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The very label of postmodern and the term postmodernity implies that which comes after modern, and denotes the terminus of the modern or modernity. Whereas modernity was a plurality of loosely connected philosophies which typically employed similar methods of reason to reach divergent conclusions to a group of common questions about the nature of thought, the self, the universe, and the relation of the individual to the universe, the concerns and questions that postmodernism addresses have proliferated, and many of these so-called schools of thought (and I use the loosest and broadest possible definition of that phrase) are contradictory and mutually exclusive. Postmodern philosophy seems more concerned with the refutation of previous assumptions, and the exposure of popular myths, delusions, illusions and misconceptions than it does with the promulgation of new universal conceptions. It is thus not a philosophy or school of related philosophies. At the center of a view of the individual and the universe lie certain assumptions: when those assumptions are refuted and shown to be spurious and are not replaced with other axioms that can generally be shown to be true or accurate based on empirical evidence, then the center becomes a void. When nothing is assumed to be true or real then the very concepts of truth and reality become meaningless and intangible. A negation is not a philosophy (unless one is a nihilist... to quote from the Big Lebowski - nihilism isn't even an ethos, much less a philosophy). I state this not to devalue the efforts of the postmodernists: many of the illusions and misconceptions of previous eras needed to be discarded, for they excluded many from the common dialogue, and tended to marginalize and alienate those who adhered to divergent views and/or were members of alternative or minority cultures or subcultures. I state this to make the case that when there are no commonly accepted norms there can be no normal (an argument made well by many late modernists and postmodernists). When there is no center no common conceptions are possible; when nothing has gravity then there can be no gravitas; when nothing is held in common, no common or popular culture can arise. In the postmodern universe everything is a matter of opinion and conjecture, truth and reality are entirely subjective and can be altered, accepted or rejected upon a whim at any time under any circumstance. All knowledge is ephemeral, whimsical, and, some might argue, chimerical. What the postmodernists have done is to wipe the slate clean of obsolete axioms without proposing new universal concepts to replace those lost. What we are left with is a tabula rasa, a vacuum at the center of our collective consciousness. There is an old Chinese curse: may you live in interesting times. An intellectual firmament of infinite freedom and possibility: that is indeed interesting. The current state of ideologic anarchy cannot last: the human mind imposes order and structure on the ideological universe innately - it is part and parcel of our being. A universally accepted law of the known physical universe is the second law of thermodynamics - that all physical systems tend toward simplicity and disorder, and that order and complexity require energy to be developed and maintained. The only known exception to this is life, which consumes and expends enormous amounts of energy to temporarily increase complexity and impose order on disordered and chaotic systems in order to live and reproduce. In the universe of ideas the old orders and structures have been systematically undermined and discredited by the entropy of late modernists and postmodernists in a self-destructive fervor of unmaking, a form of slow intellectual suicide. But we are alive and conscious and filled with the desire to remain so (hence the near-universal fear of death and mental disability). New structures and orders are inevitable if we are to continue to exist in a mutually intelligible way. What remains to be seen is what universal concepts will become generally accepted, how this will occur and how much mental energy this will consume. These are indeed interesting times, and being alive during this era will be fascinating and exciting, if a bit uncertain and disorienting. Tags: extemporaneous philosophical commentary, vacuum of postmodernity
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I keep seeing phrases in mainstream periodicals and newspapers such as: "The United States... the world's oldest democracy." I've seen a dozen or so variations of this over the last 9 months. I have three problems with this: 1. the first recorded instance of "democracy" in the western world, indeed, the source of the term itself, was Athens, Greece in the 8th century B.C., nearly 2800 years ago. 2. the oldest existing democracy is not the United States, it is Switzerland, whose democratic canton system was originally established in 1376 A.D., almost two centuries before Europeans discovered the land masses in the western hemisphere and four centuries before the Declaration of Independence was penned. 3. the United States is not a democracy, it is a constitutional republic. I've seen this erroneous assertion stated as fact in: The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Houston Chronicle, Time Magazine, U.S. News and World Report, and several other major publications. I would like to remind those poorly informed persons in the media of three things: 1. just because a myth is considered common knowledge and many people believe it does not make it a fact 2. some knowledge of history or the subject matter about which one is writing is usually preferable to ignorance, and printing false statements is not just bad journalism, it can also cause those better informed to lose confidence in the veracity and validity of a publication (I've decided that U.S. News and World Report is nothing more than poorly composed propaganda and cancelled my subscription as a result). 3. if in the course of printing and distributing false or unsubstantiated facts a person's reputation, public standing, financial situation or character is questioned, derided, diminished or negatively impacted in any way, that act or acts is/are called "libel" and is both a civil and criminal offense in the United States. If you want people to trust you and respect your profession, get your facts straight first. Tags: new low in journalistic standards, try fact checking, world's oldest democracy?
