GEC 108: Science, Technology and Society

PROBLEMS WITH MODERNITY: HUMAN CONDITION IN THE CURRENT ERA

Modernity is best grasped as a set of relationships that have been assembled in

contextual and situated ways and assumed much of their influence through their
capacity to affect change in often divergent and geographically diverse contexts.

It is generally agreed that ‘modernity’ refers to a powerful set of cultural,

political, economic, and spatial relationships that have fundamentally influenced the
nature of social life, the economy, and the use and experience of time and space. The
general characteristics of these relationships include: an emphasis upon rationality and
science over tradition and myth; a belief in progress and improvement; confidence in
human mastery over nature; a focus on humanism, individuality, and self-
consciousness; a close association to the birth and development of market capitalism;
and a strong reliance upon the state and its legal and governmental institutions.

Since the middle of the eighteenth century, beginning in Northern Europe and
then spreading to every corner of the world, people have become aware of living in an
age radically different from any other and which they have called – with a mixture of
awe and respect, trepidation and nostalgia – ‘the modern age’, or more succinctly,
‘modernity’. We are now all inhabitants of modernity; every last hamlet and remote
island has been touched by the outlook and ideology of a new era. 

According to Husserl, the crisis of modernity is most readily visible in the

disproportion between the natural and the human sciences. The natural sciences have
succeeded in bringing about “a true revolution in the technical mastery of nature,”
because “mathematically exact natural science” has been able to reduce the various
appearances of nature to a “systematic approximation on the basis of elements and
laws that are unconditionally universal”

The human sciences, on the other hand, although “richly developed,” have so far
failed to accomplish the same task for human, that is, for intellectual or spiritual matters,
although this accomplishment was promised by the early modern philosophers who
developed the methodology that made modern natural science possible

The story of our emergence into the modern world can be traced the current
status of humanity in the contemporary with regard to issues of overpopulation, climate
change, social anxieties and anomie.– all of which have ultimately contributed to an
alteration in consciousness, to a change in the way we think and feel.
Human Condition in the current era

Overpopulation

Climate Change

Social Anxieties

Anomie

Overpopulation

The modernization and development of our society is what makes us who we

are. However, modernization and development does have its limitations.

“As you put more and more people onto the world, the value of life not only
declines, it disappears (Isaac Asimov)”.

Take into consideration that within less than one century, the world population
has grown by over 600%. With the broad topic of overpopulation, it branches onto other
factors of life that has a negative connotation on society – malnutrition, CO2 Emission
increases, natural resource depletion, etc.

Overpopulation is a major cause of most of the world’s problems. Whether it is a

question of food shortage, lack of drinking water or energy shortages, every country in
the world is affected by it – or will be. Human beings have a tendency to want more and
more welfare. And there will come a time when population growth and welfare collide.
There is a reasonably good chance that floods of people will trek all over the world
searching for more food and welfare.

Various Causes of Overpopulation

1. The Decline in the Death Rate

2. Agricultural Advancements

3. Better Medical Facilities

4. More Hands to Overcome Poverty

5. Child Labor
6. Technological Advancement in Fertility Treatment

7. Immigration

8. Lack of Family Planning

9. Poor Contraceptives Use

With over 7 billion people living on the planet today and estimates

reaching between 8 and 11 billion by 2050 and up to 15 billion by 2100, the human
population will continue to grow exponentially. Almost all of this growth will take place in
developing countries, where today's 5.3 billion population of less developed regions is
expected to increase to 7.8 billion by 2050. The population of developed countries will
remain largely unchanged, at 1.2 billion, with the exception of the U.S. population, which
is expected to grow by 44% from 2008 to 2050.

How is this human population explosion possible? Medical advancements,

increases in agricultural productivity, poverty and lack of education and family planning
are the main reasons. There has been a decline in mortality rates and a rise in birth
rates, largely due to medical advances, which have provided more effective ways to
control epidemics, better measures to treat critical health ailments, more effective
solutions to infertility problems and safer pregnancies.

