modernism
Article
modernism is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 4 times across 4 issues between October 04, 2021 and July 01, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as “And since modernism is all they know, even their sincere attempts to do traditional design work tends to generate kitsch”; “Modernism certainly proceeded as if human nature had changed”; “Modernism wanted to do more than just afflict the comfortable”. It most often appears alongside China, 20th century, America.
Metadata
- Category: Concepts
- Mention count: 4
- Issue count: 4
- First seen: October 04, 2021
- Last seen: July 01, 2025
Appears In
- Highlights From The Comments On Modern Architecture
- 22
- Against The Cultural Christianity Argument
- Links For July 2025
Related Pages
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- China (3 shared issues)
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- 20th century (2 shared issues)
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- America (2 shared issues)
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- Art Nouveau (2 shared issues)
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- Christianity (2 shared issues)
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- Germany (2 shared issues)
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- India (2 shared issues)
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- New York Times (2 shared issues)
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- Twitter (2 shared issues)
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- United States (2 shared issues)
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- wokeness (2 shared issues)
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- 1880 - 1930 period (1 shared issues)
External Links
Source Context
Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.
And since modernism is all they know, even their sincere attempts to do traditional design work tends to generate kitsch. That goes to your comment about Poundbury below.
Modernism certainly proceeded *as if* human nature had changed. All the tricks that artists had used for millennia to please the human palate were cast aside. In painting, realistic depictions gave way to freakish distortions of shape and color and then to abstract grids, shapes, dribbles, splashes, and, in the $200,000 painting featured in the recent comedy *Art*, a blank white canvas. In literature, omniscient narration, structured plots, the orderly introduction of characters, and general readability were replaced by a stream of consciousness, events presented out of order, baffling characters and causal sequences, subjective and disjointed narration, and difficult prose. In poetry, the use of rhyme, meter, verse structure, and clarity were frequently abandoned. In music, conventional rhythm and melody were set aside in favor of atonal, serial, dissonant, and twelve-tone compositions. In architecture, ornamentation, human scale, garden space, and traditional craftsmanship went out the window (or would have if the windows could have been opened), and buildings were "machines for living" made of industrial materials in boxy shapes.
But modernism wanted to do more than just afflict the comfortable. Its glorification of pure form and its disdain for easy beauty and bourgeois pleasure had an explicit rationale and a political and spiritual agenda.
EPCOT was to be a utopian autocratic company town completely controlled by Walt Disney himself and featuring commercial, residential, industrial and recreational centers, connected by a mass multimodal transportation system. Based on ideas stemming from modernism and futurism, it was designed to replace the inefficient infrastructure created by urban sprawl that was growing in the United States in the 1960s. Needing the flexibility and independence to establish and maintain his own specialized, personalized government, Walt lobbied the Florida Government to create what became the Reedy Creek Improvement District.
Only two things block me from becoming a Cultural Theist. The first is boring: I hate asserting false things, even if they're "practical". I don't ask anyone else to share that particular quirk. So I find the second more interesting: the Cultural Christianity argument hinges on the proposition that all liberal societies without Christianity will eventually collapse into wokeness and postmodernism. But Christianity also eventually collapsed into wokeness and postmodernism. So if they're both equally doomed, why not at least be truthful by advocating for the virtuous liberal society I wanted in the first place?
That is, suppose I were to advocate a return to 1890s norms of (let's say) liberalism and beautiful art. The Cultural Christian would tell me this is doomed, because the 1890s cultural package eventually fell apart and became the 20th century cultural package of wokeness and postmodernism (and fascism, socialism, New Dealism, etc). Therefore, I should support Christianity.
But the Christian cultural package also fell apart and became the current post-Christian world. This wasn't just a one-time coincidence either. Protestantism gave way to modernism in Scandinavia, Germany, and the US. Catholicism gave way to modernism in Spain, Italy, and Latin America. Orthodoxy gave way to modernism in Greece, Eastern Europe, and Russia (with a slight Putinist resurrection-in-name-only which hardly seems to have produced a flourishing liberal society). Meanwhile in China, the local mix of Buddhism/Confucianism/Taoism gave way to modernism. In South East Asia, Buddhism gave way to modernism. Only 10% of Israeli Jews are ultra-Orthodox, and it would be lower if they didn't breed so fast. India is moderately Hindu but still noticeably modern. Even the Middle East is gradually becoming less Muslim.
I’d always heard modernism was a reaction to the trauma of the World Wars, but it looks like the rhyme decline started well before then.