The discontents of modernism are legion. It is soul-less, rational, scientistic, dehumanizing. And the architecture is even worse, exemplified by the glass box skyscraper. Modernism was the stage after the self-satisfied Victorian age, our last unconscious period when Westerners felt confident in our myths, our cultural superiority, and our untroubled right to all the fruits of the Earth. Modernism came in the wake of Nietzsche and World War 1, which left all those certainties in tatters, followed by an even more destructive World War 2. But from America rose a new unbounded ethos of progress through cooperation and science, leading to the UN, the EU, the conquering of air and space, and the comfortable dispensation of the fossil-fueled late Cold War West.
The long-term theme has been increasing consciousness, from the Enlightenment onwards, adopting ever more realistic views of the physical and social world. Art was first to experience this startling realism. Then politics, with the slow destruction of the myth of monarchical and aristocratic superiority. And finally religion, from the work of Nietzsche and Darwin, among many others. Throughout, science has been steadily dis-enchanting the world, removing Earth from the cosmic center, mystical vitalism from the chemistry of life, and God from among our forefathers and mothers. With modernism, we had reached a new level of consciousness. We could look at ourselves as one among many world cultures, accepting "other" forms of religion, art, and world view as good, perhaps even co-equal, with those of the West. Frills and decoration were out, myth was relentlessly exposed, and we sought to plumb the psychological depths as well, exposing our complexes and deep motivations.
Then in 1970's France, the postmodernist school took it up another notch, trying to show that all our remaining certainties were also questionable, and could be deconstructed. Whatever narratives we live by, even the most attenuated reliance on general progress through the evident workings of civic, capitalist, and scientific institutions, were unmasked as just another forum for power politics, patriarchy, and elite control of the society's metanarrative. Build all the skyscrapers and Hubble telescopes you want, it all boils down to Game of Thrones in the end. All narratives were destabilized, and not only was nothing sacred, nothing had meaning at all, since interpretation is an ever-flexible tool that gives authority to the reader/viewer, with little left over for the author (or for "reality"). Anything can be read in innumerable layers, to mean ... practically anything. The narratives we can not help but to live by are all ripe for deconstruction, but then how does reality relate to our (limited) cognition of it? That gets us right back to the foundations of philosophy in the Platonic cave.
This approach clearly follows the modernist and psychoanalytic line of excavating ever deeper into our sources of motivation, meaning, and narrative. Indeed, other disciplines, like anthropology, psychology, and even economics (in its study of institutions) have long preceeded the postmodernists. But one has to ask two big questions. First, is there some limit of analysis beyond which, even if the analysis is valid, human functioning is so destabilized that, for all the intellectual benefits, we end up inert, stripped of larger motivating narratives and reduced to mere units of immediate consumption, mediated by our TV sets and phones? Second, have they gone too far? Is the postmodernist analysis actually valid in all its implications? An excellent article in Areo chews over some of these problems.
Being scientifically and psychoanalytically inclined, I would have to answer no to the first question, and yes to the second. While unproductive over-analysis can lead some people to inertia, any correct analysis in psychological, cultural, or other terms can not help but illuminate the human condition. This is in general a big plus, and not one to be discarded because it is uncomfortable or destabilizing to our customary life and traditions. We dealt with Darwininan evolution, (well, most of us did), and can still reach for the stars. Sources of narrative and motivation are vast and perpetually self-created. Losing the old gods and myths is not a serious problem if we have new and significant tasks to replace them with. For example, nothing could be more dire than global climate heating- it is the central problem of our time, and tackling it would give us collective, indeed eschatological, meaning. What makes this moment particularly painful and fake is not that we lack an animating myth or center, but that we are dithering with regard to the true and monumental tasks at hand, blocked by a corrupt system and various defects of human nature.
