Postwar Uncertainty

POSTWAR UNCERTAINTY

The horrors of World War I shattered the Enlightenment belief that progress would continue and reason would prevail. In the postwar period, people began questioning traditional beliefs. Some found answers in new scientific developments, which challenged the way people looked at the world. Many enjoyed the convenience of technological improvements in transportation and communication. As society became more open, women demanded more rights, and young people adopted new values. Meanwhile, unconventional styles and ideas in literature, philosophy and music reflected the uncertain times.

The creation of a new Society

In the wake of World War I, with its massive destruction and slaughter, many people lost faith in the Enlightenment ideal of ongoing human progress. They felt a sense of disconnection and doubt about the future. New events and ideas in Science raised even stronger doubts about the predictable nature of the world.

A GLOBAL EPIDEMIC.

Although the death and destruction of World War I was difficult for many people to accept, at least they understood what had caused most deaths. In the midst of fighting, however, the world was hit by a mysterious illness that caused more deaths than the world itself and showed how little doctors still understood about disease. This disease was called “the Influenza pandemic “.

A man spraying the streets with chemicals in 1918 

In all, three waves of the Influenza pandemic hit the world between 1918 and 1919. It could kill some victims within two or three days of the first signs of symptoms (which were similar to flu). Then, just as mysteriously as it had appeared, the Influenza pandemic disappeared. It is uncertain exactly how many people died from the influenza pandemic, but most estimates put the death toll over 20 million.

A newspaper from 1918

 Question 1. What were the social effects of the Influenza pandemic?

A REVOLUTION IN SCIENCE.

Events like the Influenza pandemic increased many people’s feelings that the world was a frightening and unpredictable place. Some looked to the ideas of Sigmund Freud, the father of modern psychology, to ease some of this uncertainty.

• Influence of Freudian psychology. The ideas of Austrian physician Sigmund Freud were revolutionary. Freud treated patients with psychological problems. From his experiences, he constructed a theory about the human mind. He believed that much of human behavior is irrational, or beyond reason. He called the irrational part of the mind the unconscious. In the unconscious, a number irrational impulses existed, especially pleasure- seeking impulses, of which the unconscious mind was unaware. Freud’s claim that the unconscious – not the rational mind – often controlled people’s actions seemed to explain many confusing and irrational events in life. Freud’s ideas weakened faith in reason,. Even so, by the 1920´s. Freud’s theories had widespread influence all over the world.

• Impact of Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. German- born physicist Albert Einstein offered amazing new ideas on space, time, energy and matter. Einstein’s argument that even such definite concepts as motion, space and time were relative. Now uncertainty and relativity replaced Isaac Newton’s comforting belief of a world operating according to absolute laws of motion and gravity.
Einstein’s ideas had implications not only for science but also for how people viewed the world. People used Einstein’s theory of Relativity to argue that values differ greatly in many societies, and that no one could say that one set of principles was good for all human groups. This idea became known as “Moral Relativism”.

Question 2. What were the main ideas of Sigmund Freud and Albert Einstein?

Question 3. How did the ideas of Freud and Einstein influence their society?

LITERATURE AND PHILOSOPHY IN THE 1920´S.

The brutality of World War I caused philosophers to question accepted ideas about reason and progress. Disillusioned by the war, many people also feared the future and expressed doubts about traditional religious beliefs. Some writers and thinkers expressed their anxieties by creating disturbing visions of the present and future. Many others showed the influence of Freudian’s theories of the unconscious and tried to show the workings of the human mind. Finally, most writers and poets abandoned traditional literary forms and experimented new ways of writing.

• Oswald Spengler’s Decline of the West. The most influential expression of pessimism was Spengler’s “the Decline of the West”. Written in 1918, Spengler viewed history as a collection of many different cultures that, like living organisms, experience birth, youth, maturity and death. Western civilization, according to Spengler, had entered its final stage and that its death could not be avoided.

• Franz Kafka’s Alienated Individual. Perhaps better than any novelist in the age, Kafka grasped the dilemma of the modern age. Kafka, a German- speaking Jew living in Czechoslovakia, was intimidated by a tyrannical father. At a young age, he contracted tuberculosis, from which he died. In giving expression to his own deep anxieties, he expressed the feelings of alienation and isolation that characterize the modern individual. In Kafka’s works people are defeated and unable to comprehend the irrational forces that contribute to their destruction. Human beings strive to make sense out of life, but everywhere life itself oppresses them. They are caught in a web that they cannot control; they live in a nightmare society dominated by oppressive, cruel and corrupt leaders and amoral individuals.

Many writers and poets portrayed the pessimism ans uncertainties of the age.

