The Super Summary of World History - Alan Dale Daniel [174]
Japan’s desire to conquer China put her on a collision course with the United States of America. Japan attacked the United States mainly because it refused to acknowledge Japan’s claims to China,[210] continually demanded Japan stop murdering the Chinese, and wanted Japan to surrender Chinese territory won since 1937.[211]
The Future Goes Dark
Popular opinion about the future of the West soured in the 1930s. The Great Depression continued and memories of the Great War haunted everyone. In 1900 the future appeared brilliant, now it emerged dark and menacing.
The Impressionist art movement started bringing new vigor to the art world. The normally bright and colorful paintings of the Impressionist, made outdoors when possible, emphasized the immediate and the present. Previous art emphasized the classical world and great moments in history and not the actions of everyday folks. The pre-Impressionist painters normally worked in a studio, spending long hours perfecting the paintings so everything looked very lifelike. The Impressionist changed everything by recording seemingly unimportant events going on around them, working outside, and making paintings look like a bunch of paint splotches close up; however, when the viewer stood back, the paint splotches blended together by the eye transformed the painting into a glorious burst of originality, color, and substance.
After WWI art trends began to change, and a world of disjointed darkness, often with unrecognizable features, started to flow from the painter’s brush. Painting no longer bound itself to realism. Abstract painting started before WWI (about 1910) and foresaw the disruption of the modern world long before it happened. After WWI, life’s lack of meaning became a major theme in art. Another art form became important in the pre-WWI years—the motion picture. The stars of the silver screen became worldwide icons making enough money to qualify as royalty. The movies set forth popular themes such as romance, comedy, the futility of war, or living in the modern world. The dictators used the new art form for propaganda to keep the populace believing the party line. Governments used this instrument of the modern world for the modern purposes of suppression and mind control. Worst of all, it worked.
Science, so obvious in motion pictures, became more evident in everyday life. Overnight, it seemed, the world invented skyscrapers, electricity, hot water heaters, cars, inside plumbing, better medical care, wonder drugs, flushing toilets, vacuum cleaners, and a host of other modern tools and conveniences. During the Great Depression many great public works projects started construction, such as the Hoover Dam in the United States, and the autobahn in Germany.
The world was a strange mix of worry and wonder. The stress on society by the new fast-changing world, the frightening nature of world politics, the wonder of science and its fantastic accomplishments, the warnings coming from artists and writers of pending chaos, and the seemingly unending economic misery all swirled together creating a disconcerting world. Predictability was gone. Recall the world of ancient Egypt, the steadfastness of it all with the unchanging centuries slipping easily into history’s vastness. The ability to adapt may be humanity’s best trait, but that adaptation was accomplished over long spans of time. Now humans were adapting in months to titanic changes.
From 1850 to 1950, the