Are We in a Post-Modern Age? Essay -- Post-Modernity

This paper answers the question Are We in a Post-Modern Age?Post-Modernism can be key outd as a particular style of thought. It is a concept that correlates the emergence of new features and types of social life and economic order in a culture often c on the wholeed modernization, post-industrial, consumer, media, or multinationalcapitalistic societies.In Modernity, we have the sense or brain that the present is discontinuous with the past, that through a movement of social, technological, and cultural change (either through improvement, that is, progress, or through decline) life in the present is fundamentallydifferent from life in the past. This sense or idea as a world viewcontrasts with what is commonly known as Tradition, which is simply thesense that the present is continuous with the past, that the present insome agency repeats the forms, behavior, and events of the past.I would propose that traditional ways of life have been replaced with uncontrollable change and unman ageable alternatives, but that these changes and alternatives eventually create something that may result in the society that traditionalists actually seek after the balance between Nature and Technology. Modernity itself is merelythe sense that the present is a transitional point, not centre on a cleargoal in the future but simply changing through forces outside our control.I will first describe how Modernity came about, and then to indicatesome of the features for which Post-Modernity is meant to be a reaction,response or addition to modernization.Beginnings of ModernityFirst, I aim to give a broad historical picture against which we may understand the rise of Modernity as an idea related to science and society or as a example for a view of rationality.We know that we experience change as either progress or transition, thatis, we view our historical situation and our lives presently as ancestrymeaning and value in some unrealized future.The shift from Renaissance humanism to M odern rationalism can be understood in term of four shifts (1) from an oral culture in which the theory and practice of rhetoric playeda central role to a written culture in which formal logic played a centralrole in establishing the credentials of an argument (2) from a practicalconcern - with understanding and acting on particular cases to a more th... ...spicious of the belief in shared speech, shared values, and shared perceptionsthat some would like to believe form our culture but which in fact maybe no more than empty, if necessary, fictions.I believe we should be committed to salvagingwhat we can of the ideals of Enlightenment and Modernity. We need to stayopen to all valid claims of reasoning, knowledge, spirit, tradition, andhumanity for we are not, and cannot be, all knowing in this life.To be focused so completely upon Post-Modernism or Modernity, suggeststhat we can somehow define a group, any group, in the sense of its culturalessence which is not in truth completely possible or even wise.Are we in a Post-Modern Age? I would say yes as a defined theoryor word, but in the reality of man and life, the answer is No. bitis continually changing and adapting and for ever continuing to progressin spirit, technology, and social/cultural adaptation. Whatever agewe are presently in, we are modern compared to the unrivalled before, each agelives its own Modernity each era obligated to find its own balance betweenNature and Technology, Tradition and Progress a continuous cycle untilthe end of man.