Progress is, by definition, an onward or forward movement to a destination, goal, or outcome. Progress takes time. Progress is not a simple task that can always be done overnight especially when talking about human civilization. The western world has taken life times to reach the point that is has become in this century. For those of my generation, this progress is slow and is not noticeable to the naked eye, but even going as far back as a few decades we can see that many aspects of our civilization have changed throughout the course of history. The spark of a single movement on a timeline can change the time it takes to tell the story.
The story of the modern west begins in my eyes during the Renaissance era closer to the …show more content…
It questioned things such as religion, and although I dislike the rejection of “God” and the introduction of deism it helped the people of this era practice our free will and brought about new ideas for science, and the philosophy of natural law. This era also brought in other aspects of culture and society that can pertain more to the common man. This shift in history brought out a prosperous middle class that was able to help balance out the economy and the gap between the poorer families to the social elite. With this new wave of prosperity, the confidence of the people for equality and a new-found resentment of the privileges of the social elite (aristocrats and members of the clergy/church), brought out many demands for change. Leading into the demands for change, public opinion and the development of a ‘society’ was born through education and print culture no longer limited to the wealthiest of families. The expression of idea became more rampant with the art culture being used to share ideas of reason and ridicule for social issues. With all of these movements and ideas circling in the minds of many in the west revolutions became a necessity, and although bloody and damaging to a country they were an outcome needed to progress further into the modern …show more content…
Revolutions took lives, ideas, and countries along for the ride as they took over the western world. From the Enlightenment era, all the way to the age of Imperialism, this modern era of the west took hold of progress and drove it into what I feel was a new page in the story of Western Civilization. The start of the first World War in my eyes can be set apart from the modern world started back in the mid-1600s, but it is still a part of the same story line. By the end of the war that literally shook the world, Europe and many other nations were left in pieces. This one blink of time in the aged eyes of history, only a little over four years, had left the world crippled and dragged into a fast-paced movement of progress. This chapter of our modern history introduced new tactics for warfare, produced new alliances that in some cases still stand strong today, and brought out even more progress on social reforms, especially when it came to women. Although this era of war time cannot claim the title of the beginning of the modern era, it did begin a new subsection of the progress that was made from the time of the