modernism and post-modernism

[Eric the Green]

Captain Genet Wrote: Wrote:

(05-26-2021, 10:48 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: Wrote:Just a reminder: the most important event in human history since World War II is the independence of India (and with it Pakistan, Burma, and Sri Lanka). Size and scale dwarf all other secessions from colonial rule. Communist takeover of China? It is still China, and Communist rule did abandon economic Marxism and might even collapse at some point (what follows will still be China, much as much of the Soviet Union is still Russia) or morph into something else.

The most important events from the millennial saeculum are the Apollo program and development of personal computers. In 3000, noone will remember about counterculture, Bolshevism (both Russian and Chinese) will be a vague memory somewhat like that of the Teutonic Knights or Khazar Kaganate. But these two are technological breakthroughs comparable to development of writing and agriculture. I can forgive the saeculum its cultural crudeness since it brought these achievements.

Independence of India certainly was important since it marked the end of the British Empire, so if you want to discuss only political events, I agree that it is very important. India is now the world's largest democracy.

I guess we'll soon see if India is still a democracy, if the creep nationalist Modi can be voted out.

Myself, I can forgive the millennial seaculum for its tech obsession since it brought a new counter culture (as well as cultural crudeness) 

The space program and personal computers are just more old-hat modernism, while the counter culture launched a potential new age (if it still is potential). But I guess cultural crudeness is the price of greater rule of society by the common people and by commerce instead of by aristocrats, kings, queens, popes and priests.

I guess space fans can look forward to terraforming a few asteroids and moons. To me that sounds daunting and pointless. The only way space travel can ever be meaningful is if we contact ETs and learn the ways of wormholes, quantum entanglement and/or interdimensional travel between life on Earth and The Other Side, and thus really go somewhere. But that sounds more like the counter-culture. Even then, most livable planets in the galaxy are probably already inhabited, and terraforming the available ones would be even more technically-daunting given their distance from us. I guess mutual immigration, as contemplated in the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind in 1978, might be possible, at least if it's not of the kind envisioned by The Twilight Zone in the early 1960s ("it's a cook book!"). But again that depends more on ET-informed space travel than of the kind begun by Apollo.

[Eric the Green]

Quote:Captain Genet Wrote:

Quote:(06-16-2021, 02:33 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:
Myself, I can forgive the millennial seaculum for its tech obsession since it brought a new counter culture (as well as cultural crudeness) Smile

I suspect the tech obsession became a thing because humanities were overrun by postmodernism and other crazy Leftist/Inclusivist stuff, so rational people wanted to keep out of it. Of course, modernism is not going to die. China has mostly a modernist culture, and is the world's biggest economy. In the new saeculum, I expect America and Western Europe to become more modernist again after the silly postmodern fad dies out.

Regular people going into space? Maybe during the next 3T, that would be fitting for neo-Lost adventurers to have an awesome interplanetary youth.

https://www.futuretimeline.net/21stcentu...e-elevator
https://www.futuretimeline.net/21stcentu...9.htm#nasa

Myself, I don't think of post-modern as a fad, or even a philosophy, but a condition of our times for which the word is used. Modern progress as our most important product has lost its lustre for many people, because it threatens the environment and impairs the spirit by turning us into machines.

But, I think there will always be technology and new developments. The question is for how much longer will it be seen as the definition of "progress"? In the post-modern view, real progress means greater freedom from authoritarian conformity. That has been part of the idea of "progress" since its beginning in the 18th century, anyway. Social progress and spiritual or artistic development are more important than tech progress, and toward the end of this century I predict this will dawn on more people. So in that sense, post-modernism is just a gateway to increased awareness of the limits of tech progress. But tech has its needed uses as well, so it's not going away.

Humanities did not go away because of Leftist/Inclusivist stuff, and such stuff is perfectly rational. It's the best area on your diagram, and most academics these days are predominantly progressive because the alternative out in red rural America is so horrific. In any case, the reason humanities has declined is precisely the tech obsession, so you got that backwards. Politicians and pundits no longer view higher education as a place to develop the ability to express, create and debate ideas or to learn to read, write, speak, understand society, investigate or draw, etc., but to get a good tech job or get a business and finance career going.

I think space travel will definitely become a tourist adventure for those who can afford it. It will never be cheap, and probably never fully safe, but many more people will afford it than can do so today. But fun, thrilling and spectacular as it is, is this really what makes the Apollo program the greatest thing since the invention of agriculture and writing, as you suggest? Without ET contact and knowledge of The Other Side, space travel and exploration yields few other benefits.

The route to a sustainable and prosperous future on Earth lies here on Earth-- in progressive politics, conservation, innovative eco-tech, human and civil rights, urban planning, reform of agriculture, support for culture, and lifestyle arrangements here on Earth, and those who study humanities and general higher education grasp this fact much better than those who don't, as election polls and returns clearly show.

[Eric the Green]

Quote:post by Captain Genet 
1985 Xennial
***

Quote:(06-18-2021, 12:49 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:
Myself, I don't think of post-modern as a fad, or even a philosophy, but a condition of our times for which the word is used. Modern progress as our most important product has lost its lustre for many people, because it threatens the environment and impairs the spirit by turning us into machines.

You yourself believe in this philosophy, so you don't recognize it as a specific set of ideas.

A rather curt comment, and I don't really know what it means.

Related to this comment: "I suspect the tech obsession became a thing because humanities were overrun by postmodernism and other crazy Leftist/Inclusivist stuff, so rational people wanted to keep out of it."

Rather hasty conclusions drawn.

The tech obsession, I would answer, became an obsession because tech has been so overtly and overly-promoted. It is good business for big engineering firms, and there's a lot of money in tech generally. The general attitude of modernism mostly continues, and it created the tech obsession, despite some post-modern moods and ideas that have come along since the sixties. But the media and our education system have instilled in us the value of tech. And it works for a lot of things, so this obsession has become acceptable.

The tech obsession was never that much a part of "humanities" that I can see. Humanities is the study of classics, mostly from centuries ago. Unless you mean sociology and subjects like that.

Many rational people are leftists and inclusivists, so the assumption that rational people wanted to keep out of sociology because of leftists and inclusivists doesn't make much sense.

Of course some leftists etc. may take things to some crazy extremes. But just what is crazy, in your opinion? Throwing out slogans does not mean much. Define your terms.

Some late 20th century philosophers have described themselves as post-modernists, and some people think they are influential. French philosophers such as Derida are post-modernists. I didn't study him so I don't know exactly what he says, and I am certainly not a believer in his philosophy. Outside of that, I am not sure there is "a specific set of ideas" called post-modern; I mentioned the general attitude that is described as post-modern. 

The philosophy I have heard of or vaguely remember as "post-modern" involved higher social freedom, as you mention, and general opposition to hierarchical attitudes (feminism for example), combined with a questioning or disposal of absolutes and substituting relativity, and the idea that labeling anything as great or superior or more ethical is arbitrary, and is insulting to those who say tolerance of all views is the proper attitude. This may go along with a drive for political correctness and making sure people call others by the right names and titles.

