The Reality of Denying Reality

Humans have been trying to build a "theory of everything," a theory that explains what we know. In the 18th century the big thing was "modernism." Modernism was the idea that we cannot know things in themselves and that objects of knowledge must conform to our faculties of representation. Modernism preferred science to faith and argued against God, immortality, even origins. We would discover everything by means of science and technology. By the mid 20th century, the Modernism experiment was a bust. Science had failed to provide all the answers. It was time for something more. Enter Postmodernism.

It is, in fact, not possible to define Postmodernism. That's simply because the premise of Postmodernism is an absolute faith in relativism. There is no "metanarrative." A metanarrative is a statement about the truth of everything. Postmodernism argued, instead, for deconstruction. We can't really know anything. So words, for instance, mean what you want them to mean à la Humpty Dumpty. And words are simply symbols for ideas, so ideas mean just what you want them to mean. Thus, if Postmodernism is the deconstruction of meaning, defining Postmodernism beyond "the deconstruction of meaning" becomes pointless and any attempt to dispute or defend the concept is self-defeating since it can only mean what you want it to mean.

Of course, you might see the problem. This absolutely ludicrous philosophy that cannot by definition make a truth claim is now the truth upon which all our modern nonsensical "truths" are built. Love is sex. Marriage is some sort of joining -- undefined. Male and female are social constructs. Racism is no longer built on the dictionary definition, but has rebuilt the dictionary to mean something else. Disagreement is hate. Most recently, recession is rebuilding the economy. And on and on. But, most pointedly, since all words and ideas mean whatever you want, it is perfectly suitable to argue the opposite if that's what you want it to mean in your case. So double standards abound because that's how it works. In a postmodern world, for instance, you can redefine "Judicial Branch" to mean "Confirm our Positions Branch" and call it good and right. You get the idea.

The problem, then, is that we can no longer communicate. We can no longer have dialog. We can no longer discuss ideas. "Truth" is a spectrum of possibilities ultimately undefined ... except we are pretty sure that ours is the correct definition. Built on a contradiction -- "The truth is you cannot make a truth statement" -- we eliminate the possibility of truth and then assert our own version and call it truth ... which we just said isn't real. Welcome to the reality that is modern America.

Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things. (Rom 1:22-23)