but that to Loos was evidence that culture was finally arising without ornament – “I said: Weep not!
See, therein lies the greatness of our age, that it is incapable of producing a new ornament. We have
outgrown ornament; we have fought our way to freedom through ornament” (p.30). Although Loos
primarily uses aesthetic ornamentation for his examples, he also speaks of religion (both Christian and
pagan) as ornament, and it is evident that to him ornamentation is more a cultural issue than an
aesthetic one. Ornamentation and the fashions that it represents are inherently irrational – they have
no tangible benefit and yet form so much of the primary value of an object – and it is this irrational
relationship with wealth, production and cultural endeavour that Loos hoped we had “fought our way
to freedom through”. Modernity, then, represents "a triumphalistic exercise of [universal]
instrumental rationality in the domain of the social" (Vanhoozer, 2003, p. 13), that is, the celebration
of culture-wide rationalism that formed the basis of much of the 20th century’s unprecedented
development.