But I don't know if this is what you mean by post-modern. I might like some aspects of it because I am an "inclusivist", and want freedom to question outdated authority and oppression and acceptance of diversity, and I am a green, and green is closely related to post-modern in spiral dynamics too. But I don't go along with such "relativity" ideas as there's no such thing as great art, or correct ethics, or the idea that narratives or stories are useless, or ideas like that. Freedom from authority is not my only value. I am not a big proponent of political correctness either. That does get taken too far to crazy extremes at times.

Quote:Captain Genet

Quote:Eric the Green
But, I think there will always be technology and new developments. The question is for how much longer will it be seen as the definition of "progress"? In the post-modern view, real progress means greater freedom from authoritarian conformity. That has been part of the idea of "progress" since its beginning in the 18th century, anyway. Social progress and spiritual or artistic development are more important than tech progress, and toward the end of this century I predict this will dawn on more people. So in that sense, post-modernism is just a gateway to increased awareness of the limits of tech progress. But tech has its needed uses as well, so it's not going away.

I believe there are three ideas of progress, each flourishing in a specific period:

Enlightenment Idea of Progress - late 18th century. Challenged monarchy and organized Christian Churches, which worked together in what I call the Constantinian system, and fought for social freedoms and free markets (classical liberalism). Voltaire would be the most outspoken proponent of this kind of progress, which lost currency after the French Revolution horrified European public opinion.

Victorian Idea of Progress - 1870-1914. Focused on spreading civilization throughout the world and eliminating barbarism and superstition. Compared with the Enlightenment idea of progress, it was less interested in social freedom, and saw some behaviours like overusing alcohol, using illegal drugs and having extramarital sex as typical for uncivilized peoples and the underclass. Lost currency after the world wars, through some supporters like Prince Phillip remained until recently.

Millennial Idea of Progress - since the late 2000s, with forerunners since the 1980s. Unites enthusiasm for technology (especially microchips) with high social freedom. In a way it is similar to the Enlightenment idea, though it's less likely to involve support for the free market.

It looks like Dionysian saeculums produce an idea of progress involving high social freedom, while Apollonian ones produce an idea of progress involving eradication of uncivilized behaviours.

Quote:Captain Genet

Quote:Eric the Green: Humanities did not go away because of Leftist/Inclusivist stuff, and such stuff is perfectly rational. It's the best area on your diagram, and most academics these days are predominantly progressive because the alternative out in red rural America is so horrific. In any case, the reason humanities has declined is precisely the tech obsession, so you got that backwards. Politicians and pundits no longer view higher education as a place to develop the ability to express, create and debate ideas or to learn to read, write, speak, understand society, investigate or draw, etc., but to get a good tech job or get a business and finance career going.

In a way tech companies today are like drug dealers, making people addicted to the Internet and digital gadgets to make money on them. Being a drug dealer, or a tech dealer, is a fast way to get rich.

Agreed.

Quote:Captain Genet

Quote:Eric the Green
I think space travel will definitely become a tourist adventure for those who can afford it. It will never be cheap, and probably never fully safe, but many more people will afford it than can do so today. But fun, thrilling and spectacular as it is, is this really what makes the Apollo program the greatest thing since the invention of agriculture and writing, as you suggest? Without ET contact and knowledge of The Other Side, space travel and exploration yields few other benefits.

The route to a sustainable and prosperous future on Earth lies here on Earth-- in progressive politics, conservation, innovative eco-tech, human and civil rights, urban planning, reform of agriculture, support for culture, and lifestyle arrangements here on Earth, and those who study humanities and general higher education grasp this fact much better than those who don't, as election polls and returns clearly show.

It is possible space colonization will prove unfeasible. In this case, we might expect some thousands of years of the millennial saeculum, increasing stagnation until a natural catastrophe destroys us. It can be the fate of all intelligent species in the Cosmos. But I like the perspective of interstellar adventures better. If we colonize a few solar systems, we are practically immortal as a species. This is what makes space travel such a breakthrough.

Of course space travel requires elimination of some uncivilized behaviours. You cannot make a crew out of junkies or porn addicts.

The millennial saeculum has only 8 years left, so why do you call it "some thousands of years?"

As I mentioned, there will be no possible interstellar adventures within the current scope of physics as you accept it. It is not a possibility within the philosophy of modernism with its physical tenets. The speed of light barrier can't be broken in your view. So I don't see it as a great breakthrough, unless our worldview drastically changes, possibly through the influence of ETs and adoption of their technology and we achieving the same level of maturity that they have, likely including knowledge and utilization of the realms of being beyond physical life and beyond the limits of sense-bound space and time.

Uncivilized behaviors will continue in the modernist world, because it alienates us from life, and people seek an escape. In order to be mature as a species, we must go beyond modernism, and post-modernism.

[pbrower2a]

The big reality for much of Humanity will be the End of Scarcity. People will need motivation to do things, and that will need to be taught. "Work or starve" will no longer be a viable motivation.

Ideally people will have some compulsion to produce happiness. Caring about the rest of Humanity should be enough. Typically the most basic needs such as food, fuel, transportation, and clothing have been produced under conditions of sweating for maximal profit. That may be over. Overworked and underpaid agricultural workers, once among the most exploited of workers, may be freed from that. Such work offers nothing but economic reward, but those who have a desire for something pricey might end up milking cows (which will still be necessary), driving a tractor, baking bread, doing oil changes or tune-ups, or making clothes. Many may rediscover artisanship as a creative activity.

I expect status symbols to lose their attractiveness; they will largely become pointless. But note also that most people will be well-off enough to have tailored clothing and custom furniture. Mass-market schlock will be evidence of poverty by the standard of the time.

People who can benefit from post-secondary education will get it inexpensively, whether the classic liberal arts or strictly-technical learning. Liberal arts have the advantage of teaching people how to live, which includes how to use a mind so that one recognizes some basic truths as reality. The decline in the liberal arts as an educational objective shows itself in the amorality of many people who despite their sophistication in "business" specialties have primitive drives guiding their lives. There obviously is more to life than binges in food, drink, sex, pornography, and mass low culture; there are higher purposes in life than material display and comfort and in bureaucratic power. One of the most powerful people in the world in recent times -- and we all know who -- exemplifies the basest drives and desires despite having resources for much better. Just recall my thread on "Dictatorial Style".

Knowledge and culture may have their diminishing returns, but not as swiftly-diminishing returns as a gilded toilet.

[Captain Genet]

(07-01-2021, 11:25 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: The millennial saeculum has only 8 years left, so why do you call it "some thousands of years?"

Some thousands of years without much cultural advancement, if we don't embrace space travel and genetic modification of human beings, because I believe we have reached the full potential of natural human society confined to a single planet. Okay, we can still democratize the Middle East and Africa and eliminate hunger left in some places left in Madagascar.

Quote:]As I mentioned, there will be no possible interstellar adventures within the current scope of physics as you accept it. It is not a possibility within the philosophy of modernism with its physical tenets. The speed of light barrier can't be broken in your view. So I don't see it as a great breakthrough, unless our worldview drastically changes, possibly through the influence of ETs and adoption of their technology and we achieving the same level of maturity that they have, likely including knowledge and utilization of the realms of being beyond physical life and beyond the limits of sense-bound space and time.

