Post-modernism: Be scared. Be very scared!

'Postmodernism' - we all use the phrase, but do we really understand what it means? It sounds so 'cool' so trendy, so 'on message'. It sounds as though we ' our finger on the cultural pulse'. In short, it shows we are intellectual heavyweights, worthy of esteem and respect!

I am sure that I am in good company when I find that much of what is labelled ‘postmodern’ in art, sculpture, philosophy, poetry or film is often totally incomprehensible. One has the sneaking feeling that the ’artist’ is deliberately using language and semantics to disguise the fact that there is very little in the way of logic or content in their work. Indeed, the more incomprehensible it all is, the more ‘artistic’ we are made to feel that it must be. The unmade bed, the dead animal in formaldehyde, the graffiti, or the deconstructed syntax that passes for poetry MUST be incredibly clever BECAUSE we cannot understand it! One may have a deep suspicion that it is all ‘smoke and mirrors’, but one can never quite pin down the actual source of our inner confusion.

This is why I was delighted to come across a very interesting article on the website of ‘Classical Home Schooling’ on the whole subject. (By the way, the only person I home school is myself - but I thoroughly recommend this site, as it is full of very challenging - but accessible and interesting - articles by many modern philosophers and writers.)

The emphases are mine - and this is only a small portion of the whole article, but it helped me to articulate, even if only to myself, what is wrong with Relativism.

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Excerpts from:
POSTMODERN IDOLS OF THE EDUCATION TRIBE: THE ABOLITION OF EDUCATION by Curtis L. Hancock

Read the full article on: http://classicalhomeschooling.com/?page_id=176

Postmodernism … implies a radical scepticism, of course, because consciousness cannot grasp reality. ….postmodernism asserts that knowledge, including awareness of goodness, rightness, and the human subject, is a cultural construction. Since there are no objective standards, nor human nature to establish natural law to dictate how human beings ought to behave, reason is a rule for self-invention.

(According to philosopher ) Richard Rorty, postmodernism represents the last stage of the Enlightenment Project, which has already passed through Rationalism and Romanticism. We are now in a third stage, bringing to a close the Enlightenment Project. This last stage he labels “ironic,” because, while philosophical claims to objective truth are empty, each self has its best opportunity to live autonomously on the pretence that talk about truth matters. ….. Rorty believes that there are no standards of justification for our narrations…. “Truth,” to the extent the word should be used at all, is relative to social consensus. ….

… Accordingly, philosophy is not bound by objective standards, nor can it pursue public truth …. In such a state of affairs, the aggregate “we” trumps the individual.
Since one cannot ultimately justify one worldview or moral behavior over another, one must demonstrate unlimited openness. For postmodernists intolerance is added to the original list of deadly sins. Social dialogue, along with institutions that support it, is a social priority. …

Postmodernists disagree whether tolerance is negative or positive. For Richard Rorty, tolerance is a condition for liberal democracy. But for other postmodernists, such as Michel Foucault, tolerance requires that we make the world safe for tolerance. This view calls for a liquidation of all cultural bases of intolerance. Intolerance is defined as wilful perpetuation of our self-imposed immaturity, to use Kant’s language again, and something we must transcend, perhaps with the aid (or coercion) of others, as enlightened participants in historical progress, to use the language of Rousseau. Hence, curiously, postmodernism is, for some, supportive of democratic politics; for others, collectivist politics.

… postmodernists themselves do little more than assert their views. … Of course, this will not do. By this strategy, postmodernists find themselves in a quandary. On the one hand, if they argue for their position, they contradict themselves. On the other, if they do not, what reasons do we have philosophically for accepting their worldview?

….Richard John Neuhaus makes this criticism effectively:
(The postmodernist) knows that people do and do not fear, he knows that Freud has given us a way to understand human behaviour that is more adequate than earlier descriptions, he knows the course of history toward maximizing freedom, goodness and truth will take care of themselves. He even knows that “scientific discoveries” have discredited belief in an immortal soul. The ironist’s final vocabulary turns out to be not so formal as it appears; it is filled with contents that other people call facts, and about which, contra the first article of his ironist’s creed, Rorty gives no indication of having “radical and continuing doubts.”

