Rick Roderick had a "Let's just sit down and talk about modern life" approach to his lectures that I find helpful. See "Self Under Siege" https://www.youtube.co

Rick Roderick had a "Let's just sit down and talk about modern life" approach to his lectures that I find helpful. See "Self Under Siege" https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLA34681B9BE88F5AA https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLA34681B9BE88F5AA My understanding: Terms like 'modernism' and 'postmodernism' assume that such terms represent meaningful periods of history. If we roll with this assumption, then modernism refers to a collective cultural mood of optimism about the prospect of Utopia, marked by a strong sense of personal agency, derived from the intellect and the technology produced by the intellect. If modernism were a person it would say something like "Now that religion--dogma--is out of the way, I can use my brain to invent things that will improve our lives, and eventually we will live in a Utopia, or something close to it." In contrast, postmodernism refers to a collective disillusionment with the world, a loss of faith in or a deep suspicion of Utopia, especially w/r/t the intellect and technology, and a consequent erosion of a sense of agency such that the very existence of the Self is uncertain. Postmodernism might stay in bed and say things like "I'm depressed because, while rationality has undoubtedly helped some people, it has also hurt quite a few, on a scale made possible only by the technology I've created, such that it's not clear anymore if life is actually improving at all." That's the way I see postmodernism. An exercise in humility, it's a kind of moody, self-reflective style of thought that is ruthlessly critical of one's own perspective, intensely vigilant the self's capacity to distort perspective by tending to itself at the center of things, and always suspicious of one's own position in power structures for the sake of leaving no stone unturned in the search for meaning.