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. . . can anyone provide any examples of postmodernism pointing to solutions for social, political and economic problems that are conservative-oriented? Um ... how about the living possibility that a Cajun residing in Kansas is able to attend a Zen sesshin in Texas and write a book on Kundalini Tantra as a rich and fruitful embodiment of his Christian Catholicism?  ~ Dave | |||
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Ha, yes . . . there's no doubt that the spirit of PM has helped to expand the parameters for inner exploration. Are you familiar with Spiral Dynamics, Dave? If you do a search on this discussion board, you'll see that we've had several threads on it. There's quite a bit on the net as well. I mention it because PM seems to fit quite well with the Green, egalitarian memetic level. Lots of good has come from the emergence of Green and its emphasis on correcting the injustices brought about through the excesses of dogmatic and entrepeneurial systems. Hence, Brad's question about whether PM moves in the direction of conservative policies is bound to be answered in the negative. As with other memetic emergences, however, Green ends up creating its own set of problems, and with that in mind, I think some of the aspects of PM we're taking issue with on this thread would fit the bill, there. Doesn't mean it's all bad, imo . . . | ||||
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Um ... how about the living possibility that a Cajun residing in Kansas is able to attend a Zen sesshin in Texas and write a book on Kundalini Tantra as a rich and fruitful embodiment of his Christian Catholicism? Alright, Dave. I�ll except that as evidence, but we�re gonna need a few excerpts first!  | ||||
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| <Asher> |
http://www.polarisinstitute.or...ions/pubs_index.html This is the sort of discourse that makes me irate. Nobody believes this sort abstract, broad and generalizing language. Roy is supposed to be "an activist." How is this discourse supposed to mobilize a generation brought up by cynicism and doubt? If activists are to make an impact, they have to speak, I would think, in the language of their opponents. Not try to manipulate people by grandiose words and abstract ideas which bear no concordance with actual events. I wish activists would speak in the same language as their so called enemies; who buys this sort of discourse nowadays? And now I have perhaps I have performed the same sin as Roy. It's a disease, I tell you! Get me off of all band wagons, my God. Asher | ||
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Asher, did you check out Bernard Lonergan's approach? Good stuff! Also, Viktor Frankl: Unquestionably, a certain subjective state is the necessary condition for making certain values visible at all; and unquestionably a particular recptivity in the subject was the necessary medium or orgnanon for the comprehension of the values. But that by no means disproves the objectivity of values; it presupposes them. Aesthetic as well as ethical values are like objects of perception in that they require adequate acts in order to be comprehended; but those acts also, and simultaneously, reveal the transcendence of all these objects as against the acts which bring them to light -- hence their objectivity. -The Doctor and the Soul That's just a snippet. Get the book somewhere and read what he writes about the objectivity of values. Excellent material! | ||||
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| <Asher> |
That is superb, Phil. Seems like that's where I need to go next. Best, Asher | ||
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Also, Asher, since you have an appreciation of what Spiral Dynamics Green is about, it might help to note that the next level is Yellow, which can sort through the chaotic relativism that Green produces to retreive what is good not only in Green, but the earlier memetic levels as well. | ||||
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Here's and excellent essay contrasting the Modern vs. Post-modern worldviews, with implications for Christian theology. The author does a nice job of providing a summary of both approaches, including their strengths and weaknesses. Regarding the strengths of PM, he notes: That's very good, and he goes on to make several other points. Regarding the downside, however, he notes something we've emphasized here many times: Boldface mine. | ||||
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That's interesting, Phil. It seems there are almost as many definitions of postmodernism as people. I'd never seen faith and postmodernism linked like that before. Obviously it's true of any system of thought, such as conservatism, that you're going to have a wide range of ideas about just what that is. But I think postmodernism takes that several steps farther. It's seems to be an ideology that can mean whatever anyone wants it to mean. And perhaps that's inherent to any system of thought which is rather dismissive of some of the normal signposts of logic. I just got done reading "Finding Faith" by Brian McLaren who is a big proponent of postmodernism. It is an excellent book and I highly recommend it. But to him postmodernism seems to be no more than about exposing "the sins of the father". And he also seems to have embraced postmodernism as a means of talking to the young and to the disaffected, much as one might try to, consciously or otherwise, develop an affinity for bingo if one's life work was helping the elderly. | ||||
