What is next after post-modernism?

Rediscovering what God really is, and I think its love. Love is that which makes us transcend ego and realize out connection to other people and the whole. Its a real basis for morality imo. You can't completely model it through logic. Its something that's felt and something that post modernist thinking can't really model.

 

That's cool MellowViper. So you would see the next stage after postmodernism as a reaffirmation of the heart, and of spirit?

I agree that something of the heart cannot be understood logically, and this is the problem with the objectivistic rationalism that has defined truth since the Age of Reason. Our truth is defined by empirical science. The Age of Modernism in particular, represented the loss of soul, heart, and spirit, within our society and culture. That was the nuclear age when science held the key to all our problems. Ultimately though it led into the crumbling society of decay, based on a culture of greed, that we find ourselves in today.

The problem is, whatever new metaverse comes along, in order for it to define our culture, we have to understand it as truth. It has to be our truth. And the Age of Reason, has made it very difficult to rediscover god as truth.

Individuals may believe in God. But that is no longer sufficient to provide a cultural metaverse. It is a problem like that of Carl Jung: in his writings, it was clear that he believed that there was more to the universe than just our physical reality. But as a scientist he could not make that claim, there was that line that he could not cross over (instead he just pushed the line further out whenever he could).

SO the problem becomes, what does it take for a concept of spirit to become our truth. Many Christians would immediately think of the rapture and the apocolyptic final battle for good and evil. If suddenly a bunch of people started floating into heaven that would certainly change a lot of opinions, but I don't believe the universe works that way. I personally would be very angry with a God that is so wrapped up in dualities that he would rapture away all those anal-retentive souls who spent their whole lives based on their ego-ideals, and left the rest of us who were more true to ourselves to suffer through the horrors of good over evil.

But if we can get past that problem, then love is the bond, it would reconnect us as a people, it would reconnect us to our values. Some people might think that sounds overly simplistic. But the fact is that with a new metaverse, a new truth that defines our reason for being, we would find ourselves responding to subconscious cues, as the metaverse plays on the archetypical symbols of our subconscious. Love would be expressed naturally, just as it once was in a simpler time and place.

But I do agree, for our own survival, we need to rediscover god, and love.

 

We know what we know,we are what we are,we have what we have. We knew what we knew,we were what we were, we had what we had. We all have and have had the same potentialities throughout written and unwritten history according to era,society and place in each particular society. Knowledge gained and discarded as new knowledge is/was gained ,whether for "good" or "evil" as individually defined, has been the WAY. Some is timeless and some is subject to constant change and therefore subject to discardation. Could not post modernism be applied at any point relative to new knowledge gained throughout our history? The more things change,the more they remain the same? Will that facet of human behaviour that manifests now-the loveless quest for power over all things be the end of us? Does it matter? -------Or have I missed the point here completely? It wouldn't be unusual.

 

Postermodernism is viral.An infection.There is no escape from this crap.We're all doomed.I haven't got the energy to intellectualize right now,Life has become like a frackin Nietszchean power game - it's just one persons's will power against another person's will power.The best thing to do is just keep your head down and try and stay anonymous.I hate all this excess production of crap,endless bull,I've had enough.Leave.Please refrain from speaking,breathing.Even. Over.Just do what the fuck you like.

 

I have wondered the same thing Scratcho. The time of Aristotle, Plato, and the fall of the Greek civilization could be compared to postmodernism. The Greeks had become fairly rational in their philosophy and had forsaken their old gods (their old unifying myths). The fall of the Roman Empire put Europe into the dark ages. Nihilism is a symptom of any decaying civilization.

Here are some things that I see as differentiating Postmodernism from other similar periods in the history of mankind: 1.) the level of scientific and technological knowledge that we have. 2.) the fact that science has destroyed our path back to the traditional unfiying myths, with rational proofs based on empirical evidence that can be reproduced at any time. 3.) The Age of Reason, with its mechanical explanation of nature, and the denial of causation reaffirmed the value of the individual, though in a rationally ojectivistic manner. Technology has furthered the power of the individual. 4.) For the first time since before the rise of the male skyfather, we are undergoing a cultural acceptance of the feminine, for the first time since our earliest hunter-gatherer ancestors, this acceptance of the feminine is based on a balanced equality. 5.) Post modernism involves a breakdown of duality. And 6.) There is the eclectic nature of postmodernism as we now live in a global economy, a global culture.

Fairlight's last post is very nihilistic, reflecting the dark aspect of postmodernism. He is right about the power games, and Nietzsche's Will to Power. This is what happens when society discards its ethical values. Our governments, and the corporations are deeply immersed in a culture of greed, and our governments have sold off the Social contract (that unwritten contract between the state and its citizens) to multinational corporations. We are faced with unprecendeted levels of sovereign debt, and people with a diminished sense of reality (due to the culture of greed) and complete lack of wisdom on how to manage such debt. A recent scientific study has uncovered the fact that their is a concetration of power and ownership of the global economy in a group of 147 multinational companies (mainly investment banks and other financial companies) which themselves are heavily invested into each other through cross-shareholdings. This is not part of some conspiracy, it is just a natural progression of investing over time---the prudent man's rule taken to the extreme. The problem is that this means the days of questioning the too big to fail problem may already be behind us. It also means that if we see a collapse of the Eurozone, and that carries over into the US Treasury markets, we may witness a crisis so severe that it could very well mark the end of capitalism.

All the doomsday talk, all the post-apocolyptic stories, the dark grinding force of dubstep, are symptoms and dreams from the collective unconscious of grave threats to the foundations of our culture, and to the end of one era, and the beginning of the next.

Will capitalism come crashing down into a horrific global depression? I don't think it has to end that way (unfortunately I do not see a leader sophisticated and wise enough to come forward and lead us through this mess, so we may have to survive this mess by the seat of our pants, and when the smoke settles, the American dollar will need its own miracle to keep its status as the global reserve currency, which would certainly shake up things in the US. If we can continue to stay ahead of Europe in terms of dealing with our debt, we may just squeeze by). In many ways, such as crime and violence, and the lack of values among our fellow citizens, things are not as bad as they seem. With nihilism as a part of our social consciousness, things appear much worse than they are. The media, and the internet respond to the cues of the collective subconscious, and even as things get better, what we see is how things appear to get worse. After Columbine for example the media focused heavily on school shootings, which it seemed started happened more than ever since then. The truth is, the statistical occurrence of school shootings, is about the same as before Columbine.

But there is light at the end of the tunnel--------postmodernism will give way to the next stage.