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
