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2 Modernity: The Betrayer ODERNITY, which once had a sense ofhistorical inevitability about it, lost its cultural preeminence during the last third of the 20th century. Often, as in the resurgence of fundamentalism in Iran, one could not distinguish antimodernism from anti-Americanism, the United States having long epitomized the triumph of secularization. Suddenly our society's accepted, unbounded faith in human accomplishment began to seem ludicrous. Each day's telecasts brought into our homes numbing evidence that, along with its many benefits, modernity has also created new and intense forms of human misery. The disillusionment touches us in ways as local as the threat of drugs, violence, or the loss of meaning, and as global as pollution, terrorism, or nuclear destruction. We did not naively believe modernity would create no new problems, but we did assume that its spread meant the continual improvement of life, for no human problem appeared to be beyond its eventual competence. Yet people, institutions, and ideologies have so regularly disappointed us that hope, the driving force of a prior generation, has become rather a luxury, and cynicism and depression far more common. The term "postmodern" arose to describe the diverse movements that stemmed from our disillusionment with the modernists' messianic humanism. We Americans share a special pain because we believed our country better than others. Our disillusionment with democracy became clearly visible in the late 1960s. Despite a strong civil rights lawt blacks and other minority groups found that prejudice remained brutally strong, an impression relentlessly reinforced by experience. Since then, regardless of economic fluctuation, the gap between the white majority and non-white minorities remains shockingly large. Similar disparities continue in the opportunities and compensation available to men and to women. The struggle over the continuation of the Vietnam War made suspicion rather than respect the common attitude toward government; and the unending scandals of official corruption, from Watergate through the Iran-Contra revelations and beyond, desacralized the practice of democracy. Even pluralism, which we embraced as giving our society an appreciation of human diversity, now pains us by its even-handed legitimation of vice along with what we had long thought virtue. Every institution we had 20 2 Modernity: The Betrayer ODERNITY, which once had a sense ofhistorical inevitability about it, lost its cultural preeminence during the last third of the 20th century. Often, as in the resurgence of fundamentalism in Iran, one could not distinguish antimodernism from anti-Americanism, the United States having long epitomized the triumph of secularization. Suddenly our society's accepted, unbounded faith in human accomplishment began to seem ludicrous. Each day's telecasts brought into our homes numbing evidence that, along with its many benefits, modernity has also created new and intense forms of human misery. The disillusionment touches us in ways as local as the threat of drugs, violence, or the loss of meaning, and as global as pollution, terrorism, or nuclear destruction. We did not naively believe modernity would create no new problems, but we did assume that its spread meant the continual improvement of life, for no human problem appeared to be beyond its eventual competence. Yet people, institutions, and ideologies have so regularly disappointed us that hope, the driving force of a prior generation, has become rather a luxury, and cynicism and depression far more common. The term "postmodern" arose to describe the diverse movements that stemmed from our disillusionment with the modernists' messianic humanism. We Americans share a special pain because we believed our country better than others. Our disillusionment with democracy became clearly visible in the late 1960s. Despite a strong civil rights lawt blacks and other minority groups found that prejudice remained brutally strong, an impression relentlessly reinforced by experience. Since then, regardless of economic fluctuation, the gap between the white majority and non-white minorities remains shockingly large. Similar disparities continue in the opportunities and compensation available to men and to women. The struggle over the continuation of the Vietnam War made suspicion rather than respect the common attitude toward government; and the unending scandals of official corruption, from Watergate through the Iran-Contra revelations and beyond, desacralized the practice of democracy. Even pluralism, which we embraced as giving our society an appreciation of human diversity, now pains us by its even-handed legitimation of vice along with what we had long thought virtue. Every institution we had 20 MODERNITY: THE BETRAYER 21 expected to nurture character, not excepting that most sacred symbol of Americanism, the family, has shown...

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