Modernity is a runaway engine that permits partial steering but never full control

Evidence

For these images I suggest we should substitute that of the juggernaut*—a runaway engine of enormous power which, collectively as human beings, we can drive to some extent but which also threatens to rush out of our control and which could rend itself asunder. The juggernaut crushes those who resist it, and while it sometimes seems to have a steady path, there are times when it veers away erratically in directions we cannot foresee. The ride is by no means wholly unpleasant or unrewarding; it can often be exhilarating and charged with hopeful anticipation. But, so long as the institutions of modernity endure, we shall never be able to control completely either the path or the pace of the journey. In turn, we shall never be able to feel entirely secure, because the terrain across which it runs is fraught with risks of high consequence. Feelings of ontological security and existential anxiety will coexist in ambivalence. — Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, 334

Categorization

• XREF: This juggernaut image directly parallels the reader’s frame: Stevens defers to institutional systems hoping to steer the juggernaut, and Darlington’s catastrophic mis-steering fits the erratic veering Giddens describes. — connects to: Modernity’s core is an irreducible enigma that cannot be overcome — Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, 124; Modernity is best understood as compulsive, self-propelling modernization, not a completed state — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 651
• DEEPTHINKING: The juggernaut is the master metaphor of the book; the claim that ontological security and existential anxiety must coexist is the load-bearing theoretical payoff, not a summary.
• DEFINE: Defines Giddens’s central image contrasting Weber’s cage and Marx’s monster.