Both, actually.
World War Two, 1939-1945, was both the Apogee and the Nadir of the Enlightenment-Modernity Project.
In '21st Century-Speak', 1945 saw Peak Modernity staring down at a long, slow, slide into oblivion.
In the early 1940s, most middle class members of world civilization supported the Modernity project, almost without question.
But the war wasn't going as predicted, on any side.
And while 'Power Over Others' isn't really intrinsic to Modernity ( Pol Pot did pretty good in that department with pre-modern shovels and sticks), Precision is truly intrinsic to Modernity.
Put simply:
"Modernity without Precision is not Modernity".
The flustered Modernity supporters had enough self-created problems of imprecision of their own, without needing a dying doctor and his tiny team flaunting their own defiance of Modernity in everyone's face.
Martin Henry Dawson piqued Peak Modernity.
In return, Peak Modernity supporters, when it came to write the official and semi-official histories of World War Two, never forgave him.
But our world, today, looks a lot more like his than it does theirs, so I guess he got the last laugh....
PS: a note to grammarians : I look forward to explanations to flustered writers not to confuse 'Peking Modernity' with 'Piquing Modernity'. Puns, you gotta love 'em ---- at least if you read me !
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Why My Urgency ?
- Michael Marshall
- Nova Scotia
- Histories of WWII all start with the presumption that it was a war raged between humans and human ideologies, with Nature’s climate and geography as side issues easily surmounted.My blog, on the contrary will only accept that it was conflict between humans and their ideology that STARTED the war but that it was the barriers thrown up by Mother Nature (geography & climate) that turned it into a war that lasted between 6 to 15 years and expanded to thoroughly involve all the world’s oceans and continents. High Modernity may have started the war convinced that Nature had been conquered and was about to be soon replaced by human Synthetic Autarky and that only human Tiger tanks and human Typhoon planes were to be feared. But by the end, more and more people had lost their naive faith in Scientism and were beginning to accept that humanity was thoroughly entangled with both the Nature of plants, animals & microbes as well as the Nature of so called “lesser” humanity. By 1965, the world was definitely entering the Age of Entanglement. Billions still believed - at least in part -with the promises of High Modernity but intellectually & emotionally, it was no longer dominant...
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