3 ms·

In that case i think you are exactly right. We need a better word than postmodernity though. Information age? Knowledge era?

by orwin 3y ago

keiferski 3y ago
Not sure. Those both sound very 90s to me. We do need a new term.
- singleshot_ 3y ago
  We live in the future. (Of course, we will need a new word to call the time after the present shortly but that’s the best one I can think of). Parenthetically, this whole idea of orthodox privilege is profoundly weak. The feature of our society should more aptly be called “normality incentive” and it’s profoundly valuable to the extent we don’t want a nation of hermits pulling in 340,000,000 different direction. If you’d like an example to this idea taken a bit too far, see Leo Strauss.
BlueTemplar 3y ago
Modern era was cannons and muskets starting with the taking of Constantinople and ending with WW1. Postmodern era is machineguns, high explosives, tanks, planes, and now atomic bombs. Especially the last one plays a huge role in what wars even get started (think about the recent Ukraine/Russia and Israel/Palestine + Iran, and how they would (not) have happened if the ownership of the atomic weapons was reversed) - so Atomic age seems fitting ? But then I am not sure why you would want to separate them : for instance I don't think that the postmodern relativistic physics and the ideas of moral relativism common in postmodern thinking are unrelated... I think that one issue is when people say "modern" to mean "current", rather than "more than a century old".
- orwin 3y ago
  > I don't think that the postmodern relativistic physics and the ideas of moral relativism common in postmodern thinking are unrelated (hopefully you read this) : they are unrelated, but I see where you came from. Postmodernism is really Postmarxism, but that wasn't sellable in the USA (nor in the USSR, that's why it was born in Europe). And it isn't really moral relativism either. It's peddled like that nowadays, but this recent and not at all a cornerstone from what I read. If anything, postmodernism is amoral (there is a lot from Nietzsch), or consequentialist, for a broad definition of consequentialism. You have to think of postmodernism as a critique of Marxism. This critique led to the critique of everything, really, but fundamentally, postmodernists asked themselves 'where was Marx wrong'. Some responses (genealogy VS ideology especially) led to what might resemble to moral relativism, but if anything, for a postmodern, a very moral thing is to deepen your understanding of the world.
  - BlueTemplar 3y ago
    Well yes, Marx (& Engels), building on Hegel, were philosophically still extremely tied to Christianity, resulting in yet another moral absolutism. Nietzsche has realized that the supremacy of that meta-morality was over, which, combined with the moral failures of Communist regimes, opened up the way to moral relativism (and to moral egalitarianism, which is the other extreme across from moral absolutism that we must be careful not to fall into).
    - thiagoharry 3y ago
      I think this is a very creative and uncommon interpretation of Marx. Marx advocated that moral is completely dependent of society infra-structure. The moral of a capitalist society would be different than the moral of a feudal society. Moreover, Marxist critique of capitalism is not a moral critique, but an invite to see the existing contradictions that would point to where future changes and developments would happen influenced by such contradictions.
wolvesechoes 3y ago
But *postmodernity* is a good term. Confusion arises because a lot of self-proclaimed intellectuals from our age used this term and *postmodernism* itself to beat the straw-man and make an impression of profundity. *Postmodern* thinkers didn't have that much in common, except for a fact that they made predictions about the trajectory of our culture. What they described in their writings was labeled as *postmodernism*. And if you take a look at those trajectories, we indeed live in a postmodern world, or at least we are entering it.

In that case i think you are exactly right. We need a better word than postmodernity though. Information age? Knowledge era?

by orwin 3y ago

In that case i think you are exactly right. We need a better word than postmodernity though. Information age? Knowledge era?

keiferski 3y ago

Not sure. Those both sound very 90s to me. We do need a new term.

singleshot_ 3y ago
We live in the future. (Of course, we will need a new word to call the time after the present shortly but that’s the best one I can think of). Parenthetically, this whole idea of orthodox privilege is profoundly weak. The feature of our society should more aptly be called “normality incentive” and it’s profoundly valuable to the extent we don’t want a nation of hermits pulling in 340,000,000 different direction. If you’d like an example to this idea taken a bit too far, see Leo Strauss.

BlueTemplar 3y ago

Modern era was cannons and muskets starting with the taking of Constantinople and ending with WW1. Postmodern era is machineguns, high explosives, tanks, planes, and now atomic bombs. Especially the last one plays a huge role in what wars even get started (think about the recent Ukraine/Russia and Israel/Palestine + Iran, and how they would (not) have happened if the ownership of the atomic weapons was reversed) - so Atomic age seems fitting ? But then I am not sure why you would want to separate them : for instance I don't think that the postmodern relativistic physics and the ideas of moral relativism common in postmodern thinking are unrelated... I think that one issue is when people say "modern" to mean "current", rather than "more than a century old".

orwin 3y ago
> I don't think that the postmodern relativistic physics and the ideas of moral relativism common in postmodern thinking are unrelated (hopefully you read this) : they are unrelated, but I see where you came from. Postmodernism is really Postmarxism, but that wasn't sellable in the USA (nor in the USSR, that's why it was born in Europe). And it isn't really moral relativism either. It's peddled like that nowadays, but this recent and not at all a cornerstone from what I read. If anything, postmodernism is amoral (there is a lot from Nietzsch), or consequentialist, for a broad definition of consequentialism. You have to think of postmodernism as a critique of Marxism. This critique led to the critique of everything, really, but fundamentally, postmodernists asked themselves 'where was Marx wrong'. Some responses (genealogy VS ideology especially) led to what might resemble to moral relativism, but if anything, for a postmodern, a very moral thing is to deepen your understanding of the world.
- BlueTemplar 3y ago
  Well yes, Marx (& Engels), building on Hegel, were philosophically still extremely tied to Christianity, resulting in yet another moral absolutism. Nietzsche has realized that the supremacy of that meta-morality was over, which, combined with the moral failures of Communist regimes, opened up the way to moral relativism (and to moral egalitarianism, which is the other extreme across from moral absolutism that we must be careful not to fall into).
  - thiagoharry 3y ago
    I think this is a very creative and uncommon interpretation of Marx. Marx advocated that moral is completely dependent of society infra-structure. The moral of a capitalist society would be different than the moral of a feudal society. Moreover, Marxist critique of capitalism is not a moral critique, but an invite to see the existing contradictions that would point to where future changes and developments would happen influenced by such contradictions.

wolvesechoes 3y ago

But *postmodernity* is a good term. Confusion arises because a lot of self-proclaimed intellectuals from our age used this term and *postmodernism* itself to beat the straw-man and make an impression of profundity. *Postmodern* thinkers didn't have that much in common, except for a fact that they made predictions about the trajectory of our culture. What they described in their writings was labeled as *postmodernism*. And if you take a look at those trajectories, we indeed live in a postmodern world, or at least we are entering it.