The Relationship between Human, the West and Civilization

It is part of human nature to desire improvement, and a better life.  This is the basic idea that drives humanity towards modernism as a whole. Humanity values knowledge, discourse and power, and make it as a reason for life. This is the reason why our world is moving the way it is today. With everyone competing against each other to achieve a better a life, the world changes and becomes more civilized each day. However, this is only to the extent of people wanting to move towards a better quality of life. Nonetheless there are communities that reject the idea of modernization and this is the reason why there are resistances to modernization.

Theodor Adorno and Max Horkhemeir wrote an article called, “The culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception”, that shows how the media is very much the reason why media change its system and focus, making it evolve around creating as much profit as possible. Some of the key points behind this article are that Art becomes a commodity where it is used no longer to be an entertainment but as a source to gain profit. Everything is now controlled under businesses; even the political system is very much influenced by the private stakeholders.   The Idealists and capitalists influenced society to act this way. They brought the idea that modernity symbolizes progress and change and without modernization a society tends to be trapped in backwardness. Adorno and Horkhemeir also talked about the culture industry where it also had been changed from what it used to be.

Another author I analyzed was Foucault who critiqued modernity. He believes that “modern rationality is a coercive force, but where they focused on the colonization of nature and the subsequent repression of social and psychic existence” (Focault, p.43). He argued that modern theorists tend to see knowledge and truth to be neutral, objective, universal, or vehicles of progress and emancipation, while he sees it as integral components of power and domination. To connect Foucault’s explanation with Adorno, I see that Foucault is highly influenced by the ideas of Marxism and thus his idea is far from capitalism. In other words, for him modernization is just bringing society to a more liberal lifestyle. He views modern as an explanation of a west lifestyle. Focault adopts discontinuity as a positive working concept. He rejects history, civilization, and epoch. He wants us to avoid making the pass as just our pass, but to continue some aspects of the pass to our future.

Humanity often views the west as more civilized than the east. However, they do not question the negative impacts of modernization. They do not see that it weaken other forms of identity or create a sense of difference. These are some points that authors such as Foucault wants to point out.  Samuel Hamilton, also mention some of the same things in his article the “the clash of civilization”. He mentioned that culture and religion is also one of the main aspects that push economic growth, and not just modernity. However, the high respect many societies have towards modernity made many people ignore this.

Rossa D