• Starting today August 7th, 2024, in order to post in the Married Couples, Courting Couples, or Singles forums, you will not be allowed to post if you have your Marital status designated as private. Announcements will be made in the respective forums as well but please note that if yours is currently listed as Private, you will need to submit a ticket in the Support Area to have yours changed.

The Anything Goes Chat Thread.

Jump to latest Follow Reply
Sort by date Sort by votes
P

padey

Active Member
Jun 3, 2004
48
2
✟174.00
Faith
Pentecostal
Well it is ment to be Postmodernity....

So out of the greenhouse into the hothouse, here is my view on modernity;

To understand postmodernity we need to understand modernity. By ‘Modern world’, I suggest roughly spans from the 18th century to the present. Characterised by the European enlightenment at the intellectual level and the industrial revolution at the social level. These 2 events brought on massive change in the way society functioned. Vision and values within society all changed, as reflected in society’s architecture and art. There was a large scale shift from agrarian to smoke stack economies; ie fields to factories.

Philosophers of the day learnt to think for them selves without fear of tradition, and the industrialist learnt how to make things for themselves, rather than grow them. Both acquired a new confidence to take on the world, and these themes are still strong in our late modern culture.

Thus rose up the modernist trinity;
  • The confident individual, master of his fate and captain of his soul.
  • The certainty of the world and our objective knowledge of it. He could know, do and make things.
  • The myth of progress. Progress would remove all our troubles.
This unholy reality came about by splitting reality into two. On one side was, “the eternal truths of reason” and “the truths of the imperial world”. In other words, on one side are ‘facts’ and the other ‘values’. Facts were objective and values were subjective and there was apparently no link between them.

Christians were no longer told to live by traditional ethics, because they were told they now ‘lived in the real world’. And religion and ethics entered a place for private opinion. Religion became what individuals did in solitude.

The mind became God and Christianity moved from a community to individual expression. Voltaire the 18thC writer said, “True greatness consists in the use of a powerful understanding to enlighten oneself and others.”

Pre modernity, peoples identity came was from relationship, now their identity is defined by information, or by their intellect.
 
Upvote 0
B

Bevlina

Guest
So today...people are defined by their intellect?
Uhm...I think I've lived in the country for too long. We are all individuals with individualistic thinking and actions. Sometimes I find it very hard to move into the 21st century
There are soo manny things in this day and age which is, to the older mind, baffling.
The Industrial Revolution, I believe, was like a whiplash to the world. As was the Age of Enlightenment.
Voltaire, in my humble opinion came out with some of the oddest phrases I have ever heard. eg:
"Marriage is the only adventure open to the cowardly"
He also said "If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent Him"
Through all these men, the world, and mankind still went on...until it reached the world of today which really means we have to live in the real world...or be robbed or murdered. That being the case...I suppose postmodernism, placed in a nutshell, simply means awareness?
 
Upvote 0
P

padey

Active Member
Jun 3, 2004
48
2
✟174.00
Faith
Pentecostal
Come on Bev, you've got to keep up. lol

One of the key changes in postmodernity is the deconstructed human. People’s lives have become like the English country side. There lives are cut up into little chucks, hedged off so they don’t collide. So people have a ‘work world’, ‘church world’, ‘church friends’, ‘work friends’, Christian forums world, and so on… And they rarely connect, and never collide.

So identity is different depending on which field they are in. Their lives have deconstructed and look like a patch work quilt.

We read the bible in deconstructed form also. ‘Verse of the Day’ and ‘Daily Bread’ are the most popular devotional texts, yet readers of these text never get a grip of the meta-narrative, or the whole story. They only get a small passage, often taken out of context to backup what the devotion is on about. They never see Luke’s agenda for writing Luke-Acts or see how Luke and Acts must be viewed as one work, or John’s agenda and so on. ‘Verse of the Day’ and ‘Daily Bread’ is like watching the ‘Lord of the Rings’ movies in daily 10minute chunks, and not necessarily in order. You’d never get the depth of the story.

The myth of progress has been revealed in postmodernity. After all science and engineering has offered, (I’d like to clarify this comment by noting I studied Electrical Engineers at UWS) there are more people living in poverty in the world than ever before. Progress and technology has achieved much, but the rich nations get richer and poor are getting poorer. We’ve discovered that to be a pharaoh, you need slaves. Progress has not brought on an expected nirvana. Modernity in Australia has been of the casual and the immediate. For the idea if you work hard for 40 years you will achieve, has been found wanting as this modern generation approached retirement, most will be on the aged pension.