Current Location: Austin, Texas y'all
Current Mood:  annoyed
Current Music: Ozomatli
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The late, great Isaac Hayes was better known in later years for his film and television roles, especially that of the voice of Chef in the Parker/Stone animated comedy series South Park. While Hayes reached the pinnacle of his popularity and influence on western pop culture during the 1970's, his greatest body of work was produced before the peak of his commercial success. Hayes was a great rhythm and blues songwriter, and his collaborations with Dave Porter (of Sam and Dave) during the mid-late 1960s include some of the best and most enduring songs of the Stax/Motown/Atco era. Hayes wrote or co-wrote songs for most of the artists signed to Stax Records during the 1960s, artists like Aretha Franklin, Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett, Rufus Thomas... and many others. There are only two discs in the Can You Dig It box set. On the majority of the first disc Hayes is backed by the Stax Studios house band - some combination of Booker T. and the MGs, the Memphis Horns and the Atlantic Records Studio Orchestra. This stuff is great classic rhythm and blues, and Hayes' smoky baritone is positively seductive on many of these tracks. While many of the themes and lyrics are quite dated, the music endures and transcends its era. The second disc features Hayes' later solo works. While some is excellent, some is fairly mediocre soul. It is still a good compilation and a tribute to an outstanding and influential career. Hayes' home town of Memphis, Tennessee is considering erecting a statue and a monument to him: great idea; he deserves it. Tags: can you dig it?, cd box set review, isaac hayes, passing of a rhythm and blues legend
Current Location: Austin, Texas y'all
Current Mood:  pensive
Current Music: Isaac Hayes
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I work in an institutional, public service environment. The physical environment is that of a middle-sized office building in the low-rent part of town. The building is divided into twelve roughly equal sections with some offices and lots of gray cubicles. As a part of my job I have to walk through one of the twelve sections on a regular basis. There are five whiteboards and about a dozen colored dry-erase pens in this section. The whiteboards are rarely used for the purpose of work-related communication, but instead are used for non-verbal general commentary on a wide variety of topics. Humor is often employed. Those familiar with the work of micro-sociologist, symbolic interactionist and social psychologist Erving Goffman will immediately recognize this as one of his better known experiments. Goffman designed the experiment and a small group of graduate students administered it. It lasted about a month and studied non-verbal "free" communication, in order to determine fundamental orientations, conceptions of self, small group communication dynamics and "translation" (in the sociological sense). Goffman's study was of civil service office workers. The test subjects were isolated in a wing of an office building and deprived of all forms of entertainment and mental diversion. Then, after a few days of this, four large chalk boards and a sufficient variety of colored chalk in order for each participant to have his or her distinct shade. A subject was selected at random each morning and instructed to pick a topical question to which the other participants could respond. Everything was monitored and recorded, sorted by type and analyzed in several ways; four independent and ten dependent variables were tracked and correlated. The resulting "combined" analysis (first half was qualitative, second half was quantitative) was over 200 pages. The study was novel and innovative and the methods employed, the resulting analysis, and, especially, its conclusions were questioned and the entire affair was considered suspect. There were also ethical issues associated with the methodology. What Goffman found is what I've also observed here: 1. that the prime motivation of the individuals who write on the chalkboard/whiteboard is not communication 2. that the process engenders a sense of elan, of belonging to something greater than the self or of contributing to something larger than the self 3. that the process, which is an expression of the individual, ironically and counter-intuitively tends to promote conformity and collective or cooperative identities 4. that the actors reveal far more about themselves than they typically intend through this sort of open-ended communication I'm wondering about this: 1. does anyone in this workgroup (which is primarily IT and other data services workers) have sufficient familiarity with sociology to know that they are re-creating a famous micro-sociology study? 2. if this is a spontaneous thing and there was no design involved... what are the chances of such an experiment just happening? I mean, one of the participants just deciding to do this one day... the chances seem pretty slim and remote Today there were no questions or responses on the board. I'm going to kind of miss it... although I only participated in it a couple of times, I did enjoy reading the board and I appreciated the fact that it was there. ... might be more on this later... Tags: accidentally like a goffman, put yourself under the microscope, spontaneous micro-sociology experiment
Current Location: Austin, Texas
Current Mood: contemplative
Current Music: Bob Dylan - Suddenly Sweet Marie
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