Modernity

Homogenization is one of the characteristics of modernity.

The visual experience of modern spaces all over the world is beginning to look alike- day today products, consumption pattern, life style, architecture, signage, hoardings, products, color sense, food, and eating style.

Naturally this is being created by people who are also mechanized and homogenized. How did that happen?

Without going into history even a mere observation of two kind of spaces – the so called developed, educated and the nonliterate communities around the world- gives us a clue as to what must have caused this.

Modern education not only kills creativity but also kills the cultural diversity and aesthetic sense as it ignores the two most important aspects of knowledge creation- the biological process involved in making sense of the world and the need to connect with the space in which they live. 

Beauty is the most misunderstood aspect of modernity. Modernity understands only that which is within the realm of language and which can be quantified, planned and predicted. Beauty lies outside any of this. But like everything else modernity appropriates everything by turning them into mental constructs. Art is the version of beauty constructed mentally in place of real beauty.

Biological roots of art and artist are being explored (neuroaesthetics) to ‘understand’ the biological roots of aesthetic sense instead of simple and direct experiences of common people. Present art is for the mind’s enjoyment. Even dance has been taken over by mind as modern dance makes one think and not immerse.

Not one indigenous community has a word for art and never the idea of self-expression. Even within the modern context self-expression was invented only in the 18th century.

Modernity is the condition for cognition of description of the real. Naturally, modernity is about absence, thinking, imagination prompted by language which also denies the senses, body and experience.