Genetically enhanced galactic humans might figure out how to harness the power of dark energy which caused the Big Bang. It is possible this is a way to break the light speed limit, making space contract in front of a spaceship. Neil DeGrasse Tyson discussed this in the 2020 Cosmos series.
It is very likely some creatures in the Universe are already using such technology.

Quote:Uncivilized behaviors will continue in the modernist world, because it alienates us from life, and people seek an escape. In order to be mature as a species, we must go beyond modernism, and post-modernism.[/size]

Maybe we are overstimulated and need to recognize digital technology addiction as a problem. Many young people would be way more normal if they got off social media. But I also believe the West overcorrected after WW2. Fascism and colonialism were big on collectivism, militarism and cultural superiority, so since the 1950s Silent (and later Boomer) intellectuals started to posit radical individualism, pacifism and cultural relativism as cures. The cures now became problems in themselves, and this is the condition I call postmodernism. Note there are different combinations of these ideas, e.g. the "wolves of Wall Streets" are radical individualists to the point they see any communitarian ideals as evil, but are not pacifists. Socialists like Jeremy Corbyn or Bernie Sanders adopt pacifism and cultural relativism, but not individualism.

Quote:I don't go along with such "relativity" ideas as there's no such thing as great art, or correct ethics, or the idea that narratives or stories are useless, or ideas like that. Freedom from authority is not my only value. I am not a big proponent of political correctness either. That does get taken too far to crazy extremes at times.

I'm glad to know that.

[pbrower2a]

(07-01-2021, 11:20 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:

Captain Genet Wrote: Wrote:

(05-26-2021, 10:48 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: Wrote:Just a reminder: the most important event in human history since World War II is the independence of India (and with it Pakistan, Burma, and Sri Lanka). Size and scale dwarf all other secessions from colonial rule. Communist takeover of China? It is still China, and Communist rule did abandon economic Marxism and might even collapse at some point (what follows will still be China, much as much of the Soviet Union is still Russia) or morph into something else.

The most important events from the millennial saeculum are the Apollo program and development of personal computers. In 3000, noone will remember about counterculture, Bolshevism (both Russian and Chinese) will be a vague memory somewhat like that of the Teutonic Knights or Khazar Kaganate. But these two are technological breakthroughs comparable to development of writing and agriculture. I can forgive the saeculum its cultural crudeness since it brought these achievements.

Independence of India certainly was important since it marked the end of the British Empire, so if you want to discuss only political events, I agree that it is very important. India is now the world's largest democracy.

I guess we'll soon see if India is still a democracy, if the creep nationalist Modi can be voted out.

Myself, I can forgive the millennial seaculum for its tech obsession since it brought a new counter culture (as well as cultural crudeness) 

The space program and personal computers are just more old-hat modernism, while the counter culture launched a potential new age (if it still is potential). But I guess cultural crudeness is the price of greater rule of society by the common people and by commerce instead of by aristocrats, kings, queens, popes and priests.

I guess space fans can look forward to terraforming a few asteroids and moons. To me that sounds daunting and pointless. The only way space travel can ever be meaningful is if we contact ETs and learn the ways of wormholes, quantum entanglement and/or interdimensional travel between life on Earth and The Other Side, and thus really go somewhere. But that sounds more like the counter-culture. Even then, most livable planets in the galaxy are probably already inhabited, and terraforming the available ones would be even more technically-daunting given their distance from us. I guess mutual immigration, as contemplated in the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind in 1978, might be possible, at least if it's not of the kind envisioned by The Twilight Zone in the early 1960s ("it's a cook book!"). But again that depends more on ET-informed space travel than of the kind begun by Apollo.

The question is when we get contact with intelligent life forms (or quasi-life such as the artificial-intelligence life forms that those life-forms create and send off into space. We have enough questions about ourselves, such as whether we will make a catastrophic mess of this planet. AGW could give Humanity stresses far worse than those that led to the Second World War, Stalinism, and the Holocaust. Whether we will grow out of the fetish for technological solutions to every question in life is itself a big question. The disappearance of material scarcity will take away one of the driving forces in innovation (but also far worse tendencies in human nature, including the ever-present desire of some people to get command over near-slave labor). 

Most ominous of the hazards of visits from extraterrestrial high intelligence will be some barbarous interstellar power that chooses to reshape the Earth for its own questionable purposes. Surely you have encountered Independence Day, in which the great revelation is that the invaders seek to take over our planet (as they have others) and exploit it for its resources to leave an unlivable or impoverished husk behind. (That says much about certain parts of human nature, does it not?). I could imagine some interstellar power trying to make our planet resemble theirs to make it compatible for them but intolerable for us. 

Before we discuss intelligent life on other planets, we need ask ourselves how well we do with other intelligent life right on Good Old Planet Earth. Some people poach elephants....

[Eric the Green]

(07-04-2021, 09:21 AM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(07-01-2021, 11:20 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:

Captain Genet Wrote: Wrote:

(05-26-2021, 10:48 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: Wrote:Just a reminder: the most important event in human history since World War II is the independence of India (and with it Pakistan, Burma, and Sri Lanka). Size and scale dwarf all other secessions from colonial rule. Communist takeover of China? It is still China, and Communist rule did abandon economic Marxism and might even collapse at some point (what follows will still be China, much as much of the Soviet Union is still Russia) or morph into something else.

The most important events from the millennial saeculum are the Apollo program and development of personal computers. In 3000, noone will remember about counterculture, Bolshevism (both Russian and Chinese) will be a vague memory somewhat like that of the Teutonic Knights or Khazar Kaganate. But these two are technological breakthroughs comparable to development of writing and agriculture. I can forgive the saeculum its cultural crudeness since it brought these achievements.

Independence of India certainly was important since it marked the end of the British Empire, so if you want to discuss only political events, I agree that it is very important. India is now the world's largest democracy.

I guess we'll soon see if India is still a democracy, if the creep nationalist Modi can be voted out.

Myself, I can forgive the millennial seaculum for its tech obsession since it brought a new counter culture (as well as cultural crudeness) 

The space program and personal computers are just more old-hat modernism, while the counter culture launched a potential new age (if it still is potential). But I guess cultural crudeness is the price of greater rule of society by the common people and by commerce instead of by aristocrats, kings, queens, popes and priests.

I guess space fans can look forward to terraforming a few asteroids and moons. To me that sounds daunting and pointless. The only way space travel can ever be meaningful is if we contact ETs and learn the ways of wormholes, quantum entanglement and/or interdimensional travel between life on Earth and The Other Side, and thus really go somewhere. But that sounds more like the counter-culture. Even then, most livable planets in the galaxy are probably already inhabited, and terraforming the available ones would be even more technically-daunting given their distance from us. I guess mutual immigration, as contemplated in the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind in 1978, might be possible, at least if it's not of the kind envisioned by The Twilight Zone in the early 1960s ("it's a cook book!"). But again that depends more on ET-informed space travel than of the kind begun by Apollo.

