Almond, Rousseau le tourbillon social

Rousseau's description of the whirlwind that his hero experiences in his novel The New Eloise paint a detailed and ever changing stability of the modern that still hold true today. Although, there has been a shift between city streets to the cyber world this may in fact be only one of the few differences in the struggle of modernity.

 As a student attempting to study communications and new media this fact is driven home even more so. Trying to keep up with the rest of the world is in fact impossible, because the world is moving in to many directions all at once. By the time that a modern person begins to become comfortable or competent with the state of social, economic, technological etc. it changes, shifts and morphs into something else entirely.

This leads to the biggest problem of modernity, the illusion of control and comfort. This is what Rousseau was attempting to convey through Saint-Preux struggles moving out of the country (pre-modern(ity) and into the city (modern(ity).

Today the idea is that people are unique and as such have a voice, power over their self and lives. But this is not the case at all, the assault on the senses and mind in the modern world are too numerous and powerful. Individuality is a construction of a deconstruction and re-assimilation of the whirlwind built both by modernity and as a response-rebellion against modernity.

The force of modernity is strengthened and deluded by in-stability. Rousseau's Saint-Preux says "I don't know one day what I'm going to love the next". To say that Saint -Preux feels unstable would be an understatement, but the catch 22 of living in the modern world is that he is not required to be stable and is both accepted and demanded of him in the "city".