Post Modernism

[Biggles]

The bottom line on postmodernism is that it gives everyone license to have their own reality, their own facts, their own truths. Reason, rationality, and objectivity are denied and replaced with subjectivity and relativism. Postmodernism makes it impossible for a people to have the same shared, consensus reality, the same standards, values and morality. It divides people and causes conflict. Your identity beomes malleable, inchoate, dare I say "Liquid"!

Yikes! This is the version of post modernism you've been peddling on GTPlanet Dotini & why I thought it might be time to have a thread devoted to it. Leaving aside questions of style, in art, architecture & other cultural media, & contrary to what you have repeatedly suggested, Dotini, post modernism does NOT "makes it impossible for a people to have the same shared, consensus reality, the same standards, values and morality". The core idea behind postmodernism is this:

postmodernism does not dispute the existence of truth, per se, but rather seeks to interrogate the sources and interests of those making assertions of truth. This leads to the understanding that truth is not found - rather truth is made, & making truth means exercising power. Those persons, or institutions, that wield power often control the narrative around what is "true".

Think of the influence of the Church for centuries in Europe - it controlled what people believed, how they lived, what they ate, how they worked & socialized. More tellingly, in the 18th century, as a new spirit of rationalism emerged, the US Declaration of Independence embodied this rationalist philosophy:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness"

but even while claiming "these self-evident truths", in reality, only 6% of the population actually had the right to vote, hundreds of thousands of people were literally enslaved, women had virtually no rights, & indigenous peoples were subject to displacement or murder at the whim of the authorities. "Truth" was at the service of those with the power to define what was & wasn't true.

Postmodernism is concerned with understanding & critiquing who, or what, creates the narrative of what is "true", but it does not deny the possibility of objective truth.

 

[Johnnypenso]

Yikes! This is the version of post modernism you've been peddling on GTPlanet Dotini & why I thought it might be time to have a thread devoted to it. Leaving aside questions of style, in art, architecture & other cultural media, & contrary to what you have repeatedly suggested, Dotini, post modernism does NOT "makes it impossible for a people to have the same shared, consensus reality, the same standards, values and morality". The core idea behind postmodernism is this:

postmodernism does not dispute the existence of truth, per se, but rather seeks to interrogate the sources and interests of those making assertions of truth. This leads to the understanding that truth is not found - rather truth is made, & making truth means exercising power. Those persons, or institutions, that wield power often control the narrative around what is "true".

Think of the influence of the Church for centuries in Europe - it controlled what people believed, how they lived, what they ate, how they worked & socialized. More tellingly, in the 18th century, as a new spirit of rationalism emerged, the US Declaration of Independence embodied this rationalist philosophy:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness"

but even while claiming "these self-evident truths", in reality, only 6% of the population actually had the right to vote, hundreds of thousands of people were literally enslaved, women had virtually no rights, & indigenous peoples were subject to displacement or murder at the whim of the authorities. "Truth" was at the service of those with the power to define what was & wasn't true.

Postmodernism is concerned with understanding & critiquing who, or what, creates the narrative of what is "true", but it does not deny the possibility of objective truth.

Looks like you need to make a correction to the Wikipedia entry:

Many postmodern claims are a deliberate repudiation of certain 18th-century Enlightenment values. Such a postmodernist believes that there is no objective natural reality, and that logic and reason are mere conceptual constructs that are not universally valid. Two other characteristic postmodern practices are a denial that human nature exists, and a (sometimes moderate) skepticism toward claims that science and technology will change society for the better. Postmodernists also believe there are no objective moral values. Thus, postmodern philosophy suggests equality for all things. One's concept of good and another's concept of evil are to be equally correct, since good and evil are subjective. Since both good and evil are equally correct, a postmodernist then tolerates both concepts, even if he or she disagrees with them subjectively.[9][10] Postmodern writings often focus on deconstructing the role that power and ideology play in shaping discourse and belief. Postmodern philosophy shares ontological similarities with classical skeptical and relativistic belief systems, and shares political similarities with modern identity politics.[1]

 

[Mr Tree]

Looks like you need to make a correction to the Wikipedia entry:

If I'm correct @Biggles is right. Those where the ideas post modernism was founded on.

