Friday, November 20, 2009

Rise and Significance of Western Ideologies


The 19th and 20th century opened the flood gates of Western culture to new ideological propositions. The rapid reconstitution of society demanded a contemporary pantheon of political theory to absorb the disillusionment of the Modern Age. Each new idea proposed to espouse the philosophical salvation of civilization. Such theories seemed to take on an air of secular divinity, arousing intense devotion to an idea rather than to God or country. The dissemination of various ideologies, and the devotion led people to redefine themselves collectively, as well as individually.

Liberalism was born out of the Enlightenment, and provided the foundation of a nation apart from Europe, whose national ideals would inspire people across the globe, for more than two hundred years. Nationalism excited great conflict in the West, even as it compelled people throughout the undeveloped world to throw off oppressive colonial regimes. Socialism and Marxism took various forms of which none seemed to provide the utopian society people had hoped for. Romanticism represented a reaction to “the cult of rational thought,” and the classical order. Romanticism promoted the eternal mystery of the soul, even as society seemed perched on the verge of unraveling such a mystery. As Romanticism longed to return to a more ‘natural’ state Modernism rushed forward into the 20th century. Modernism created a radically different vision of the future which seemed to lack boundaries. The uncertainty of the Modern Age, and the multiplicity of conflicting ideologies aroused fear in people throughout the world. Causing a return to near monarchial control in a number of nations under Totalitarianism.

Each political theory responded to the disintegration of another. Western ideology builds itself upon the foundations of all that came before it. Each ideology imposed itself upon the fashioning of our collective history and so suffuse itself into the fabric of our society. In the progression of civilization each concept will be reincarnated, thus their reverberations will go on inevitably to redefine us collectively, as well as individually.

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