Postmodernism sounds like such an academic sort of issue, doesn't it? Why should I care about such an abstract idea? Why should I even bother to understand what it is, when it's so -- well, Ivory Towerish.
Unfortunately, postmodernism has long since escaped from the ivory towers of academia. It is well and truly at large in the world. In fact, postmodernism has probably had an impact on you even today, so pervasive is its influence.
In my last post, I talked a little about one of the impacts of postmodernism: the destruction of context. With all context stripped away, we are deprived of any meaningful way to make sensible and wise decisions. This doesn't bother postmoderns, who don't believe in such things (everything is right for you, after all), but it has serious consequences on those of us who live in the real world.
But there is another personal impact of postmodernism. I know, because I have been whacked by this. It's taken me a long time to write about this, because it was, frankly, so painful. But the time has come, so let's get going.
Imagine you had a small group that, every week, got together to study and learn and share together. Over the years, sharing in each others trials and triumphs, and learning about the world and reality together, you grow closer and closer. Eventually your group is so comfortable with one another that you really are a group of friends. And, as with all friends, you become casual and relaxed with one another, welcoming each other into your homes without any great formality, and sharing together with absolute trust.
Now imagine that, into this group comes a new person (or two). Obviously the group has to make concessions for this new person. People are on their best behavior, trying not to be too casual or over-relaxed. Still, the nature of the group, it's interests and character, won't change just because someone new comes along. The new person has a few splutters, but then seems to fit in, and the group flexes appropriately to make them feel welcome and as much a part as possible.
Then something happens. The new member finds an excuse to feel excluded from the group, it doesn't matter why or how. A power struggle ensues, with the new member threatening to drag the group leaders before the leadership they are responsible to. The new member demands that the group change its behavior to his or her preferences, or face the consequences. The new member (well, now a thoroughly ex-member) even makes legal threats. Eventually, at the request of the group's leaders, the leaders responsible for all groups get the two parties together: group leaders and new ex-member. The ex-member makes bizarre claims, demands, and outrageous racial slurs. When the mediating leadership is unimpressed by this, and the group leadership unable to comply to anything so unreasonable, the ex-member leaves the larger community and moves on to who knows where. Maybe the cycle repeats.
What is going on here? Well, what has happened is that one of the results of postmodernism has reared its ugly head. Postmodernism denies absolutes. There is no objective truth for the postmodernist. The new member was heavily influenced by postmodernism, and as a result, was open to all sorts of strange influences (since there's no way to tell strange from sensible when context is stripped away). He or she was offended by the group's robust camaraderie, and doubly offended by the group's agreement on a range of issues that they had carefully studied together, and come to agreement on.
Now, to a postmodernist, there is only one way to achieve agreement. Argument, debate, and careful instruction are not possible when there are no absolutes. No, only propaganda and force can bring about agreement. The group's consensus was clearly not the result of force, so the new member concluded that it was the result of propaganda, or brain washing (or the cultic force of personality). When attempting to undermine this failed, he or she resorted to the only alternative open to a postmodernist: force. He or she attempted to use the threat of authority (initially ecclesiastical, then legal) to force agreement. Attempts by the group's leaders to reason about this failed utterly, almost as if the two parties spoke a different language. And, in a sense, they did. There was no common ground: in postmodernism there can never be any common ground. Eventually, the only resolution was to part ways.
This tragic little drama will be played out in increasing numbers in the coming decades, as postmodernism sinks deeper into the modern psyche. With no hope of common ground, more and more people will resort to force when they encounter what they can only interpret as coercion.
And more and more innocent people will feel the terrible, personal impact of postmodernism.
Showing posts with label postmodernism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label postmodernism. Show all posts
Monday, 30 April 2007
Sunday, 22 April 2007
Crisis of Context
Without context there is no meaning. And yet context is something our society has almost rid itself of.
Why is context so important, and why have we fled from it so?
Definition
Context is a very broad term, and it simply means the surroundings of something that give it a setting in which to understand it.
More formally, you could define context as a set of coherent concepts, some of which have already been determined as having strong correspondence to reality.
Context is important in communication (see http://smartdreaming.blogspot.com/ for some discussion on context in computer UI's), the arts (see this amazing story in the Washington Post, one of the most powerful examples of how important context is that I've seen -- it's a great read, too), science, society, etc.
