After Postmodernism: Introduction

2010-07-06T07:14:00.000-07:00

Note: This is an incomplete work still in "brainstorm" stage. Check back for edits and additions regularly.

The modernist era of philosophy was centered on the belief that an adherence to science and logic and a rejection of the mythical metanarrative in favor a rationalist one was the path to peace and utopia. The post-modern era began as a direct result of World War II; in this war, nations like Nazi Germany followed the teachings of modernist philosophers like Nietzsche and Heidegger but still managed to pervert them. Things done in the name of science and reason where considered horrific by human standards. The post-modern era of philosophy viewed this as the death of logic and reason, but unlike the modern era where the death of the myth gave way to logic and reason, this death gave way to nothing, or at least no one single thing. We went on to live in the world described by Baudrillard as the third simulacra, a world where we have created imitations more real than the things we are imitating. To us, the images we view on TV are more real than the actual people making them. Society and culture subside on pastiche, an endless representation of things which reference other things. Lyotard rejected the idea of a metanarrative altogether, stating that instead the world operated on multiple individual narratives without any functional overlying reason. The result was alleged to be a world operating beyond our control and one in which there was nothing to do but sit back and enjoy the ride.

Objective truth has largely become itself a type of myth, a metanarrative of the past which we now reject. The concept of the metanarrative itself, a single painting on a canvas we are all supposedly painting by numbers, has been discarded according to Lyotard. Even things seemingly as objective as male and female gender are questioned and in some cases, denied as nothing more than cultural constructions.

All of these ideas were presented and discussed before 9/11. As World War II marked the transition from modernism to post-modernism, so has 9/11 marked a transition from post-modernism to something new...and as yet unnamed and unrecognized. It is easy to dismiss that idea as western ethnocentricism and perhaps to some extent it is, but they did after all call it the World Trade Center, and the repercussions of that day are still being felt in an economic sense around the world. In attempting to recognize it, is impossible not to credit the incredibly fast and irreversible fashion in which the world has been changed, is being changed, and will continue to be changed by the internet, perhaps the fourth simulacra as a logical progression from Baudrillard's third. Now, the simulacra ceases to be specific objects of infinitely reproducible simulation but in fact becomes a single sweeping simulated reality that overlies everything. As the internet has become mobile and thus impossible to separate oneself from, we see "augmented reality" functions for mobile devices. These functions effectively remove the barrier between the two worlds, of which neither can be said to be more real than the other. They also create an environment in which there is no longer a discernible period of time during which a person is not operating in both worlds.

This transition is not without its resistance. Since 9/11, a countermovement of some type has occurred primarily in the previous generation. This countermovement values stringent anti-intellectualism and a has attempted to reform and repurpose a psuedo-modern metanarrative as an escape from what is viewed by them as an incredibly accelerated movement away from the values and themes they were attached to prior to 9/11. In an attempt to return to September 10th, 2001, this movement would really like to see us returned to a time before World War II. This movement is already doomed to failure because it has no means of controlling itself and growth of the fourth simulacra; in fact, no one does. The movement forward has become inevitable. Further, this movement is championed by older generations, meaning that as they continue to age and concede power to younger generations, their views will become more and more marginalized from everyday society.

So what is the new direction in which we are moving and what does it hold for us? In many ways, it is post-modernism seen in a mirror. A reflection in which everything looks the same, but everything functions in exactly the opposite way as it did before. Where post-modernism focused on the loss of control of the individual, this new movement gives de facto equal control to all who participate in it, not as individuals, but as single cells in a massive new organism, for better or for worse. Where post-modernism saw the simulacrum as replacing the real for us, now we see us becoming one with the simulacrum, the tool through which we ourselves replace the real based on our own whims and desires, for better or for worse. Where post-modernism focused on disillusionment and an inability to understand the real, the new zeitgeist perhaps forgoes individual emotions such as disillusionment altogether and presents the real as a void to be filled, emptied, and filled again at will.

In subsequent essays, this new concept will be explored and its meanings discussed. The first step in attempting to form a conceivable understanding of it will be an examination of it's origin from 9/11 and the growth of the internet. The next step will be an examination of where we are now and where we are possibly headed. A key component of this new movement, the fourth simulacrum exists in many ways as a sum of it's parts, almost a unique being that consists of everyone in it with individual anonymity. Because of this, this new movement is also not the observations of a single person. It is rather the intellectual offspring of the entire fourth simulacrum as a personified whole. Comments and questions are not only welcome, they are a necessary part of understanding where we are. That this should then occur on a blog in the simulacrum is not only appropriate, it is inevitable.

Ataraxian Aponian

After Postmodernism: Introduction