Then some people took it a step further and stopped believing any source and started concidering everything as subjective.

I really love the former I don't like the newer version at all.

 

[Dotini]

If Biggles or Mr Tree will go ahead and edit wikipedia, I'll change my tune, even though I've based my thoughts on much more than just wikipedia. Somehow it feels like there is a great deal of unresolved ideological division and conflict in modern western society, and postmodernism rather neatly explains a good part of it. I think you can believe me when I tell you that I don't like it and wish it were otherwise. However, I do think postmodernism is useful to a degree in helping to understand certain absurd facts common to our reality.

Meanwhile, there is no shortage of YouTube videos you can roll out which support one or more takes on postmodernism. Roll your own truth. You can do that while I practice my fencing actions on the college girls down at the academy, something that is far dearer to my heart than postmodern philosophy. Grumpy no more!

 

[Biggles]

If Biggles or Mr Tree will go ahead and edit wikipedia, I'll change my tune, even though I've based my thoughts on much more than just wikipedia. Somehow it feels like there is a great deal of unresolved ideological division and conflict in modern western society, and postmodernism rather neatly explains a good part of it. I think you can believe me when I tell you that I don't like it and wish it were otherwise. However, I do think postmodernism is useful to a degree in helping to understand certain absurd facts common to our reality.

Meanwhile, there is no shortage of YouTube videos you can roll out which support one or more takes on postmodernism. Roll your own truth. You can do that while I practice my fencing actions on the college girls down at the academy, something that is far dearer to my heart than postmodern philosophy. Grumpy no more!

Postmodernism isn't some kind of coherent ideology - what has come to be called postmodernism has manifested in a wide variety of ways & in many different fields. Yes, relativism is an important core idea, but the most important postmodern thinkers did not use this simply as a means to tear down established truths, they used it as to deconstruct them to show how our social, cultural & political environment creates those truths. In other words, truth does not have a separate existence from that environment. This is not the same thing as saying "that it gives everyone license to have their own reality, their own facts, their own truths." There's no doubt that some people have used the deconstruction of established truths to promote an "anything can be true" attitude, but this is not representative of serious postmodernism thought.

If you look what's happening in the political arena, I think it has less to do with postmodernism & more to do a regression to old, well-established, "pre-modern" fears & prejudices. Those have never gone away, but have been lurking underneath the veneer of liberal values. Trump (& similar figures in other countries) has helped release these old feelings.

Really, the poster boy for postmodern inanity has to be Andy Warhol, who raised the inane & meaninglessness to an art form (& a business). I thought some of these might cheer you up Dotini. He's really pretty brilliant in his idiot savant way:

Art is what you can get away with.

An artist is somebody who produces things that people don't need to have.

I always like to see if the art across the street is better than mine.

I like boring things.

When I got my first television set, I stopped caring so much about having close relationships.

It's the movies that have really been running things in America ever since they were invented. They show you what to do, how to do it, when to do it, how to feel about it, and how to look how you feel about it

I used to think that everything was just being funny but now I don't know. I mean, how can you tell?

Employees make the best dates. You don't have to pick them up and they're always tax-deductible.

I always hear myself saying, 'She's a beauty!' or 'He's a beauty!' or 'What a beauty!' but I never know what I'm talking about.

If you wear a wig, everybody notices. But if you then dye the wig, people notice the dye.

I am a deeply superficial person.

I'd asked around 10 or 15 people for suggestions. Finally one lady friend asked the right question, 'Well, what do you love most?' That's how I started painting money.

I went to vote once, but I got too scared. I couldn't decide whom to vote for.

In the future everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes.

In the future fifteen people will be famous.

 

[Imari]

You can do that while I practice my fencing actions on the college girls down at the academy, something that is far dearer to my heart than postmodern philosophy. Grumpy no more!

That's not the sort of fencing that first sprang to my mind, but that certainly is a good way to cheer oneself up. Nothing quite like angling to poke college girls.

 

[TenEightyOne]

Art is what you can get away with.

