Dizzy and Postmodernist

If you follow the news, read blogs, maybe even hang out it is hard to avoid being dizzy. There's so much out there--so much info to process--what can we do?

Those that know me know that I believe we are in a transition period that is completely unprecedented in human history due to the modernist/postmodernist project. That is, modernism which started with Descartes' Discourse on Method, questions tradition and received opinion and searches for a more solid basis for knowledge than tradition. But modernism is really unprecedented in human history (even for the Greeks)--nearly all civilizations believed in some kind of mythical golden age that occurred in the past. In contrast, the modernist movement stated that there was no golden age, quite the opposite, the ancients were, in a profound way, retarded--the golden age was real but it was in the future, a future that we need to run to catch.

Modernism is unsustainable and is already leading to a move away from the very virtues that created modernism. Principally, these virtues are: 1) the use of reason to govern life on an individual and collective level; 2) creating institutions that can maintain a continuous narrative of the various findings of the inquiry into the world using reason; and 3) the exclusion or diminution of anomalous or unmeasurable information from creating the narrative. Postmodernism is kind of the evil-twin of modernism and developed very gradually in the "underground" and then bloomed in the bohemian art movements starting in pre-WWI Europe. Postmodernism is really a kind of a tendency towards creative confusion and openess to emotional experimentation--a postmodernist is one who makes his or her life the experiment, i.e. it is not just an intellectual exercise as it was with Descartes. In a wasy that attitude has permeated our world and really brought us to this period when the findings of modern science and technology have created an dramatically hedonistic world-culture (consumerism is really hedonism by another name) that has caused us to overheat the globe both literally and figuratively.

I think the methods pioneered by modernism and science just ain't cutting it today--massive amounts of information is just lying around unprocessed and undigested and its beginning to stink and create a very toxic situation on both a physical and psychic level.

Postmodernism has the virtue of not only being confused but ridiculous and impossible to maintain. It forces us to move towards finding some profound basis for our existence that is far more than intellectual but combines emotional, spiritual, and intellectual aspects of who we are. Postmodernism forces us into the timeless and the universal for sustenance. The alternative is to search backwards and go towards fundamentalisms of all kinds. The growth and maintenance of Christian, Islamic, Judaic and Hindu fundamentalisms is one of the striking aspects of our age. I don't believe these fundamentalism go very deep--they may be holding patterns because they guarantee at least temporary sanity. You limit the information you process you forbid what you can't understand and can get on with life. There are also all kinds of other sects including sexual-orientation sects, age-group sects (peer group identity movements is kind of irrational if you think about it), intellectual sects including the reductionism, scientism, political ideology as a basis for a kind tribalism (we see this in blogs like Daily Kos), feminism and so on. Almost any kind of grouping has a tendency to develop as a kind of half-hearted cult that provides meaning--usually the allegiances are not very strong and people will shift and try to find belongingness where they can. John Lennon wrote, "whatever gets you through the night is all right" and that observation really makes sense for our age.

Where are we headed? What do I mean by being forced to find a timeless basis for the meaning of life etc. Well, obviously I mean that we need to dig deeper, very deep beyond our current understanding of self and of consciousness. Science itself, though often stuck in institutional scholasticism and endless attempts to enforce orthodoxy, gives us all we need to move on. The implication of modern research into physics, biology, psychology, information science (or at least that part strongly based on systems theory) and so on can provide the basis of a new intellectual framework we can build on. The right questions are being asked and sometimes answered by scientists of all kinds. But it is not enough, in fact, science can only be partially helpful in dealing with the postmodernist dilemma. We need to move towards a re-valuing of experience and consciousness not as a matter for scientific research but a field we explore by ourselves with the aid of teachers who are adept in that area and texts that relate to the inner search. Nothing can work until we learn to trust ourselves and our perception--no intellectual framework can heal our emotional and spiritual pain. No science can deal with a love-affair gone wrong. No science can help us in understanding ourselves from the inside out--that can only be done by direct experience and direct spiritual work. Briefly, I will say to you that in order to find that spiritual work but the idea in your head and let it bounce around that there is a path that works for you out there that may come entirely from inside you or from others you meet. Asset to yourself that this is possible--that healing your hurts and confusion is possible--that the universe has something like gravity that moves us towards clarity of mind and bliss. The reason we aren't falling up to it is that we are holding on with various tentacles to a number of false ideas and material things that once we understand and can locate we can unwind the tentacle and begin to break free. The confusion of postmodernism allows us to come to this.