The question is when we get contact with intelligent life forms (or quasi-life such as the artificial-intelligence life forms that those life-forms create and send off into space). We have enough questions about ourselves, such as whether we will make a catastrophic mess of this planet. AGW could give Humanity stresses far worse than those that led to the Second World War, Stalinism, and the Holocaust. Whether we will grow out of the fetish for technological solutions to every question in life is itself a big question. The disappearance of material scarcity will take away one of the driving forces in innovation (but also far worse tendencies in human nature, including the ever-present desire of some people to get command over near-slave labor). 

Most ominous of the hazards of visits from extraterrestrial high intelligence will be some barbarous interstellar power that chooses to reshape the Earth for its own questionable purposes. Surely you have encountered Independence Day, in which the great revelation is that the invaders seek to take over our planet (as they have others) and exploit it for its resources to leave an unlivable or impoverished husk behind. (That says much about certain parts of human nature, does it not?). I could imagine some interstellar power trying to make our planet resemble theirs to make it compatible for them but intolerable for us. 

Before we discuss intelligent life on other planets, we need ask ourselves how well we do with other intelligent life right on Good Old Planet Earth. Some people poach elephants....

That's right, and it sort of implies that, most likely, the ET aliens had to learn that lesson before they were even able to contact or visit us. The invaders in Independence Day and programs like that are our own imaginings based on our own immaturity and our own inability to behave in harmony with other beings on our own home planet. Most likely the intelligent life forms on other planets are not even allowed by the rules of the galactic federation to visit or contact us until they themselves are mature enough. Maybe they are not even able to visit us, because their technology will be more than what we know as technology, but will have recombined science and tech with wisdom and mysticism and art-- even to be able to develop a technology that can break the light barrier-- probably by being able to transit back and forth between The Other Side and here, as envisioned in the Insights in The Celestine Prophecy and The Tenth Insight, and first demonstrated in The West by Jesus the Christ. Or at least to further develop a technology which we are only beginning to understand in the notion of entanglement, which at the very least requires a notion that reality and all beings are connected and not dis-connected as common sense and our modernist economic rulers now convince us to believe.

[Eric the Green]

(07-04-2021, 03:02 AM)Captain Genet Wrote: Some thousands of years without much cultural advancement, if we don't embrace space travel and genetic modification of human beings, because I believe we have reached the full potential of natural human society confined to a single planet. Okay, we can still democratize the Middle East and Africa and eliminate hunger left in some places left in Madagascar.

I don't see any possible technology being developed anytime soon that could take us to planets around other stars, and the few terrestrial planets and a few moons don't offer enough real estate to expand into, even supposing it could ever be anywhere near as appropriate and life-giving in every way as our beautiful and rare gem and jungle planet here.

I don't think we have even scratched the surface of the potential of human society and individuality on Earth. We have only in the last few decades even approached childhood in our development. To begin with, we are a very primitive species only recently emerged in human form. I am appalled whenever I read about conditions under which people lived only a few decades ago, let alone centuries and millennia ago. Most people, outside a few aristocrats and priests and the artists and seers they employed or enslaved, have only now been starting to unfold their potential in this current and perhaps-all-too-brief window of a livable human society, in some places but not others, on a planet with a still-livable climate (but if current trends continue will soon be a hothouse). And now we live in a time of regression in which people in half the world or more are not even allowed to speak up about the concerns they face everyday without being shot or jailed by their tyrant, and in which a few capitalists and national-capitalist regimes can with impunity in a few more years go on polluting and ruining our extraordinary and beautiful livable Earth that took 4 and a half billion years to create and evolve, for no other purpose than their own convenience.

Genetic enhancement I don't see as any possible path to human improvement, beyond possibly eliminating some inherited disabilities and diseases. It cannot create virtue, or higher consciousness, or love, or creativity, or the ability to look beyond personal greed and insecurity to envision a society where everyone's needs are striven to be met instead of the needs of a powerful few. Instead, we must learn and practice, and evolve and be able to transmit through culture and genes what we learn to future generations. Genetics as understood by those still in the old paradigm is incorrect; learned and acquired characteristics and behaviors can be passed on genetically. We must learn that we are not just bodies, but first and foremost and most-basically souls, before we can advance those abilities that are soul abilities.

Quote:Genetically enhanced galactic humans might figure out how to harness the power of dark energy which caused the Big Bang. It is possible this is a way to break the light speed limit, making space contract in front of a spaceship. Neil DeGrasse Tyson discussed this in the 2020 Cosmos series.
It is very likely some creatures in the Universe are already using such technology.

But we won't, for the foreseeable future. And Tyson I am sure does not believe that the light barrier can be broken. He is a very traditional scientist within a very confined, narrow and very-incorrect worldview. His concept of dark energy is not even known to him; it is just an assumption made to account for what his colleagues have measured.

Quote:Maybe we are overstimulated and need to recognize digital technology addiction as a problem. Many young people would be way more normal if they got off social media. But I also believe the West overcorrected after WW2. Fascism and colonialism were big on collectivism, militarism and cultural superiority, so since the 1950s Silent (and later Boomer) intellectuals started to posit radical individualism, pacifism and cultural relativism as cures. The cures now became problems in themselves, and this is the condition I call postmodernism. Note there are different combinations of these ideas, e.g. the "wolves of Wall Streets" are radical individualists to the point they see any communitarian ideals as evil, but are not pacifists. Socialists like Jeremy Corbyn or Bernie Sanders adopt pacifism and cultural relativism, but not individualism.

As I see it, your philosophy tends to cram and shove a lot of different concepts under one label of your own choosing. These are a lot of different and conflicting worldviews and intellectual positions, with different origins.

Socialism is collectivism, so it still exists, and emerged from the mid-19th century, and is still popular among such politicians as Corbyn and Sanders. What was discredited after World War Two (and yet still also exists) was totalitarianism, which was based on either socialism (communism) or fascism (Darwinian racism and nationalist militarism). But collectivism can be moderate and democratic, and in the USA was exemplified by the New Deal, and which is now proposed in an updated form called the Green New Deal, which contains most of the political program needed today.

The major over-correction after World War Two was not pacifism, but precisely the opposite: the Munich Syndrome, which held that "democracies" must intervene to "contain" or "stop the aggressive advance" of communism or fascism, lest we fall into the mistake of appeasement and the "dominoes" fall. Thus the USA and some of its allies invaded Vietnam for this purpose. The pacifism among intellectuals arose in the sixties in reaction to THIS Munich Syndrome. Detractors to this pacifism like George Bush I called this the "Vietnam Syndrome", which he supposedly "overcame" via the Gulf War of 1991. Now however, there are some folks like Tulsi Gabbard and Ron/Rand Paul, both on the left and the right, who have exaggerated this Vietnam Syndrome into a belief that any US military action is evil, and that most wars in the world are regime-change wars caused by the CIA. But most people have, on the other hand, reacted to Saddam Hussein and Al Queda to embrace a new militarism, to one degree or another, and for such folks pacifism is passe again.

Neo-liberalism is an entirely separate ideology from post-modernism. It is the economic-libertarian philosophy that supports the wolves on Wall Street and most Republican and Libertarian politicians and pundits. It did originate among intellectuals like Hayek and Mises in reaction to totalitarianism as realized in the time of World War Two. You could call this free-market ideology a classical-liberal modernism stripped down to just whatever supports the market and those who make money in it.

