a little postmodern primer

[Nick]

Pye wrote:

A great many of their think projects have to do with the notion that no single human being can be in possession of the full truth until they are standing everywhere at once. And many of them see this move toward context and validity as a way to get there.

I assume from your enlightened, spiritual experiences that you are able to stand everywhere at once, so I am not taking after you here for that, but rather your understanding of postmodernism -- as an -ism -- itself.

I see no reason why a truly wise person cannot "stand everywhere at once" if such an idea represents specifically the complete comprehension of all that is universal; aka understanding the nature of reality.

Talk about lofty.

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I think the postmodernist litterally means "standing everywhere at once", to describe the only way one can understand ultimate reality. Another way of saying, unless we are constantly experiencing and understanding everything that is happening in the universe simultaneously, then any opinion we have to offer is completely subjective. Of course noone will ever be able to accomplish this task of "standing everywhere at once", so it makes it easy for any postmodernist to dismiss any authoritive statements concerning ultimate reality as inherently lacking. This idea demonstrates how cowardly postmodernism is.

[Steven Coyle]

Nick,

Word to the wise,

Keep an eye out for silver foxes.

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What's your take on Buddhism?

[Nick]

Nick,

Word to the wise,

Keep an eye out for silver foxes.

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What's your take on Buddhism?

That's a very broad question, are you refering to anything specific? To give you a broad answer, I think some of the ideals of Buddhism, such as selflessness, non-attachment, and emptyness are very helpful in aiding one's spiritual development. Though the systems which different forms of Buddhism operate within can be a hindrance or even misleading to one's spiritual development.

[David Quinn]

Pye wrote:

Many of these descriptions of the age go this way (the ponderous Frederick Jameson comes to mind), and it is not difficult to look around and see the shifting, if not obliterated sources of assumed authority for any meaning -- in daily life, as well as in humanity's most cherished traditional beliefs. The postmodern thinking I've found interesting is the stuff that is attempting to think through this age, to ask after it as evolutionary phenomena and to posit or envision what this shift in human consciousness may be conspiring to produce.

Of course, fears for the lost values of the next generation have existed all throughout recorded history. Perhaps some thinkers here share this woe. Myself I would rather look at it non-hysterically; to ask in an interested way what, if any, direction human consciousness now takes, as when Nietzsche's madman asks "Whither are we moving . . . What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun . . . ."

It's all just the babble of children, though, isn't it? Speculating about where society will go next after postmodernism is like speculating about which kind of games the local children will favour next. It might have a surface interest, but essentially it is meaningless.

I can't believe that you continue to take this stuff seriously.

Fundamentally, there are only two possible ways to go "through" postmodernism - that is, either by abandoning reason altogether and adopting a belief-system on faith, or by doing what this forum suggests and reasoning one's way past it and thereby plunging into the realm of the absolute again.

So given this, it should be pretty obvious where society will go next. It will either keep going around and around in circles in a postmodernist fog, or it will revert back to the religious fundamentalisms of old. Or more likely, it will continue trying to juggle both.

One thing it won't do is reason its way into the absolute. We can virtually take this as a given. Personally speaking, apart from this forum, I haven't come across any person or group or discipline in the world today which has successfully deconstructed postmodernism is a rational manner. So Genius Forum is pretty unique in this regard.

(If anyone does know of other instances of this elsewhere, I would be grateful if they could direct me to them. )

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[David Quinn]

Diebert wrote:

Postmodernism is not a philosophy a such, perhaps in that way very similar to 'nihilism', like a philosophy can be 'nihilist'. Certain thinkers have been branded postmodern or to be contributing to the 'postmodern' movement, but that's mostly it. Certain 'postmodern' writers even condemn postmodernism!

Only in the sense that a clergyman might condemn the sermons or behaviour of another clergyman, or an edict from the church. The condemnation by these "postmodernist writers" is surely no more fundamental than this?

As far as I can see, all postmodernists share the same basic belief-system, which is that everything is subjective and uncertain, that there are no absolute truths, that human behaviour is a product of "narratives", that Utimate Reality cannot be grasped by the human mind. There might be slight variations on this theme from one postmodernist to the next, but I can't see how any of them could properly challenge these core tenets without ceasing to be a postmodernist.

Is it possible to affirm something as being absolutely true while remaining a postmodernist?

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[Pye]

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David writes:

I can't believe that you continue to take this stuff seriously.

Two things here. First, finding something of interest is simply finding something of interest. It is not myself who does not possess the subtlety of mind to be near other thoughts without threat, without gagging. [/serious kidding]

Secondly, do you believe, David, that the consciousness of human beings has been of a fixed nature since the beginning of human being? I do not. Not microcosmically in a single life, nor macrocosmically for the species -- which also means for me that said consciousness is not "finished," either.

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[David Quinn]

Pye wrote:

Two things here. First, finding something of interest is simply finding something of interest. It is not myself who does not possess the subtlety of mind to be near other thoughts without threat, without gagging. [/serious kidding]

"Thoughts"? Is that what they are?