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I am spiritual director for a number of ministers who are very postmodern, but in the healthy way discussed above. As they have faith in the truths of revelation, they find postmodernism to be a breath of fresh air from the heavy, ponderous kind of rational dogmatism that has, in fact, inflicted the Church for several centuries. In many ways, PM has helped the Church to open to and embrace the Mystery and be with It with a new humility. My axe-grinding on this thread hasn't been with those who've taken something of the "spirit" of PM into the life of faith and theology, but with the more secular manifestations, which do tend to deteriorate into rank secularism and relativism. Unfortunately, the latter seems to be a rather strong movement, with many adherents -- especially in university settings. | ||||
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...they find postmodernism to be a breath of fresh air from the heavy, ponderous kind of rational dogmatism that has, in fact, inflicted the Church for several centuries. In many ways, PM has helped the Church to open to and embrace the Mystery and be with It with a new humility. If you�re familiar with that McLaren book then you�ll know I agree with that assessment wholeheartedly. And yet if views do become hardened and dogmatic, and they do, we should not forget about the context of such hardening. I think hardening often occurs in the face of some pretty nasty alternatives. And what postmodernism na�vely does is to role back the present imperfections with little appreciation for just how and why such forces got sort of calcified in the first place. If we simply destroy the current imperfect institutions because they do not satisfy our desire for perfection then we risk letting in some very nasty things in the power vacuum that ensues, particularly because it�s likely we haven�t been very discerning in the first place. | ||||
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Well, I'll have to look up the McLaren book -- adding it to the list of many others, now. But, to be fair, if you read the whole article I linked to above, PM is reacting to Modernism, which was reacing to Pre-Modernism, some healthy aspects of which are actually recovered in Post-Modernism. Spiral Dynamics is a little more precise in speaking of these worldviews, but these three terms do say a lot. Consider the quote below for a good example of the kinds of problems that the Modernist view presented -- even to Christians. Also . . . These are very fair assessments, imo, and PM has provided a means to opening to other perspectives. Again, doing so within the context of a faith tradition is different from doing so outside, as there are certain "givens" about truth that cannot be cast aside in a faith tradition, even as we struggle to better express what we are saying. The article goes on to speak of the PM challenge to religion, but as this post is already monstrously long, I'll save it for later. | ||||
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Well, I'll have to look up the McLaren book -- adding it to the list of many others, now. Only as a recommendation for others perhaps. I assume you�re above the Kindergarten level, Phil, in terms of faith. �some healthy aspects of which are actually recovered in Post-Modernism I�m willing to stipulate to that. From your quote: If, however, we recognize that we cannot transcend the perspectival nature of our knowledge, we can be comfortable with such imperfect knowledge, not denigrating it to second-class knowledge or mere opinion, but recognizing it as all that we are able to have and thus being comfortable with it. That sounds swell. Really. But does such humility translate into a respect for the institutions we form around us? We all want these things to be formed in our own image, whether public schools or the Supreme Court, and if we�re not in there adding our two cents worth then somebody else will be and they will be more likely to effect these institutions because we, in our humility, have already waved the white flag because of our respect for imperfect truth. But then because we have respect for an imperfect truth we will then fight to see that our institutions are not overrun by what we perceive as fundamentalist barbarians. And then our views become hardened against other views and we�re back to where we started. Can�t stay in the middle and there�s no refuge in the extremes. So what�s a postmodernist to do? Advocate one�s beliefs with as much humility and love as one can muster. That doesn�t mean backing down just because your beliefs ruffle