07-13-2021, 02:55 PM
(This post was last modified: 07-13-2021, 03:13 PM by 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peace movement of the sixties and seventies may be post-modern, because it sees that technology applied to war makes it outdated and leading us to doom, so that we need to go beyond war if we are to survive as a species.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.
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.