Early 20th-century heterosexual Charles Chaplin
When does modernity begin? Is it with the emergence of nation-states in Europe, as my high school social studies teacher insisted? Perhaps modernity arrived with the industrial revolution, when broad changes in the nature of work altered the day-to-day texture of millions of lives. Or maybe modernity started with the internet and the retrospective knowledge that to give everyone a global voice means dramatically reducing, in your perception at least, the importance of your own. Personally, I think modernity started when a law firm realized it could make more money suing people who downloaded free pornography it uploaded to the internet than by making actual pornography. Today is Friday, and modernity begins when society concludes that its work is done. Won’t you knock off early with me?
