Our modern way of life, is second to none!
I have total faith in the Western modern way of living. I'm sick to the teeth with those who continually bombard my hightech, multimedia communication systems, banging on and on, about how the modern way of living is a complete nightmare, or worse - a total disaster.Our society has indeed lost faith. There is no faith even in its own finest achievements. People in the West now live longer, are richer in wealth, and fitter in health than ever before. Even those who are now classified as poor in developed societies like mine (the UK), have access to goods and services that are far beyond even the imagination of the super-rich a century ago.
I've heard modern farming methods described as 'like Auschwitz'. Modern food is more often as not, described as 'toxic' - the people who eat food bought from supermarkets are said to be in a state of 'toxic overload'. Modern medicine is deemed by many to be the real killer of people, and not the other way around. But the real truth is, there is no substance to most of these stories. Critics of the project of modernity have no real viable alternative to it. Critics of modernism seem to want less and less technological advances, not more. The critics of the modern way of life would love humanity to go back to a 'pre-modern era', ie... back to the caves no doubt.
I want to see the unfettered growth of Western science and its application in society, and throughout the world. It was not wars that led to great social change in the past, it was the compass and the telescope that overthrew religious fuedalism over two hundred years ago. The broadband internet is my weapon of choice against the modern day philistines. So viva modernity and Western science - because, this is what I have faith in.
Picture: Erno Goldfinger building in Elephant & Castle. London. 2006.
posted by Courtney Hamilton @ 6:02 PM
4 Comments:
"The broadband internet is my weapon [of] choice against the modern day philistines."
Who are the philistines? I've always wondered if the philistines are just another way of saying white, black, Jew, Chinese, woman, et al...I'm wondering if targeting Hollywood-MTV ethics with a broadband quiver is a way to quell our conscience (in psycho-babble the professionals call it "moral masochism") Whoever said that the Jacobins, despite their profession of morality, didn't have more than a little narcicism programmed into their own biological system[s]?
Nevertheless, "moral masochism" swings the other way, and so kudos on defending the right to be modern without a guilty complex.
Enjoying your blog.
www.thepeckingorder.wordpress.com
Have you seen the plans for Castle House, Elephant & Castle? Possibly the ugliest building I have ever seen, yet profoundly modern in every possible way...
That looks like the old Alexander Fleming building now named Metro Central Heights, after it was gutted of asbestos years back and turned into flats.
well I never
interesting blog, I am a great fan of modernity my self :)
Well, the critique of the horrors of factory farming does not necessarily entail a neo-luddist position, and therefore should not threaten more than slightly your idiotic "total faith in the western way of living."
And there is certainly plenty of "substance" these "stories" of unimaginable torture - that is if you count animal suffering as suffering. But perhaps your beloved technology will pull us out of this quagmire. You are familiar no doubt with the developments in cultured meat?
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