Todd Suomela's Library tagged modernity →  View Popular, Search in Google

"The problem, or difference, that everyone was trying to point to is that India has not developed the practices and philosophies of hiding to the extent that America, and in other ways Europe, has. America is so good at hiding that even the claims to acknowledge injustice are themselves a hiding of American injustice: not only is the noting of poverty, caste, and pollution a displacing of subjectivity, it is also a hiding of American poverty, class, and consumptive pollution. So the differential problem is not Indian injustice and violence, which exists in equal measure in America, but that India does not hide a human essence towards violence and injustice, it has not developed the practices or philosophies to withdraw our injustice and violent essence from public view. It is, in other words, not modern in a Weberian, Protestant-rationalized way. "

american culture modernity poverty visibility judgment humanity

"What has happened to rationality? Not that it is necessarily in shorter supply than in the past, but rationality seems to be valued significantly less."

rationality modernity technology geeky culture values

secularism religion modernity modern societies context history

by Stephen Greenblatt

book publisher history modernity literature

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"When Ringle opened his Washington Post article with the line, "We have seen the future and it is random," I believe he was making a moral point. The post-World War II "neat" may have been an ignorant oversimplification of the world and its inherent messiness, but the post-9/11 random is an exaggeration of this messiness and an unwillingness to find resolve or connection. There is something unthinking and uncurious and unfeeling in its use. It is defensive. It indicates a lack of empathy.

Random is anathema to synthesis through imagination, a refusal to enter the unknown."

language trends randomness metaphor ambition modernity scale