Anthony Giddens: The Consequences of Modernity

Downsides of modernity 1. environmental destruction 2. Increased military power 3. Increased totalitarianism in form of transnational corporations (having been long replaced the nation states) 4. Degrading work (think repetitive work and deskilling) information society and information as such can not be divorced from the consumer context. Do we not have enough information? No, too much information is always the problem We have 1000 trademark tools that do essentially the same jobs Why put the format onto automatic and work it into the lower brain, basal ganglia, when you can constantly exhaust limited high brain functioning getting used to hot, exciting new features! New features that are scarcely an improvement on the good enough for government work features of yore. Are postmodernism and postindustrialism same terms? Lyotard coined the non-retarded term postmodernism Here's an epistemology sandwich to start a jaunty morning first came the bun on the bottom, Nature, holding the whole thing up (The Natural World with it's infinite psychedelic experiences) Next came, the fake meat of God in the middle, the meat was necessary when nature died out and agriculture replaced the HG's. (religion, that substitute for real experiences in the natural world, the spiritual sense is the lost immediacy of everyday survival in the jaws of death, with a million fantastical experiences, ever-changing, ever-delighting) On the top, the latest bun, is the bun of Technology Yes, so all we are eating today is the top bun of tech. No more natural world, no more God. Just Google. Google and a Search. As Nietzsche would say, "I guess some things come full circle, eh my friends?) Modernity is a historical epoch that goes hand in glove with the historical epoch of capitalism. We can split the hairs all day long, but for all intents and P, the damn thing arises pert near 17th century, give or take some scholarly wheel-spinning. PM is the feeling of being swept up in a world that we do not fully understand. Exempli Gratis: 1. I just ate a sandwich made in Japan. 2. I just switched on the lights! PM is the experience of irony everywhere. The rapidity of change under PM is flabbergasting. (While writing this, I just updated my software, and began squatting digitally in cyberspace) Lately we seem to have lost our belief in progress (9) Didn't Blake say it in the 18th century in "The Human Abstract" so beautifully. Blake in one poem raised and answered the questions of so much data and scholarly tome. Society is an ambiguous notion. Referring to some vague associations of people (12) and suddenly this epiphany: "we can use hx to make hx!" (15) Was not this/that the real eureka of Marx? Along with the recipe for the ingredients of exploitation. Marx said and I paraphrase liberally here: "Making salsa in Spanish is the same as salsa in French" The names are different, but the ingredients, the essence will stay the same, be it plebian or some official workers" If modernity began in conjunction with the mechanical clock, than the PM era begins when the cell phone becomes a much more effective mechanical clock. Cell phones are clocks on steroids. Here's one for an art installation You or Me (but better you than me) in a prison with the name of your carrier on the walls Now pray tell, how many bars is your 3G picking up, eh my friends? Giddens says that under modernity and becoming worse under PM, locals become shaped by beliefs that come from far away. "I live in Silicon Valley and I give two shits about what the NYT says is transpiring in NYC?" HG's didn't care about distant events, but we are made to believe we should. Nevertheless, dominant cultures colonize the lifeworld (Lieberwelt) of other cultures Giddens fancy (I'm worth my salary!) term for this phenomenon is "phantasmagoric" (19) This "phantasmagoric" tendency is a real thing and a real problem, but do we really need such a fancy word for it?

