Whoever walked the grounds of the 1939 World’s Fair saw a new vision of the future that was a showpiece of science, engineering, and art in mutual embrace of progress.

“The World of Tomorrow” was a model world of smooth efficiency, assembled in sweeping geometric forms articu­lated in steel, masonry, glass, and plastic. Popular sci-fi, as late as Star Trek, was hooked on the 1930s archetypes of modern human habi­tat. Of course, modern minds, not just bodies, would live in this mod­ern world. And so the demise of old molds and the creation of new molds for the brain was part of the strate­gic planning for the future.

I was too young then to apprehend this hidden, dark side of modernity that coupled the evolution of things with the evolution of people. The mad-scientist horror movies that abounded in the 1930s and 1940s were cartoons you might say of this dehumanizing, negative aspect of progress – entertainments spun out of science/technology gone awry, but not to be taken seriously. It was authors of politically compatible, rosy-future fiction like Lost Horizon, not spoil-brats a la Brave New World that were to be taken seriously.

With skyscrapers of Art Deco design rising over the Manhattan of early 20th century, and swiftly-evolving locomotive conveyances and devices of communication shrinking time and distance between the coasts of America, across the sea, and in the sky – these mod­ern representations of the future seemed almost natural. For most observers they were sights for sore eyes – a balm for the aching memory of the Great War (World War I) and the priva­tions of the Great Depression.

As a child of the 20th century and survivor of its turbulent decades, I need to say something, however, about the dark side of modernity seeping into my growing consciousness and maturity. And so the following is intended to throw some light on the character of “modern times” which is incidentally the title of a Charles Chaplin movie worth seeing. 

It was a mighty good time for Utopians.

After the blundering holocaust of World War I, evolutionary socialists (e.g., Fabians), trade unionists, communists, sociological pragmatists emerged en masse to engineer a new world order that would bring peace, abundance, equality and fraternity for all, steered proudly by The Common Man.

The Common Man would not be told, however, that steering instructions would be issued by Elite Man. From their actions, not their rhetoric, these uber beings planning our future could care less about the Common Man. What did and still does set this variety of leader on edge is any interference from God, whom they insist must not have any part in human affairs – an attitude that defines atheists, Marxists, and assorted fellow travelers.

But since the good of humanity is the highest ethical goal, what means do atheists and futurists with a strictly secular bent of mind – have to find solutions except through “science,” totally isolated from the spiritual aspect of being human? Secularists who claim to be Christian or Jewish are not to be confused with Christians and Jews who abide in their originating faith and may not claim those religious “credentials.” Such de facto hypocrisy shows in the disregard for sacred scripture, except to edit it in order to serve an agenda. It is a common practice among futurists to downplay or totally disregard religion and the good to humanity in their plans for world improvement.

Remember that it was a noble cause, that of “The Common Man,” that managed to send many millions to an early grave in the name of justice, following the revolutions in France, Russia, and China, and setting the stage for revolution in America.

What “Utopians” did in Russia and China in the 20th century they have been doing in a slower, neater way in America. Dismissing God from their plans for heaven-on-earth, proletarian revolutionaries afflicted with Marxism wrecked Russia and decimated the once great country of China. Will America wake up before it is “transformed” beyond recall?

Beware the “world of tomorrow” designed by leaders so demented as to render it uninhabitable.

At the end of the 1936 movie Things to Come, actor Raymond Massey points to the stars over a modern landscape that resembles the one at the 1939 World’s Fair. He wears shorts and a top with a cape draped over a shoulder-rod (the uniform of the denizens). Wearing a smirk of right­eous satisfaction, he and the man he speaks to have just shot their son and daughter off to the moon, min­utes before a horde of protesters descend upon the launch site to destroy the machinery. The moon-exploring couple will be safe, he assures his companion, and of course they will return. This first shot into space will only be the beginning, he decrees. For man there is no rest, he muses. Man must conquer the universe – there must be conquest beyond conquest. The grandiose pronouncements light up his face and seem to ring through the firmament. He has the look of a man possessed, fervor oozing from every pore. When man has conquered all the deep and all the mysteries of time this will only be the beginning, he declares.

How high the tone, how deep the conceit . . . of those who rage against God’s Creation.

Such diabolical obsession recalls “Man’s first disobedience, and the fruit of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste brought death into the World, and all our woe.”

How to regain “Paradise Lost,” the subject of Milton’s epic poem? The rabid drive of Utopians to attain heaven-on-earth, as they crush people, is most certainly not the way.

In the quest for a better world, what doubt can there be that when God is dismissed, and people act according to their conceits, we get times like these.

Image: Wikimedia Commons, via Picryl // public domain