Definition of Modernity

Modernity in modern day terms basically means new technology, transportation, materials, sources of power and energy. These elements led to the rise in modern day life in the 20th century for people living in the Western part of the world.

The following quote explains clearly who a modernist is: "Modernists, as I portray them, are at once at home in this world and at odds with it. They celebrate and identify with the triumphs of modern science, art, technology, economics, politics: with all the activities that enable mankind to do what the Bible said only God could do: to 'make all things new'. At the same time, however, they deplore modernization's betrayal of its own human promise. Modernists demand deeper and more radical rewards: modern men and women must become the subjects as well as the objects of modernization; they must learn to change the world that is changing them, and to make it their own. Modernists know this is possible: the fact that the world has changed so much is proof that it can change still more. They can, in a striking phrase of Hegel's, 'look the negative in the face and live with it' ... If everything must go, then let it go: modern people have the power to create a better world than the world they have lost." Marshall Berman, "Why Modernism Still Matters" in Scott Lash & Jonathan Friedman, Modernity and Identity. Blackwell, 1992

Modernity and Modernism are different no matter how similar they may seem. Modernism is the term for a number of cultural revolutions in the Western society through art, literature, music during the 19th and early 20th centuries. Through knowledge and self awareness, the term defines how humans molded the world they lived in from the practices and nuances in which they lived by. "Modernists are critiques of modernity. they draw upon the archaic, the classic, the exotic and the 'primitive' to develop their critiques. Modernism does not feel at home in Modernity. Its creative drive is constructed from components drawn from an idealised past or a utopianised future, not from Modernity's present, which it finds banal or life threatening. Yet each modernist critique of Modernity invariably fails. During its creative avant-garde moment it seeks to make Modernity endurable, liveable. As its energy wanes its traces may be discerned in Modernity. For Modernism's critique is not sustained; it folds over into a celebration of Modernity. It begins with its Picassos and ends with its Warhols tirelessly repeating themselves. Then hopefully, but not inevitably, a renewed avant-garde may appear again, perhaps as the strange child of cultural imperialism, and in another part of the globe." (Smith 12)

"Definitions and Views of the Modern, Modernism, and Modernity." 29 Oct 2008 <http://pegasus.cc.ucf.edu/~janzb/courses/hum3255/modernviews1.htm>.