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255 Conclusion Shaping Modernity It’s time to adjust the adage, given what we know about the wide history of modernity. Those who do not know the past may indeed be condemned to repeat some of the past’s mistakes. That is the conventional statement, still valid. More to the point, however: those who do not know the past cannot really appreciate the forces that actively shape the present. They cannot fully understand the context for their own lives. The formation of modernity is a long process, and we’re still very much enmeshed in it. Ongoing adjustments to modernity—including unraveling some first responses—run deep in contemporary societies. As more countries mount the modernity bandwagon, we can expect issues and responses to expand. It is impossible to know exactly how other societies will define their modernities—some common basic directions are predictable, even in areas as personal as gender or sexuality, but great variety will persist. But the theme of modernity reactions is becoming increasingly global, and while the United States is farther along in the process than some, it’s still arguably in a common pool. The challenges are not, for the most part, headline grabbers. The news flashes and the policy crises still center in those areas where modernity has clearly worsened the global experience—as in environmental disasters or the enhancement of the ugliness of war and civil strife. Or they derive from shorter-term, though often agonizing, fluctuations within the modern framework, notably in response to periodic economic downturns (which had also occurred, though in different forms, in premodern contexts as well). Or they apply to more recent changes taking place beneath the modernity umbrella, such as the transition from the Cold War to the United States’ brief monopoly of great power status to the rise of newly 256  Conclusion assertive—not necessarily hostile—powers like China and Brazil. The palpable rise of fear in American society, though a current testament to the frustrations of modernity in part, obviously also owes more to a largely contemporary concatenation of forces, including new economic challenges and terrorism, than to modernity broadly construed. We live in a society and an age glued to change. Quite apart from current headlines, we indulge a variety of futurologists bent on showing how the present is virtually unrecognizable in terms of even the recent past, and of course how different in turn everything will be by 2050. Often, these visions are hampered by historical ignorance or exaggeration—even globalization is not as totally novel as some pundits make it out to be. But it is true: change is rapid, whether we focus on the habits of the current generation of expert texters, or the probable further shifts in technology , or the rise of India and China as against American assumptions of global predominance. There’s every reason to ponder what a (somewhat) altered future will hold, and how we can prepare. This book, however, has emphasized a different slice of the present: its deep and ongoing links to a profound and continuing process of modern change. It has argued that our future will depend—along with the new technologies and generational styles—on how well we cope with this inescapable process of adjusting to modernity, from definable drawbacks to false starts to excessive expectations. For beneath the headlines and the eye-catching forecasts, there’s much to ponder about our links to the transformations of modernity, even though we’ve been grappling as a society for many decades, and a good bit still to revise. The measurable benefits of modernity must not be forgotten , including their partial relationship to reported happiness. But the magnitude of change itself has inevitably provoked confusions and defensive reactions, and these have not yet entirely dissipated. The challenge of interpreting the modern work experience remains intriguing, and even though some improvements can be registered after initial deterioration with industrialization, a number of clear issues persist, including the ongoing difficulty of really focusing on meanings in work as opposed to external compensations. And there are plenty of other problem areas. While illustrations can be multiplied, the cases we have explored show how easy it has been—not just through general overoptimism but around specific new trends in childhood or death—to complicate modern achievements with new expectations and a sense that results still lag measurably behind what a fully modern society ought to achieve. [18.191.147.190] Project...

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