Cultural relativism rose alongside collectivism and totalitarianism, rather than separate from or in reaction to it. The ideas of Freud and Einstein gave it a foundation, as did existential philosophy. It was popular in the 1920s, and again in the 1970s. There is a general counter-cultural rebellion that broke out in the 1960s and 70s against depersonalization, conformity, and various oppressive hierarchies like patriarchy. This was more of a reaction against the conformist society in The West itself that emerged AFTER World War Two, or just continued as it already was before it, rather than the societies like fascism and communism that CREATED World War Two. There was the racism and nationalism of the Nazis to react against after the BIG WAR, but also the racism already existing within American and other western societies to react against. People didn't have to look abroad to feel the pinch of this oppression. The civil rights movement thus encouraged similar movements against other unjust hierarchies, and some of these are cultural relativist ideas that can be annoying if taken to extremes, and which are the ideas most-often labelled as post-modernist.

[Captain Genet]

(07-04-2021, 11:45 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: As I see it, your philosophy tends to cram and shove a lot of different concepts under one label of your own choosing. These are a lot of different and conflicting worldviews and intellectual positions, with different origins.

Maybe. Which concepts should I start distinguishing?

Quote:Socialism is collectivism, so it still exists, and emerged from the mid-19th century, and is still popular among such politicians as Corbyn and Sanders. What was discredited after World War Two (and yet still also exists) was totalitarianism, which was based on either socialism (communism) or fascism (Darwinian racism and nationalist militarism). But collectivism can be moderate and democratic, and in the USA was exemplified by the New Deal, and which is now proposed in an updated form called the Green New Deal, which contains most of the political program needed today.

The overreaction against totalitarianism created the intellectual climate of the postwar academia, which raised the hippies. I know that democratic socialism was popular among postwar intellectuals and their countercultural students, and is still cool for millennials. This kind of academic democratic socialism is characterized by cultural individualism, which is quite alien to the working class and fails to win their support.

Quote:The major over-correction after World War Two was not pacifism, but precisely the opposite: the Munich Syndrome, which held that "democracies" must intervene to "contain" or "stop the aggressive advance" of communism or fascism, lest we fall into the mistake of appeasement and the "dominoes" fall. Thus the USA and some of its allies invaded Vietnam for this purpose. The pacifism among intellectuals arose in the sixties in reaction to THIS Munich Syndrome. Detractors to this pacifism like George Bush I called this the "Vietnam Syndrome", which he supposedly "overcame" via the Gulf War of 1991. Now however, there are some folks like Tulsi Gabbard and Ron/Rand Paul, both on the left and the right, who have exaggerated this Vietnam Syndrome into a belief that any US military action is evil, and that most wars in the world are regime-change wars caused by the CIA. But most people have, on the other hand, reacted to Saddam Hussein and Al Queda to embrace a new militarism, to one degree or another, and for such folks pacifism is passe again.

I see the idea of military intervention against tyranny or terrorism as a continuation of the Victorian "civilizing mission". Some people adopted it as a reaction to Nazism, but it is not a distinctly "millennial saeculum" way of thinking. Heck, even the Romans understood they need to use the sword to stop some barbarian warlord.

Pacifism definitely did not arise in the Sixties, maybe that's when you (and many others) learned about it, but as far as I am aware Einstein was a pacifist in the 1940s. It seems that pacifism started already in the late 19th century, among some intellectuals disillusioned with the Victorian civilizing mission. But it became more persuasive with the threat of atomic warfare. The UN was created after WW2 in order to prevent wars by means of diplomacy and prevent a nuclear apocalypse. Sounds like what peaceniks propose now, doesn't it? The idea that the Taliban will cease to be terrorists when the civilized nations "starts talking to them" did not originate with the flower power of the 1960s, but with the UN.

Quote:Neo-liberalism is an entirely separate ideology from post-modernism. It is the economic-libertarian philosophy that supports the wolves on Wall Street and most Republican and Libertarian politicians and pundits. It did originate among intellectuals like Hayek and Mises in reaction to totalitarianism as realized in the time of World War Two. You could call this free-market ideology a classical-liberal modernism stripped down to just whatever supports the market and those who make money in it.

I agree with the first part, but you can have modernism without supporting the free market and you can have the free market without modernism. Some people blend neo-liberalism with post-modernism, and maybe this was the gist of the 1990s zeitgeist.

Quote:Cultural relativism rose alongside collectivism and totalitarianism, rather than separate from or in reaction to it. The ideas of Freud and Einstein gave it a foundation, as did existential philosophy. It was popular in the 1920s, and again in the 1970s. There is a general counter-cultural rebellion that broke out in the 1960s and 70s against depersonalization, conformity, and various oppressive hierarchies like patriarchy. This was more of a reaction against the conformist society in The West itself that emerged AFTER World War Two, or just continued as it already was before it, rather than the societies like fascism and communism that CREATED World War Two. There was the racism and nationalism of the Nazis to react against after the BIG WAR, but also the racism already existing within American and other western societies to react against. People didn't have to look abroad to feel the pinch of this oppression. The civil rights movement thus encouraged similar movements against other unjust hierarchies, and some of these are cultural relativist ideas that can be annoying if taken to extremes, and which are the ideas most-often labelled as post-modernist.

The civil rights movement in America could not be a product of the 2T since it started in 1954:
https://www.nps.gov/subjects/civilrights...vement.htm

S&H mentioned Artists starting to doubt the Civic consensus during the 1T. I see the movements of the 2T of the continuation of these doubts. Silent intellectuals doubted because they saw similarities between American GIs' conformist society and fascism or communism abroad. For example racial segregation was too obviously similar to the Nazi system.

I'm above all curious what will new Artists doubt in the 2030s? This will determine the zeitgeist of the entire new Saeculum.

***

Quote:Genetic enhancement I don't see as any possible path to human improvement, beyond possibly eliminating some inherited disabilities and diseases. It cannot create virtue, or higher consciousness, or love, or creativity, or the ability to look beyond personal greed and insecurity to envision a society where everyone's needs are striven to be met instead of the needs of a powerful few. Instead, we must learn and practice, and evolve and be able to transmit through culture and genes what we learn to future generations. Genetics as understood by those still in the old paradigm is incorrect; learned and acquired characteristics and behaviors can be passed on genetically. We must learn that we are not just bodies, but first and foremost and most-basically souls, before we can advance those abilities that are soul abilities.

Intelligence, by which I mean not only abstract school abilities, but also practical and emotional intelligence, is largely determined by genes. Of course genetically enhanced people will still need education, probably more than we do. With this caveat, their societies will be more sophisticated and peaceful than it'll be ever possible for naturally evolved humans. I also need to mention longevity, a society ruled by centenarians who are physically still in the middle age is necessarily a more experienced, wiser civilization.

"Learned and acquired characteristics and behaviors can be passed on genetically" - it's called Lamarckian evolution and has been refuted already in the 19th century.