someone else�s feathers. One must remember that disingenuous others will use that as a tactic to defeat you. But do advocate your beliefs, even if incomplete, because by acknowledging that any one of us can hold only part of the truth we thereby acknowledge that perhaps together, as sort of a teaming conglomerate, we stand a pretty good chance at coming up with a reasonable facsimile of the truth. But not if we wipe out our opponents and the chance for differing opinions to be heard and even enacted. Such is the state of affairs in many places in society which cynically tell of "diversity" while enforcing homogeneity. From the quote: The question of objective truth is often misleading. It treats truth as an entity "out there," rather than a philosophical concept, which it is. There is a difference between saying that there is a reality "out there" not contingent on human knowing, and saying that truth is out there. LOL. Oh, how we do have to leave much to faith. Even a statement such as the above states what the author presents as a truth about the limitations of, or nature of, truth. True? Reality? What? How. Uhhhhhhhh. No wonder postmodernists find it so easy to just throw up their hands and say "Everything is true and nothing is true." Frankly, either objective truth is "out there" or I�m not sure that truth has any meaning whatsoever. Now, that said, that is no reason to be unhumble about what we view as true. There is surely a difference between the belief in objective truth and our ability to know it. When I say "There is truth!" I hope you will all get up and high-five each other. When I say "This is the truth!" I hope you will give me a kind, almost condescending look of skepticism. And yet my first statement, technically, should also garner such a look. But if we deny that first statement then there really is no point to human endeavors of intellect of any kind. | ||||
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More from Phil�s quote: How can we be sure that our knowledge corresponds to objective reality, then? We cannot. Such is the predicament we find ourselves in because of our finite, limited perspective. We must admit that we cannot have apodictic certainty that our knowledge corresponds with reality, but we can have a growing certitude of the same. Marvelous, but my advice to one and all would be to get right out in the open, right out there on the table where all can see, everyone�s views on when "growing certitude" becomes enough certitude to act on. That�s when we�ll find out who is taking this process seriously and who is fudging or, most likely, who is unconsciously fudging because their inner sense of truth and beauty is so activated by an idea that they skip ahead to the end and assume truth. That phenomenon is something that perhaps postmodernism could expose if it weren�t so busy, in my not so humble opinion, committing the same error. Another part of Phil�s quote: Modernism has been guilty of deifying reason. It was believed that the problems of the world were caused by ignorance, and could be solved by reason. This runs smack in the face of the Christian doctrine of the Fall and the perversion of the will. While knowledge/reason aids us in overcoming the many problems of humanity, knowledge/reason alone cannot overcome the root of humanity�s problem; i.e. sin. Our problem is not with ignorance, but with the perverted will resulting from the Fall. That�s a tough one because reason over ignorance has given us closed sewer systems as opposed to how medieval cities used to operate. Reason over ignorance has given us open-heart surgery as opposed to bloodletting. And yet, if you look around SP, you�ll find no bulldoggier of an opponent to radical rationalism than myself. Science and reason are wonderful things but they are not self-sufficient things. They must always be viewed in the context of for what purpose. The results of science, and even the pursuits of science, are not neutral in my eyes. It is only when we try to escape any responsibility for our work and actions that we try to hind behind the idea of just doing neutral theoretical research even while bombs may be rolling off the factory line because of our supposedly neutral work. And so it is true with reason. We can put our reason and logic busy creating empires and tyrannies and when confronted its proponents may say "We were just doing the rational, logical, reasonable thing." But if we take our intellect out of the context of the full human experience we are as likely to undermine humanity as uplift it. | ||||