Advancements in medicine have also led to an increase in the average life

expectancy of humans and good prenatal care, health care, education and development
programs have improved the chances of survival for both the mother and the baby.
There are also social pressures, mostly from families, to have children and increased
early marriages, which increases the chances of having more children; especially with
an uneducated class where family planning is often not present.

Moreover, modern methods of birth control and family planning usually don't
reach the illiterate populations of society and some cultures promote beliefs and
expectations to marry at a certain age or have a certain number of children. Intensive
farming practices, including an immense use of genetically modified foods, have also
played a significant role in allowing the current growth of the human population and will
likely continue to play such a role in the future.

Finally, immigration, which may not affect the overall world population figure, can
lead to localized overpopulation and cause an uneven distribution of natural resources.
Fatal Effects of Overpopulation

1. Depletion of Natural Resources

2. Degradation of Environment

3. Conflicts and Wars

4. Rise in Unemployment

5. High Cost of Living

6. Pandemics and Epidemics

7. Malnutrition, Starvation and Famine

8. Water Shortage

9. Lower Life Expectancy

10. Extinction

11. Increased Intensive Farming

12. Faster Climate Change

In order to reduce the adverse impacts of overpopulation, mitigation measures,

such as spreading awareness and education about overpopulation, enacting birth
control measures and regulations, and providing universal access to birth control
devices and family planning, must be taken.

In countries like China, the government has put policies in place that regulate the
number of children allowed to a couple, and some leaders and environmentalists are
suggesting that the United Nations implement a China-like one-child policy globally to
help control and reduce overpopulation gradually.

Others, such as Gerard K. O'Neill, Marshall T. Savage and John S. Lewis, have

suggested building space habitats in asteroid belts or the Venusian atmosphere as
viable solutions to successfully sustaining current population growth rates. Stabilizing
human overpopulation, outside of relying on an undesirable United Nations global
takeover of the bedroom or waiting to send future populations to space, is possible
through widespread availability of family planning, spreading awareness on the causes
and effects of overpopulation, providing easier access to birth control devices
and implementing social norms, such as social marketing strategies, to educate the
public, particularly in developing countries, about overpopulation and provide them with
the tools they need to make the decisions they want. 

Worldwide, nearly 40% of pregnancies are unintended, which equates to

about 80 million unintended pregnancies each year and, according to the United
Nations Population Fund, an estimated 350 million women in the poorest countries of
the world either not wanting their last child, not wanting another child or wanting to
space their pregnancies, but lack access to information and affordable means and
services to determine the size and spacing of their families.

Even in the United States, in 2011, almost half of pregnancies were unintended.

The Worldwatch Institute has released State of the World 2012: Moving Toward
Sustainable Prosperity and in the chapter "Nine Population Strategies to Stop Short of 9
Billion," Worldwatch Institute President Robert Engelman argues that, "If most or all of
these strategies were put into effect, global population likely would peak and
subsequently begin a gradual decline before 2050, thereby ensuring sustainable
development of natural resources and global stability into the future.

By implementing policies that defend human rights, promote education, and

reflect the true economic and environmental costs of childbearing, the world can halt
population short of the 9 billion that so many analysts expect." 
Climate Change

Climate Change: The Price of Modernity

It is hard to know where to start when talking about climate change, as it affects
nearly every aspect of human life on this planet, and at every scale.

It affects our:

 Security
 Food and water Systems
 Our energy and economic system
 Ecosystem
 Infrastructure
 Mental health
 Politics

Climate breakdown is a devilish problem for humanity. During the nineteenth

century, a handful of scientists worked out how fossil fuel emissions were warming the
planet.

Around 2200 BC, the Akkadian Empire was wiped off the Earth due to a
sudden climate change. It was a long drought spread over 300 years that brought an
inevitable downfall of that great empire. Akkadians’ fate was sealed by the natural
change in the Earth’s climate but today humans are changing the Earth’s climate and
that could, in the end, prove to have similar consequences as of Akkadians. Climate can
be understood as “the average state of the atmosphere and the underlying land or
water, on time scales of seasons and longer. It is typically described by the statistics of
a set of atmospheric and surface variables, such as temperature, precipitation, wind,
humidity, cloudiness, soil moisture, sea surface temperature, and the concentration and
thickness of sea ice. Whereas, weather could be taken as the state or condition of the
atmosphere at a particular place and time.

