Class response

In class on Thursday, one quote, which circulated a lot of discussion, was “hyper stimulated activity”(101). As consumers in a commodity driven society where the media is constantly growing, advancing, and showing us what we need/should want we, as citizens, we are constantly being bombarded with newer items to purchase. Being someone who’s grown up with technology becoming increasingly available for basically every means of functioning in society, we are as Habermas states hyper stimulated. There is pressure on the constant necessity for the pursuit of success, things to buy for everything, structure and being in a high paced culture we become null from the motion of it all. Technology is used in some cases to teach but in others it allows us to become completely dependant on the system and without its presence in our lives we are unable to function properly. We now have an intense need to be connected at all possible mediums to one another and being cut off from this for whatever reason, anxiety sets in.

“The cult of the new”(99) is also a quote I found interesting. The word cult simply brings negative connotations to mind. People apart of a cult follow one belief, one narrow path in action and thought, which is blindly followed greatly due to the mass following. People find it hard to go against the grain, to stand apart from the crowd and it becomes easier to be a certain way. Our society, from celebrities, television shows, and everything that the media has created and continues to hype up, we as consumers become devoted in it so much that our complete way of being becomes just as the way the mass media desires. We all do it; it is not a small follow but a cult at large.

On my honor I have neither given nor received aid on this blog.

Kelly Strandberg