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Descartes� standard for truth was that it have indubitable certainty on par with mathematical certainty. The Christian gospel cannot offer that level of certainty, and thus was excluded as truth in the Enlightenment sense because the Enlightenment project attempted to rid knowledge of any basis in faith. Such a goal is not compatible with Christianity because the Gospel requires faith. One thing I�ve learned, and am learning, is that postmodernism has a point about truth being highly, well, personal? As much as I like and appreciate the wonderful technology of the computer, the automobile, and modern medicine, I have very little insider knowledge about these things. I couldn�t create a microchip if my life depended on it. I couldn�t even begin to tell you how and why aspirin works. Yet the data for how all these things do work are written somewhere on paper or stored in a computer. It�s what we might call shared facts or truth. But it seems that some of the most interesting things, perhaps the most important things of all, are highly personal and are known to me in a way that makes that knowledge highly singular. I can write it on paper and even tell you of my experience, but it is not something you can or will reproduce in just he same way. That�s certainly not a concept friendly to science, and yet there are, as postmodernism rightly points out, faith aspects to all knowledge. So when Descarte, the Enlightenment, or modern scientism throws out some of the most amazing aspects of being a human being (such as our ability to sense things with our minds, hearts and spirits that are not, strictly speaking, reproducible, but are real) it throws out not a minor detail, not a thing which is an obstruction to what otherwise would be rationalistic purity, but the very thing that gives any of these things meaning. | ||||
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Phil's quote: We may have reasons to believe X, but we cannot prove X to be absolutely true because our perspective of X is always limited. Modernism, then, is to be faulted in that it raised the bar too high for epistemology. Postmodernism has lowered this bar to a more realistic level, from apodictic certainty to certitude. Well, I really doubt that postmodernism has lowered the bar to a realistic level. It seems to me that it has tried to dispense with the bar altogether. But that quibble aside, the part that I bolded is the part that raised my eyebrows. Has not this been too often interpreted as "Because you can�t prove X beyond doubt that therefore X is not true"? Phil's quote: Postmodernism, with its emphasis on the narrative and socially inherited, unquestioned presuppositions about our world, has demonstrated that faith is involved in all knowledge. But I have no quibble whatsoever with that in general. We do inherent knowledge, although to apply the term "faith" to this process is to unnecessarily obscure the point. Surely we do show a naked faith when we teach in schools, for example, the evils of capitalism and the inherent compassion of socialism or Marxism because the evidence does not support this view. But a perversion of truth in the interest of advocating an ideology is just being dishonest. It doesn�t delegitimize, nor should it, the idea of truth. And it might not be fair to even refer to such a thing as faith. Faith in god, for instance, does not have to mean setting aside reason. One can have complete faith in god and completely accept science and evolution. But when faith does clearly set aside reason then it might be best to label it at least as "bad faith" or simply as a political or social cause disguised as truth. But that�s a different thing entirely from, say, publishing a school textbook with the best pictures we have available of the planet Pluto. Even though the pictures may be quite blurry and indistinct, we don�t consider publishing them much of an issue of faith, even when better pictures come along that show so much detail that � gasp! � we find that Pluto isn�t a planet at all but a large alien spacecraft. This seems a scientific distinction which, perhaps inherently, are more easily nailed down to true/false distinctions. But so also, I believe, are political and social constructs and beliefs. The Founding Fathers were able to, with eyes wide open, take a look at as many previous political and social systems as they could wrap their minds around while trying to construct a political system that would be good and would stand the test of time. And they did so marvelously because of the vast amount of truth underlying our system. They surely uncovered and applied many truisms and it is my belief that such truisms are not all that hard to find. And this is my main problem with postmodernism. It theoretically should, via its own description of itself, be the finest instrument available to deal with such things, to sort out the truths from the wanna-be truths like Marxism, for so many of the things we hold as truths are not true. They are just things we wish to be true and we wish them to be true for easily-uncoverable reasons. That�s a big difference. But it seems to me that postmodernism comes in and paints this all with the same brush. I see little distinction made between wanna-be truths (which are always promoted for political and social power gains, sometimes with good intentions as well) and truths that are more buttressed with facts, such as the capitalism is conducive to freedom and prosperity and meshes will with unleashing and honoring the human spirit. | ||||
