The 20th Century Begins
Background to the 20th Century
- World War I - optimism turns to pessimism
- 40 million dead, 20 million wounded
- The first true industrial war
- Industry creates new mediums seen in the arts
- Art - Ferroconcrete, steel, neon tubes, etc.
- Music - Synthesizer, magnetic tape, etc.
- A century of instability
- The Depression (1929-1940) - A global economic collapse
- World War II (1940-1945) - A global war against fascism
- Cold War (1946-1989) - A political/economic war between
the western democracies and communists
- 2nd vs. 3rd Wave (1990-today) - Struggle and conflicts
emerging between an industrial paradigm and an emerging informational
society
Existentialism
- The Contributors
- Sartre
- Being and Nothingness - A treatise of existentialism
- No Exit - A play exploring existential concepts
- Camus
- The Myth of Sisyphus
- The Stranger
- The Existential paradigm
- Existence before Essence
- Traditional assumption of essence preceding existence is rejected
- Our essence of being is the result of our existence
- Freedom in a world
without god
- No god means we have an unlimited potentiality to define our own
essence
- "Condemned to be free"
- "Suffocation of freedom"
- Choice
- Each choice defines your essence
- The requirement to choose
- Responsibility
- The non existence of god demands responsibility
- The choice is always the individual's
- "Bad Faith"
- The attempt to absolve oneself from responsibility for the choices
made
- Non-choice is the worse example - you choose not to choose
- Result is Anxiety
- The burden of "infinite potentiality" means
an existence of never ending anxiety
- Munch - The
Scream
- Sisyphus
- Hostile World
- Estrangement
- To become separated from ourselves and our world
- Informational technologies and the estrangement of nature
- Life is Absurd
- The meaning of life is life itself
- The Sisyphus dilemma of life and death
Humanities
Resource of Mark Hunter