An artist is somebody who produces things that people don't need to have.

I always like to see if the art across the street is better than mine.

I like boring things.

When I got my first television set, I stopped caring so much about having close relationships.

It's the movies that have really been running things in America ever since they were invented. They show you what to do, how to do it, when to do it, how to feel about it, and how to look how you feel about it

I used to think that everything was just being funny but now I don't know. I mean, how can you tell?

Employees make the best dates. You don't have to pick them up and they're always tax-deductible.

I always hear myself saying, 'She's a beauty!' or 'He's a beauty!' or 'What a beauty!' but I never know what I'm talking about.

If you wear a wig, everybody notices. But if you then dye the wig, people notice the dye.

I am a deeply superficial person.

I'd asked around 10 or 15 people for suggestions. Finally one lady friend asked the right question, 'Well, what do you love most?' That's how I started painting money.

I went to vote once, but I got too scared. I couldn't decide whom to vote for.

In the future everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes.

In the future fifteen people will be famous.

We need some John Cage too:

Art is whatever the artist says it is.

 

[TexRex]

We need some John Cage too:

And some John Cale:

The only reason we wore sunglasses onstage was because we couldn't stand the sight of the audience.

Good grief it's early...

 

[Johnnypenso]

I was going to pop this into the Political Correctness thread, then I thought, no, Funny Stories thread. I think it belongs here though:

University of Akron officials this week blocked a professor from carrying out his plan to raise female students' grades as part of what he called a "national movement to encourage female students to go to information sciences." According to school officials, Liping Liu, an information systems analysis and design teacher who has worked at the university since 2001, said in an email to students: "FYI, your grade has been sent to the university registrar. The following categories of students may see their grades raised one level or two: Female students (it is a national movement to encourage female students to go to information sciences)." Liu added that there might be other beneficiaries: "Students who had earned scores in exams (especially final exams) demonstrating a higher performance than their calculated ones; Students who attended class but missed reporting attendance (as long as I can tell)."

Source

 

[Mr Tree]

I was going to pop this into the Political Correctness thread, then I thought, no, Funny Stories thread. I think it belongs here though:


Source

Did the proffessor 'do' this out of critique on affirmative action or was he serious

While there are bad thing s about regular affirmative action it only let's them get in easier. They at least still need to work to get there diploma this proposal on the oter hand was so of the charts I find it hard to believe he was serious.

(Not saying he wasn )

Edit: I am.wondering what's post modern about this

 

[Dotini]

In the postmodern age, the epidemic of fake news is proof that truth itself is on trial.

 

[Mr Tree]

In the postmodern age, the epidemic of fake news is proof that truth itself is on trial.

Was this a response to my question or rather a thought you had?

 

[baldgye]

In the postmodern age...

I'm fairly new to this area of the forum, but do you start all your posts like this?

 

[Johnnypenso]

Did the proffessor 'do' this out of critique on affirmative action or was he serious

While there are bad thing s about regular affirmative action it only let's them get in easier. They at least still need to work to get there diploma this proposal on the oter hand was so of the charts I find it hard to believe he was serious.

It's only let's them get in easier? Affirmative action literally means giving something to someone who is less qualified than other candidates, for the sole reason that they have different skin colour. In this case it's affirmative action based on sex. We used to call it by another name - racism or sexism.

Edit: I am.wondering what's post modern about this

For millenia students wrote tests in maths, sciences and other disciplines and you progressed, or didn't, based on whether you got the right answers often enough. In the postmodern age, whether you get enough answers correct doesn't matter in this case, unless you are male of course and then that's the only thing that counts.

 

[Dotini]

Was this a response to my question or rather a thought you had?

It was in partial response to @Johnnypenso, whose post bordered on the incredible. Devaluing the objective scores of males on university exams seems a sort of cultural Marxism, social engineering and, yes, the postmodern phenomena of deconstruction and rearrangement of reality. Or fake news.

 

[Mr Tree]

It's only let's get them in easier? Affirmative action literally means giving something to someone who is less qualified than other candidates, for the sole reason that they have different skin colour. We used to call it by another name - racism.


