pomo

a time  for retrieving drafts - here is another. Partly sparked by a current discussion. 

Originally began as a facebook discussion -  strange source but sometimes social media gets into something that's maybe worth capturing  beyond the moment.

in this case, was a discussion of that over used term; post modernism.  I think a useful and perhaps definitional way to think of this is - (though such things resist simple definition)  is against the false dawn of modernism; even a judgement against its over promise. 

One hears people say the big picture narrative has broken down - and perhaps it has. But which big picture narrative was it, anyway?  Christians who see the past as somehow more aligned to the faith, might have something correct.  But they also need to ask if post modernism  is uncomfortable - well  that begs the question - what was modernism?    And what sort of Christian narrative could be comfortably tied to the progress narrative of modernism, anyway?

And perhaps, if modernism gave a false meta-narrative - an illusory big picture, then the fragmentation of post modernism - with its insistence on relative value  - was a necessary judgment on the illusory organising story of modernism. The arrogance of the tower of babel is met with a scattering and fragmentation of language.  The hand of the Lord raised against the false narrative - and the scattering is not always bad.

I know something about this - i grew up in a house of science and engineering - was schooled in such, with a little dose of religion  - and found the assumed optimism behind this far too shallow - soon swept away in the weltering confusions of enlightened education, which for all its power had no ultimate reasons, no stabilising center of faith.

So my take on explaining these terms went like this:

Do you ever hear someone say - in high moral tones, in a comment on the The Age website about the Iraq war for example - 

"I just can't believe in the 21st Century we still bomb other people" 

Now whatever the outrage at the undeniable tragedy of the whole thing, a question always emerges for me-  what is the date doing in there?   Was it less wrong in the 20th Century?  Tolerable in the 19th?  

It often seems many still hold, at heart, that some version of progress was meant to make us more enlightened, we are meant to be improving on some moral pathway, in tandem with a progress narrative. The  modernist dream does not die easily. 

And of course the temptation to this is strong because progress does seems to work, at least in part;  we have been caught up an era where science and technology did bring change for the better, in some ways. The relative levels of economic wealth for increasing portions of the population,  one has to concede,  have brought large scale improvement to many. Not, by any means, evenly spread or without cultural loss, but the large scale data on say life expectancy, has increased in vast regions of the world in the last hundred years. 

So there is something to that progress narrative - and seems to me that the high points of that story  still inform the modernist dream; progress will deliver us to a new world order. 

This was a large scale narrative  of many- and yet a false one when taken as the overarching story  - since whatever material benefits have been delivered, the moral case is quite another story. Human nature turns out not to have  changed - and technology is a lever that partly ameliorates, but also partly magnifies our folly. 

And so on closer inspection, science and technology, for all their good, turn out to create almost as many problems as they solve.

So a 'post modern' view highlights that - sees the over promise of the science and technology, and that it didn't deliver - or not cleanly; is abused as well as used. Knows we face nuclear war or ecological disaster or economic collapse or digitised sexual abuse - all from the same technological sources that gave penicillin and high yield wheat. And like the melting image of da Vinci's iconic man which a discerning artist drew in large scale in the melting ice caps, a fragmenting perception of self is tied to that sense of failure of the humanist project. 







The frontal assault on that naive progress narrative should surely have been the massive and deadly wars of the 20th century - waged among the 'Christian' nations.  Yet naivety springs eternal.  The progress narrative is still a sweet song many  want to believe - who are still shocked when the hearts of humanity prove as retrograde as ever - no matter the advances in quantum computing or medicine. 

 And so this mood of disillusion with what was seemingly promised, this sense of dis-ease, underwrites,  like a festering swamp, any number of other strains of  post modernism. Once the culture has got in that mood everything seems suspect.   Every narrative is suspect, is deconstructed and disbelieved. Academia cultivates versions that seem to have nothing to do with the false god of progress, but simply target any variety of modernist certainty, including many expressions of Christian faith which do not fare well in this environment (where truth has become a matter of propositional certainties, majoring on the "what" of assertions - a system of stand alone theological axioms - rather than majoring on the "Who" that they are predicated on, it is vulnerable to this deconstruction. What is truth? is the wrong question, ultimately. Who is truth? is the reality that makes and re-orders the universe. Secondary assertions may hold, but not as ultimate truths in their own right, as deconstructionism knows, even if that's all it knows.)

This goes too far; but its perhaps partly a reaction against the false picture in the first place. Babel is judged and all are scattered. 

And then as that picture breaks down people are left in a more ambiguous state.

Some of its kind of interesting - mix and match of cultural influences is more interesting than a bland monoculture. I like parts of that. But extends beyond that. How many now want to roll their own version of religion or morality etc - bits and pieces of whatever.

All fine till something like London riots shows its all on shaky ground now.

Seems to me we're likely to be influenced by this - i know i grew up with some of this - moving from one to the other.

I know when i came to God, verses like Jeremiah 6:14 

They dress the wound of my people
   as though it were not serious.

were actually a relief- finally a way to stop pretending and hoping all will be ok.  Its not.  Things are deeply wrong - not least within me - and a realisation that i had to own that first - and across creation.  A story that could go that deep, spoke to the true condition of both, so we are both worse than expected, but also drawn into a common story before God ("my people")  offered true hope. How much deeper can it go, than identifying with the death of God. And not in the way of nausea of lack of all bearings  - but beyond all the false dawns that had been offered, the very entry to life; the doorway to life itself - and one of the huge blessings, is the commonality of brothers and sisters walking in such things - this is not just my private spirituality, or peculiar personal view of the world, but a common and shared story runs under all this.