NOTES ON POSTMODERNISM

In recent historical times there has arisen a new philosophical, artistic and cultural movement that goes by the name of postmodernism. In some ways this phenomenon of postmodernism has made important contributions to human thinking as well as making most people realize the pitfalls of an excessive use of reason, progress and scientific ingenuity to attain meaning in our lives. Any definition of postmodernism cannot be adequately defined without mentioning that it is a cultural rebellion against another movement called modernism or it can also be said to come after modernism; this I mention even though the postmodernists dislike postmodernism being defined. It is true that a world that is far too scientific and rational is a sterile and unfeeling one, so values, feelings, inner meanings and socially agreed upon external purposes are just as significant for our general needs and wants than is to be found in a scientific and rational progress as a goal in itself can be in our lives. In postmodern architecture we find a return to ornamentation as opposed to the very cold formal and simple buildings of the modernist movement. Also in architecture postmodernism reintroduces traditional and classical styles as a reaction against modernist principles, but postmodern thought and philosophy itself rejects all the traditional knowledge of philosophy, religion and science that have come before it, especially the knowledge that has led to the modernist movement. It is this extreme complexity, contradiction and ambiguity that I am mentioning that makes postmodernism a puzzling cultural movement; it does seem to create a lot of fertile ground for so much confusion and disagreements between people about what exactly it is that defines postmodernism as a unified whole. The ideals of postmodernism as a whole does not seem to fully resolve itself completely into a specific form than can be fully understood. Because of their dislike of modernism and progress it seems that postmodern thinkers have rejected traditional methods of philosophy and science to such a degree that they have discarded logic and objective truths completely from their epistemological thoughts of what real knowledge consists of. Most postmodernists give you the impression that they are a bunch of confused, deluded, affectless, illogical, relativists and perspectivists as well as subjectivists who will argue with you all day long on the matter of what exactly it is that truth is. This intense skepticism against any kind of objective or absolute truth claims is one of the defining aspects of postmodernism which I find to be an unjustified stance against the truths of reason and science that we have greatly benefited from, such as the curing of diseases, medicine, improved living conditions as well as all the other improvements to our lives that the knowledge of the truth has given us generally. Postmodernists are also suspicious of truth claims because they equate them with authority types and the manipulation of the masses by instituitions and authorities generally; I must add, that this way of thinking was made popular by Nietzsche himself. A lot of postmodern thinkers admired Nietzsche and were influenced by his example. Nietzsche was one of those thinkers of a dual nature who used equal amounts of sophistry as well as philosophy in his writings so that it would have a sort of dynamic and poetical affect on his readers, one especially finds this in his aphorisms, he was also known to have admired the sophists for their more direct, realistic and forceful methods. Postmodernism is also characterized by an incredulity or skepticism towards all "grand narratives" i.e., all grand narratives are grand or large-scale theories and philosophies that exist of the world about the world, examples of this, can be found in such theories as that their is a progress of history, the knowability of everything by science as well as the possibility of absolute freedom or free will. It is a good thing in a way that in postmodernist thinking absolute grand narratives have been rejected; this is because they seem like such a clumsy thing. In general people will cease to believe and accept that such narratives of this kind are adequate and sufficient to represent and contain any proper definitions of certain truths. We as human beings have become alert to the differences in opinion as well as the diversity and the interconnectedness of phenomena. Also the incompatibility of different peoples aspirations becomes more apparent over time. Peoples beliefs and desires change as society progresses. I must stress that progress is an inevitable thing throughout history as well as in civilizations forward movement and so the postmodernists are fighting a losing battle in their opposition against progress in this particular regard. I do not think that nihilism will take as much hold as Nietzsche claims in his most cynical moments of so-called prophecy and this is because most people are inherently ethical and constructive in nature. Somebody once described postmodernisn as being like a bastard child or offspring of modernism that is constantly trying to kill its own parent; which is a good analogy I am sure for this cultural movement. A battle against a traditional, progressive and objectivist way of thinking by a postmodernist way of thinking can clearly be found in the the novel that is a direct attack on all kinds of communist totalitarian regimes by the writer George Orwell in his novel called nineteen eighty-four. The character named O'Brien distinctly displays a postmodernist, subjectivist and collectivist type sophistry and denial of Winston's objective, empirical and rational truths as a means to manipulate Winston into submission and compliance with his own orders and that of the party. I have often thought that postmodernist writers are like a breed of neo-sophists of some kind; using whatever forceful but fallacious methods of thinking work for them at the time as they are formulating their ideas, but not really thinking about any thing in any real depth whatsoever. Modernism is supposed to represent a cultural condition that is characterized by a constant change in the pursuit of reason and progress; postmodernism on the other hand is meant to represent a constant change that has the notion of progress taken out of it altogether. Postmodernism also rejects all forms of universality in favour of relativism. Universality or universalism as we all know is a doctrine or school of thought (Plato and Aristotle, etc.,) that claims that universal facts are a part of reality and can be discovered and understood by philosophers. At times one gets the feeling that there are cynical, negative, destructive and subversive elements in postmodernist thinking, especially when it is attacking the positive ideals of the enlightenment, science, philosophy and tradition generally. Postmodernists have