sawsaw 2/14

I found today's class discussion to be very interesting and insightful. There were many quotes I enjoyed, but I found two of them very true and evident in my everyday life. The first quote is, “the relation between ‘modern’ and ‘classical’ has definitely lost a fixed historical reference.” I am reminded of a discussion I had in high school with a teacher in one of my classes. He kept trying to define the postmodern era and put it into a certain timeline. I was always taught that postmodernism is a period of time we are experiencing in history. I found this concept to be very confusing. After reading this quote by Habermas it is very easy to see that modern and classic are a way of thinking and are concepts to be analyzed, not a specific period of time in history. When something is said to be modern people assume it is the most recent or cutting edge thing. You can never quite define something that is modern because things change all the time. What was modern fifty years ago is very different from what is modern today. The same thing is to be said of the word classic. Classic means old or something in the past. It is very difficult to describe something that is classic because something in the past can still be popular today. An example of this is classic rock. Classic rock is something in the past yet is very popular in today’s contemporary society. The second quote I found to be interesting is, “the cult of the new.” This is so true in today’s society. Everyone wants the newest invention and latest styles. This is why corporations such as Mac, Proctor and Gamble, Toyota and Cannon are so successful. People are constantly upgrading to the newest products and are always trying to keep up with the latest inventions. After discussing Habermas’ concepts in class, it is evident to me how much our society has changed in the past twenty years. If these ideas were evident in society during the 1980’s how much more are they evident in our society today. It really makes me wonder how much things will change in the next twenty years!