The Self in Contemporary Society

The self in contemporary society was an interesting outlook on the differences of "self" in our modern world differ very much in comparison to previous generations.  Kenneth J. Gergen's "technologies of social saturation" has an enormous influence to almost everyone's life in modern society.  With these technologies, the variety of relationships differ much more than it did in the non-globalized world.  I also thought that Gergen's perspectives competing in modern life was very understandable.  Although he had three different perspectives, the two that stuck out was the modernist and romantic movements.  "The modernist self is described by the philosophers of the Enlightenment as the rational creature, one who operates in the world by attempting to master the passions and to act rationally, while for Romantics our sense of self originates from a deep inner core..." (pg 164).  These two perspectives are very visible in people and it's almost like distinguishing between the "emotion" driven people versus the "logic" driven people.