had the nerve to claim; Rorty in particular, that philosophy mistakenly imitates scientific methods and that it should not do this. It does not even seem to occur to Rorty and other postmodernists that it was philosophy that developed the scientific method in the first place and that it does not need to imitate something that is already part of its own doctrine. Anti-foundationalism is just another one of the mental diseases that has been spread by postmodernists and their crowd. Postmodernists embrace subjectivity because it cannot be made into a science; according them the human subject precludes objective truth claims and so they do not think that science is capable of discovering objective truth. Postmodernists even go so far as to claim that objectivity is an illusion and this is something that they believe in, even though people have actually been to the moon by using scienctific knowledge from objective truths; so according to the postmodernists everything that happens in the real world that is external from their own petty subjective states, is an illusion! If postmodernists really knew how stupid they sounded, they would actually make an effort to change their ways. The disapppearance of a sense of history and a lack of desire to retain the lessons from the past are also characteristics of postmodernism, this also brings about an erosion of class and culture distinctions between high and low culture, the latter of these two things I must add, is a good thing. The traditions of class distinctions will not be missed, but the traditions of knowledge, useful culture, reason and science, etc., should be retained and pursued by all people. The postmodernists like to think that the nature of reality is contingent, absurd, unordered, ambiguous, contradictory and diverse, rather than rational, ordered, universal, necessary, determined and comprehensible, etc.; one could even claim that this is one of the reasons why they are not to fond of Hegel so much and this is because he advocated the latter qualities, the existentialists were not too fond of Hegel either because he was considered by them to be too idealisic and unrealistic unlike they, who were realistic and experiential concerning existence and its struggles, apparant meaninglessness and sense of angst. Postmodernists claim to combine the best aspects of the modern world with the best elements of the traditions of the past, but I think that this is a false claim on the part of postmodernism; to my mind they seem to do this only in architecture, but in all other branches of though they reject the traditions and lessons of the past altogether. All the genuine philosophers of this modern era that we live in today, know how so very deluded and boring these postmodernist killjoys are, with their incessant affectless sophistry and their inability to find proper answers and solutions to things; at least proper philosophers of the traditonal kind actually have answers and solutions and don't simply just use methods of dissimulation to cover up their lack of knowledge which is exactly what postmodernists do when they find themselves unable to answer fundamental questions. When postmodernists claim that the nature of reality is largely contingent, they seem to leave out the fact that many things are in fact determined, necessary and inevitable and so is therefore capable of being understood rationally. Postmodernists are also known for their technical, vague, wishy washy jargon and play on words which they use to cover up the sheer emptiness of their rhetoric. In postmodernisms desire to rebel against all enlightenment ideals which the postmodernists deem to be far too optimistic and confident is a sort of extreme response against an imaginary extreme claim that was supposedly made by the enlightenment thinkers (i.e., postmodernists claim that enlightenment thinkers thought they could resolve all problems and figure out all things, which is not the case). Englightenment thinkers were simply confident in their own abilities to improve the world as well as to learn more about it, they did not claim that they could figure out all things and resolve all problems. In postmodernism any relativist, subjectivist and persepectivist opinion can be uttered and is expected by them to be accepted by others as a truth, but in reality this cannot be accepted as a truth, because black will never be white, salt will never be sugar and two plus two will never make five, it will always make four. Postmodernists have to accept that reason and objectivity works and that there is nothing that they can do to change it. It was natural for the modernists to find traditional themes and ways of thinking to be outmoded and outdated; therefore wanting to move on from all that was holding back progress was a very natural response and this is because change and progress enables one to overcome stagnation and repetition of the same old values over and over again. William Morris and the arts and crafts movement generally was a sort of anticipated rebellion against a climate that was increasingly becoming more industrialist and modernist. Industrialization and mass production of goods does seem to have lowered the quality and value of goods generally and this is because the time, effort and care that one expects to find in a product is not put into every individual product as it was in the past. William Morris and the arts and crafts movement basically taught us to appreciate all that was good in the past and its ideals and accomplishments. One ideally should have a foot in the past and another foot in science, progress and reason and this is because they are all aspects of the same desire to make sense of a world that is constantly changing and building on what was good from the past, postmodernism is simply a sort of negative overreaction to progress, the inevitable and the real. The problem with labels is that they always seem to be one-sided and incomplete. The integration and resolving of opposing concepts or things (Hegel's dialectic) is always the best way to find a harmonious balance in things generally and so the act of doing this always transcends labels and incomplete assessments of phenomena. Where exactly it is that postmodernism leads as a movement itself, no one can know! I myself think that postmodernism is simply a moral and reactionary movement that is aimed against the causes and results of an overuse of the negative aspects of reason to jusify one cause against another or one error against another. We philosophers know that reason is only a tool in the service of truth, reality and progress and that it is useless or negative when used in an absolute sense to justify any cause or purpose in the name of reason alone. Postmodernism likes to create uncertainty and doubt by its use of relativism and perspectivism as well as in its emphasis on subjectivity. But real philosophy consists of certainty, objectivity, clarity