…Of course, sceptics have to deride common sense. Once the consensus among intellectuals is to accept beliefs that are counterintuitive to people untrained in departments of philosophy, their criticism and bemusement can be dismissed as the doubts of the unsophisticated. This fosters a Gnostic culture, as Eric Voegelin explains, in which modern and postmodern intellectuals seek to create a Magisterium of secular intellectuals. This is the consensus of Enlightened intellectuals who qualify for what Kant called “public speech,” by which even common sense is criticized. In this way, modern and postmodern intellectuals can use education and other arms of culture to monopolize discourse about their definition and interpretation of the social contract. They can protect public speech from intolerance. They can root out intolerance wherever it occurs. People who are not qualified for “public speech,” that is, those who live by the guidance of common sense, can be forced to be tolerant, just as Rousseau said Enlightened leaders can force citizens to be free. In education and in practice, this is political correctness….

Another Outing for the Emperor's New Clothes!

I regularly spend a very pleasant few hours in Bristol Museum, where I alternate between visiting the various galleries, spending some ’quality time’ with all my favourite objects, and sitting in the vast, austerely beautiful atrium, sipping a cappuccino and reading or writing. The real joy of my visits though, is that I have a haven of solitude in which to be anonymous and invisible, so that I can think more deeply about whatever I am currently studying.


No, I have not enrolled on any official course of study, much as I might like to. The costs are beyond my reach! But I do follow my own personal study journey, and try to focus on whatever serious issue which currently interests me. The procedure is the same as that found at any University: read seriously, analyse and compare the various authorities, take notes, memorise and finally - the equivalent of formal ‘Essays’ - I try to produce, for my own interest, and for an intellectual challenge, written responses to those questions which spark my interest or intrigue me. It is supremely enjoyable and really exciting to struggle with new ideas and concepts!


Up to a couple of years ago I would never have bothered to do such a thing. I always read widely, but my reading had become superficial and undemanding. It was my meeting with the Heralds of the Gospel which changed all that. As I have said in earlier posts, there are so many aspects of this wonderful Order that I came to deeply admire, and to desire to emulate, but it was their love of deep and serious learning which really attracted me. Their example changed me completely in so many ways, and the desire to study is one of the gifts I have received from them.


So now I take my books and notebook with me wherever I go. I study on buses, in cafes, park benches, libraries, art galleries - wherever there is peace and I am undisturbed. What I have discovered, strangely enough, is that the surroundings in which you think or read deeply about something, colours your memory of that thought and that book. And the beautiful and grand interior of the Victorian museum really adds to that wonderful feeling of having an ongoing conversation with great thinkers and writers. It has a little of the same ambience that I associate with great libraries of the kind in the photos above.


But now I am going to descend from this elevated mood and express the deep irritation that I feel when I first enter the museum and see what appears to be a statue of a classically beautiful angel defaced and mocked by the artist who has upended a pot of pink paint over its head! It is a work by the internationally renowned Bristol graffiti artist ‘Banksy’


Of course, I am aware that this is an ‘ironic’, ‘postmodernist’, ’deconstructivist’ take on classical aesthetics. But every time I see it, I feel assaulted by a sort of spiritual nihilism, a desire to desecrate all that is good, or noble. And the most depressing aspect of all is, that this ‘artwork’ has been chosen to be proudly exhibited in the most prominent part of the Museum’s display area!


This work - and I think that some of Banksy’s graffiti art is clever and thought provoking - seems to show a coarseness of feeling which grates on me every time I see it.


Well, now I have done! My opinion counts for nothing here, and would no doubt be regarded as unsophisticated rantings of a middle-aged nobody. However, I will say it: this is not a ‘work of Art’! It is just another outing for the Emperor’s New Clothes!’

Intellectual rigour - powerful shield against political correctness and cultural relativism.

Picture from :http://www.you-can-teach-writing.com

“Even if the wounds of this shattered world enmesh you,

and the sea in turmoil bears you along

in but one surviving ship,

it would still befit you

to maintain your enthusiasm for studies unimpaired.

