Post-Modernism (Part 2)

This disconnect is at the heart of post-modernism.

The computer has transformed knowledge into information, that is, coded messages within a system of transmission and communication. Analysis of this knowledge calls for a pragmatics of communication insofar as the phrasing of messages, their transmission and reception, must follow rules in order to be accepted by those who judge them. Reality, then, originates and ends in the recipient of the IM or e-mail.

Thus, the individual, and by implications, society compartimentalizes knowledge.  The compartmentalization of knowledge and the dissolution of epistemic coherence is a concern for Christians.  If knowledge is subjective then Truth will be the next victim. There will no longer be a redemptive narrative for millions of post-modern Americans whose subjectivity has stampeded any semblance of metaphysical objectivity from the barn.

The loss of a continuous, historically true, biblical narrative in American society was/is disastrous.  Post-modernism breaks the subject into heterogeneous moments of subjectivity that do not cohere into an identity. Quite literally separating the parts into parts means that there is no whole.

What does this mean?  It means that millions of Americans will not know who they are.  Really.  Their subjective interpretations of who they think they are—roughly based on perceived needs and desires—will not suffice to create a coherent whole.  Like Oedipus in Sophocles Oedipus Rex Americans will rail against the fates while standing squarely in the path of inevitable destruction—and not knowing what is happening.

Post-modern Americans, sooner or later, will fall and not know what knocked them down.

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