The Modern Era
The Modern era changed society a great deal and laid key foundations for society and culture as we know it today, in the postmodern era. Meyrowitz says that in the modern era, unity results because of writing. The ability to record events and stories laid the groundwork for institutions, higher education, and globalization as a whole. As part of the modern era, there became the ability to rapidly disseminate information and mass produce communication mediums through newspaper, radio, television, and film. With these advancements, people began to intensely value the improvement of society as a whole. The way this was carried out was through standardized and public education. Basic reading and math skills were taught in school and specialized and higher education were essential to produce specialized knowledge.
The industrial revolution was a key component in the widespread availability of information. It contributed to the growth of cities, creation of mixed economies, and in turn made it important for society to learn to manage its resources, all while producing a rampant construction of mass culture, globally. This term would be coined what we know today as globalization. As a result, large corporations emerged and national identity became something people cared about. Violence was never again within only the local community, but between nations and large groups. Institutions arose because of industrial society and they all depended greatly on mass communication to function and advance.
Newspaper, television, radio and film allowed for multiple news outlets and information platforms. New societal traditions were shared and followed through these new media forms, as America had implemented the new nine to five workday and forty hour work week. The implementation of this social construct created a new thing called leisure time. Americans now had time to kill which meant they started to go to the movies, play sports, and read literature when they were not at work. When they came home from work, it became the norm to tune in to a radio show or the televised news to gain an understanding about what was going on in the world. News institutions and highly educated scientists were sharing new information with people every day, making institutions seem highly knowledgeable and important.
Institutions are organized sectors of society that held power and managed the day-to-day life of people. Examples of institutions are higher education, healthcare, news, and government agencies. They were determined to create order within an otherwise “chaotic” society. The nation state emerged in the Modern era as well which is where all of the institutions gather under the powerful control and central authority of the national government. Because nation states looked different depending on where you lived, there became a sense of identity linked to the people under their rule. Institutions and the government worked simultaneously to construct society on a national level and the citizens of each nation followed suit and learned to comply.
Because of nationalism, a newer form of violence emerges; this time being between countries. World War I and World War II are prime examples of nationalism. Take WWII for example. There were mainly five powerful countries (Great Britain, American, Soviet Union, France, and Germany) all in a heated war together trying to dissepate Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany. Because of institutions and the desire to advance society as part of our culture, the idea of Eugenics that was born in America, took a turn under Hitler’s dictatorship across the Atlantic in Germany.
Eugenics was a set of beliefs aimed at improving the genetic quality of a population by “selective breeding to make desirable heritable characteristics within that population”. In the USA, eugenics was heavily endorsed by the federal government and institutions alike. Eugenics fit the ideals of a master narrative. The science of eugenics was a theory and mythology that the government endorsed and society adhered to because of social constructs. In Germany, the sterilization aspect of eugenics was used aggressively compared to how we used it in the United States. In the US, sterilization procedures were used to prevent moronic and disabled people from giving birth to a child in a world that could not support them. Hitler, on the other hand, used it to wipe out an entire religion in hopes to make society adhere to his ideals for an extraordinary human race. The media heavily endorsed eugenics through all dominant communication technologies and publications. Newspaper, TV, radio, and film all constructed national forms of propaganda to be used during WWII. The globalization of this propaganda fed the fire of the war throughout the 30s and into the mid 40s.
The Modern era was an important time in American history because it essentially put in place all of the baseline knowledge we have about society and its functions in the postmodern era. The rapid spread of information just got faster as society progressed. The industrial revolution was the kickstart of a capitalist society that we still use today. All the while nationalism and master narratives dictated our technological advancements and individualized American culture.