Why should lasting values tremble

if transient things fall?”
—
Prosper of Aquitaine

What the Heralds taught me: Read Serious Books!

One thing which fascinates me about the Heralds of the Gospel is their devotion to study.
Mgr. João S. Clá Dias, the founder of the Heralds of the Gospel
(see: http://www.arautos.org/view/show/341-arautos-do-evangelho) tells us that we should never stop studying until the day we die!

Shamed by my own mental laziness, and by the example of the Order, I have returned to a programme of serious reading. But where to begin? I hope to keep track of my progress on this blog - among other interests. But I came across this post from http://www.aholyexperience.com/2010/02/weekends-are-for-curling-up-with-books.html
and I found it helpful.
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...Reasons to Study the Classics by Oliver DeMille

"It is chiefly through books that we enjoy intercourse with superior minds . . . . In the best books, great men talk to us, give us their most precious thoughts, and pour their souls into ours." -William Ellery Channing

"How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book."
-Henry David Thoreau

"When you reread a classic you do not see more in the book than you did before; you see more in you than was there before."
-Clifton Fadiman

Study the Classics

There are at least six... reasons to study the classics:

1. The Classics Teach us Human Nature

The classics give us a glimpse into human instincts. In fact, the thing which makes a classic great is glaring insight into basic human nature. Ultimately, as you study the classics, you learn about your own personal nature. Learning through experience is good, but it is often better to learn from someone else's experiences and build on them- we hope a baby will learn from his parents not to touch a hot stove, even though the actual experience would certainly have impact. If we will let them, the classics can teach us lessons without the pain of repeating certain mistakes ourselves. They can show us correct choices which will get us where we want to go.

…. Classics allow us to experience, in an intimate way, the greatest mistakes and successful choices of human history. If we learn from these mistakes and successes, we will make fewer mistakes and have more successes.

…. We can develop empathy, compassion, wisdom and self-discipline without subjecting our relationships to the learning curve. This is invaluable to the spouse, parent, entrepreneur, community leader or statesman. People with experience have been through certain patterns many times and know what to anticipate. The classics can provide us with many such experiences.

2. The Classics Bring us Face-to-Face with Greatness

The purpose of studying literature is to become better. First, as we read we experience despair, heartache, tragedy-and we learn to recognize what causes them and avoid it in our own lives. As we study the characters, real or fictional, in the classics, we are inspired by greatness, which is the first step to becoming great ourselves. In the classics we come face-to-face with Moses on Sinai, Buddha leaving the castle, Christ at Gethsemane, Mohammed's cave (and Plato's), Paul on Mars Hill, Adam's finger outstretched on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, Washington at Valley Forge, Hamlet, Lear, Shylock, Othello, Macbeth, MacDuff, Hector, Penelope and Jane Eyre. ‘Who we are’ changes as we set higher and higher standards of what life is about and what we are here to accomplish.

3. The Classics Take us to the Frontier to be Conquered

Our challenges define us, our reactions to them mold and shape us. As Thucydides said over three thousand years ago, and as I like to tell my students at George Wythe College: "There is no need to suppose that human beings differ very much one from another: but it is true that the ones who come out on top are the ones who have been trained in the hardest school."

Human beings need a frontier in order to progress. Fortunately, we do have one frontier left, and it is in fact the hardest one. It is the frontier within. In all of history, this frontier has not been fully conquered. The most challenging struggles of life are internal-and the classics can help. The classics deal with the real questions of life, our deepest concerns: joy, pain, fear, love, hate, courage, anger, death, faith. These issues are reality; they are eternal and more lasting than jobs, careers, school, material things.

In the classics we can often experience other people's characters more powerfully than in real life because the author lets us see their thoughts, feelings and reasons for and consequences of their choices (which we hardly ever see in others, and often not even in ourselves). Our goal in life is to become truly good, really happy. The classics help us see that quest in others and how their choices fail or succeed. A by-product of this rapport is the erasure of prejudices and ill-founded biases that divide and factionalize us from others. Classics help us connect with individuals whatever their race, creed, age, culture and even place in history.

