Jonathan Frei

Here’s the second installment in my Daily *ism series. Although, very destructive in many ways to Western culture and tradition, it still was a the movement that paved the way (or was the creation of) many great works of literature that I admire. I find that modernism, as an artistic movement, did produce art that was in far better alignment with the society it inhabited than the romantic period that preceded it.

Modernism, in its broadest definition, is modern thought, character, or practice. More specifically, the term describes the modernist movement, its set of cultural tendencies and array of associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Modernism was a revolt against the conservative values of realism.^[2][3][4] Arguably the most paradigmatic motive of modernism is the rejection of tradition and its reprise, incorporation, rewriting, recapitulation, revision and parody in new forms.^[5][6][7]Modernism rejected the lingering certainty of Enlightenment thinking and also rejected the existence of a compassionate, all-powerful Creator God.^[8][9]

In general, the term modernism encompasses the activities and output of those who felt the “traditional” forms of art, architecture, literature, religious faith, social organization and daily life were becoming outdated in the new economic, social, and political conditions of an emerging fully industrialized world. The poet Ezra Pound‘s 1934 injunction to “Make it new!” was paradigmatic of the movement’s approach towards the obsolete. Another paradigmatic exhortation was articulated by philosopher and composer Theodor Adorno, who, in the 1940s, challenged conventional surface coherence and appearance of harmony typical of the rationality of Enlightenment thinking.^[10] A salient characteristic of modernism is self-consciousness. This self-consciousness often led to experiments with form and work that draws attention to the processes and materials used (and to the further tendency of abstraction).^[11]

The modernist movement, at the beginning of the 20th century, marked the first time that the term “avant-garde”, with which the movement was labeled until the word “modernism” prevailed, was used for the arts (rather than in its original military and political context).^[12]Surrealism gained fame among the public as being the most extreme form of modernism, or “the avant-garde of modernism”.^[13]

(via Modernism – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

This is the first post in a new series I’m starting on this blog. I call it the daily *ism. It’s going to be mostly information copied from Wikipedia, but each entry is going to feature another *ism.

Now *ism’s have a variety of meanings, but at their root, they indicate a belief or principle. Now, I suppose there can be as many systems of though and belief as there are thinkers and believers. However, the credibility of some *ism’s are stronger than others, and unless you are a subscriber to relativism you will agree that some are more valid than others.

You wouldn’t believe how many *ism’s there are. With a quick Wikipedia Wildcard search, I came up with thousands of *ism’s to explore, which means I could be at this for a while.

This series isn’t meant to promote one *ism over another or to give a reflection of the *isms I espouse (many of them I reject entirely), but I will gravitate towards ones I find interesting. Each *ism will also include links to other *ism’s to explore.

So without further introduction, here’s the first *ism, individualism, an *ism which I happen to be quite proud to hold.

Individualism is the moral stance, political philosophy, ideology, or social outlook that stresses “the moral worth of the individual”.^[1] Individualists promote the exercise of one’s goals and desires and so independence and self-reliance^[2] while opposing most external interference upon one’s own interests, whether by society, family or any other group or institution.^[2]

Individualism makes the individual its focus^[1] and so it starts “with the fundamental premise that the human individual is of primary importance in the struggle for liberation.” Classical liberalism (including libertarianism), existentialism and anarchism (especially individualist anarchism) are examples of movements that take the human individual as a central unit of analysis.^[3]

It has also been used as a term denoting “The quality of being an individual; individuality”^[2] related to possessing “An individual characteristic; a quirk.”^[2] Individualism is thus also associated with artistic and bohemian interests and lifestyles where there is a tendency towards self creation and experimentation as opposed to tradition or popular mass opinions and behaviors^[2][4] as so also with humanist philosophical positions and ethics.^[5][6]

(via Individualism – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)