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Welcome back to our blog series Wisdom and Love vs. Postmodern Power. We’ve been talking about why we have so much conflict in our society and unhappiness in our lives.
The primary reason is that we have three conflicting understandings of life at work in society.
It’s like trying to play a game of basketball-football-golf. I call it basket-foot-golf.
The conflicting rules make it impossible to combine them into a single game. It will inevitably lead to conflict and deep frustration.
Are you supposed to move the ball forward by dribbling or running or using a club?
What is the proper club selection on 3rd down from the free throw line?
Do you win by scoring the most points or the fewest strokes?
Basket-foot-golf is a metaphor, of course, for the three understandings of life in conflict in our society—the Wisdom Paradigm, Modern Paradigm and Postmodern Paradigm.
Review of the Wisdom Paradigm
As we discussed in earlier blogs, the Wisdom Paradigm is the way all the world’s great religions and philosophies have thought about life for thousands of years.
The Wisdom Paradigm teaches that all people have the same human nature and purpose in life—Happiness.
A big, 80-year, ongoing Harvard study confirms something we already know. Happiness in life comes from high-quality relationships. Good relationships won’t just make you happier; you’ll also be healthier and live longer.
Knowing that our purpose in life is Happiness, reason tells us what we need to do to get there.
The Wisdom Paradigm says that all relationships are covenant relationships. In covenant relationships, the good of the individual and the good of the team are the same. Covenant relationships are high-trust, high-performance, high-stability relationships.
The Wisdom Paradigm teaches that there is an objective morality with moral facts.
For example, it is a fact that practicing moral virtues like courage, wisdom, honesty, justice and love help us develop good relationships that bring Happiness.
It is also a fact that practicing moral vices like addiction, cowardice and dishonesty destroy relationships and will inevitably lead to unhappiness.
Rise and Fall of the Modern Paradigm
In Europe in the 1500’s and 1600’s, however, things began to change. Religious wars were tearing Europe apart. Different Christian religions had conflicting versions of what Salvation—Happiness—was and different ways to get there.
The religious wars were brutal. Thinkers of the time responded by creating a whole new way of understanding life—the Modern Paradigm.
These new, modern thinkers needed to find a way to get people to live together without killing each other over religion. So, they split life into public life and private life.
Then they put our destination in life, Happiness, into the private side so that we stopped fighting about it publicly.
That helped with the religious fighting, but it created other problems.
When it came to morality, modern thinkers had to come up with a new way to justify objective morality with moral facts. They tried to do that using reason alone. As we’ll see again, that attempt created some big problems.
Modern thinkers also redefined human relationships from covenant relationships into contract relationships.
In contract relationships, what’s good for the individual and team are opposite.
That’s a big change.
For example, in the relationship between an employee and a company, the employee wants more money for less work, while the company wants more work while paying less money.
Contract relationships end up being low-trust, low-performance and unstable relationships.
Finally, remember that the Modern Paradigm is a whole new way of looking at life, so it impacted every aspect of society including art, literature, education, religion, work, music, government and politics—everything.
The Rise of Postmodern Thinking
During the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, it became clear that the Modern Paradigm’s attempts to establish an objective morality and Truth and facts were failing.
Philosophers like Nietzsche wrote books like The Genealogy of Morals and Beyond Good and Evil.
When it comes to family, genealogy is the study of your family’s history.
Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morals did the same thing with morality. It described the failure of modern philosophers to prove that there are moral facts.
This failure wasn’t just limited to moral facts. It also failed to prove that there is objective Truth, facts, or justice.
That meant it was time to go Beyond [the old categories of] Good and Evil and embrace a new, postmodern reality where there is no objective Truth or Morality or Justice.
Postmodern thinkers argued that all the categories that society teaches us are facts about life—like the existence of Good and Evil—are false.
They are just social constructs that we’ve been programmed to believe by our parents, media, schools, churches, government, etc.
In the Postmodern Paradigm, there is no objective Truth only your personal truth. No objective Morality, just your personal morality. There are no facts, just what you feel.
We began to see life through the postmodern lens of everything-is-in-the-eye-of-the-beholder.
This new postmodern reality changes how we think about every aspect of society including family, human nature, art, language, work, law, philosophy, theology, education, government, music, architecture, science, health, etc.
There is no deeper purpose or meaning in life, just whatever purpose or meaning you make for yourself.
With no objective Truth, Morality, Justice or purpose in life, all that really matters is Power. Postmodern thinking sees all relationships as power relationships.
Three Keys to Remember about Postmodern Thinking
These are the three keys to understanding the Postmodern Paradigm:
- There is no Truth or Morality or facts. Everything in life is In-the-Eye-of-the-Beholder.
- There is no purpose or meaning in Life.
- All that matters is Power. All relationships are power relationships.
Over the last 120 years, European and American society has slowly become postmodern.
