Rewind the clock with me about 19 years. I was just married. I had been writing here for a while, as well as other places, and I was a full-time grad student. I wrote a lot of critiques…that’s the nature of being a grad student, after all…and I enjoyed doing so. To this day, if I’m thinking through a concept or a problem, the process doesn’t feel finished until I’ve written it out. That’s something about being a student that never goes away, I guess.
I wrote…and still write…reviews of movies and books here and other places. I’ve noticed a shift in my tendencies, though. When I critiqued things back then, I was…well, critical. Sometimes overly so. In reading some of the things that I wrote from that time, I sometimes feel that the me from that time didn’t feel as though he was thinking about something if it wasn’t completely torn down, many faults exposed. That’s changed, I think. Don’t get me wrong, I can still be quite critical, but I’ve noticed that if I re-read or re-watch something now that I read or watched then, I tend to receive it with a more positive attitude overall. There was at least one case in which I finished a series that I had abandoned then because I thought so critically of its writing, and was happy I did so, because it turned out to be quite worthwhile.
I heard a stunning statement recently on the Theology in the Raw podcast. The guest on the episode in question, a Dr. Miller, stated that we as a society have reached the end of postmodernism. For someone who did their graduate work in religion, like me, that’s a breath-taking statement. The theological and philosophical implications are huge, and the way that those implications inform the rest of our lives possibly even more profound. Miller states that he had come to this conclusion because he (rightly) identified deconstructionism as a hallmark of postmodernism, and felt that he had observed a loss of interest culturally in deconstructionist thought in recent years. He particularly tied this to our political moment, but I want to think more broadly than that here, because this statement, if true, leaves me with so many questions.
I recently was in a conversation with some friends around the falsehood of the idea that “the ends justify the means.” As part of that discussion, we agreed with the rejection of the concept that the means are also completely inclusive of meaning…in other words, “it’s all about the journey” rings equally hollow. There was easy agreement there, and I think now about how much of a shift that is from early 19th century thought, such as the lingering echoes of Hegel’s dialectic and how the process was most important, because truth is not static. When I think of those foundational thinkers, I think of the birth of postmodernism in the sense that postmodernism’s primary characteristic in my studies, beyond deconstructive pessimism, is moral and theological relativism. The influence of postmodernism today is felt in the pervasive…and empty…idea that there is not an absolute truth. Think of statements that encompass this:
“You do you.”
“That’s what’s right for me, it may not be what’s right for you.”
“Find your own meaning.”
“Jesus is my way.”
And, the interjection that I find so repulsive, “…for me…”.
If postmodernism is fizzling…and the longer I think about the argument, the more I am open to the idea that it’s true…the societal shift, marked by a necessary exhaustion with these sorts of rudderless drifting, are huge. An openness to a defined reality…that there has to be a truth, that it is a knowable truth, and that it would give us a common starting point for discussion…would be a positive shift, perhaps just the shift that we need culturally. If Generations X and Z, and Millenials, have been defined by postmodern relativism and cynicism, what would this mean for an up and coming Generation Alpha? What would it mean for the scientific enterprise? For education? For politics?
I’m slightly concerned that Dr. Miller’s hypothesis presented on the podcast episode may be correct…that we’re a culture that is so exhausted with denying everything that we arbitrarily choose something to be true. There could be a rebound period here in which that happens, but, if postmodernism truly is passing away, I’m excited overall to see what replaces it. Like my old critiques, I think a bit less cynicism and a bit more definition would do all of us good.