Human activities are changing the global climate through a phenomenon called
global warming – i.e., rise of temperature of Earth’s atmosphere. Global warming occurs
due to increase in gases that trap the heat from moving out from Earth’s atmosphere –
generally called the greenhouse gases. Among those gases are: carbon dioxide (CO2),
methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O), water vapor (H2O), ozone (O3) and the
chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). The increase in amounts of the greenhouse gases is a
direct consequence of burning of fossil fuel and deforestation - which indeed are
human-induced phenomena.
 How humans are changing the things on Earth can be gauged from the article
“Human domination of Earth’s ecosystems” published in Science in 1997. The article
suggests that due to human action alone: (1) up to 50% of land has been transformed;
(2) nearly 25% increase in greenhouse gases has occurred; (3) about 60% of
freshwater has been put to use; (4) over 60% nitrogen fixation, which is more than all
natural sources, has happened; (5) close to 25% birds species became extinct and (6)
over 70% fish resources have been over exploited or depleted.

Cumulative result of these human activities is the shrinking of resources and its,
direct or indirect, impact on global climate change. Humans have put, in the last 100
years, an amount of CO2 that is equal to what was put between the last ice age and
pre-industrial period. This CO2 pollutant increase was accompanied by a global
warming of 3°C!

One may argue here is who produces all these pollutants? Maslin identifies two
main sources:

(1) Burning of fossil fuel, to which the industrialized countries contribute to about
22 billion tonnes per year and this comes from energy production, industrial processes
and transport. North America, Asia and Europe produce over 90% of global industrially
generated CO2;

(2) Land use changes, when trees are cut down for purpose of roads, agriculture
and housing, which leaves the land less capable of storing CO2. Here, South America,
Asia and Africa stand out as culprits for producing 4 billion tonnes (nearly 90%) of CO2
due to deforestation.

Some analysts argue that it would be ‘suicidal’ if humanity chooses to ignore the
preservation of natural life support systems and processes. This could only be possible
if we focus on reducing anthropogenic (man-made) pollutants. This asks for a relook at
the basics of human life – adopting a lifestyle that stresses less on consumption and
focuses more on preservation.

This fundamental shift from more energy-demanding living to less energy-

demanding life would not be an easy proposition to accept but that’s the way the climate
of this planet can remain life-friendly. Explosive population growth, shrinking resources
and power-hungry modernity might, in the end, seal the fate of Earth, the only planet in
the entire universe, which has environment to support life.
 The price that the humanity is paying for modernity is, indeed, the steady
destruction of this planet. It is time for all of us to understand that climate change, as in
the words of Al Gore, is a “planetary emergency” and we all must contribute to protect
the world’s environment. Creating awareness about pollutants, their unchecked spread
and consequential degradation of the climate is something that each one of us needs to
assume as a moral responsibility for the betterment of our planet.
Social Anxieties

Social anxiety disorder, also called social phobia, is intense anxiety or fear of
being judged, negatively evaluated, or rejected in a social or performance situation.

People with social anxiety disorder may worry about acting or appearing visibly anxious
(e.g., blushing, stumbling over words), or being viewed as stupid, awkward, or boring.
As a result, they often avoid social or performance situations, and when a situation
cannot be avoided, they experience significant anxiety and distress.

Social anxiety disorder can wreak havoc on the lives of those who suffer from it. For
example:

 Individuals may decline a job opportunity that requires frequent interaction with
new people or avoid going out to eat with friends due to a fear that their hands
will shake when eating or drinking. Symptoms may be so extreme that they
disrupt daily life and can interfere significantly with daily routines, occupational
performance, or social life, making it difficult to complete school, interview and
get a job, and have friendships and romantic relationships.

Despite the availability of effective treatments, fewer than 5% of people of with social
anxiety disorder seek treatment in the year following initial onset and more than a third
of people report symptoms for 10 or more years before seeking help.