Loss of Context
Yet our society has lost so much respect for context. How is that evidenced? Well, think about watching TV. As you watch it (unless it's something like ABC in Australia, or BBC in the UK), the program you're watching will be interrupted every few minutes by some 30 second segments talking about something (usually products or services) with no relationship whatsoever to what you are watching. These "advertisements" are completely without context, and yet we have grown so familiar with them that we can provide our own context for them.
Another example is in the "sound bites" that make up TV "reporting". We expect, even demand, that everything that someone has said be boiled down to a ten-second "sound bite". But such brief comments can never provide us with sufficient context to really understand anything.
Even Reality TV pretends to be able to reduce people's lives to an hour a week, stripping their actions of all context.
Finally, we expect to learn something of significance in the tiny half-hour or hour long segments we allow for learning or training. We try to create "quality" time with our kids by packing lots of context-free activity into the shortest time possible, etc. etc.
You may think it ironic that someone with a blog called "Eclectica" is writing about lack of context, but pay attention to both my first post and the second part of the subtitle of the blog. These are deliberate and careful attempts to give some context to what I'm saying here.
Why Context was Lost
So why did we move so aggressively away from contextuality in our society? Why did we value it so poorly that we thought we could discard it in our headlong rush into busyness? The answer's simple, and the more formal definition above gives it away.
Context is only necessary if you value the correspondence property of truth statements. Or, to put it more simply, if you don't care whether things are really real or not, but just care about whether they "work for you", then context becomes unimportant.
The whole point of context is to provide us with a sufficient surrounding network of truths in order to be able to fit the new, potential truth we are learning into our network of beliefs. If our network of beliefs is very loose (ie. we don't care much about whether the beliefs conflict with one another) or disconnected from reality (ie. we don't bother testing our beliefs against reality), then context really isn't much use to us.
And this is precisely the direction that society moved in over the last century. Nowdays this movement is called postmodernism. As is hinted at by the name, postmodernism is a reaction to modernism. Modernism values coherence and correspondence of beliefs, but refuses to accept the existence of anything beyond nature. (I've mentioned it before, but called it by a different name, naturalism or scientism, both of which are variants of modernism.) The problem with modernism is that it gives absolutely no foundation for reason, logic, meaning, or any sort of real thought. Post-modernism recognises this and, rather than invoking supernaturalism as a foundation for these things (as Christianity does), or throwing away reason and embracing supernaturalism (as New Age does), postmodernism continues to embrace naturalism (nothing exists apart from nature) and discards reason and logic.
Without reason and logic, context is worthless. In fact, postmodernism denies the significance of context, claiming that the interpretation of truths is not contextual, but rather purely up to the individual (known as deconstructionism). While full-blown postmodernism is not accepted by most people, it has had a huge influence on our society, and the devaluing of context is one of those influences.
Context is on the way back
The good news is that context is on the way back. An easy way to see this is the rise in popularity of the "serial" programme on TV. Back in the 90's Babylon 5 revolutionised TV SciFi with it's five-year story, with complex, pre-planned character arcs for all the major characters, and it's multi-layered mysteries and story. Now, more than ten years later, this trend has truly penetrated the mainstream, with shows like 24, Lost, Prison Break, and the like demanding the viewer pay attention over an extended period of time. Each episode has so much context that the "Previously on ..." teasers are simply not enough to understand the story.
The arts are well ahead of the rest of society at the moment, but there is hope that things like the news will rediscover the value of context.
Context and Christianity
What does this have to do with Christianity? Well, Christianity was not immune to the influence of post-modernism. Over the years, Christians became so ignorant of the importance of context that they fell into all sorts of error due to failing to take context into account.
Greg Koukl has an excellent resource called "Never Read a Bible Verse", which explains what should not need explaining: you need to understand the context of a verse in order to understand the verse.
Context is crucial to understanding the Bible, and it's also crucial to explaining it to others. We need to insist that people pay attention to the context, even when they wish to ignore it, and we need to be prepared to show why it's so important.
So, what examples of egregious context-ignorance can you think of? What ways have you found useful for explaining the importance of context? This is an important issue, and I'll be talking about it more in the future.
Why is context so important, and why have we fled from it so?
Definition
Context is a very broad term, and it simply means the surroundings of something that give it a setting in which to understand it.
More formally, you could define context as a set of coherent concepts, some of which have already been determined as having strong correspondence to reality.