For millenia students wrote tests in maths, sciences and other disciplines and you progressed, or didn't, based on whether you got the right answers often enough. In the postmodern age, whether you get enough answers correct doesn't matter in this case, unless you are male of course and then that's the only thing that counts.

Sorry I wasn't strong enough in my choice of words like I said it's got the bad feature that it gives advantages based on skincolour over merrit. But like I also said it's way less worse then what this proffessor alegdly wanted to do as the students who didn't get there on some merrit will fail the classes and thus not hraduate under standard affirmative action or am I wrong?

 

[Johnnypenso]

Sorry I wasn't strong enough in my choice of words like I said it's got the bad feature that it gives advantages based on skincolour over merrit. But like I also said it's way less worse then what this proffessor alegdly wanted to do as the students who didn't get there on some merrit will fail the classes and thus not hraduate under standard affirmative action or am I wrong?

They are exactly the same.

 

[Mr Tree]

They are exactly the same.

How?

 

[Johnnypenso]

How?

In both cases one group is allowed to progress beyond their objectively measured abilities for an arbitrary reason. Skin colour, gender etc.

 

[Mr Tree]

In both cases one group is allowed to progress beyond their objectively measured abilities for an arbitrary reason. Skin colour, gender etc.

Yeah and you're ignoring the fact that people go to college to get a diploma and in one of them they are advantaged 'only' by admission and then have to prove if they were people who should've been admitted in the first place or fail and thus reach the endgoal, the diploma.
The other actually let's people graduate who shouldn't have so reach end goal without proving to be worth it.

Calling that exactly the same is just plain wrong and a very radical position.

But maybe you can prove me wrong
Edit I do agree to strong similarities in the process but the end result is way to diffrent to call it exactly the same

 

[Johnnypenso]

Yeah and you're ignoring the fact that people go to college to get a diploma and in one of them they are advantaged 'only' by admission and then have to prove if they were people who should've been admitted in the first place or fail and thus reach the endgoal, the diploma.
The other actually let's people graduate who shouldn't have so reach end goal without proving to be worth it.

Calling that exactly the same is just plain wrong and a very radical position.

But maybe you can prove me wrong
Edit I do agree to strong similarities in the process but the end result is way to diffrent to call it exactly the same

You're focused on the specifics. The principle is the same, getting something you didn't objectively earn. Post modernism would seek to differentiate between the two things as if differentiating between them makes even a scintilla of difference. They are both fruit from the same poisoned post modernist tree.

 

[Mr Tree]

You're focused on the specifics. The principle is the same, getting something you didn't objectively earn. Post modernism would seek to differentiate between the two things as if differentiating between them makes even a scintilla of difference. They are both fruit from the same poisoned post modernist tree.

Like I said I agree to that

It was the exactly the same I didn't agree with as the outcome.is diffrent but the intention the same.

 

[Imari]

Yeah and you're ignoring the fact that people go to college to get a diploma and in one of them they are advantaged 'only' by admission and then have to prove if they were people who should've been admitted in the first place or fail and thus reach the endgoal, the diploma.
The other actually let's people graduate who shouldn't have so reach end goal without proving to be worth it.

Calling that exactly the same is just plain wrong and a very radical position.

Not really. In the sense of unequal treatment they're identical. That's not a radical position at all.

I think you're underselling the damage that illegitimately allowing people into college does as well. Modern college isn't free, and if you can't get admitted on merit your chances of successfully graduating are almost certainly reduced. Is it doing people a favour to allow them to spend money or take out loans to finance something that they're likely ill-equipped to complete?

At least giving people undeserved diplomas is at least likely to land them a job they otherwise wouldn't. They'll be bad at it, but there's bad employees in every office. They can probably fake their way through it for a while at least, or mooch off the other people in the office that actually know what they're doing.

 

[Mr Tree]

Not really. In the sense of unequal treatment they're identical. That's not a radical position at all.

I think you're underselling the damage that illegitimately allowing people into college does as well. Modern college isn't free, and if you can't get admitted on merit your chances of successfully graduating are almost certainly reduced. Is it doing people a favour to allow them to spend money or take out loans to finance something that they're likely ill-equipped to complete?