and accuracy. Postmodernists like to point out that a lot of the suffering in the world is due to the negative aspects of absolute reason, but this is not a case against reason, it is a case against how reason can be used, reason in itself is neutral, it can be used in a positive or in a negative way depending upon the intentions of the user. Postmodernists use the concept of the "other" (i.e., anything that is different or opposite to one's own cause) as a means to explain the destructive and negative aspects of how reason can be used, reason can be used as a means to be hostile towards the other. It is people who choose to be hostile towards the other by the use of an absolute type of reason, but reason can be used in many ways depending upon how it is used, this does not mean that reason itself is bad or should be blamed for the acts of individual people. Postmodernists do not hide the fact that they hold an anti-enlightenment position, they consider reason, rationalism, science and wisdom to be elitist pursuits, they think that these things are non-multicultural, so are therefore oppressive. Because postmodernists are contemptuous of traditional morality, this gives them an almost nihilistic outlook, they are always in the habit of stripping away whatever it is that is morally traditional and culturally rational in things from its innate meaning or qualities. Postmodernists are also known for being anti-capitalist and anti-individualism, they also dislike the traditions of artistic genius that comes from the renaissance and classical periods, they are in favour of radical egalitarianism and the rise of Political Correctness, so in this sense and in a few others the message of postmodernism is not a complete error. Postmodernists enjoy intentional discontinuity within the elements of a work, they also like ironic self-consciousness as well as anything that is fragmentary, random and arbitrary, they also dislike systematic science and continuity as well as all rational progress. Postmodernists think that they have opened themselves up to the exploration of past models, paradigms and ways of thinking because they have chosen to reject modernism, progress, rationalism, scientism and objectivity and its truths, but this is not so, in fact, postmodernists simply perpetuate the ignorance, blindness and narrowness of past models and paradigms. Progress should be viewed as an inevitable process, the ideals of modernism should be used as a tool to understand, appreciate and transcend older models by analyzing them as a natural process and progression and then learning to go beyond them. Postmodernism should be viewed as a failed experiment, one that panicked by being cynical and irrational in the face of modernism and its ideals. Just because modernism failed to produce new meanings to replace the older ones and initially failed to understand fully the meanings of the older forms and paradigms does not mean that modernism itself and its ideals lack any value or meaning. The postmodernists claim that the modernists are only interested in what is modern, that they behave in such a way that if something is not new, if it is not the latest thing, then it is reactionary, retrograde and an obstacle to progress, I think that the postmodernists use this excuse to cover up the fact that modernism is able to understand the nature of reality and the past very well, yet is also able to transcend it. The science of archaeology was created by the use of modernist ideals, which is the study that appreciates and understands the history of the past by studying ancient cultures, peoples and periods by scientific analysis of physical remains. Modernist thinkers like Einstein, Marx and Freud also appreciated the lessons of the past through science and reason, yet they also valued progress. Postmodernism by its very nature rejects all the ideals and values of modernism that enables us to understand and appreciate reality and the past and its path towards progress, and postmodernism rejects all the ideals of modernism for the superficial belief that it can understand reality and history because it is able to synthesize elements from all phases of human history without truly understanding them, seeing as though you can only really understand them using the methods and ideals of modernism. Postmodernism seems to care mostly about what is modern in the sense that you can synthesize it with older forms, for it makes a mockery of the past in its pastiches and mutations, by combining older and newer things together, seeing that it does not truly appreciate the past, otherwise it would not create these pastiches and mutations and present them as latest fashions, such as a Mona Lisa with a moustache, etc. Postmodernists do not actually understand or appreciate the past through archaeology, anthropology or a study of history that is done in a rational and objective manner, and this is because postmodernism rejects all science, objectivity, objective truths, reason, logic, progress, evolution, universality and rational processes, etc. One of the main reasons that postmodernism fails as a proper ideology is because it was a reactionary and impulsive movement rather than a properly thought out ideology. Postmodernism is full of flaws and contradictions of all kinds, it does not make much sense, not even in a rudimentary sense beyond just being a type of knee jerk reaction against progress itself and its inevitable course through time, with all of its optimism and hopes of a better future for all. Postmodernism is a form of decadence, it is an easy escape for those who fail to hope, dream and wonder on matters concerning the course of progress and evolution generally, it represents a resignation and a failure to be optimistic about how knowledge is understood and used to improve our lives. The in-depth analysis of many labels and their content, has brought me to the conclusion that labels like modernism and postmodernism are either too general, inconsistent or contradictory to have any real, distinct meaning or value for all the things that they are attached to, because they simply represent a sort of general attitude or direction that the general public accepts that they have, and on closer investigation and analysis become something entirely different and problematical. For example, postmodernism itself, is an academic intellectual movement that is anti-philosophical and intellectually bankrupt in nature, and only has any real value in architecture and the arts. Whereas labels like modern and modernism that have been made fashionable by historians, are in fact abused immensely. It is strange to consider, when one thinks about it, that something that happened a few hundred years ago, can be considered modern, yet this is how historians sometimes use the label modern. Will historians in a few hundred years time still be calling Descartes, and his philosophy modern?