{"id":36352,"date":"2024-03-04T13:52:03","date_gmt":"2024-03-04T21:52:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/?p=36352"},"modified":"2024-03-04T16:09:45","modified_gmt":"2024-03-05T00:09:45","slug":"for-every-action-there-is-an-equal-and-opposite-reaction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/for-every-action-there-is-an-equal-and-opposite-reaction\/","title":{"rendered":"Every action has an equal opposite reaction."},"content":{"rendered":"

I spent my formative teenage and young adult years in 1980\u2019s\/90\u2019s Los Angeles, which seemed to be a ground zero for postmodernism in the United States at the time. In fact, I remember in college hearing a lecture on emerging<\/em> postmodernity and thinking \u201cthat\u2019s not emerging, it\u2019s what I grew up with\u201d (now I would say it\u2019s the water I\u2019ve always been swimming in).<\/p>\n

Postmodern ideology influenced \u201cmy\u201d Los Angeles in many ways, but where it intersected my life most was in the art I was exposed to: From literature (Joan Didion) to fine art (David Hockney) to architecture (Frank Gehry) to film (David Lynch) to all kinds of music (from punk and post-punk to new wave to gangster rap to the bands being platformed up and down the Sunset strip), the flexible and foundationless suggestions of postmodernism were on display all over the place.<\/p>\n

The generations before me often valued structure, and certainty, and \u201ceasy\u201d answers. Even the authority-questioning Baby Boomers, who famously said, \u201cnever trust anyone over 30\u201d, seemed to wield authority comfortably and confidently and draw hard and fast rules once they crossed that age Rubicon themselves. My generation (or at least the ones I was hanging out with in LA) didn\u2019t buy it. This is just my opinion, but where the Baby Boomers often played around at the edges of postmodernity, Gen X Los Angelenos were postmodern natives.<\/p>\n

This week we read Steven Hicks\u2019 Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault. <\/em>This book serves as both a primer on what postmodernism is, as well as a full-throated and well-reasoned critique of it. It\u2019s clear that Hicks has a strong antagonism to postmodern philosophy, and a just-as-strong embrace of the enlightenment project.<\/p>\n

I want to lay my cards on the table here and confess that I agree with many of his concerns about postmodernism. I may have grown up swimming in these concepts, but I never could swallow them hook, line, and sinker. For instance, as a Christian, I believe there is such a thing as absolute truth, and that history is the metanarrative of God\u2019s story of redemption. I regularly argue that words carry important meanings, and that there are universal moral laws that cannot be deconstructed.<\/p>\n

However, I also want to address something that I didn\u2019t notice in my inspectional reading of this book. To have a post<\/em><\/strong>-modernism there needs to be a modernism. A post-something is usually a reaction to whatever that something<\/em> is. And that is true of post-modernism. Hicks does write about this reaction, but as a fact of history, without explaining why some push-back to modernism may have been justified.<\/p>\n

And I believe one of the reasons that postmodernism emerged was to counter parts of modernism that needed<\/em>to<\/em> be<\/em> questioned.<\/p>\n

Newton\u2019s third law doesn\u2019t just apply to motion, but to ideologies, too.<\/p>\n

And while I would argue that not all parts of modernism needed to be deconstructed, I\u2019d also contend that some did. For all its advances in reason and truth and beauty, modernity was a human-centered endeavor that seemed to squeeze out the mystery and transcendence of an unseen spiritual and supernatural order that is, according to Scripture, very real, and eternal.<\/p>\n

Hick\u2019s own description of Modernism is telling: \u201cModern thinkers start from nature\u2014instead of starting with some form of the supernatural… Modern thinkers stress that perception and reason are the human means of knowing nature\u2014in contrast to the pre-modern reliance upon tradition, faith, and mysticism. Modern thinkers stress human autonomy and the human capacity for forming one\u2019s own character\u2014in contrast to the pre-modern emphasis upon dependence and original sin. Modern thinkers emphasize the individual as the unity of reality, in contrast to the pre-modernist subordination of the individual to religious realities…\u201d <\/em>(7).<\/p>\n

As much as I believe there is universal absolute truth, I also believe that \u201cGod\u2019s ways are higher than our ways and His thoughts higher than our thoughts\u201d (Isaiah 55:8-9). And I believe that the individualism modernism encourages has been the source of societal problems. I could never fully buy into all aspects of the enlightenment project, so there were (and are) parts of postmodernism that have provided a helpful framework (or enjoyable art) for me.<\/p>\n

It would have been helpful if Hicks had given some<\/u><\/em> credit to where postmodernism may have rightly countered parts of the far-swing of the pendulum of modernity. Because he doesn\u2019t, the book reads like a polemic, which may be what it was intended to be, but I think that makes it less useful as an argument that anyone who doesn\u2019t fully subscribe to modernity can engage with.<\/p>\n

But just as modernity swung the pendulum one way, postmodernity swung it another way. Ever since I learned about postmodernism, I\u2019ve wondered what the \u201cequal and opposite\u201d cultural reaction to IT<\/strong> is going to be.<\/p>\n

I question whether the \u201cpostmodern project\u201d is a full movement or if it is a liminal moment between modernity and something else that is yet to be defined. I\u2019ve dipped my toes into conversations surrounding post-postmodernism and transhumanism (only enough to know that the conversations exist not enough to know anything useful about them), and I get the sense that we are on the verge of an emerging movement that hasn\u2019t yet been understood or described, but that will influence the future.<\/p>\n

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I spent my formative teenage and young adult years in 1980\u2019s\/90\u2019s Los Angeles, which seemed to be a ground zero for postmodernism in the United States at the time. In fact, I remember in college hearing a lecture on emerging postmodernity and thinking \u201cthat\u2019s not emerging, it\u2019s what I grew up with\u201d (now I would […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":169,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2489,1764],"class_list":["post-36352","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-dlgp02","tag-hicks","cohort-dlgp02"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36352","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/169"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36352"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36352\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36359,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36352\/revisions\/36359"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36352"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36352"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36352"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}