modernism and alienation. help please!

[Albus Dumbledore]

.....

[capek]

Because that's the trait the best defines the modern condition.

The loss of moral innocence (ie the unexamined belief that what you believe is true because you believe it) heralded by the ascent of technology/science, WWI & II, the rise of the city and a whole host of confluent factors forced people into an understanding of the subjectivity of their values. People could no longer just blindly accept that their values were true just because the held them. So they were fundamentally alienated from the structure of beliefs/thoughts/values that at an earlier time the would have accepted by their very nature. So they write about that alienation. Hence the connection between modernism and alienation.

[annakarina]

Couldn't have put it better!

[AwayAloneAlast]

Capek nailed it. With the decline of religion, and the fall of so many noble ideologies gone bad, plus the increased capability for ruthlessness and destruction demonstrated in WWI (which was supposed to be the war to end all wars :(), how can one not feel alienated?

You COULD take a Marxist standpoint too, and say that the Industrial Revolution has alienated people from their labour, and increased the class divide. It would be contentious, but I personally think Marx was right in this regard.