Modernity can be defined as the present stage of history. World War I led us past the early 20th Century idea of "Modernism" to "Post-Modernism". It would appear by this word that we feel we have been living outside history or perhaps at the end of it. Perhaps it is because we feel we have no frontiers left to push or that most ideological battles seem to have been fought or that for the past 50 years society has lived under a viable threat of human destruction. While we recognize the harm done by many of the manifestations of human egotism, one has remained unexplored: that of "time-centricity" for lack of a better term.

A generation was lost in the "war to end all wars" and by the great Spanish Flu that followed. This may have been the time and the shock that unbounded us as participants in human history. Society was devastated and traditions lost their continuity as a generation re-invented itself in an uncertain time. The loss of this continuity afforded this generation freedom from the past. This was our inheritance. Vocabulary continues to be an expression of this discontinuity whether as a cause or an effect. This first generation defined itself by that decade, "the roaring twenties", followed by every generation that named a decade distinguishing it only in its narrow context. What follows the Nineties? We only now think about that. Furthermore, will we talk about "Post-Post-Modernism" or "Generation Z plus 1"? Will 20th Century Fox or Gateway 2000 become antiquated? Our vocabulary does not account for this passage of time and therefore must change come the next century.

In the name of progress, with this myopic vision, we lost track of where progress was leading. Progress has been a mantra of the past several centuries, but it appears that only in this last Century we have failed to realize that progress implies a future. Canadian author Marshall McLuhan once wrote, "Technology is a reflection of those who create it." The fact that our technology, before some eleventh hour panic, was unable to function past the 20th Century serves as evidence that we as a society must undergo some transformation as well. The Y2K bug was simply a failure to include two digits to complete our current date, but here lies a problem: a philosophy existing in society/business to think only of short-run gains at the expense of long-run costs. Perhaps we are too competitive as a society and in this sink or swim environment no one has the luxury to stop and think to where we should be swimming. The "Y2K Bug" may just be one obvious manifestation of this zeitgeist, but what is most concerning is that while the Y2K bug may have been caught in time, we may now have leaped headlong into this century with a society more profoundly infested.

We are at a crux as this last century ends. Can we return to the path of human history from which we have departed? Can we reacquaint ourselves with this former path that recognized the past and accounted for the future? Perhaps just as our "modern" technological infrastructure must be reprogrammed so too must we, as a society destined for a new time.

The golden century's ideological time capsule is now closed and buried. How will the future view our "modern" world and us? Will we be seen as a naïve, arrogant and detached generation who ignored their place in history? Time will force us to change, but will we be wise enough to know which ideas to retain as we are forced to abandon others? Will more mature ideas such as Post-Modernism die, as we have been reborn into the 21st Century perhaps full of optimism and hope?

More than any before us we lived in a time not a place, a century not a world. The century has ended, but is it also the end of that world?

Copyright © 2000 Jeremy R. Friesen All Rights Reserved

Jeremy Friesen is a graduate student in the Faculty of Economics at the University of McGill in Montreal, Quebec. He is enamoured with the idea that reason is an emolument to amoralism and social ignorance.