post modernism and cultural baggage

i am revising what i know, so that i can put my thoughts in context. if you already know the following, skip it.

before the first world war in 1914, things made sense in the world- religion, the equation between powerful and powerless as it manifested in humans through the equation of god and mortals. post world war II, people questioned everything around them- religion and the raison d'etre of human existence. the reasons are as follows:

• industrial revolution in the 20th century and hence the urbanization
• the Charles Darwin theory (Origin Of Species)
• Freud and Jung's psychoanalysis (the conscious, the subconscious and the unconscious, like wise- the ego, the superego and the id. man's unconscious is supervised by an unknown force)
• Scientific progression (men could fly and carriages were without horses)
• the most important- mass massacre, dirty politics and the paraphernalia of the world wars. from that stemmed modernism.

the word 'modernism' coined by Bernard Bergonzi in 1971 and Ezra Pound said 'Make It New'. because of world wars, the countries all over the world became closer and aware of each other. nothing was absolute- like god and the belief systems attached with it, everything was questionable and relative (like truth- there is no absolute truth but one and that is death- everything else is influenced by a person's circumstantial, socio-economic and political context).

the quest of finding 'who are we?' gave birth to study of anthropology. before that it never existed because God had created humans. the study of anthropology dug out the concept of myths. the modern literature makes ample use of local and global myths in their works- 'The Potrait Of Artist As A Young Man'. all these elements triggered the irrationality of human beings and their behaviour. people were grappling with the knowledge flood. after 1930's came post modernism- existentialism and nihilism.

Friedrick Nietsczhe's philosophy comes first in minds of those who think existentialism. 'Man is Superman'. he rejected the christian morality and the doctrine of the power of god. if religion taught us that god created man then Nietzche taught us that man created god because society has to have ethics.

therefore, in modern age roughly beginning in USA and Europe in 1900 culminated in post modernism till roughly around 1950's. Science, Anthropology, Philosophy and Psychology developed.

well, if you are wondering the India has not featured in any of this intellectual movements then, you will also notice that she got her independence in 1947. which means when the world was struggling with "who are we?", we were making "Us". we had problems in making our country and finding our indiviuality which we lost in those 150 years of colonization. this cultural baggage of enslavement is harming us still where we become the passive consumers of many things in society. it is harmful because injustice becomes rampant and we are immobilised. we carry enormous fear of authority and are afraid of questioning.

thank you- Mrs Snober Satarawala- my M.A teacher (Wadia College- Pune), from whose notes i religiously wrote the blog