Note №1

The End of Modernity

09 June, 2023

Seven or eight years ago, the beginning of a new historical stage was perceived as a potential event that would reveal itself at some point in the future, perhaps even within the coming years. But it was, in any case, not part of the lived present.

This did not prevent reflection or attempts to think about the future, since even then contradictions across many key aspects of social life were rapidly intensifying and actively discussed by those who were able to notice them.

Later, the course of history shifted. With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, whose impact on us remains largely unexamined, one could begin to sense the movement of certain deep processes that seemed to initiate a change of times.

It is difficult to describe these processes literally, as the right words for them are still difficult to find. Intuitively, however, they can be perceived as the movement of a historical mass whose source lies neither in modernity nor in postmodernism, but in something else altogether.

Following this, the pressure of that mass began to intensify, in my perception almost exponentially. At first it grew slowly, over years and half years, between 2020 and 2022. Then, beginning in 2023, the mass started to grow heavier on a monthly and even weekly basis. 

In recent weeks I have begun to experience a new sensation. The mass of this emerging entity seems to press from within, while modernity itself has become almost imperceptible. By this I mean that the influence of modernity as an ontology has nearly vanished. Its historical weight and existential energy can no longer be felt. 

This produces a sensation of suspended time, since we all grew up within the horizon of modernity and could not imagine ourselves beyond it. Now this system is disappearing, yet without it, we do not know how to perceive the world.

This suspension of time, however, is deceptive.

It resembles a calm before a storm, or a midday dread, after which something unimaginable will nevertheless arrive and redirect the flow of time. In fact, it already seems to be doing so, since the breath of this something can already be sensed.

Most likely, history is already searching for a way to declare that modernity has come to an end. The same applies to postmodernism, which was never a complete idea in itself, but rather a reflection of crisis and a harbinger of possible change.