“Modernity” is a continuous concept that begins with agriculture, followed by

industrialization, urbanization, and ever-accelerating changes in technology and social
structure. “Modernization” is loosely defined in this review as the conglomeration of a
society’s urbanization, industrialization, technological advancement, secularization,
consumerism, and westernization. “Depression” refers to the symptoms that define
major depressive disorder.

If modernization correlates with an increased risk of depression, then what are

the specific components of modern, western culture contributing to this phenomenon? A
decline in physical well-being is a prime suspect.

Disease-promoting changes in modern daily living include growing waistlines in

relation to poor diet and physical inactivity, as well as endocrine dysfunction from
inadequate sunlight exposure and sleep. A toxic social environment characterized by
increasing competition, inequality, and social isolation may also contribute to a
depressiogenic milieu. Each of these aspects of the contemporary environment is
associated with diseases of modernity and affects depression incidence and treatment.
 Available epidemiologic evidence equivocally suggests that prevalence has risen
over the past century, especially in recent decades, with younger cohorts exhibiting an
earlier age-of-onset and increased lifetime risk. Parallel lines of evidence indicate that
modernization is generally associated with higher rates of depression.

The obesity epidemic and its underlying drivers of poor diet and sedentary
lifestyle appear to directly and indirectly contribute to an increased risk. Sunlight and
sleep deprivation characteristic of modern-day living are also candidate mediators of
rising rates chronic disease and depression. Greater competition, inequality, and
loneliness are the principal factors of the modern, western social environment blamed
for rising rates of psychopathology, including depression.

Put another way, the modern man would likely be much more resilient to the toils
of living if he were physically fit, well-rested, and free of chronic disease and financial
stress, surrounded by close family and friends, and felt pride in his meaningful work.
The temporal, cultural, and mechanistic evidence presented here prompt consideration
for depression as a disease of modernity.

As long as people with a dual diagnosis for social anxiety and depression follow
their recovery routines faithfully, and continue to consult with mental health
professionals about any changes in their conditions, their prospects for long-term
recovery are excellent. Social anxiety and depression are difficult to manage without
expert help, but with high-quality treatment those who’ve suffered from both can finally
get their lives back on track.
Anomie

Anomie, also spelled anomy, in societies or individuals, a condition of instability

resulting from a breakdown of standards and values or from a lack of purpose or ideals.

The term was introduced by the French sociologist Émile Durkheim in his study

of suicide. He believed that one type of suicide (anomic) resulted from the breakdown of
the social standards necessary for regulating behavior. When a social system is in a
state of anomie, common values and common meanings are no longer understood or
accepted, and new values and meanings have not developed. According to Durkheim,
such a society produces, in many of its members, psychological states characterized by
a sense of futility, lack of purpose, and emotional emptiness and despair. Striving is
considered useless, because there is no accepted definition of what is desirable.

The American sociologist Robert K. Merton studied the causes of anomie, or

normlessness, finding it severest in people who lack an acceptable means of achieving
their personal goals. Goals may become so important that if the institutionalized means
—i.e., those means acceptable according to the standards of the society—
fail, illegitimate means might be used.

Greater emphasis on ends rather than means creates a stress that leads to a
breakdown in the regulatory structure—i.e., anomie. If, for example, a society impelled
its members to acquire wealth yet offered inadequate means for them to do so, the
strain would cause many people to violate norms. The only regulating agencies would
be the desire for personal advantage and the fear of punishment. Social behaviour
would thus become unpredictable. Merton defined a continuum of responses to anomie
that ranged from conformity to social innovation, ritualism, retreatism, and, finally,
rebellion. Delinquency, crime, and suicide are often reactions to anomie.

