Contemporary Connections – Different Points of View

"There are good reasons for suggesting that the modern age has ended. Many things indicate that we are going through a transitional period, when it seems that something is on the way out and something else is painfully being born. It is as if something were crumbling, decaying, and exhausting itself, while something else, still indistinct, were arising from the rubble.

The distinguishing features of transitional periods are a mixing and blending of cultures and plurality or parallelism of intellectual and spiritual worlds. These are periods when all consistent value systems collapse, when cultures distant in time and space are discovered or rediscovered. New meaning is gradually born from the encounter, or the intersection, of many different elements.

Today, this state of mind, or of the human world, is called postmodernism."

— Václav Havel, a playwright, poet, and former president of the Czech Republic

What do you think of Havel's comment? What do you think is on the way out or on the way in? Respond to these questions in a journal entry. Try to think in terms of literature, music, art, values, and clothing. If you need assistance on writing a journal entry, please visit the Developmental Module for more information. Once you have completed your journal entry, please save it with a file name of mod10top6_quotation and submit it to the journal dropbox.