To me, postmodernists seem to come from the same mold as those Christian fundamentalists who fall into a trance and start speaking in toungues. Get a postmodernist to talk about philosophy and he immediately starts speaking in tongues.

Secondly, do you believe, David, that the consciousness of human beings has been of a fixed nature since the beginning of human being? I do not. Not microcosmically in a single life, nor macrocosmically for the species -- which also means for me that said consciousness is not "finished," either.

It depends on which level you are talking about. Superficially, people's consciousnesses are evolving or devolving all the time. For example, the consciousness of people in the West has broadened a lot over the past 100 years, while becoming a great deal shallower. So a long-term change can definitely be observed there.

On a more fundamental level, I doubt there has been any real change in human consciousness over the past ten thousand years. Most people nowadays are still as mentally crude and ignorant of Truth as they have ever been.

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[Leyla Shen]

Nick wrote:

I think the postmodernist litterally means "standing everywhere at once", to describe the only way one can understand ultimate reality. Another way of saying, unless we are constantly experiencing and understanding everything that is happening in the universe simultaneously, then any opinion we have to offer is completely subjective. Of course noone will ever be able to accomplish this task of "standing everywhere at once", so it makes it easy for any postmodernist to dismiss any authoritive statements concerning ultimate reality as inherently lacking. This idea demonstrates how cowardly postmodernism is.

So, ultimately, their argument is things exist outside of consciousness and experience is limited by personal subjectivity, arising as "personal pockets" (people with narratives, etc.) of an inherently existing objective universe.

Would that be their truth?

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[Nick]

So, ultimately, their argument is things exist outside of consciousness and experience is limited by personal subjectivity, arising as "personal pockets" (people with narratives, etc.) of an inherently existing objective universe.

Would that be their truth?

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I guess so, but I don't think they hold anything as absolute truth, since everything is subjective, according to them. Their "absolute truth" sounds to me like they are saying nothing can be proven ultimately true beyond a doubt. But how can they take that ideal seriously when in fact nothing is true including that statement itself. Postmodernists might as well not think about anything at all and offer no opinions or theorys about anything except on a superficial level. It eventually leads to pure nihilism.

[Elizabeth Isabelle]

Steven wrote 9/16/06:

establishing a direct dialouge with the psychology of the medium via the message.

I think a step got missed here. Although I suppose there could be considered a psychology of the medium itself, though only as assigned by the members of the culture at hand, I considered both the medium and the message as only two tools to understand the source of the message - or in the case of relayed messages, occasionally the indirect source. This does leave out the understanding of the Ultimate Source for the time being - which would in succession only be understandable by understanding the sub-sources (which would be understood by the mediums, the messages, and those things left uncommunicated).

[millipodium]

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The medium is the message -- Marshall McLuhan

Since the aforementioned author of this quote is a pet of postmodernism (and most people here are not), I leave a brief word in explanation of how I have been using it here.

McLuhan came up with this phrase in response to his studies and analyses of the technological, media-driven age in which we live, but it was picked up in the general postmodernist gathering of postmodernist ideas as a signal moment.

In this sentence, traditional distinctions between form and content are meant to be obliterated. The medium -- in other words, the carrier (form) of whatever message (content) is being delivered -- is not only just as important as what is being said, but becomes the content itself. In this manner, say the postmodernists, the focus for any authority for the message-content no longer rests in this disembodied content, but in the person/media/package that is delivering it itself.

This moment has been so signal to our age that it birthed the modern notion of "validity" and the equally compelling force of context. No longer do we judge the actual message being delivered anymore because we must now focus on the context that delivers it to understand it at its depths. It also means to make a direct assault against original notions that the veracity of thought can be conveyed without taking the living context of the thinker into consideration.

In this manner, the words (message) of an 8-year-old child (medium) can be deemed as valid as those of a 70 year-old philosopher, because they are genuine (truthful) to the whole package and delivery system. In other words, we cannot go about judging the truth or validity of anything without first knowing the context from whence it came. In doing this, notions of any universal truth applicable to all is also dissolved.

. . . not just pedantry here -- I'd like to know what you think of this. It says that what is truer than the thing being said is the thing saying-it.

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Context is context. The truth is the truth. The medium IS NOT REALLY THE MESSAGE. He just means the medium can INFLUENCE our perception of the message. Of course, some transmissions may be intentionally devoid of any meaning, on purpose, to please those who are pleased with themselves when they pretend to appreciate meaninglessness, or have been convinced that meaninglessness is something cool.

Postmodernism is an anti human attempt to remove the human narrative from the world.

[Wild Fox Zen]

Postmodernism is an anti human attempt to remove the human narrative from the world.

man, you're weird.

[millipodium]

Postmodernism is an anti human attempt to remove the human narrative from the world.

man, you're weird.

The truth is weird. Effective drama threatens the mind control grid.