Modernity: A transforming progression of human life Mankind is always transforming, moving progressively in a direction that modernizes the very fabric of being, ultimately impacting the socioreligious, cultural, economic and geopolitical aspects. Modernity, as a whole, is a reactive force--a reaction of comparisons and contractions to that which existed before. Some institutions and values of society are carried through modernalistic changes, often those notions thought to be progressive and valuable to the new transitional society. Resistance to modernity is evident, but inevitably any resistance will end in failure.Modernity, as defined by Webster's Dictionary, is the state or quality of being modern. The human process of modernity has always been constant, if though at times subtle; examples of modernity have come in the form of such things as simple stone tools, the plow, and the stirrup. However, not until the 16th and 17th centuries did a great leap of modernization occur.Scientists do not wholly understand what caused the lead to modernity or really why it occurred in such a defining way. What is known is that it happened between the 16th and 18th centuries. What information also known is that modernity first began in the northwestern countries of Europe, mainly; England, the Netherlands, northern France, and northern Germany.Northwestern Europe in the early 16th century, to put it nicely, was rather backward, both culturally and technologically. The countries therein absorbed most of its innovations from surrounding countries, primarily Spain and Italy. Realistically, northwestern Europe did not seem to be a region that would become the economic and modernistic leader of the rest of Europe.In the 16th century of northwestern Europe changes in religion were occurring. It was in the Protestant Reformation that modernalism was setting in to take place. Protestantism broke down the distinction between the religion and the rest of...