• Existentialism. The philosophic movement that best exemplified the anxiety and uncertainty of Europe in an era of world wars was Existentialism. Like writers and artists, existentialist philosophers were responding to a European civilization that seemed to be in decay.
Which way should people take in world where values and certainties have dissolved, where universal truth was rejected and God’s existence was denied? How could people cope in a society where they were menaced by technology, manipulated by impersonal bureaucracies and overwhelmed by feelings of anxiety? If the world is without meaning, what meaning could ones give to one’s life?. These questions were at the base of existentialist philosophy.
Among the most important exponents of existentialism we find: Jean- Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, Martin Heidegger, Karl Jaspers and Simone de Beauvoir.

Question 4. How did Literature and philosophy reflect the uncertainties of the period?

Question 5. Identify and explain the significance of: a) Spengler, b) Kafka and 

c) Existentialism

A REVOLUTION IN THE ARTS.

Musicians and painters, like writers and poets, experimented with new forms and styles. Although many of the new directions in painting and music began in the prewar period, they evolved after the war.

Artists rebel against tradition. Artists rebelled against earlier realistic styles of painting. They wanted to depict the inner world of emotion and imagination rather than show realistic representation of objects.

• Expressionism. Characterized by heightened, symbolic colors and exaggerated imagery, the term “Expressionism” can be used to describe various art forms but, in its broadest sense, it is used to describe any art that raises subjective feelings above objective observations.

 The Scream by Edvard Munch

These paintings aim to reflect the artists’ state of mind rather than the reality of the external world. Some of the painters considered as Expressionist we find: Edvard Munch, Wassily Kandinsky and Paul Klee, among others.

• Surrealism. The movement represented a reaction against what its members saw as the destruction brought by the “rationalism” that had guided European culture and politics in the past and that had culminated in the horrors of World War I. Inspired by Freud’s ideas, surrealists tried to call on the unconscious part of their minds, that’s why many of their paintings have an eerie, dream- like quality and depict objects in unrealistic ways. The major Surrealist painters were Jean Arp, Max Ernst, André Masson, René Magritte, Yves Tanguy, Salvador Dalí, Pierre Roy, Paul Delvaux, and Joan Miró.

The Persistence of Memory by Salvador Dali

• Cubism. Highly influential visual arts style of the 20th century that was created principally by the painters Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque in Paris between 1907 and 1914. The Cubist style emphasized the flat, two-dimensional surface of the picture plane, rejecting the traditional techniques like perspective and refuting old theories of art as the imitation of nature. Cubist painters were not bound to copying form, texture, colour, and space; instead, they presented a new reality in paintings that depicted radically fragmented objects, whose several sides were seen simultaneously.

Mademoiselles d´Avignon by Pablo Picasso

Composers try new styles. In both popular and classical music, composers moved away from traditional styles.

• Jazz. A new popular style appeared in the United States. Developed mainly by African Americans, Jazz would have a profound impact on the U.S. and Europe. While jazz may be difficult to define, improvisation is clearly one of its key elements. While in European classical music elements of interpretation, ornamentation and accompaniment are sometimes left to the performer’s discretion, the performer’s primary goal is to play a composition as it was written. In Jazz, however, the performer will interpret a tune in very individual ways, never playing the same composition exactly the same way twice. Depending upon the performer’s mood and personal experience, interactions with fellow musicians, or even members of the audience, a jazz musician/performer may alter melodies, harmonies or time signature at will.

Question 6. Why do you think writers and artists began exploring the unconscious?

Question 7. Identify and explain the significance of: a) Expressionism, b) Surrealism, c) Cubism and d) Jazz.

POPULAR CULTURE AND CONSUMERISM.

The era of the 1920´s was marked by the rise of leisure activities and purchases of consumer goods in industrialized nations. Shorter workdays and slowly improving economies gave people more money and free time. After years of war, many people were ready to enjoy life.

• Entertainment. The chief entertainment for popular audiences of the 1920´s and 1930´s was the motion picture. Developed in about 1900, motion pictures were first shown publicly about 10 years later. By the 1920´s millions of people regularly flocked to theaters to see their favorite films.

Charlie Chaplin´s movies were one of the most watched in the period

Playing and watching sports also became very popular throughout the world. Baseball was popular in the U.S. and Japan. Golf was widely played in both countries, as well as in some parts of Europe. Tennis was another popular sport. And in Latin America and Europe they mostly enjoyed soccer.

• Consumer culture. The decade of the 1920´s brought enormous changes people’s lifestyles. As economies began to recover, more people began to purchase consumer goods. The price of many goods once considered luxury items, like automobiles, dropped significantly. As more people purchased such items, the whole structure of society began to change.
Companies came up with new ways to get consumers to buy more goods. Radio advertising brought commercials right into people´s homes. Companies also began offering to sell more goods on credit.
The expanded use of credit reflected a gradual change in attitudes and values of the times. Increasingly people were focused on the present moment instead of planning for the future.
Increasingly, the younger generations began to challenge “proper” society rules. For example, in industrialized nations many women started wearing short hair and skirts and going out to public places like Jazz clubs.

A woman from the flapper era 

Question 8. How did people´s social behavior reflect a change 

in values in many societies? 

~ by HistoryRocks.com on October 20, 2007.