LEX, M2 and V1 in Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections

Language expressions and metaphors mostly from The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen "Two empty hours were a sinus in which infections bred" (3). "It was difficult and pointless like trying to peel blueberries (5). "It was a large, vaguely gubanatorial chair" (8). "Chip was appaled by his parents' willingness to make themselves vectors of corporate advertising (16). "The carousel coughed up some more luggage (18). "Eager to swallow a long-hoarded Xanax" "Been squirreling away a cache of Vicodins." "Two nipples jutting phallic-like to the surface of the bra" (28). The very definition of mental health is the ability to go full-throttle in the consumer economy (31). A lack of desire to spend money b-c's ground for mental therapy (31) "I fight the whole phallometric yardsticks of achievement in the male-dominated society." (33) "Her hair had the cherry-wood color of new motor oil" (36). "Chip reminded his class to sit up straight like active critics rather than passive consumers" (39). "She was a vaguely chihuahua-like person" (40). "He wondered how much of his depression had been the effect of a greasy diet" (46). "He girded himself for the last stage up the ascent of mount tenure" "Not being theatrical, he always felt disadvangaged around people who were" (47). "swamped by loneliness" (51). "to be dependent on a drug with no hedonic kick" (57). "under the heavy weight of fresh shame" (60). "the borderline feminine softness of freshly-leavened bread" (68). "the automaticity in which she drove a corkscrew into a bottle of wine was disconcertingly admirable (73). "Her parents took a wrong turn somewhere in her upbringing" (74). He smelled his couch hoping some hints of vaginal tang may be lingering weeks after the beautiful woman had sat there (74) his work looked somewhat mentally unbalanced (80). he'd written extensively about cuckolds (89). marriage as a property right, and adultery as theft (90). "I was struck afresh by ______________" (91). her long cool pear tree limbs, her grapy smell and lecherous pliability (92?). to "escape the nightmare of consumption" (97). "The problem with money is the indignities of life w/o it" (105). His new goal was simply to be a man w/ some dignity in the world Her pussy was like a seasoned baseball glove" (104). She "retreated to her birch-laminate desk" (107). His responses to men fell into one of two categories: fear and resentment of their sucesses, or "flight from the contagion of their failures" (111). "A teakwood salad bowl" (119). she asked "half-beseechingly" (126). a wedding is just a party with a purpose (119). "sunflowers with their thick, meaty heads, heavy as a brownie" (136). "interminably futile fights" (?) in the "obliterative heartland heat" (138). he expected a "modicum of cooperation from his wife: a mature willingness to consider the special circumstances" (147). "his parents were cowed by authority of all kinds" (149). "the pretty, pumpkin-yellow sunset unfolding" (153). "He was afraid that if the idea that he was depressed gained currency, he would forfeit his right to his opinions" (159). his mental markets--glycemic, endocrine, over-the-synapse were crashing (159). "the twisted boogers of browning meats" (163). Don't look too hard at your own house! If you do, you'll find "big, emboldened spiders"; "cricket husks"; "unfamiliar fungal and enteric smells"; "the sage of entropy" (page?) When slowing down enough to finally stop and look at his house Chip's brother thinks: "We've got to sell this fucker right now, we can't lose another minute!" (172) NTR: Certain liberties have been taken with this quote "there are things in life that simply have to be endured" (173). "I always feel so unpampered in the Midwest" (175). "It's hostile to label people" (181). MT: label jars not people. I think Gary said this in response to his wife Caroline. he'd reached the "post-martini downslope" (?). MT: One thing Franzen is really good at doing is coming up with creative observations for routine daily activities, like drinking martinis. Maybe Franzen dropped acid? Maybe his wires just got mixed up at birth? In any case, he "makes it new." She crossed the DMZ (demilitarized zone) of the mattress for amorous activities. (191) MCM: Gary and Caroline are fighting over the question of returning to Christmas in St. Jude. Gary wants to return b/c he's oft promised his mother Enid a return, but failed to make true of it. Caroline, the little city-slicker, refuses to travel w/ the fam. to St. Jude for X-mas, so she is boycotting by witholding "affection." At this point in the story, her mind begins to play second fiddle to the needs of the body, thus proving that Descartes Cogito is still relevant today, despite the fMRI evidence. it was hard to imagine them sharing a house amicably (?) "Gary tore fresh tape from the fanged dispensor" (229). "how the world seemed bent on torturing a man of virtue" (246). MCM: I believe this was a flashback from Alfred's life, he was staying in a hotel earlier is his career and heard a girl is a motel room next door "gasping in her ululations." Alfred--despite being from St. Jude, i.e. St. Louis--is no borderlander. His is a mindset informed by New Englander Puritan values combined with upper midwestern frames of mind. Schopenhauer: "Among the evils of a penal colony is the company of those imprisoned in it." (?) the joys of the swingset are uterine memories (277). old urologists never die, they just peter out (296) faint view of a "sun-toasted shoulder" (292). "perch-belly white" (359). "smells like raw oyster in here" (362). "I've got a real knack for timing" (364). a nip of Seagrams they talked about flavor the way Marxist's talked about revolution (377) drawing on "reservoirs of libido" (380). "You be a pathogen, I'll be a leukocyte" (386). she was "avidly adventurous" (394). "she had the metabolism of a hummingbird" (398). "he trie to garden, but his shovel got chipped on all the petrified cat shit" (398). "she was literally awash in desire" (411). "an agreeable fizz that lingered from the night before (?) she felt attractive, well-aerated, and alive. (?) "a penitentially small living room" (427). "flogging herself w/ Christmas prep" (460). "elated by her second cup of coffee" (471). the paucity of his home furnishings (472) his glial cells purring w/ the first sweet lubrication of his first drink (?)