The Shock of Modernity

What is modernity? The end of the nineteenth century was a period of unprecedented upheaval. Factories sprouted in masses, railways were laid at great length, urbanisation sprawled and beckoned, and masses organised capitalistically and politically. All of this happened at dizzying speed. This was the moment the modern world crashed together and dragged people from the fields to the factory floor. Within a generation, the entire consciousness of life had changed. In this video, I look at how consciousness was affected by that change. I look at industrialisation, the move from the country to the city, neurasthenia, kierkegaard and the concept of anxiety, Nietzche, Darwin and the death of God. I also look at the birth of the railway, Dickens, and sensation novels. All of these things contributed to what has become modernity. People were nervous, literally – a new diagnosis became popular amongst America’s elites: neurasthenia. It was a contemporary form of stress, characterised by symptoms like fatigue, headache, and irritability. Neurasthenia, according to physician Charles Beard, was the result of a depletion of nervous energy, but was becoming more common as a reaction to the anxieties of the modern world and of the demands of American exceptionalism. Neurasthenia was almost a fashion. Adverts appeared selling ‘nerve tonics’, self help books dominated the shelves, even breakfast cereals claimed to be able to cure ‘americanitus’. Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018 Or send me a one-off tip of any amount and help me make more videos: https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=JJ76W4CZ2A8J2 Buy on Amazon through this link to support the channel: https://amzn.to/2ykJe6L Follow me on: Facebook: http://fb.me/thethenandnow Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thethenandnow/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/lewlewwaller Sources: Allan V Horwitz, Anxiety: A Short History Nicholas Daly, ‘Blood on the Tracks: Sensation Drama, the Railway, and the Dark Face of Modernity’, Victorian Studies, 42, 1, 1999, 47-76 Charles Beard, American Nervousness Mark Jackson, the Age of Stress Schuster, David G.. Neurasthenic Nation : America s Search for Health, Happiness, and Comfort, 1869-1920. : Rutgers University Press Nicholas Daly, ‘Railway Novels: Sensation Fiction and the Modernization of the Senses’, John Hopkins University Press, 66, 2, 1999, 461-497