Modernism in Society and the Human Mind

William Calvin begins to describe modernity by expressing his interest in the changes in the human mind as a result of our evolution and our expanding civilizations. He writes of the evolution of the mind to a modern thinking state that is experienced by intelligent people in industrialized societies. The idea behind language, the ability to plan ahead, the search for coherence in society, and our human logic. He expresses this in four points; "1. Our language instincts have become strong enough for orators to hold us spellbound, to urge us off to war. 2. Our multistage planning is now good enough to prepare for a prolonged war, not just raids. 3. Our compulsive search for coherence often results in finding hidden patterns where none exist. Astrology is one of the more innocuous examples (compared to religious cults, more later) of our tendency to find patterns in random noise. 4. Our logic is so impressive (when it works) that we can convince ourselves that there are no other possibilities than what we have eliminated with our logic – even though the history of both science and politics is full of examples where we were blindsided, or where our logic instead led us down a garden path into a mire" (Calvin Chap. 9). These concepts are the basis of modern society. The evolution of the human mind, and our theories as to how to function in the world, is what makes a modern society. A society consists of the people in it, and what they think.

William H. Calvin, A Brief History of the Mind (Oxford University Press 2004), http://WilliamCalvin.com/BHM/ch9.htm