[Eric the Green]

(07-08-2021, 03:43 AM)Captain Genet Wrote: Maybe. Which concepts should I start distinguishing?

Those that I described in my post. Those you listed in the comment made before mine.

Quote:The overreaction against totalitarianism created the intellectual climate of the postwar academia, which raised the hippies. I know that democratic socialism was popular among postwar intellectuals and their countercultural students, and is still cool for millennials.

I dunno. Totalitarianism was horrid; a strong reaction against it was warranted. But the dominant reaction was the McCarthy era, not some socialist professors. If they were socialists this was hardly apparent in our democracy in the 1950s. Socialist parties declined to almost nothing. Such watered-down socialism as existed already had arrived with the New Deal, not through reaction to the war which tended to stifle it. Some hippies had left-wing parents, but as a younger generation member you don't know how widespread a trend hippies were; all sorts of young people became hippies or semi-hippies and underwent the "conversion" to one degree or another.

Quote:I see the idea of military intervention against tyranny or terrorism as a continuation of the Victorian "civilizing mission".

Sure, and it goes back to the French Revolution and Napoleon too.

Quote:Pacifism definitely did not arise in the Sixties, maybe that's when you learned about it, but as far as I am aware Einstein was a pacifist in the 1940s. It seems that pacifism started already in the late 19th century, among some intellectuals disillusioned with the Victorian civilizing mission.

The UN was created after WW2 in order to prevent wars by means of diplomacy. Sounds like what peaceniks propose now, doesn't it? The idea that the Taliban cease to be terrorists when the civilized nations "starts talking to them" did not originate with the flower power of the 1960s, but with the UN.

But what I am saying is that pacifism did not increase much at all because of World War Two. It declined because of it, and resulted in increased militarism in the USA to avoid another Munich appeasement. The whole USA defense establishment arose directly after and because of this, and because Stalin and Communism had become the new Hitler. This syndrome was the direct cause of the Korean and Vietnam Wars, which in turn aroused the first peace movement to actually stop a war. Pacifism had existed before, and there was a strong peace movement before Pearl Harbor, but World War II tended to discredit it.

Diplomacy by the UN is not pacifism. The UN has not disarmed nations yet or confiscated and taken over their weapons. Obama, Trump and Biden all tried diplomacy with the Taliban. That does not make them pacifists.

This history was so well-known to we boomers that it is interesting that you as a younger generation member don't seem to know it, or the immense scale of the influences it had. I wonder a lot what world I live in now.

Quote: Eric the Green
Neo-liberalism is an entirely separate ideology from post-modernism. It is the economic-libertarian philosophy that supports the wolves on Wall Street and most Republican and Libertarian politicians and pundits. It did originate among intellectuals like Hayek and Mises in reaction to totalitarianism as realized in the time of World War Two. You could call this free-market ideology a classical-liberal modernism stripped down to just whatever supports the market and those who make money in it.

Quote:Captain Genet
I agree with the first part, but you can have modernism without supporting the free market and you can have the free market without modernism.

Yes, you can have modernism without supporting the free market; that's called socialism. The free market without modernism seems only to apply to ancient barter 4000 years ago. But free market ideology descends directly from classical liberalism, which is modernist, even though another modern ideology of socialism arose to challenge it in the 19th century.

Quote:The civil rights movement in America started in 1954:
https://www.nps.gov/subjects/civilrights...vement.htm

But it became powerful in the early sixties, and not before. A Court decision paved the way for the movement, but did not start it. A couple of incidents in 1956 and 1957 did, but then it died away again until 1960, when it took off with the sit-ins and freedom rides and continued from there and resulted in the civil rights and voting rights acts in the mid-60s.

Quote:S&H mentioned Artists starting to doubt the Civic consensus during the 1T. I see the movements of the 2T of the continuation of these doubts. Silent intellectuals doubted because they saw similarities between American GIs' conformist society and fascism or communism abroad. For example racial segregation was too obviously similar to the Nazi system.

I'm above all curious what will new Artists doubt in the 2030s?

Again, on a small scale that's true; like the Beatnicks, circa 1956, doubted the civic consensus. There were a few wild ones like Marlon Brando. But the predominant trend among Silents was conformity until the 2T began in 1964. Look for Gen Z to begin to doubt the civic consensus in the 2040s. 2030s will be too soon. Why were the Silent Generation called that? Because of their conformity in the 1950s. Look for Gen Z at least to doubt the enormous application of virtual reality, zooming, robotics, social media, etc.

[Captain Genet]

The influence of Vietnam is overrated. Certainly it was an important and painful experience for young men threatened with draft, but beyond that... AFAIK American military was winning the Vietnam war. The government surrendered because of the pressure of the media and anti-war student protests.

https://www.prageru.com/video/the-truth-...etnam-war/
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathansal...ab95e3f218

Imagine America in the kind of societal mood experienced by Victorian England or currently by China. Is it likely for anti-war protests to emerge in such a mood? It is more probable that young men would be proud to die for honour, fatherland and civilization. This kind of mood was also present in America in the 19th century during the wars with the Natives. It became impossible precisely because of the influence of postwar intellectuals in the media and academia. For them, honour and civilization were suspect.

The "Vietnam syndrome" theory is also refuted by the fact that anti-war views became super popular in Europe during the Millennial Saeculum, even though no European troops were ever sent to Vietnam. And when European countercultural students were attacking the older generation, they were always calling them fascists.

You are right that most Silents were conformist in the 1950s. The cause seems to be that few young people were students back then, most of them would start full-time work before the age of 20 and marry a few years later. This does not change the fact that countercultural ideas were born in the 1950s. What makes the 2T important is the skyrocketing number of people supporting these ideas.

[Eric the Green]

(07-09-2021, 02:55 AM)Captain Genet Wrote: The influence of Vietnam is overrated. Certainly it was an important and painful experience for young men threatened with draft, but beyond that... AFAIK American military was winning the Vietnam war. The government surrendered because of the pressure of the media and anti-war student protests.

https://www.prageru.com/video/the-truth-...etnam-war/
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathansal...ab95e3f218

Imagine America in the kind of societal mood experienced by Victorian England or currently by China. Is it likely for anti-war protests to emerge in such a mood? It is more probable that young men would be proud to die for honour, fatherland and civilization. This kind of mood was also present in America in the 19th century during the wars with the Natives. It became impossible precisely because of the influence of postwar intellectuals in the media and academia. For them, honour and civilization were suspect.

The "Vietnam syndrome" theory is also refuted by the fact that anti-war views became super popular in Europe during the Millennial Saeculum, even though no European troops were ever sent to Vietnam. And when European countercultural students were attacking the older generation, they were always calling them fascists.

You are right that most Silents were conformist in the 1950s. The cause seems to be that few young people were students back then, most of them would start full-time work before the age of 20 and marry a few years later. This does not change the fact that countercultural ideas were born in the 1950s. What makes the 2T important is the skyrocketing number of people supporting these ideas.

