"A Secular Age"

With fits and starts I've made it through the first 211 pages of Charles Taylor's "A Secular Age," the highly regarded sociological explanation of what makes modernity.  Taylor analyzes a long-observed factor in what distinguishes modern life from its forbears: its disintermediation.  Rather than related to the top through real entities (peasant --> lord --> king --> God and/or parishioner --> bishop --> pope --> God), time has become secularized (it's all horizontal, sequential or the like; in any event, nothing outside the succession of moments really matters) and people (think they) have direct access to their rulers (talk radio, anyone?), whether civil or divine.  We're all citizens, dammit, and even Presbyterian congregants rarely think about the hierarchy of their church courts (session, presbytery, general assembly, synod) much less pay them any mind.

Of course, moderns still have relationships, only they're not givens.  Instead, we form them by consent.  Maine's description of the common law as progress from status to contract is true.  Even the most basic socially given institution, the family, barely hangs on.

And how did we come to imagine life and society in this "direct-access" sort of way?  You'll have to slog through Taylor's book yourself for the answer to that one.