What Does It Mean to be Post-Modern: Introduction

POST #1

I know when I first started hearing “postmodern” all I really had as a reference was “that art movement” but couldn’t say much more about it.

I see now that to understand and engage with my own values of postmoderism is of the utmost importance and the only way to not only see where we are stuck in culturally, but also what the next, called Integral, level of development holds for us all.

But before I get too ahead of myself, I thought it would be great to go slow, all get on the same page about the simple question: “what does it mean to be Postmodern?” For us to have a focused inquiry and exploration together is so completely thrilling and the benefits for our collective understanding and development seem countless.

So, for now, let’s just explore that question…

And I’d like to kick it off with a basic understanding of what Postmodernism is from Steve McIntosh’s amazing book: Integral Consciousness and the Future of Evolution. (if you haven’t read it, you ought to) Postmoderism is defined at a stage of human development, distinguished from previous and post stages by its values. What is helpful is to understand the way Human Development develops…each “stage” (ie. Tribal to Warrior to Traditional to Modern to Postmodern) is a RESPONSE to the previous stage…it’s not an isolated or random set of values, they are formed as a response to what came before. So when we understand what the MODERN values are, we can see more clearly what our POSTMODERN values are. Without getting lost in needing to discuss the whole spiral (at least at this point ! :) it’s just helpful to see where the postmodern values came from…it makes them less personal. We start to see our emphatic mistrust of hierarchy, for example, coming more from a response to the MODERNIST culture’s eventual abuses of hierarchy, and not ‘my own experiences of corrupt hierarchy in my life’…

So for our maiden voyage of this forum, I’d like to list what McIntosh identifies as the “Values” of Postmodernism and also the “Pathologies” (where postmodernism starting to break down, not addressing the needs of our time because culture has continued to evolve, things have changed and the problems that postmoderism addressed do not have the strong-hold they once had at the leading edge of thinking, requiring NEW values to now address what DOES have a strong-hold) – and then open this up for discussion…where do we all recognize these values and pathologies? What does it mean to be postmodern? How does life and the world look to us as postmoderns?

VALUES:
- inclusion of those previously marginalized or exploited
- consensus decision making and egalitarianism
- environmentalism and preference for “natural”
- multiculturalism and spiritual diversity
- personal growth of the “whole person”
- sensitivity

PATHOLOGIES:
- value relativism
- narcissism
- denial of hierarchy
- contempt for modernism and traditionalism

Being Post-Modern: PoMo vs. Integral

POST #3

At the EnlightenNext New York Center tonight, we had our 7th women’s study group discussion on Steve MacIntosh’s book on Integral Consciousness.

What keeps striking me after each chapter that we read, is that each stage of development is so radically different than what came before – the relationships are evident, they are just huge LEAPS forward, addressing the shortcomings and pathologies of the previous culture and beliefs.

And what made me want to come home and write a post is to just begin to grapple with the inevitable truth that INTEGRAL is going to be – for arguments’ sake – polar opposite to our current postmodern culture and beliefs. OPPOSITE. A leap forward, a rejection of! Not a gentle cascading forward but a consciousness-shattering, surge ahead. I see a group of humans in the very near future, arms crossed, looking back on us postmoderns thinking “Man, did they have any idea how crazy it was getting before Integral came along?”

That’s where we are. We see the faint hints of a new way of being and seeing the world but it’s FROM postmodern.

So what IS IT about being postmodern that Integral is going to address, to take on, to “fix” so to speak?

Andrew Cohen has been talking about it for years, EnlightenNext magazine talks about it, the webcasts address it, but how much do each of US own it and grapple with it? How much do we objectify our postmodernism in the name of transcending it – Facing it in the context of development? It’s a BIG DEAL. We KNOW how evolution works for the very first time…and we can use that knowledge to begin to push our OWN EVOLUTION…it’s miraculous!

First and foremost, the easiest way for me to spot postmodernism is our pluralistic values…everything’s relative, everything’s the same, there’s no hierarchy. And Andrew’s recent blog post addresses this perfectly…SPIRIT IS HIGHER.
For anyone who wants to read that and then blog here, let’s do it!!!! :)

Being Post-Modern: “I Think, Therefore I’m Right”

POST #4

At first I didn’t even notice it.