Your account of history seems to me distorted. I certainly don't agree that the influence and importance of the Vietnam War is overrated. I would attribute your thought on that to not having lived through the time. It is THE example in history for all time of a war that becomes a quagmire. The protests did help bring about the end of the war, and it mobilized a generation and helped launch the counter-culture, but the US-Vietnam War could never have been won. Pouring so much money and so many lives down the drain, both American and Vietnamese, with so little to show for it, was even more important as a reason to get out. The nature of that war was that the more you put into the fight, so that those who died would not have died in vain, the further from victory we were. The Vietnam War did more to discredit war than any war in history.

The famous credibility gap was another reason the war became unpopular and failed; the war was promoted by unceasing lies, as the Pentagon Papers proved. The Vietnam War's lies was the first and biggest reason why distrust of government has taken over public opinion. President Johnson's advisors all turned on him after the Tet Offensive in early 1968 and convinced him to start talks, and after that he announced he would not run again. No matter how many bombs and napalm the USA dropped on Vietnam, no matter how many soldiers he sent to fight and die, the Vietnamese could not be defeated and would find ways to resist the American invasion of their country. It would never have been successful, any more than our invasion of Afghanistan would be. Tet convinced LBJ's advisors that the Vietnamese would launch an offensive over and over again, even though technically Tet was an American victory, more or less. Only in 1968 after Tet did the media start to oppose the war, led by Walter Chronkite. Vietnam ruined LBJ's presidency, drove him from office, and ended for good, so far, the great society/new deal projects and its replacement with neo-liberalism.

A great history of LBJ and the war from PBS. Part 4. It would be wise to get to know this history:

https://youtu.be/m0Jt8HehBpA?t=3965





Vietnam caused a complete reluctance by the USA to go to war until 1991. It was disappointing that Bush broke through the Vietnam Syndrome; it should have continued. That syndrome is not just a "theory;" that's what the president publically called it. Even so, Bush's Military Joint Chief of Staff Colin Powell advised Bush in 1991 to stop and not invade Iraq, saying "that's the quagmire." It was left to his son to invade Iraq later, and create that next quagmire, to enormous protests, especially in Europe. The anti-war movement Vietnam had spawned was still strong there, and in the USA too. It became the chief issue in the 2004 election.

After Vietnam the idea had taken hold that we could go beyond war. A group of that name arranged the first "space bridges" that were later used to end the Cold War. It seems to me that Europeans were more-advanced in their anti-war sentiment than America, which seems to me to prove the power of the Vietnam Syndrome. It's global. The students of 1968 in Europe were protesting the Vietnam War; it spawned the worldwide student protest movement, and a revolution in France. There is no connection between the anti-war movement and a few postwar intellectuals, and no connection between the anti-war movement of the sixties with concern over fascism or world war two. The students like Mario Savio created the anti-war movement. Some teachers came out against it too, but they came out against it because it was so horribly and obviously wrong, not because World War Two was considered wrong. It wasn't. World War Two boosted militarism in America as never before. The media, and the "wise men" intellectuals who advised LBJ, told him to keep the war going. If you don't know all that, you don't know the history of the time.  

Most of the counter-cultural ideas were born in the 1960s, but some hidden ideas that paved the way for it came into being in the 1950s. That's as much as you can say about it. Silents were very often students, in fact. They were an educated, professional class who took advantage of careers in academia and other professions and companies because the opportunities were so easy and abundant. They just moved into status, and conformed to the established ways. S&H described this. The artist archetype is an inheritor class.

Knocking American intellectuals is foolish. There is way too much anti-intellectualism in America, and is why we are such an authoritarian society despite our slogans and founding documents. After World War Two and during the height of the Cold War and McCarthyism, teachers were required to sign loyalty oaths and media people were blacklisted. Intellectuals had to fall in line and support militarism, or be fired; there was no anti-war movement among intellectuals in the 1950s. Such conformity and restriction is why teachers ended up supporting the student movement for free speech in Berkeley in the Fall of 1964. You attributing the student protests against the war to their teachers, reminds me of the climate science deniers who wrongly say Greta Thunberg could not have really started the school strike because she was too young; she had to be just a tool of her parents and climate alarmists.

The Vietnam Syndrome still exists, which is why President Obama was able to run and win on an anti-war platform, and then refused to back the citizens of Syria in their revolution when they started to get run over by their dictator, causing the biggest exodus and refugee crisis in history.

[Eric the Green]

Summary of some post-modern thinkers, from wikipedia

Jean-François Lyotard (10 August 1924 – 21 April 1998)

Most famously, in La Condition postmoderne: Rapport sur le savoir (The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge) (1979), he proposes what he calls an extreme simplification of the "postmodern" as an 'incredulity towards meta-narratives'.[34] These meta-narratives—sometimes 'grand narratives'—are grand, large-scale theories and philosophies of the world, such as the progress of history, the knowability of everything by science, and the possibility of absolute freedom. Lyotard argues that we have ceased to believe that narratives of this kind are adequate to represent and contain us all. He points out that no one seemed to agree on what, if anything, was real and everyone had their own perspective and story.[35] We have become alert to difference, diversity, the incompatibility of our aspirations, beliefs and desires, and for that reason postmodernity is characterised by an abundance of micronarratives

Lyotard is a skeptic for modern cultural thought. According to his 1979 The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, the impact of the postmodern condition was to provoke skepticism about universalizing theories. Lyotard argues that we have outgrown our needs for metanarratives (French: métarécits) due to the advancement of techniques and technologies since World War II. He argues against the possibility of justifying the narratives that bring together disciplines and social practices, such as science and culture; "the narratives we tell to justify a single set of laws and stakes are inherently unjust. … Little narratives have now become the appropriate way for explaining social transformations and political problems. Lyotard argues that this is the driving force behind postmodern science. As metanarratives fade, science suffers a loss of faith in its search for truth, and therefore must find other ways of legitimating its efforts. Connected to this scientific legitimacy is the growing dominance for information machines. Lyotard argues that one day, in order for knowledge to be considered useful, it will have to be converted into computerized data. Years later, this led him into writing his book The Inhuman, published in 1988, in which he illustrates a world where technology has taken over.

Jean Baudrillard (27 July 1929 – 6 March 2007)

Baudrillard averred that (globalization) should not be understood as the culmination of history's progress, but as the collapse of the very idea of historical progress. For Baudrillard, the end of the Cold War did not represent an ideological victory; rather, it signaled the disappearance of utopian visions shared between both the political Right and Left. Baudrillard contended that the ends they hoped for had always been illusions; indeed, as The Illusion of the End argues, he thought the idea of an end itself was nothing more than a misguided dream.

In common with many post-structuralists, his arguments consistently draw upon the notion that signification and meaning are both only understandable in terms of how particular words or "signs" interrelate….Baudrillard developed theories in which the excessive, fruitless search for total knowledge leads almost inevitably to a kind of delusion... a complete understanding of the minutiae of human life is impossible, and when people are seduced into thinking otherwise they become drawn toward a "simulated" version of reality ...the faster and more comprehensively societies begin to bring reality together into one supposedly coherent picture, the more insecure and unstable it looks and the more fearful societies become.