At least giving people undeserved diplomas is at least likely to land them a job they otherwise wouldn't. They'll be bad at it, but there's bad employees in every office. They can probably fake their way through it for a while at least, or mooch off the other people in the office that actually know what they're doing.

Yeah ok I get that I always forget it's so expensive in the US looking at it with them as victims instead of lucky chaps makes them identical.

 

[Dotini]

ProfessorBaylock Documentary on The X-Files episode "Jose Chung's 'From Outer Space'" by Darin Morgan and its role as a bridge from Postmodernism to Metamodernism in television. "The X-File that broke all the rules and its long journey from avante garde to mainstream."

This epsisode was viewed live by over 16 million viewers in 1996, and is my favorite single episode of all the X-Files. Paranormal activity is about as postmodern as can be, and this 'university lecture' connects well all kinds of relevant facts for Mr @Biggles pleasure and education.

 

[HenrySwanson]

What is post-modernism's take on heaven/hell/purgatory?

 

[TexRex]

Paranormal activity is about as postmodern as can be

The supposed activity itself or the belief in it?

 

[Mr Tree]

What is post-modernism's take on heaven/hell/purgatory?

I don't realy think they have a consistent take on it.

It's a good question and I'm going to look into it. But from what I understand we can't know
Like pretty much anything. There is a sense of reality in hell and heaven as far as for the people who believe it to be real live like it's real so it's in a way 'real'. But then again this is my personal take how you could look on.it in a post modern sense and I don't know post modernism fully.

 

[Dotini]

@HenrySwanson

Rationalist atheism would have it that religion and God are dead. But Postmodernism has had the result that some forms of religion are rising from the grave. This is despite the resistance to traditional religions by feminists, gays, and the Marxist roots of leftists. Harry Potter, The Matrix, Lord of the Rings, X-Files, etc. are sacred texts; heaven, hell and purgatory are literal places, parallel dimensions of existence overlapping and separate from the human dimension, and are as real as you make it. In this New Age, experience of the individual is the arbiter of reality and truth. When reason is destroyed, everything becomes possible - from divine revelation to pure will, phenomenology and despair.

The supposed activity itself or the belief in it?

Both. The fact that UFOs are real, as confirmed by recent US government reports and videos, yet at the same time exhibit paranormal* characteristics impossible in known physics and medicine, perfectly exemplifies the kind of absurdity featuring in postmodernism.

*
- hyper velocity combined with instant 90 and 180 degree turns
- trans-medium travel
- shapeshifting
- disappearance
- strange effects on human consciousness

 

[TenEightyOne]

Rationalist atheism would have it that religion and God are dead.

Nope, rationalist atheism says gods never existed in any state.

But Postmodernism has had the result that some forms of religion are rising from the grave. This is despite the resistance to traditional religions by feminists, gays, and the Marxist roots of leftists. Harry Potter, The Matrix, Lord of the Rings, X-Files, etc. are sacred texts; heaven, hell and purgatory are literal places, parallel dimensions of existence overlapping and separate from the human dimension, and are as real as you make it. In this New Age, experience of the individual is the arbiter of reality and truth. When reason is destroyed, everything becomes possible - from divine revelation to pure will, phenomenology and despair.

Which goes to the paradoxical self-justification (or self-denial) in calling anything "post-modern". With many basis for definition and a strong emphasis on subjectivism one might say that the apogee of post-modernism's usefulness is in demonstrating how useless it is.

Both. The fact that UFOs are real, as confirmed by recent US government reports and videos, yet at the same time exhibit paranormal* characteristics impossible in known physics and medicine, perfectly exemplifies the kind of absurdity featuring in postmodernism.

UFOs have always been real, there's no sensible denial of that... and furthermore they've (along with other literally para "normal" observations) always stood outside the era's understanding of physics or medicine. Defining things as outside the norm and inexplicable through known learning or observation is part of observation. There's nothing post-modern about that other than calling it post-modernism, the difference in modern societies is that core, authorised doctrines aren't necessarily subject to the same reverence that they were.