A few days ago at work a group of us gathered around the TV to eat lunch and watch the news regarding Obama’s trip to Buchenwald. We were captivated by the scenes, Obama’s outward display of seriousness and the significance of the event itself. And then Elie Wiesel – the 80 year old Holocaust survivor and Nobel Peace Prize winner – spoke so beautifully, “Mr. President, we have such high hopes for you because you, with your moral vision of history, will be able and compelled to change this world into a better place… It’s enough — enough to go to cemeteries, enough to weep for oceans. It’s enough. There must come a moment — a moment of bringing people together.”
So it was a powerful moment to say the least.
And there was a 20-something assistant editor in the room, really nice guy, who sort of scoffed. I asked him why. “I don’t know…I don’t know why everyone is making a big about this visit, I really don’t.”

No one really said anything…I could tell we were going to move on and speak about something else. Then it hit me. Of course he was entitled to his opinion. But what seemed crystal clear to me was that this guy was equating his own reaction as being more informed and more significant than Elie Wiesel’s! I mean, he wasn’t even taking into account who this man was. There was absolutely no distinctions being made, no appreciation or respect for who Elie Wiesel is, what he has seen, and been able to make of his life in its wake.
In fact, the guy was weighing his own responses as MORE important, not valuing the decades of experience that his comfortable life will never come close to seeing. He obviously didn’t reflect for a moment – “Hey, I’m 24, I still live at home in New Jersey. The hardest choice I had to make this week was whether or not to buy the new Green Day CD or wait for my girlfriend to get for me for my birthday next week. I’ve never been west of Ohio and consider ‘breaking news’ to be when someone gets knocked off American Idol.”

All kidding aside, I did try to push the point a bit with him, but I could see it landed in that lovely green swamp and immediately became a pointless discussion.

It was a brief exchange and then the conversation moved right along without a hiccup. But in it, I saw the arrogance, ugliness, and delusion of the postmodern ego in a way I hadn’t so clearly before. And of course, recognized it immediately in myself. How many times have I weighed my own ideas, my own responses and opinions as being the same if not MORE the truth than who I was with, without ever taking into consideration who they are, what they know, and that – God forbid – they might actually know more than I do? That they might actually be a more significant or relevant person to speak about the topic? Too many to count for sure. It’s pretty much my main point of reference. “I think, therefore I’m right.”

What would it have been like if this young man had expressed his lack of understanding BUT seen that Elie Wiesel was obviously impacted, and by that very fact, been interested in what was going on? There is hierarchy everywhere and when us postmoderns REALLY start to see and appreciate that, we are left with something we hardly ever experience but DESPERATELY need: humility.

Being Post-Modern: Our Ideas of ‘Heaven’

POST #2

Postmodernism: what does that really looks like, feels like, and “is” in as, as us, in the world.

I just completed teaching my first Evolutionary Enlightenment Course in Philadelphia and was been struck by the angle Jeff has to keep making over and over to get us to see how our postmodern conditioning of designing most of our lives around our psychological and emotional comfort IS our version of ‘heaven’.

Most of us don’t believe in a ‘heaven’ up in the sky, a cloudy Club Med filled with our loved ones, angels playing harps, ancestors in while togas, and a huge old man – God- dropping by for a visit. BUT this notion that there is something better than what we have now, the idea that we are working towards something ‘out there’ that will make us happy, content, and fulfilled is VERY much alive and kicking in us. It’s a powerful point that Andrew has made in several retreats and is part of the course’s material.

So this idea that we spend our lives – our money, our time, where we put our ‘stock’ and our energy is in the future…things will be better when___. And we will go to great lengths to ensure our emotional and psychological ease and comfort. If we make a pie graph of what we spend our money on, we can see how much we value comfort, ease, peace, looking good, feeling good.

This is an expression of a value of postmodernism – the worldview of postmodernism. We’re not REALLY the process…the process is a “thing” outside of me, my sense of ME is my reality, and so everything else is NOT me. I can help the process, I can be interested in the process but it makes no sense that I AM THE PROCESS. To the individuated self-sense, we can never truly embrace the Kosmocentric perspective.
This is where the inner-journey has taken us. We have traveled the very important and very significant road of inner-awareness, inner-education, inner-development. And now, the narcissistic separate self has gotten lost on that road…so infatuated and obsessed with our inner life and psychological ups and downs, that our definitions of right and wrong become muddied by what is right and wrong FOR ME. And the emotional connections to a higher Self, for motives to act and be BEYOND the individual have not been developed.

In the course, we use the example of HEAVEN to show that while we don’t believe in a place called heaven anymore – most of us postmoderns that is – we still think the action is somewhere else. Now isn’t it. If your concern is just eating then heaven is a place where there is an abundance of food. If your psychological and emotional well-being is your concern, then heaven looks like peace and happiness. However, if we are the ones (and we are) who are going to carve out grooves for the next stage in human development, where insecurity and the unknown are the terrain…how much do our postmodern values of peace and “getting somewhere that’s better than here” help us?