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Brad, to be fair, here, most PM writers have no quarrel with the good things that have come from the Enlightenment period, especially the power unleashed by the scientific method and the technological benefits that have accrued from it. Nor do they wish to say that reason doesn't know anything about anything. The point made above is that Modernism tended to deify reason, so much so that if something couldn't be rationally justified, then it didn't have merit. Naturally, this approach had implications for religious faith, not to mention the arts and many other aspects of human life, including love itself. The Catholic response to this was to say that faith need not be rationally proven, but neither must it be irrational. Hence, Catholic (and other Christian apologetics) has not focused on proving the Faith -- as Modernists would have us do -- so much as in showing that it's not unreasonable, and that faith is an integral part of human experience as a whole, far beyond the realm of religion. We've also been adverse to the notion that we can completely cure the maladies of the human spirit through more knowledge and making more rational decisions. If only it were that easy . . . The very Marxism against which you rail on this board is a product of the Englightenment, just as surely as is the Declaration of Independence. The difference is that the former was influenced somewhat by a theistic view of creation while the latter was strictly politico-economic, eschewing theism and even regarding religion as an injustice-enabling influence. Marx's approach, OTOH, drew from the "spirit" of Modernism in proposing a utopian vision that he heoped would be rationally persuasive and compelling; the presupposition, here, is, again, that such a purely rational approach will carry the day, transforming all the other aspects of human nature in the process. Of course, as history has taught us, human nature isn't so completely malleable -- there are aspects of our nature that have their own ways of knowing and being, and which resist the imperialism of an overly intellectual approach to life. PM has, happily, restored this appreciation, and when married to a theistic perspective, things can go rather well, for the most part. The non-theistic aspects of PM are another matter, however, moving more toward anarchy than Marxism. You got a good taste of that a few years ago when the World Bank met in Seattle. I'm still trying to understand what those folks were all about. | ||||
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Brad, to be fair, here, most PM writers have no quarrel with the good things that have come from the Enlightenment period, especially the power unleashed by the scientific method and the technological benefits that have accrued from it. Fair enough, Phil. I guess what I would like to see then is some postmodern specifics rather than general theory. I�d like to see how specific events are seen through postmodern eyes, and presumably, what postmodern eyes see as a solution or better way of doing things. | ||||
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see http://www.elsewhere.org/cgi-bin/postmodern/ Reload the page. LOL!  It's a random post-modernism essay generator. | ||||
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That's great, Phil! I just sent it to a philosophy major freind without comment. I think he'll get it, and if he doesn't, what does it matter? Everything is relative. There is a problem, however. If postmodernism has learned the power of creation and construction, then hasn't it defeated it's primary purpose? And Brad, I hear you mentioning Marxism alot. Was he a postmodernist? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groucho_Marx | ||||
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I love Groucho Marx. And he couldn't have been a postmodernist because he made too much sense! From the moment I picked up your book until I laid it down, I was convulsed with laughter. Some day I intend reading it. Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read. I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book. | ||||
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Those are funny, Brad! Would you all check out this survey and see if it makes sense? I'd like to use it with my class tomorrow night as part of a session contrasting premodern, modern, and postmodern perspectives. Obviously, these correleate to A, B, and C on the survey. (You might all be surprised to find you've a bit of postmodernism in your perspective, using this approach.) | ||||
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Phil, I�m not familiar enough to with the differences between premodern, modern, and postmodern to offer much of a critique of you questions. Perhaps my answers will provide some of the feedback you�re looking for. 1. 3, 4, 3 2. 1, 2, 7 3. 3, 6, 1 4. 6, 4, 0 5. 2, 3, 5 6. 1, 9, 0 7. 2, 8, 0 Totals: 18, 36, 16 | ||||
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Do you suppose the postmodern answer for question #2 is worded the way you want? That doesn�t sound postmodern to me. | ||||
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