Mike of Modernity(or post?)

The condition of this surreal civilization in which we exist is hard to encapsulate in a few meager words. Just try expressing the tenets of a "post-modern ideology" to someone who is not familiar with the term (like my well-read, intelligent 67 year-old mother) and its amorphous and paradoxical nature begins to frustrate the hell out of you. So much so, you begin to question whether or not you even know what you're talking about. Am I truly waxing wise, or is all this high-brow intellectualism merely brain-fodder, created to legitimize research? Our first PomoCult pow-wow gifted me with what I believe to be a more powerful lexicon of descriptions than I had previously possessed. Specifically, the idea of post-modernism as "An Aura, Not an Era", which freed my rather pragmatic mind from attaching this concept to a specific period in history. Instead it allowed me to focus on the psychological and cultural impact that mass-media saturation and exponenetially more powerful technology has had upon our society. When viewed without a time specific lens, post-modernism as a concept reveals itself to be as Hassan said: "...A will to power in nomenclature". It uncovers the very real fact that our world is moving faster and faster; not through any natural cosmological process, but by the machinations of its own self-aggrandizing inhabitants...Us. This is not a statement I make to shame or browbeat humanity. We are an intelligent species, capable of great reason and cleverness. Perhaps it is our own fascination with this cleverness that supersedes our ability to control it. Perhaps this is why our beloved Miss South Carolina warranted top headline status. Does she make us feel more collectively clever about ourselves? Must we relegate someone to a lower status in order to improve of our own self-esteem? Certainly our ability to disseminate and access information at a moment's notice is a powerful tool, but what exactly are we doing with it? Dr. Rog's comments on post-modern assertion that "faster equals better" spawned a disturbing thought in my own post-modern brain. Those who tout the superiority of faster cars, computers, diets, and pills all have to benefit from society believing this to be true. It is the people that sell the necessary "technology" to make things move faster that have the most to benefit from the acceptance of the SPEED=BETTER equation. It is speed, or the illusion that it is necessary for survival that feeds the great post-modern commercial beast.