Habermass - Post Class post

The Lyotard and Habermass readings have been quite a challenge this week. Being in class and listening to discussion has helped me a lot to understand our two philosophers/ writers a lot more. Especially with Habermass I seemed to really grasp what he is trying to say.

It seemed that everyone in class came to understand Habermass a lot more when we began talking about his quote on p. 101 on hyperstimulated sensitivity. Habermass wrote “Modernity – An Incomplete Project” around 1980 so well before the 21^st century and well before the revolution of technologies such as iPhones, BlackBerries, iPads…He is concerned that we are (when he wrote this) still living in modernity and are not ready yet for postmodernity. “The Project of modernity has not yet been fulfilled”. He worries that we are losing something that is of importance. This is when we began our class discussion about how many of us cannot ‘live’ with out having our phones beside us 24/7. We have them beside us when we sleep, eat, drive, work out, study…and feel ‘empty’ when it is not beside us. Not being connected is almost scary to some of us. And although communication is becoming ‘easier’ it is also becoming more impersonal. We are always one step ahead and cant seem to focus on the moment anymore – we cant seem to feel relaxed in the moment because technology has caused us to never stop ‘keeping busy’. One of my classmates gave an example of how she went to a kindergarden and they wanted to test how kids would interact if they took all technology away – she said, “they didn’t know what to do”. That is so sad to me. So maybe Habermass is/ was trying to warn us about something nobody else saw – that is, that living in the postmodern is making us lose the complete referent to the historical. Especially now in the 21^st century I complete agree with Habermass. Although we may be faster in doing things and communicating, we are losing ourselves in this world of technology and no longer living in the present but always in the future.

I must say I really enjoy reading Habermass. I really believe in what he says and find his way of thinking highly stimulating.

AHC