Context is important in communication (see http://smartdreaming.blogspot.com/ for some discussion on context in computer UI's), the arts (see this amazing story in the Washington Post, one of the most powerful examples of how important context is that I've seen -- it's a great read, too), science, society, etc.
Loss of Context
Yet our society has lost so much respect for context. How is that evidenced? Well, think about watching TV. As you watch it (unless it's something like ABC in Australia, or BBC in the UK), the program you're watching will be interrupted every few minutes by some 30 second segments talking about something (usually products or services) with no relationship whatsoever to what you are watching. These "advertisements" are completely without context, and yet we have grown so familiar with them that we can provide our own context for them.
Another example is in the "sound bites" that make up TV "reporting". We expect, even demand, that everything that someone has said be boiled down to a ten-second "sound bite". But such brief comments can never provide us with sufficient context to really understand anything.
Even Reality TV pretends to be able to reduce people's lives to an hour a week, stripping their actions of all context.
Finally, we expect to learn something of significance in the tiny half-hour or hour long segments we allow for learning or training. We try to create "quality" time with our kids by packing lots of context-free activity into the shortest time possible, etc. etc.
You may think it ironic that someone with a blog called "Eclectica" is writing about lack of context, but pay attention to both my first post and the second part of the subtitle of the blog. These are deliberate and careful attempts to give some context to what I'm saying here.
Why Context was Lost
So why did we move so aggressively away from contextuality in our society? Why did we value it so poorly that we thought we could discard it in our headlong rush into busyness? The answer's simple, and the more formal definition above gives it away.
Context is only necessary if you value the correspondence property of truth statements. Or, to put it more simply, if you don't care whether things are really real or not, but just care about whether they "work for you", then context becomes unimportant.
The whole point of context is to provide us with a sufficient surrounding network of truths in order to be able to fit the new, potential truth we are learning into our network of beliefs. If our network of beliefs is very loose (ie. we don't care much about whether the beliefs conflict with one another) or disconnected from reality (ie. we don't bother testing our beliefs against reality), then context really isn't much use to us.
And this is precisely the direction that society moved in over the last century. Nowdays this movement is called postmodernism. As is hinted at by the name, postmodernism is a reaction to modernism. Modernism values coherence and correspondence of beliefs, but refuses to accept the existence of anything beyond nature. (I've mentioned it before, but called it by a different name, naturalism or scientism, both of which are variants of modernism.) The problem with modernism is that it gives absolutely no foundation for reason, logic, meaning, or any sort of real thought. Post-modernism recognises this and, rather than invoking supernaturalism as a foundation for these things (as Christianity does), or throwing away reason and embracing supernaturalism (as New Age does), postmodernism continues to embrace naturalism (nothing exists apart from nature) and discards reason and logic.
Without reason and logic, context is worthless. In fact, postmodernism denies the significance of context, claiming that the interpretation of truths is not contextual, but rather purely up to the individual (known as deconstructionism). While full-blown postmodernism is not accepted by most people, it has had a huge influence on our society, and the devaluing of context is one of those influences.
Context is on the way back
The good news is that context is on the way back. An easy way to see this is the rise in popularity of the "serial" programme on TV. Back in the 90's Babylon 5 revolutionised TV SciFi with it's five-year story, with complex, pre-planned character arcs for all the major characters, and it's multi-layered mysteries and story. Now, more than ten years later, this trend has truly penetrated the mainstream, with shows like 24, Lost, Prison Break, and the like demanding the viewer pay attention over an extended period of time. Each episode has so much context that the "Previously on ..." teasers are simply not enough to understand the story.
The arts are well ahead of the rest of society at the moment, but there is hope that things like the news will rediscover the value of context.
Context and Christianity
What does this have to do with Christianity? Well, Christianity was not immune to the influence of post-modernism. Over the years, Christians became so ignorant of the importance of context that they fell into all sorts of error due to failing to take context into account.
Greg Koukl has an excellent resource called "Never Read a Bible Verse", which explains what should not need explaining: you need to understand the context of a verse in order to understand the verse.
Context is crucial to understanding the Bible, and it's also crucial to explaining it to others. We need to insist that people pay attention to the context, even when they wish to ignore it, and we need to be prepared to show why it's so important.
So, what examples of egregious context-ignorance can you think of? What ways have you found useful for explaining the importance of context? This is an important issue, and I'll be talking about it more in the future.
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