Pavel's Postmodern thread

[Pavel Mosko]

Introduction
I'm going to be playing Devil's Advocate for something I have criticized many, many times before, especially in regards to "Post Modern Christianity". Postmodern Christianity (especially the Emergent movement) once was quite fashionable a decade or so ago, but has declined considerably since then (except in the minds of its critics both in the Church and the secular world). In general, I think this concept is not completely understood by some famous pundits that I follow on line namely: Jordan Peterson, Michael Heiser, and Ben Shapiro. (The Criticism made tend to be about things like cultural Marxism, Jacques Derrida, complete Relativism of morals and other concepts etc. that I'm also against, but that does not describe the totality of this fuzzy concept from my stand point.)

I will be advocating that besides all the bad things we associate with the term "Post Modernism" that are some gold nuggets to be had. But that I'm not advocating for most of the common philosophers and writers that you hear about. The person that changed my mind and really got me thinking positively on this topic was a computer language creator named, Larry Wall, who gave a talk a local university (back when I was living in the area, but did not attend only read abou it years later) entitled "Perl, the World's First Post Modern Computer Language. Anyway, I stumbled on transcript of that talks years after the fact and found it extremely useful and enlighteneing and intend to disuss it as well as other Postmodern stuff in this thread.
Perl, the first postmodern computer language


For my point of View, what I think is constructive or good about this area of thought are what Larry Wall in his talk describes as "The Isms of Modernism" (and of the Enlightenment) and from that stand point people like Jordan Peterson are actually Post Modernists themselves without realizing it when you relate his general approach (which fit's Wall's description of "Showing Your Duct-work") and his own use of a technique that can be considered to be a form of "Deconstruction", and a few other things (like speaking out on the dangers of reductionism) and so on.

 

[Pavel Mosko]

I'm posting a few quotes for people who either don't want to read the article or have trouble digesting it.


The funny thing is, Modernism itself was a kind of hammer, and it made everything look like something to be hammered. The protest movement of the '60s was Modernistic: ``If I had a hammer, I'd hammer all over this land.'' The focus was always on the nail, or on whatever it was that was getting pounded. And many things did get hammered in the Modern age. Architectural beauty, for one. That one is obvious just by looking at the skyline of any major city. It's easy to tell which buildings were built in the 50's and 60's. They're the ones that look like boxes. When we first saw them, we thought they looked very modern. Well, they did. But when the Seattle First National Bank was built in, you guessed it, Seattle, we all made jokes about how it looked like the box the Space Needle came in. At least the Space Needle was cute, kinda like the Jetsons were cute. But the Space Needle wasn't really very functional, unless you go in for rotating restaurants.

In fact, at many different levels, Modernism brought us various kinds of dysfunction. Every cultural institution took a beating. Government took a beating. Schools took a beating. Certainly the family took a beating. Everyone took a beating, because Modernism was about attacking problems. Modernism was the hammer. (I'd like to make a pun on hammer and sickle here, but I'm not sure what it would be. Certainly Russia was more hammered than we were by Modernism, in the cloak of Marxism. I know what it means to be hammered, but I'm still trying to figure out what it would mean to be more sickled. Hmm. Unless that's talking about the Grim Reaper. Russia has a lot of experience with that too.) Anyway, back to our talk. Modernism oversimplifies. Modernism puts the focus squarely on the hammer and the nail.

 

[Pavel Mosko]

I'm posting a few quotes for people who either don't want to read the article or have trouble digesting it.

Well, enough of that. Let's see what's next in our talk. Oh, oh, here comes a biggie. The Cult of Objectivity.

You know, Modernism tried. It tried real hard. It really, really tried. It tried to get rid of conventions. It thought it got rid of conventions. But all it really did was make its conventions invisible. At least to itself.

Reductionists often feel like they're being objective. But the problem with reductionism is that, once you've split your universe into enough pieces, you can't keep track of them any more. Psychologists tell us that the human mind can only keep track of about about seven objects, plus or minus two. That's for short-term memory. It gets both worse and better for long-term memory, but the principle still stands. If you lose track of something, it's because you thought it was less important, and didn't think about it often enough to remind yourself. This is what happened to Modernists in literature. They've forgotten what's important about literature

 

[Pavel Mosko]

quote from article


I would like to say one thing here about objectivity, however. While I despise the Modern Cult of Objectivity, I also despise the quasi-postmodern Cult of Subjectivity. I call it absolute cultural relativism. It's the notion that everything is as good as everything else, because goodness is only a matter of opinion. It's like claiming that the only thing you can know absolutely is that you can't know anything absolutely. I think this is really just another form of Modernism, a kind of existentialism really, though unfortunately it's come to be associated with postmodernism. But I think it sucks.

The funny thing is, it's almost right. It's very close to what I do, in fact, believe. I'd go so far as to call myself a strong postmodernist. Strong postmodernism says that all truth is created. But this really isn't a problem for anyone who believes in a Creator. All truths are created relative, but some are more relative than others. A universal truth only has to be true about our particular universe, so to speak. It doesn't much matter whether the universe itself is true or false, just as long as it makes a good story. And I think our universe does make a good story. I happen to like the Author.

 

[Messerve]

My response to Modernism has always been "Efficiency is overrated." I'm sick of everything being done in the fastest, simplest (aka boring-est) way possible. Or every vehicle looking more or less the same. And rows and rows of houses where the garage door is the main focal point... Ugh.

Even old factory towns, which were constructed quickly to accommodate workers in the past, still put some effort into making the homes beautiful with artistic woodwork and delicate roof lines. They could have made everything squares and rectangles, but they obviously saw a purpose for doing something a little more.

As a music composer, I have learned over time that beauty isn't something you can streamline. It takes time and effort and lots of patience. And music notes aren't relative. Without assigned pitches, it would be chaos - I'm sure we've all heard that "music" from the 20th century (and still today).

Having said all that, since our Jesus calls himself the Way, Truth and Life and one with the Father, I think we can conclude that our universe is not false, but true. Thus, His universal truths are not only true, but very good truths. False stories can be great when the hearers are convinced of its truth, but a story that is not only great but is also true is far batter because the hearers are not deceived.