Jacques Derrida (15 July 1930 – 9 October 2004)

He questioned assumptions of the Western philosophical tradition and also more broadly Western culture.[54] By questioning the dominant discourses, and trying to modify them, he attempted to democratize the university scene and to politicize it.[55] Derrida called his challenge to the assumptions of Western culture "deconstruction"

Derrida frequently argues that Western philosophy has uncritically allowed metaphorical models to govern its conception of language and consciousness. He sees these often unacknowledged assumptions ...to which philosophy has bound itself. This "logocentrism," Derrida argues, creates "marked" (or hierarchical) binary oppositions.... Deconstruction is an attempt to expose and undermine such "metaphysics."

three books which Derrida published in 1967...served to establish his reputation. This collection of three books published in 1967 elaborated Derrida's theoretical framework. Derrida attempts to approach the very heart of the Western intellectual tradition, characterizing this tradition as "a search for a transcendental being that serves as the origin or guarantor of meaning". The attempt to "ground the meaning relations constitutive of the world in an instance that itself lies outside all relationality" was referred to by Heidegger as logocentrism, and Derrida argues that the philosophical enterprise is essentially logocentric,[94] and that this is a paradigm inherited from Judaism and Hellenism.[95] He in turn describes logocentrism as phallocratic, patriarchal and masculinist.[95][96] Derrida contributed to "the understanding of certain deeply hidden philosophical presuppositions and prejudices in Western culture",[95] arguing that the whole philosophical tradition rests on arbitrary dichotomous categories (such as sacred/profane, signifier/signified, mind/body), and that any text contains implicit hierarchies, "by which an order is imposed on reality and by which a subtle repression is exercised, as these hierarchies exclude, subordinate, and hide the various potential meanings."[94] Derrida refers to his procedure for uncovering and unsettling these dichotomies as deconstruction of Western culture.[97]

Paul-Michel Foucault (15 October 1926 – 25 June 1984)

The theme that underlies all Foucault's work is the relationship between power and knowledge, and how the former is used to control and define the latter. What authorities claim as 'scientific knowledge' are really just means of social control. Foucault shows how, for instance, in the eighteenth century 'madness' was used to categorize and stigmatize not just the mentally ill but the poor, the sick, the homeless and, indeed, anyone whose expressions of individuality were unwelcome.
— Philip Stokes, Philosophy: 100 Essential Thinkers (2004)

Foucault writes that power always includes resistance, which means there is always a possibility that power and force relations will change in some way. According to Richard A. Lynch, the purpose of Foucault's theory of power is to increase peoples' awareness of how power has shaped their way of being, thinking and acting, and by increasing this awareness making it possible for them to change ….

Foucault is described by Mary Beth Mader as an epistemological constructivist and historicist.[211] Foucault is critical of the idea that humans can reach "absolute" knowledge about the world. A fundamental goal in many of Foucault's works is to show how that which has traditionally been considered as absolute, universal and true in fact are historically contingent. To Foucault, even the idea of absolute knowledge is a historically contingent idea. This does however not lead to epistemological nihilism; rather, Foucault argues that we "always begin anew" when it comes to knowledge.[205] At the same time Foucault is critical of modern western philosophy for lacking "spirituality". With "spirituality" Foucault refers to a certain type of ethical being, and the processes that lead to this state of being. Foucault argues that such a spirituality was a natural part of the ancient Greek philosophy, where knowledge was considered as something that was only accessible to those that had an ethical character. According to Foucault this changed in the "cartesian moment", the moment when René Descartes reached the "insight" that self-awareness was something given (Cogito ergo sum, "I think, therefore I am"), and from this "insight" Descartes drew conclusions about God, the world, and knowledge. According to Foucault, since Descartes knowledge has been something separate from ethics. In modern times, Foucault argues, anyone can reach "knowledge", as long as they are rational beings, educated, willing to participate in the scientific community and use a scientific method. Foucault is critical of this "modern" view of knowledge.

[Eric the Green]

Post-modernism seems to have whatever definition the person referring to it wants it to have. That may be an exaggeration, but maybe the haziness of the term fits the movement and trend itself. Richard Tarnas has referred to Nietzsche as the first post-modern philosopher. In general the 1890s to the 1960s I still see as a predominantly modernist period, when progress was linked to technology and not applied fully enough to all kinds of people, but the ancestors of post-modern trends have certainly also unfolded since the 1890s Neptune-Pluto conjunction (in USA, the previous Second Turning or Awakening period in the Great Power Saeculum) under which Nietzsche wrote his greatest works and the Sierra Club was founded by John Muir, and the upsurge in conservation promoted by Teddy Roosevelt in the 1900s.

The term seems to me to indicate a general mood. Derida and Foucault defined it as a philosophy shortly after the 1966 Uranus-Pluto conjunction, in 1967 and the early 1970s (here we call it the Second Turning of the Millennial Saeculum). The mood and the term seems to me to indicate a general disillusion with modernism, and environmentalism, which surged forth in the sixties, is a big part of that. Technology must be revised, says this trend and movement, so that it does not destroy Nature and civilization and ruin sustainability for us on Earth. Going back to valuing pre-modern pursuits would seem to fit that profile too.

Having emerged in the 1960s, it seems generally related to the critique of progress, the leading attribute of modernism. The peace movement of the sixties and seventies may be post-modern, because it sees that technology applied to war makes it outdated and leading us to doom, so that we need to go beyond war if we are to survive as a species. So a critique of technology in general would seem to be post-modern as well. In general, the term often means a rejection or rebellion against hierarchy and absolutes and a respect for diversity and relativity. We can see that in its origins in the 1890s and 1900s with the emergence of Freud and Einstein as prophets of relativity, but its power as a movement dates from the 1960s, in the civil rights and women's rights and other diversity movements.

Critics of post-modernism point to the rage of political correctness and rejection of standards prominent on campuses and among some professors since the 1970s. The Green movement in general and the Green Party's values seem basically post-modern. It could be a transitional phase in the re-evaluation of progress starting in the 1960s, so that progress can be purified and reborn in this decade. A more-evolved new age movement may emerge in this decade and in the years ahead leading up to Uranus conjunct Neptune in 2165. I attribute the "new age" also to the sixties, with earlier foundations, and not to the 1990s.

In general, the pandemic and the turmoil over Trump and other tyrants seem to point to a possible now-emerging movement worldwide to overthrow these tyrants in the 2020s, a decade that began when Jupiter joined Saturn in Aquarius, and thus in the USA to Biden and Ossoff-Warnock as a return to progress. The cosmic cycles of the saeculum confirm this. The return in 2022 of Neptune to its pre-civil war zodiac position in the late 1850s, and of Pluto in 2022 to its 1776 Revolution zodiac position, plus the 83-84-year cycle of the Uranus Return in 2027, certainly indicate that many changes in the USA could revitalize this return to progress in this country in the 2020s decade.

[JasonBlack]

I'm a little confused by the OP, as this doesn't seem to have much to do with modernism/post modernism, but on that topic, I think post-modernism is an unholy combination of nihilism, pseudo-intellectualism and solipsism. If offers the cheap pretense of "depth" to anyone willing to militantly destroy any kind of real philosophy, means of categorization of basic, common sense observation of the world. When you destroy the ability to define, you destroy the ability to think, and with it, the ability to salvage any kind of ethics or meaning.