Stages Of Modernist Grief

 The 16th century will return! In the previous series, I compared the centuries of the 20th, 21st, and upcoming 22nd to the maiden, mother, and the crone.  I think it’s only fair to compare this to their masculine counterparts, the centuries of the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries using a similar but contrasting format. What we can call the father, the son, and the holy ghost or just the grandfather.  Interestingly, this time it is reversed. Instead of the maiden aging into the mother and then the crone, the holy ghost or the grandfather gives way to the father, which then begets the son. The 16th century is the grandfather era, the 17th century is the father era, and the 18th century is the son era.  People often complain about the 20th century for how it caused “the death of the father”, setting up incentives to make fathers seem irrelevant.  This “death of the father” theme is very much present in 20th century media and symbolized the end of the masculine coded...

The 22nd Century Will Be One Giant Nursing Home (And That’s Sad) The maiden has little hope for the future and dwells on beauty and sorrow. The mother manically attempts to create a future by any means necessary despite its hardships. The crone then is at the end. There isn't a future to anticipate. She stoically accepts her fate.  I've tied these concepts to stages of grief. The maiden is depression, the mother is testing, and the crone is acceptance. I've also tied these concepts to centuries and believe it follows a cycle.  So in this cycle, the era of the maiden was the 20th century, and in the previous cycle, it was the 10th century, the Dark Ages. The mother era is our current century, the 21st century. And in the past cycle, it was the 11th century. The era of the crone, I predict, will be the theme of the 22nd century. And in the old cycle, this was the 12th century. These eras are reflected by the works of art and events of the time. The 20th century, for example, ...

The 20th century was cool, actually We are well over one-quarter through the 21st century and Marshall McLuhan once said, "We look at things through a rear view mirror. We march backwards into the future.” We never see the present for what it truly is. We are always judging the present based off of the past. Whether that's people longing for the good old days with intense nostalgia or looking at history through a much more cynical lens and harshly judging humanity for its past actions. Either way, we are blind to the reality of the present. The present is never seen as its own thing we can judge it for. It's always seen as just the aftermath of the past, or like a final bad product or end game that's a result of decades or centuries of past decisions.  People often act as if they are living in another century and sometimes even another millennium. We do this because history is already set in stone. It is documented and it is dead. The present is undocumented and alive....

The 21st Century has Mommy Issues While it might be an odd thing to say, the 21st century embodies "the mom era". This is a pattern I have been seeing everywhere as of late. The “mommification” of everything. But before I get into how everything is mommified, perhaps I'll contrast it with the times that were not. The 21st century seems to be the exact opposite of the 17th century. The 17th century very much had a “dad theme”. From the 17th century worship of monarchs, especially kings, to artwork about grown men smoking and drinking coffee and hanging out while wearing black and hats with buckles on top. It was a time of ambition, conflict, experimentation, and risk-taking. A century full of testosterone and volatility with its Scientific Revolution, endless wars (30 Years War, civil wars, colonial wars), new ideas breaking out violently, lots of energy but mature rigid political systems by the end of it. Like a dad, the people of the 17th century based their mindset on a...