I fear that modernity has come to mean ignoring what is important because we are too busy with what is immediate. Nietzsche said that the difference between modern and ancient times is that modern man substitutes the morning newspaper for morning prayer. … Too often we focus on the mortal rather than the eternal: this is a disease of modern times.

The classics are a remedy and can be a cure. They force us to turn off the TV and computer, to quietly study for hours and hours and hours-reading, pondering, thinking, asking, crying, laughing, struggling, and above all, feeling, changing, becoming. And then, because we are better, we must go out and serve.

4. The Classics Force us to Think

First we are caused to think about the characters in the story, then about ourselves, then about people we know and finally about humanity in general. At first reading the classics can be a chore, an assignment. If we persist, it eventually becomes entertainment. Then one day (after a few weeks for some, perhaps years for another) something clicks; all the exposure to greatness reaches critical mass. And you, the reader, awaken. Your exposure to greatness changes you: Your ideas are bigger, your dreams wilder, your plans more challenging, your faith more powerful.

The classics can be hard work, and that is exactly what is needed to learn to think. Thinking is hard; deep thinking is not entertaining or easy. Thinking is like exercise, it requires consistency and rigor. Like barbells in a weightlifting room, the classics force us to either put them down or exert our minds. They require us to think. And not just in a rote memory way, either. The classics make us struggle, search, ponder, seek, analyze, discover, decide, and reconsider. And, as with physical exercise, the exertion leads to pleasing results as we metamorphose and experience the pleasure of doing something wholesome and difficult that changes us for the better.

5. The Classics Connect Us to Those Who Share the Stories

Each culture is different because it has different shared stories. Different stories define each family, each religion, each nation. And members of each connect themselves with the stories, they make the stories part of their personal story.

Can you imagine the Jews without the stories of Moses, the Maccabees, or the Holocaust? Or Americans without stories of Paul Revere, George Washington, and Abraham Lincoln? Learn the stories of a culture, and you will come to understand that culture. That is why I think it is such a tragedy that the current generation of … youth are mostly growing up without … stories . The classics are the ark, the preserver, of stories which unite the cultures and the generations.

In addition to cultural, national and family stories, we each have individual stories. We all have a personal canon, a set of stories which we hang on to and believe in and base our lives around; and great classics are the best canon. A canon is the set of books we consider to be the standard of truth. Since the purpose of reading, of gaining education, is to become good, our most important task is to choose the right books. Our personal set of stories, our canon, shapes our lives. I believe it is a law of the universe that we will not rise above our canon. Our canon is part of us, deeply, subconsciously. And the characters and teachings in our canon shape our characters-good, evil, mediocre, or great.

6. Our Canon Becomes our Plot

There are four types of stories: bent, broken, whole, and healing.

A. Bent stories portray evil as good, and good as evil. Such stories are meant to enhance the evil tendencies of the reader, such as pornography and many horror books and movies. The best decision regarding Bent stories is to avoid them like the plague.

B. Broken stories portray evil as evil and good as good, but evil wins. Something is broken, not right, in need of fixing. Such books are not uplifting, but can be very inspiring. Broken stories can be very good for the reader if they motivate him or her to heal them, to fix them. The Communist Manifesto is a broken classic; so are The Lord of the Flies and 1984. In each of these, evil wins; but they have been very motivating to me because I have felt a real need to help reverse their messages in the real world.

C. Whole stories are where good is good and good wins. Most of the classics are in this category, and readers should spend most of their time in such works.

D. Healing stories can be either Whole or Broken stories where the reader is profoundly moved, changed, significantly improved by his reading experience.

I recommend three rules in coming face-to-face with greatness through the classics:
1. Avoid Bent stories.
2. Develop a personal canon of Healing stories.
3. Spend the majority of your studies in Whole works, but don't neglect Broken stories that you ought to be fixing.


(I have excerpted the above from a link at the George Wythe website. For the entire essay, you can go here: http://newsletter.gw.edu/pre/july2000.pdf )