The PostModern Option

In 2008, Time released an Anniversary issue entitled 1968: Fallen Leaders, Lunar Dreams, Riots at Home and War Abroad: The Year That Changed the World. Many place the beginning of the Postmodenist period in 1968. I have always chosen that date too since it was the year I was born…

Postmodernism is birthed in the work of Frederick Nietzsche, validated in the glory and brutality of the 20th Century, and expressed in many different cultural movements and trends that shaped the latter half of the 20th Century.

Just as Nihilism was more a feeling than a clearly defined philosophy, so PostModernism is more an attitude – a posture of heart and mind. Some view Postmodernism as a fierce rejection of the intellectual arrogance birthed in The Enlightenment. Others see Postmodernism as simply the last move of Modernity – the ideals of Modernity being taken seriously, put to the test, and found severely wanting.

Postmodernism pulls the smiling mask of arrogance from the face of naturalism.

—James W. Sire, The Universe Next Door, 243

The Enlightenment Ideal promised a better world, a golden age built on the autonomy of human reason and ingenuity. We are smart enough and wise enough to create or world in our own image. In the 1990s, after two World-Wars, innumerable smaller wars, an unimaginable rise in crimes of all sorts, an ever increasing gap in the the quality of life in 1st World versus 3rd world countries, atomic weapons, the advent of chemical and bio warfare, and countless other well-reasoned man-made horrors, there are very few left who trust autonomous human reason.

First of all, some distinction needs to be made between Postmodernity and Postmodernism. The first refers to an era (see the previous topic: Bridging the Gap) and the second to a net of philosophical ideas that we could loosely call a worldview. But we should not think that Postmodernism is a singular worldview.

Even the Postmodernists disagree on how to define what Postmodernism is essentially. One of the most famous is that of Jean-Francois Lyotard who defined it as “incredulity toward all metanarratives.” This at least means that Postmodernism does not trust any Master Story that claims to make sense out of the macro (the larger issues) and micro (details) of life. There is no Master Story.

Instead, the argument is made that all stories are equally valid and they are made so by the communities that choose to live by those stories. Because many of the intellectual postmodernists also dabbled in linguistics, they came to view life as a war of words.

Just as Descartes shifted the philosophical base from being to knowing, (or from God’s Revelation to human reason), Postmodernism shifts its base to the individual construction of meaning. To say it more clearly: we create meaning by our language.

In the Postmodern mind, truth – especially transcendent truth – is forever hidden from us. All we can do now is tell stories and convince as many people as we can to agree with us and be on “our side.” It doesn’t really matter whether a story or statement is “true”; the only thing that really matters is if the story is helpful in getting you what you want. The Postmodern person does not believe something because it is true, but because it creates meaning, belonging, hope, peace, courage – whatever is needed.

These stories create meaning and coherence for the community or group that believes these stories. So culture and society is built around these stories that are believed in common. Again, it doesn’t matter if these stories are true or not, only that they create the meaning and purpose that we want. The Tribalism of our times is one of the clearest examples of this effect.

All this is well and good as long a these stories are not made too large and approach being metanarrative – master stories – as we have defined them. Metanarratives have been described by some Postmodernists merely as power plays that one group uses to subjugate another. The Identity politics that have recently entered the main stream of our culture is one expression of such ideas.

Postmodernism seems to accept merge the major tenets of Naturalism and Existentialism – there is only the material world, no god and the individual creates meaning. This poses some real problems, especially in ethics. What is “right” and “good” is defined as what the society wants it to be – majority rule.

The Postmodern mindset has taken deep root in arts and literature since the 1960s. In fact, this is where this mindset is making its greatest advances in the general public’s consciousness. We cannot give a full or adequate treatment of this view here and so once again recommend you read “The Vanished Horizon: Postmoderism” in The Universe Next Door as a good introduction to a larger study.

Oddly enough, Postmodernism and Theism sympathize on a couple of points. Both views agree that the critique of complete confidence in the sufficiency of human reason is on point. We also agree that our stories do give meaning and coherence to our “in groups” and some form of power over others. The question is, “How do we use that power?”