Dear Blog,
I can't stop thinking about how theorists during the 19th and 20th century had these big claims as to what the future would look like, but there is no way they could have predicted this reality. Habermas says, "The project of modernity has not yet been fulfilled." With his use of the word "yet" he is acknowledging that he believes it will be fulfilled someday. When will the project of modernity be completed? I wonder what he predicted the end of modernity to look like...
Another theorist he quotes, Daniel Bell, who offers another suggestion for how the world will turn out: "Bell sees a religious revival to be the only solution. Religious faith tied to a faith in tradition will provide individuals with clearly define identities and existential security" (7). I spoke in class about this quote and how it reminded me of another theorist, Karl Marx, who also made a claim for a social uprising. Marx believed there would a proletariat uprising which would throw capitalism and the bourgeois through the ringer. It's interesting that in 2022, politicians, scientists, your average person, makes claims about what they think is going to happen in the impending future. It's interesting that we continue to give people a platform to do so and yet, most humans do not change their minds so easily. We say we welcome all forms of thought and opinions but does it really matter? I mean do we really listen to them?
When we go back and read theory by intellectuals from earlier centuries we are swept away in a sense, it almost feels like they could be talking about a different world. Other times it feels like some things have not changed, which can feel incredibly defeating. We are so concerned about certain histories repeating themselves, especially if we don't talk about them, but what about humans recycling theories and claims, pretending to listen to other points of view. What does that do to a society, a culture, the human race?
This connects to another thing we spoke about in class: the progress narrative. I find this really fascinating because it is so clear the ways in which we to this on a personal level but also on a more broad scale. Individually, we may do this with finding a job or looking for a house, believing their is something better out there. On a more general scale, we may do this with political systems or economical issues. What I like about the progress theory is this idea that we're constantly evolving. We wouldn't have nearly half of the technologies we have today without humans in the past believing there was something better to be uncovered or discovered. I think that this could be a problematic human characteristic but it's also really interesting.
Signing off,
mg
Comments
Post a Comment