Although Durkheim’s concept of anomie referred to a condition of relative

normlessness of a society or social group, other writers have used the term to refer to
conditions of individuals. In this psychological usage, anomie means the state of mind of
a person who has no standards or sense of continuity or obligation and has rejected all
social bonds. Individuals may feel that community leaders are indifferent to their needs,
that society is basically unpredictable and lacking order, and that goals are not being
realized. They may also have a sense of futility and a conviction that associates are not
dependable sources of support.
 Anomie is a social condition in which there is a disintegration or disappearance of
the norms and values that were previously common to the society. The concept, thought
of as “normlessness”, was developed by the founding sociologist, Émile Durkheim. He
discovered, through research that anomie occurs during and follows periods of drastic
and rapid changes to the social, economic or political structures of society. It is, per
Durkheim’s view, a transition phase wherein the values and norms common during one
period are no longer valid, but new ones have not evolved to take their place.

Though the concept of anomie is most closely associated with Durkheim's study
of suicide, in fact, he first wrote about it in his 1893 book The Division of Labor in
Society. In this book, Durkheim wrote about an anomic division of labor, a phrase he
used to describe a disordered division of labor in which some groups no longer fit in,
though they did in the past. Durkheim saw that this occurred as European societies
industrialized and the nature of work changed along with the development of a more
complex division of labor.

He framed this as a clash between the mechanical solidarity of

homogeneous, traditional societies and the organic solidarity that keeps more complex
societies together. According to Durkheim, anomie could not occur in the context of
organic solidarity because this heterogeneous form of solidarity allows for the division of
labor to evolve as needed, such that none are left out and all play a meaningful role.

Durkheim's theory of anomie proved influential to American sociologist Robert K.

Merton, who pioneered the sociology of deviance and is considered one of the most
influential sociologists in the United States. Building on Durkheim's theory that anomie is
a social condition in which people's norms and values no longer sync with those of
society, Merton created the structural strain theory, which explains how anomie lead to
deviance and crime. The theory states that when society does not provide the
necessary legitimate and legal means that allow people to achieve culturally valued
goals, people seek out alternative means that may simply break from the norm, or may
violate norms and laws.

For example, if society does not provide enough jobs that pay living wage so that
people can work to survive, many will turn to criminal methods of earning a living. So for
Merton, deviance and crime are in large part, a result of Anomie, a state of social
disorder. People who lived during periods of anomie typically feel disconnected from
their society because they no longer see the norms and values that they hold dear
reflected in society itself.
Other Explanation

As with bureaucracy, so with most other features: they show the two faces
of modernity. One is dynamic, forward-looking, progressive, promising unprecedented
abundance, freedom, and fulfillment. The other shows the dark side of modernity, the
new problems that modernity brings in its wake by virtue of the very scale and novelty of
its achievements. Social progress is matched by social pathology.

Thus, the historic achievement of becoming able to feed a large population

brings with it crowding, pollution, and environmental destruction. Quiet, privacy, and
space become scarce and increasingly treasured commodities. Massed together in
cities, seeking rest and recreation, the populations of industrial societies force open the
whole world to tourism. Soon every rural haven, every sunswept coast, is turned into an
administered holiday camp, each a uniform replica of the rest. The industrial principle
of mass production and distribution can readily be turned from the production of goods
to that of services, including those of leisure and entertainment.

Urban-industrial life offers unprecedented opportunities for individual mobility and

personal freedom. It also promises the attainment of dazzling prizes, in wealth and
honours, for those with the enterprise and talent to reach for them. The other side of the
coin is the loneliness of the city dweller and the desolation of failure for those many who
cannot win any of the prizes. As Durkheim analyzed it, the individual is placed in the
pathological condition of anomie. He experiences “the malady of infinite aspirations.”
The decline of religion and community removes the traditional restraints on appetite,
allowing it to grow morbidly and without limit. At the same time the competitive modern
order that stimulates these unreal expectations provides insufficient and unequal means
for their realization. The result is an increase in suicide, crime, and mental disorder.

Industrial work, too, exacts a high price for the enormous increase in productivity
brought about by the intensified division of labor. Karl Marx offered the most systematic
analysis of this price under the heading of “alienation.” The industrial worker feels
estranged from the activity of work because his task is so fragmented, undemanding,
and meaningless. He does not realize himself, his human potential, in his work. Unlike
traditional craft work, for instance, it does not call on his constructive and creative
faculties.

