I actually did not mind reading this piece of work. Personally, I thought that it was a hard read but somehow I understood it better than the other readings we had to read. I felt like I fully grasped Georg Simmel’s main points and that I could see where he was coming from. One of the quotes from Simmel’s piece that I would like to give my own opinion and experience to is when he says that “in less advanced cultures production was for the customer who ordered the product so that the producer and the purchaser knew one another. The modern city, however, is supplied almost exclusively by production for the market, that is, for entirely unknown purchasers who never appear in the actual field of vision of the producers themselves.” Coming from Long Island, I do see the difference in the relationship between the producer and the purchaser. Back home there is a pizzaeria in which all of the employees know personal information about my family and I. I can tell that in New York City that there is a different feeling in which I do not feel personable to the producers.
Another quote from Simmel’s piece that I would like to talk about is when he says that “The modern mind has become more and more a calculating one…transforming the world into an arithmetical problem and of fixing every one of its parts in a mathematical formula.” Personally, I want to major in mathematics so this quote immediately caught my attention. I believe that what he is saying is true. Every day I am faced with calculating something. I calculate the positives and negatives of the solutions of problems. For example, I calculate the pros and cons of coming to school early everyday. The cons is that I wake up earlier, I do not have time for a nice breakfast, and I am bored sitting outside of the room. The pros is that I get to eat a nice breakfast, I get to do the homework that I did not get to do the night before, and I have ample time to get to class if there is a problem with my train. I calculate how much time I need to spend studying in each class to get an A, what is the proper path I need to take to achieve my major, what’s the best food place I should go to for lunch, and many more. I could definitely relate to what Simmel was saying in both of these quotes.