A wild trip through the ideas that built (and broke) the modern world.
Ever feel like your thoughts aren't your own? Or that you're navigating a world with no instruction manual? You're not imagining it. Let's trace the source code.
The 20th century kicked off by breaking up with certainty. Freud found a stranger in our minds: the unconscious. Einstein revealed time and space weren't fixed. The old rulebook was officially deleted.
With the old world gone, new ideologies rushed in. Think of them as competing operating systems for society. Marxism. Liberalism. Fascism. Each promised a perfect world, leading to the century's greatest conflicts.
After the world wars came the burnout. Philosophers like Sartre and de Beauvoir had a radical idea: there's no pre-written script. You are defined only by your choices. Your actions create your essence.
This was terrifying, but also liberating. No god, no destiny, no 'nature' to tell you who to be. The weight of creating your own meaning? That's entirely on you.
Then, a mind-bending twist from thinkers like Wittgenstein. What if reality isn't just 'out there'? He argued the limits of our language are the limits of our world. Change the words, and you change what's possible to think.
Think about it. Slang, jargon, hashtags, memes... they aren't just words. They are tools that construct social realities and filter what we can even conceive of.
Thinkers like Foucault and Derrida took this further. They saw power hidden everywhere: in schools, hospitals, and language itself. They gave us the tools to deconstruct and question everything.
This is the source of modern critical thought. It asks us to look for the power dynamics and hidden assumptions behind every 'truth.' It’s the reason we question narratives today.
Meanwhile, science had a different idea. The 'Cognitive Revolution' began treating the mind as an information processor. The brain wasn't a mystery box, but complex hardware running sophisticated software.
This way of thinking gave us cognitive psychology, modern linguistics, and crucially... Artificial Intelligence. The quest to build a thinking machine had officially begun.
By the late 20th century, many felt exhausted by 'big ideas'. Postmodernism declared the death of 'grand narratives'. No single story—religion, science, or politics—could explain everything anymore.
What replaced it? Irony. Pastiche. Remix culture. A playful, skeptical blend of styles and ideas, where everything is a reference to something else. Sound familiar? It's the native language of the internet.
And then you were born. Into a world where the code is no longer just a metaphor. Algorithms now curate your music, your news, your friends, and shape your desires.
The new philosophical question isn't just 'Who am I?'. It's 'How much of 'me' is a recommendation engine?'. Our thoughts are now co-created with non-human intelligence.
But a counter-movement is brewing. 'Embodied cognition' argues that we don't just think with our brains. We think with our bodies, our tools, and our environment.
Your phone is an extension of your memory. The city you live in shapes your movement. Your mind isn't just in your head; it's a network that extends into the world.
From Freud's unconscious to AI's deep learning, the last century has been a radical rewrite of what it means to think. The story isn't over. The operating system is still being updated.
Knowing the history of these ideas is a superpower. It gives you the ability to choose your inputs, to question the code, and to consciously write your own script. What will your next thought be?