romulus Habermas

"The struggle takes the form of exposing every manifestation of what could be considered an oppositionist mentality and tracing its 'logic' so as to link it to various forms of extremism: drawing the connection between modernism and nihilism... between government regulation and totalitarianism, between criticism of arms expenditures and subservience to communism, between Women's liberation or homosexual rights and the destruction of the family... between the Left generally and terrorism, anti-semitism, and fascism.."

Habermas is dead on with the dramatic shift in western culture's shared conceptualizations. People have been calling themselves modern and there is truth behind the reason why they thought so. We are at a radical point in civilization, where the freedom and speech with our sprint towards complete globalization, has allowed for a re-evaluation of the complicated systems of ideologies we have in place today. If the United Nations actually served its function, there would be cooperation and harmony.

Technology has been our golden ticket to advance. Shiga who we have to have read for CMC 200, talks about the mash-up phenomena. As I read through Habermas, two images stick in my head. One of the Berlin wall being patrolled by communist Russian guards, and one of an American suburb cut off from what is taking place with humanity. The Cold War Era was a battle between a numbers of competing schools of thought. Socialism and Communism/Democracy and Capitalism; good and bad, black and white.

Its just so hard for me to image a world like that. As we try to label where we are at an exact moment in history, we are taking snapshots of our achievement. As we constantly redefine how modern we are as we reach major milestones, it is interesting to think how those snapshots have significantly increased.

It took thousands of years after farming began in Egypt become the rise of a centralized government of control.

How were the lives of those individuals during that time period. Without big brother hegemon controlling the contractions and constrictions of society, were they free to live?


I read of an Ancient Roman politician who traveled to Egypt and was amazed by the Pyramids builds thousands of years before them pondering how 'modern' the ancients must of been in their contemporary modern lives.