The industrial worker also feels alienated from the product of his work, for he has
no control over its manufacture, nor over the terms and conditions of its disposal. As the
dynamic sum of its parts, the industrial system of production is phenomenally powerful;
but this power is achieved at the cost of reducing one class of those parts, the human
workers, to mere “hands,” mere semblances of humanity.
 Eventually, Marx hoped, the surplus wealth produced by the industrial system
would free workers altogether from the necessity of work; but until that time the
degraded condition of the worker would be the most eloquent testimony to the
dehumanization wrought by the system.

Marx’s optimism about the future was perhaps as excessive as his pessimism
about his present. But he was by no means the only one who felt that industrial
society demanded too high a price of many of its members. Repeatedly, industrialism
was found to have created new and apparently ineradicable pockets of poverty.

Despite steady economic growth, it was the persistent finding throughout the

industrial world that between 15 and 20 percent of the population remained permanently
below officially defined levels of poverty. It appeared that industrialism by its very
mechanism of growth created a “new poor,” who for whatever reason—deprived
backgrounds, low enterprise, low intelligence—were unable to compete according to the
rules of the industrial order. The communal and kinship supports of the past having
withered away, there was no alternative for the failed and the rejected but to become
claimants and pensioners of the state.

There were other victims, too. The small nuclear family offered, to a greater

extent than ever before, the opportunity for intense privacy and emotional fulfillment. But
the very intensity of these relationships seemed to put an intolerable burden on it.
Added to that, the family survived as the only remaining primary group in society, the
only social unit where relationships remained primarily personal and face-to-face.

Elsewhere bureaucratic or commercial relationships prevailed. The nuclear family

was called upon to do all the work of restoration and repair of its members on their
return from the impersonal, large-scale, bureaucratic world of work and, increasingly,
play. Under this unprecedented pressure it began to show all the classic symptoms of
distress. Adolescent alienation and teenage rebellion became accepted features of
modern family life. Divorce rates soared; and when people sought to remarry—“the
triumph of hope over experience”—their second marriages proved even less stable than
their first. There was a steady increase in the incidence of one-parent families, usually
headed by a woman.

Modernization, finally, put a number of new political and cultural problems on the
agenda. The plethora of choices about how to spend leisure time and
the urbanization of life gave rise to so-called post materialist values in advanced
industrial societies, reflecting the greater importance attached to quality-of-life issues
such as entertainment, self-improvement, and the environment.
 The decline of local communities, the great growth in the scale of all social
institutions, and the acceleration of political centralization put a strain on civic loyalties
and the willingness of people to participate in political life. As mass political parties
came to monopolize civic life, individual citizens retreated increasingly into private life.
Political apathy and low turnouts at elections became matters of serious concern, calling
into question the democratic claims of modern liberal societies. A similar concern
centered on the spread of mass communications, which in the 20th century came to
dominate the cultural life of modern societies. The uniformity and conformity bred by the
press, radio, and television threatened—albeit passively rather than directly—
the pluralism and diversity on which liberal society prided itself and which it regarded as
its chief security against totalitarian challenge.

Together, political and cultural centralization and uniformity were interpreted as

evidence of the creation of a “mass society.” Tocqueville had warned that individuals
lacking strong intermediate institutions with which to identify would become atomized
and in their anonymity and powerlessness might look to the protection of strong men
and strong governments. Once more, this outcome had to be seen as a possibility, not
inevitability. Pluralism remained strong in many societies. But the rise and success of
totalitarian movements in some industrial societies showed that the tendencies were
real and suggested that they were present in some degree in all modern societies.
 Conclusion

Though modernity may have made us materially abundant, it has imposed a

heavy emotional toll: it has alienated us, bred envy, increased shame, separated us
from one another, bewildered us, forced us to grin in authentically and left us restless
and enraged.

  Fortunately, we do not need to suffer alone. Our condition – though it presents

itself to each one of us as a personal affliction – is at heart the work of an age, not of
our own minds. By learning to diagnose our condition, we can come to accept that we
are not so much individually demented as living in times of unusually intense and
societally-generated anxieties. We can accept that modernity is a disease – and that
understanding it will be the cure.