In postmodernity all truth has been relegated to the place of personal subjective truth. Your truth has become your truth and my truth is my truth. As long as your truth makes you happy, and doesn’t affect me, then that’s fine with me. So your blue can become red and red become blue, but just don’t think you can tell me what is blue and what is red. And because what I know has given my identity, if you disagree with what I know, then you must also be disagreeing with who I am. This is classic postmodernism and I see this alot on these forums.
 
Upvote 0
B

Bevlina

Guest
Yes, I think I get the gist of what you are saying Padey. It's really all still above my head. I still tend to live in a little world of my own - and cling to old fashioned values, and my own views of life on what is right and what is wrong.

Today's world is very strange to me. Today's thinking is very strange to me. In fact, city folk are very different to country folk. The stress of some city folk seems to be immense, whereas,the stress of country folk seems to surround whether or not the chooks are moulting and off the lay.

The world today is far, by far different to the world I grew up in. In fact, we could live on different planets except some of the scenery doesn't change. This is a world of materialism. A world of 'you'll survive if you are rich and well educated'.

To me, it's a world in chaos. Nothing is simplified anymore. Everything seems to have to be analysed, looked at through a microscope, and defined into a category. It amazed me that people actually study trees whereas, in the country, we could tell the age of a tree by it's rings, and size. Progress is what they call it I think...

In the country, we have to laugh at these things. We know when it's going to rain by looking at the haze on the hills. We don't need satellites. We only have to see the things of nature. So, there is no need for analysis. No need for the microscope. And, a person't opinion counts alot. We learn from their opinion. We respect who they are because they are a person.

I guess I'm an ignoramus Padey!
But, I do get the gist of what you are talking about.
 
Upvote 0

Wolflily

Saved by the Grace of God, thank you Jesus!
Jan 8, 2004
2,801
59
New Hampshire, USA
✟25,794.00
Gender
Female
Faith
Non-Denom
Marital Status
Married

Spoken like a true neanderthal!!!! No wonder you're so full of anxiety. If you at least liked some form of artistic expression, you'd probably have a lot more fun in your life. My goodness, without art, life would be dull dull dull. Like engineering.
 
Upvote 0

KristianJ

What's in a name? Letters...
Feb 9, 2004
15,443
663
42
Sydney, Australia
✟43,288.00
Faith
Christian
That's why I balance my engineering with guitars and music.
 
Upvote 0

Wolflily

Saved by the Grace of God, thank you Jesus!
Jan 8, 2004
2,801
59
New Hampshire, USA
✟25,794.00
Gender
Female
Faith
Non-Denom
Marital Status
Married
Art is a balm and a blessing, if it's done to glorify the Lord and to use your gifts the way He intended them to be used. I think you'd like my stuff, Jim. Believe me, it's not four dots. I even have a hard time with some of that abstract stuff. It does have value, when you know the language and know how to read it. See, you don't know the vocabulary of art so you can't understand what's being said. Much like putting someone like me in a computer room and trying to follow an IT conversation. It'd be like, "Ok, fine, I'm going to the beach. See ya later! And let me know when my computer's fixed!" We all have different gifts and abilities - that's what makes us so interesting.

That's cool, KJ! What would life be without rockin and rollin' engineers? We need 'em!
 
Upvote 0
B

Bevlina

Guest
Exactly Wolf. Art is a balm. There is alot of thought and application which goes into art.
I don't think folk really appreciate, or know just how much does go into it. And it more than just art, it's a talent.
Music belongs to the arts. And the amount of time dedicated musicians put into their work is equivalent to the work all other dedicated artist apply themselves to. It would be a sad world without any of these things.
I can speak about music. The amount of time and practise that goes into music is absolutely unbelievable. Art is a balm to the world. And, it is aromatic.
We become absorbed in our little world of it and the world goes by with it's wars and fights and disagreements, sarcasm and taunts, laughter and friendliness....then, off they go to bask in what the artists have created.
Growing orchids is an art Jim!
 
Upvote 0
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

G
Howdy and glad to be here -- our little journey to the Euro-missions
Replies
4
Views
355
Introduce Yourself
linux.poet
God Isn’t Nice: The Cult Of Niceness Is Destroying The Virtue Of Love – Fr. Michael Rennier
Replies
0
Views
121
One Bread, One Body - Catholic
Michie
Walking life's journeys (Mattot v'Masei) Numbers 30-36
Replies
0
Views
294
Messianic Judaism
RabbiJames
"Just what does YHVH your Elohim ask of you?" (Parasha "Ekev")
Replies
1
Views
391
Messianic Judaism
Yusuphhai
Midrash "Shoftim" (Judges) "Righteousness through Righteous means" (Deut 16:18-21:9)
Replies
0
Views
217
Messianic Judaism
RabbiJames
Menu
Log in
Register