In trying to explain modernity, I am conflicted with so many iterations of what modern life actually is. My confidence lacks in my ability to define modernity not by the capacity that modernism amounts to, but by the contradictions those characteristics make; so I will use agriculture as an example. However, this idea, or lack of, of modernism exemplifies exactly what it means to be a part of a modern society; for as Carl Marx said, "In our days everything seems to pregnant with its contrary."
What Marx meant by this is a large indication of what we now experience as being a part of a modern society. In a pre-modern world, industries were supported by purpose, as well as function - particularly with renewable resources. In the modern era, it seems as though we have reached a plateau in developing and increasing production of renewable resources through advances in areas such as the biology of how we grow and maintain them, as well as the technology we use to harvest them. To give example to Marx's' statement, these seemingly helpful solutions have caused many problems today. To list a few, non-political reasons I'll start with the well-known idea of carbon emissions by the industrialized process of harvesting through gas-run engines. Second, labor replaced by machines, and third, the controversial topic of genetically modified foods for maintaining sustainability as market commodities.
These three examples are but a small example of modern society where the overcoming of controlling nature has in fact put man in his own infamy. One thing is for sure after reading theses three articles; the more I see, the less I know.
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