Today's Jumbled Brain Fart
Postmodernity looks at modernity and proclaims it flawed; your claims to truth, your foundations, they are manipulative power ploys. Foundations don't work. As for language, it cannot refer beyond itself; reality, therefore, is nothing but a fictive construct.
I respond to postmodernism that you have made everythign meaningless, nothing makes sense because there is nothing to make sense of. You trivialize the pain, the loneliness, and the ostracization of all those you claim to protect. Suffering from a fear of Descartes you open the door once again to Descartes fear.
I do not offer this criticism as someone who considers himself "modern" in the philosophical sense, or any sense. I find it interesting that both modernity and postmodernity seem to destroy that which they find most important. Seeking foundations modernity has turned to manipulation, attempting to create a self-perpetuating system which would consistently destroys any hope of moving towards truth. Seeking to create an epistemology, modernity has turned language into self-referential fiction. Seeking community, to hear the voice of "the other", postmodernity has trivialized all, including the other. Seeking to remove the manipulation in order to allow dialogue to occur, postmodernity is rendering true dialogue impossible.
Whenever faced with a trend that is so obviously a submission to the ideas of the age I become very cautious. It is dangerous to follow along with the masses. Neither modernity nor postmodernity matter on a philosophical level like they do at the popular level. And it is the popular level with which most of us interact. The problem is that the popular level is uncritical. While many mistakes are made by them, the philosophers have done there best. They only became dangerous insofar as they are not taken seriously: Nietzsche proclaimed "God is dead, and we have killed him" but he well knew what that meant, and one hundred years later we see he was right in the consequences he proclaimed as a result of this. In our enthusiastic grasping after his proclamation we ignored what he had to say. Smith, a social philosopher as well as an economist, knew what capitalism involved, but in our leaping forward with his system we have ignored what he himself proclaimed it was based on, and what he warned us to avoid.
And what about those things not in the realm of philosophy? The world I live in seeks to destroy my passions: I can't care to much about anythign or else i would find myself unable to be tolerant, and God forbid, literally according to most Christians, that I cease to be the nice guy for a second. Next to go is my imagination, and it doesn't stop there. Of course there is no malevolence in these things. Were all good people after all, we just want whats best. Being truly creative takes a lot of work, and we know you don't want to strain yourself, so we will relieve you of that pressure. Actually caring about something inevitably brings pain, and we don't want you to feel pain, so we will elevate all those qualities and traits which take away the source of the pain, the passion. The most tragic casuality in the search for "Freedom from" is the "freedom to".
Can you cope with the end of one world and the begginning of another? Most people don't like when movies end without ending, but what if life is like that? No lab can fit an earthquake, no bottle can fit the sea, lightning doesn't follow directives, the wind is still one of those things we don't know. Are you not terrified by the hurricane that became human? The word became flesh and dwelt among us, the fire rested in his bones and flew from his fingertips. The truth became a man, and Life itself came to life to live beside us. Is this not offensive? Does it not shake you to the core, sending shivers up your spine, adrenaline into your system, and make your hair stand on end?
Or are you just a nice person, looking for a buddy and a hug?
Postmodernity looks at modernity and proclaims it flawed; your claims to truth, your foundations, they are manipulative power ploys. Foundations don't work. As for language, it cannot refer beyond itself; reality, therefore, is nothing but a fictive construct.
I respond to postmodernism that you have made everythign meaningless, nothing makes sense because there is nothing to make sense of. You trivialize the pain, the loneliness, and the ostracization of all those you claim to protect. Suffering from a fear of Descartes you open the door once again to Descartes fear.
I do not offer this criticism as someone who considers himself "modern" in the philosophical sense, or any sense. I find it interesting that both modernity and postmodernity seem to destroy that which they find most important. Seeking foundations modernity has turned to manipulation, attempting to create a self-perpetuating system which would consistently destroys any hope of moving towards truth. Seeking to create an epistemology, modernity has turned language into self-referential fiction. Seeking community, to hear the voice of "the other", postmodernity has trivialized all, including the other. Seeking to remove the manipulation in order to allow dialogue to occur, postmodernity is rendering true dialogue impossible.
Whenever faced with a trend that is so obviously a submission to the ideas of the age I become very cautious. It is dangerous to follow along with the masses. Neither modernity nor postmodernity matter on a philosophical level like they do at the popular level. And it is the popular level with which most of us interact. The problem is that the popular level is uncritical. While many mistakes are made by them, the philosophers have done there best. They only became dangerous insofar as they are not taken seriously: Nietzsche proclaimed "God is dead, and we have killed him" but he well knew what that meant, and one hundred years later we see he was right in the consequences he proclaimed as a result of this. In our enthusiastic grasping after his proclamation we ignored what he had to say. Smith, a social philosopher as well as an economist, knew what capitalism involved, but in our leaping forward with his system we have ignored what he himself proclaimed it was based on, and what he warned us to avoid.
And what about those things not in the realm of philosophy? The world I live in seeks to destroy my passions: I can't care to much about anythign or else i would find myself unable to be tolerant, and God forbid, literally according to most Christians, that I cease to be the nice guy for a second. Next to go is my imagination, and it doesn't stop there. Of course there is no malevolence in these things. Were all good people after all, we just want whats best. Being truly creative takes a lot of work, and we know you don't want to strain yourself, so we will relieve you of that pressure. Actually caring about something inevitably brings pain, and we don't want you to feel pain, so we will elevate all those qualities and traits which take away the source of the pain, the passion. The most tragic casuality in the search for "Freedom from" is the "freedom to".
Can you cope with the end of one world and the begginning of another? Most people don't like when movies end without ending, but what if life is like that? No lab can fit an earthquake, no bottle can fit the sea, lightning doesn't follow directives, the wind is still one of those things we don't know. Are you not terrified by the hurricane that became human? The word became flesh and dwelt among us, the fire rested in his bones and flew from his fingertips. The truth became a man, and Life itself came to life to live beside us. Is this not offensive? Does it not shake you to the core, sending shivers up your spine, adrenaline into your system, and make your hair stand on end?
Or are you just a nice person, looking for a buddy and a hug?
Comments