The second question more pointed, for if the postmodernist analysis is not generally true, then we hardly have to worry about the first question at all. This is a very tricky area, since much of the postmodernist critique is valid enough. We live by many myths and narratives. But its earthshaking claims to destabilize everything and all other forms of truth are clearly false. Many fields, not just science, have a living commitment to truth that is demonstrably valid, even if the quest is elusive, even quixotic. Take the news media. While the tendency to endless punditry is lamentable, there is a core of factual reporting that is the product of a great deal of worthy dedication and forms a public good. Whatever the biases that go into selecting the targets of reporting, their products, when true, are immune to the postmodern critique. The school board really did fire its superintendent, or put a bond on the next election ballot. The fact that we have a president who fears "perjury traps", labels all truthful reporting about him "fake news", and allies with propaganda outlets like FOX and RT should not put anyone in any doubt that truth, nevertheless, exists.
Why some religious people have cottoned to the postmodern approach is somewhat mysterious and curious, for while postmodernism has mightily attempted to destablize reigning cultural orthodoxies, particularly those of science, it is hardly more kind to clericalism or religion in principle. At best, it may allow that these are at least honest about their (false) mythos/narrative basis, unlike the devious subterfuges by which science channels its bourgeois interests into claims to the really, really true narrative, which thus have posed the more interesting challenge in the postmodern literature. But make no mistake, if religion were the reigning cultural power, the deconstructionists would make mincemeat of it.
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But postmodernism has nevertheless filtered down from the academy to popular culture, destabilizing verities and authorities. Did they seek to have Republican policians declare that "we make our own reality"? Did they foresee the internet and its ironic capacity, not to make us all Orwellian drones with the same beliefs, but to let us stew voluntarily in propaganda-laced echo chambers, losing touch with reality all the same? At issue is the nature and status of factual authority, which we are so shockingly confronted with in this political moment. Coordinated assaults on our capacity for reason, from the wingnut right and its unhinged media, the new masters of the internet, the Russians, and the lying sleazebag who found his moment amongst the chaos, have posed this problem in the starkest terms. What is truth? Are there facts? What is an authoritative narrative of leadership, of care for the future and the nation? Should public policy be responsive to facts, or to money and nepotism? What is the point of morality in a fully corrupt world? Why is gaslighting a new and trending word?
The postmodernists insisted, as does our current president, that every category and supposed fact is a mask for power. They saw hobgoblins of social construction and violent dominance in the most innocent scientific facts and institutions. Such an attitude might be provocative and occasionally fruitful, but it has been taken way too far, rendering fields most affected (in the humanities) stripped of coherence, let alone authority. Leaving us with a modern art bereft of ideals other than shock, and the most banal literature and identity-based histories. It is also a sort of zero-sum-ism, needlessly oppositional and Manichaean. In their haste to unmask and tear down all idols and intellectual achievements that unify humanity, they have generated a sort of war against all meaning which is deeply anti-human- not just deconstructive, but destructive.
Yes, our narratives are in perpetual conflict. Different religions, political viewpoints, and cultures have distinct narratives and each seeks to win the hearts and minds in order to rule human soceity. The Reformation offers abundant examples of this, as does our current political scene. But at the same time, reality itself forms another, and very influential, locus in this conflict. For all the other narratives claim to be accurate views of reality, whether claiming that god is real, Catholicism is the true church, or that Republicans have a more accurate and effective view of economics and human nature. Each stakes its claims on discernment of how reality works, including the moral and other aspects of what people really want out of their social system. Do they want a king to look up to, or a representative government that may be more moderate and effective?
So narratives are not just thrashing our their conflicts on an entirely archetypal / mythical / power basis, as the postmodernists seem to assume. Rather, they are negotiating views of reality, including moral and social realities, which can be interrogated in large degree by reason generally and science specifically. Creationism and climate change denialism are just the most flagrant examples of narratives that seek social dominance on the backs of religious delusion and/or simple greed. And for all the equivocation of the postmodernists, they can be definitively dismissed given the knowledge we have outside of these or other narrative claims. The growth of mature consciousness means expanding our abilities to judge the reality-claims of narratives in a dispassionate way, considering both physical but also the psycho-social realities we share, and progressively leaving our psychological baggage behind.
- Coal is dead.
- The long road ahead against Alzheimer's. Though that article oversells our ignorance.
- Do shareholders come first, or workers and communities?
- Who is doing the harassing in the Persian Gulf?
- Rachmaninoff 3, after the instructive intro, ~5:30.
- Sanctity of life.
- Endless corruption.
- Better automatic stabilizers?