History of Postmodern Influence
Nietzsche was still relatively unknown when he died in 1900, but his writings and ways of thinking became increasingly influential in universities through the 1920’s.
Europe and America were recovering from World War I. It was a horrible and wasteful war that killed millions through modern technology like the machine gun and poison gas. World War I was a war between nations at the apex of the Modern Paradigm that destroyed an entire generation of young men, and millions of women and children.
The incredible death, destruction and loss caused people to lose confidence in the Modern Paradigm. It created fertile ground for postmodern thinking to take root in universities in the 1920’s and 30’s.
Postmodern thinkers made it their mission to directly challenge and overthrow the social constructs, the rules, of modern society that led to this carnage.
The incredible horrors of World War II, the Holocaust and the hydrogen bomb undermined trust in older institutions—especially in Europe—and added momentum to postmodern thinking.
You can do the math and figure out that those going through college in the 1920’s (about 20 years old) became the leaders of higher education by the 1960’s.
As these postmodern thinkers took over the colleges and universities, they hired several generations of other postmodern thinkers to fill the humanities departments in universities.
Thinkers like J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis wrote books like The Lord of the Rings and the Chronicles of Narnia in opposition to this rising postmodern thinking in universities.
Today, over 90% of college professors in the humanities embrace elements of postmodern thinking. Postmodern thinking dominates the humanities.
Let’s dive deeper.
Human Nature is Programmable
The Wisdom Paradigm teaches that human nature is the same across cultures and throughout history. That’s why today we can read and share experiences of love, betrayal and courage across the ages and across cultures.
In the Wisdom Paradigm, your purpose in life is to achieve Happiness by fulfilling your human nature.
In contrast, the Postmodern Paradigm teaches that human nature is not a constant. Human nature is the product of social programming. Human nature can be changed by programming people with different social constructs.
The idea that there are differences between men and women? Nothing more than a social construct.
The idea that human beings are a special species on the planet? Nothing more than a social construct.
Justice?
Morality?
Love?
Family?
Happiness?
Nothing deeper or transcendent about any of these. They are nothing more than social constructs.
You don’t believe them because they are true. You believe them because that’s how you’ve been programmed.
The postmodern argument is that none of these constructs are objectively true or real, but simply our own made-up understandings.
It goes further. Postmodern thinking rejects reason and logic as ways to prove facts or Truth. Reason and logic are also just social constructs that those in power use to program you.
That’s why postmodern thinking emphasizes narrative. A narrative is not a collection of facts. A narrative is simply a collection of ideas arranged to talk you into agreeing with those in power.
No objective Truth, just personal truth. No objective morality, just your personal morality.
Postmodern thinking rejects reason, logic and facts for narrative.
Everything is in the eye-of-the-beholder.
Truth and Beauty: In the Eye of the Beholder
In postmodern thinking, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
That means that when you say that the Grand Canyon is beautiful, you’re not recognizing something deep or transcendent in the Grand Canyon. You’re just saying that you like it a lot.
So, the Grand Canyon is not inherently or intrinsically Beautiful. Beauty is not a quality the canyon possesses on its own.
Rather, the “beauty” of the Grand Canyon only exists in your mind. Beauty is not a fact, its just something that you feel. Beauty is a value that you put on the Grand Canyon.
This way of thinking where there are no facts, just feelings, applies to supposed truths that we may take for granted, like physical health.
Most of us think that good health is a fact that includes having an appropriate weight, blood pressure and cholesterol, eating well and getting good rest.
In contrast, in postmodern thinking, good health is not a fact or Truth, but a value that’s in the eye-of-the-beholder.
In postmodern thinking, it is not a fact that being 130lbs is better than being 700lbs. They are simply different lifestyle choices. Different values.
Good health is simply a phrase that others use to exercise power over you. If they can program you to believe that good health is important, they can use that to sell you things like diet plans and health club memberships.
Does it sound too crazy to be true?
Go to the Internet and search for “pro-ana” or “thinspiration” or “thinspo” and check out the websites that advocate for anorexia as a legitimate lifestyle choice.
Morality in the Eye of the Beholder
In postmodern thinking, morality, like everything else, is in-the-eye-of-the-beholder.
Morality goes from the idea that there are moral facts—virtues like honesty, courage and justice—to the idea that morality is nothing more than personal opinion, or value.
Morality is nothing more than how much you value something.
Behaviors aren’t right or wrong. They only have the value that you give them.
Everyone has values. The Parkland school shooter valued shooting his classmates. The 9/11 bombers valued killing Americans. Hitler valued genocide.
The point of postmodern thinking is that it’s impossible to prove that helping the homeless is better than murdering the homeless. The two actions are morally equivalent.
This is moral subjectivism. Morality is in the eye-of-the-beholder.
Thanks for listening!
Stay tuned for our next session in which we’ll discuss postmodern purpose, communities, power, freedom and how they develop children.
I’m Pete Bowen.
