the paradigm of the latter two was change, the defining characteristic of modernism was that of relativity. Modernism defines an era where things are no longer seen as black and white as they once were and sees the introduction of nihilistic philosophers such as Nietzsche and Schopenhauer. Music, too, became more pessimistic and not as much of an expression of joy as in years past; it instead was obsessed with rather Freudian themes of death and fatality.
Relativity is the somewhat unsettling idea that there is no centre to the universe; no grand or even careless plan. In relativity, there are no overriding correct or false ideas, and in Freud's case, no conception of the 'self.' Morally, you might speak of 'cultural relativity' in defence of a certain culture's treatment of people or animals - if there is no real way of knowing what is morally sound, then who are we to criticise anyone? This sort of idea directly opposes Immanuel Kant's moral absolutism, and also defies totalitarian ideals which are largely based on mechanics of Kant's ethical maxims and then applied with no regards to cruel consequences.
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| And he wasn't even hiding behind Movember as an excuse. |
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a German philosopher born in 1844. Nietzsche loved to compose music, and he described the almost familial relationship he had with friend and famed composer Wagner as his greatest lifetime achievement. In his first book - “The art of tragedy and the spirit of music”- he said that the beauty of Wagner's music is in tragedy. Both men shared a mutual admiration for the writing of Arthur Schopenhauer who was a huge influence on their works; the tragedy experienced through Wagner's music, and the pessimism seen in Nietzsche's essays. My own, personal favourite quote from a Schopenhauer book I read when I was younger regarding the disequilibrium of pain and pleasure is the world is: “Compare the happiness of the animal eating to the pain of the animal being eaten.” It is fair to say that he was a rather gloomy man.
A famous quote from Nietzsche is “God is dead, and we have killed him.” He also said that humanity must be destroyed. That we are just apes, and we know where we came from. That we don't know where we're going and that modern medicine means we have effectively stopped evolving - which will culminate in the devolution of the human species. Now, this might even be something you have thought in passing when you see (what you think is) a particularly horrible human being shouting/swearing at/blowing smoke in the faces of their offspring in public. I know I have. You wonder who let these people have children in the first place then realise you are straying dangerously close to eugenics. And history has shown that support of eugenics as an ideology and the inevitable mass genocide that follows is rather unsurprisingly not a great idea.
Internal moral debate is one thing, so it stands to reason that politically the idea espoused by Nietzsche above is an extremely divisive one. There are two paths, both with powerful ramifications; the first path involves evolving through technology. The future is not organic; it is intellectual. This has inspired the plot of many a decent sci-fi flick; Bladerunner, the Matrix, to name a couple. The second path involves eugenics, which ultimately will throw someone like Hitler in to the mix. Hitler (or more accurately, someone he had appointed to do his dirty work for him) tried to selectively breed people as though they were dogs to create the 'master' Aryan race – as a consequence, undesirable people had to be eliminated from the gene pool to prevent contamination, free up resources for the desirables, and most importantly maintain the climate of fear that is endemic in a totalitarian regime. In terms of attempting to 'improve' the gene pool, “The Final solution” was first geared not towards Jews, but disabled or mentally handicapped people. The Natural Law - the rules by which all humans are simply agents looking to uphold - was that of survival of the fittest.
There's a third option, which is education. Science helps us to evolve, and understand the world. It constantly unravels new questions, which lends more strength to relativity. And if relativity really is the opposite to totalitarian ideology, then you could fairly argue that that's no bad thing.
William Randolph Hearst, Alfred Harmsworth/Lord Northcliffe
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| Citizen Kane - a film produced by and starring Orson Welles that is widely believed to be a biopic of Hearst's own life |
Hearst was born in 1863 to a wealthy family. He took control of the San Francisco Examiner from his father, and then moved to New York to again take over The New York Journal. He later became involved in politics, and ran for mayor and later governor of New York. Hearst completely changed the format of every paper he came in to control of, moving from heavy text-based stuff to front pages full of visually striking photographs. At the peak of Hearst's 'publishing empire' he owned more than 30 newspapers. Hearst hired top quality writers in order to compete with the New York World, owned and published by Joesph Pulitzer. In a particularly cheeky move, he even headhunted writers and a cartoonist from the New York World's Sunday edition, and during the fierce battle for readership Hearst would sanction more and more outlandish stories with apt headlines to grab readers in. The authenticity of such stories could sometimes be dubious, but the practice of yellow journalism is the predecessor of red-top tabloid journalism today. Apart from the 'dubious in origin' thing, because everything you read in the Daily Star is 1000% true facts, folks.
Alfred Harmsworh, a.k.a. Lord Northcliffe, was born in 1865 in Ireland. He was essentially the English Hearst in terms of being a successful publisher. Much like French chemist Louis Pasteur, nobody seemed to think that he was really anything special academically until he ventured out in the work and set up his magazine 'Answers to Correspondents on Every Subject Under the Sun', or simply 'Answers'. It contained bizarre articles asking questions such as whether Jews ride bikes. It also ran competitions and offered its readers cash prizes and
Articles in the Daily Mail weren't to exceed over 250 words - Harmsworth argued that the rising level of literacy meant that people were more able than ever to pick and choose what they read that and that the paper needed to provide short and interesting news articles.
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