I’ve been thinking I should write here more since I can write whatever I want and don’t have to answer to anyone or anything. Not that there’s a lot to answer for, but still. Problem being, is lately I’m not so hip on putting myself out there for criticism. I could lock the site down or only allow the comments I want to be posted but that kind of goes against the idea of this site. Besides, I’d still have to look at all the bullshit comments, even if I don’t publish them. So I don’t know what I’m going to do yet.
So the postmodernism thing in the title…well, I’ve always liked postmodernism for some reason. Don’t bother looking it up if you don’t know what it is – looking it up won’t help anyway. Basically its an attempt to change the reality future generations will experience. That’s a very simplified understanding of it but will do for the point I’m making. Just hang with me a second. Modern is the idea (again, very simplified) to reject the things you inherited. In other words to change the future you, yourself will experience by shaking off all the bullshit passed on to you from past generations. So, if you’re forced to do one or the other, which one do you choose? Modernism right? right. Why? Obviously because of the Hermeneutic Circle for those of you playing philosophy bingo.
Hemeneutic Circle(s) refer to the idea of understanding things within a context. Specifically, understanding all the parts in the context of the whole and understanding the whole within the context of the parts. So if modernists reject what the ideas they inherited, then, hermeneutically, post modernists should abandon the idea of changing the reality of future generations as wildly optimistic. After all, it would only take another modernist movement within the context of the future generations to undo the postmodern agenda right? But you say, maybe the postmodernist don’t subscribe to hermeneutic circles, which is a great point except that postmodernism spawned hermeneutic circles.
See, pretty simple.
But how does it have anything to do with me continuing to write this ridiculous blog. Seems pretty disconnected, I know. But there was this guy Jean Baudrillard who said some shit that brings me back full circle:
“…reality or the principle of the “real” is short-circuited by the interchangeability of signs in an era whose communicative and semantic acts are dominated by electronic media and digital technologies. Baudrillard proposes the notion that, in such a state, where subjects are detached from the outcomes of events (political, literary, artistic, personal or otherwise), events no longer hold any particular sway on the subject nor have any identifiable context; they therefore have the effect of producing widespread indifference, detachment and passivity in industrialized populations. He claimed that a constant stream of appearances and references without any direct consequences to viewers or readers could eventually render the division between appearance and object indiscernible, resulting, ironically, in the “disappearance” of mankind in what is, in effect, a virtual or holographic state, composed only of appearances.”
You get all that? yeah. What he’s saying is since I’m removed from the reader, and can’t see the impact my writing has on them, then I’m more likely to become indifferent due to a lack of context (hemeneutic circles) and this will result in the disappearance any meaning that could be inherited (modernism) and will leave a state of disconnected indifference in future generations (postmodernism). So I’m trying to figure out if writing this is to change the future I will experience or the experience future generations will experience and then I’ll know the answer.
Of course, the other way to look at it is that this blog is nothing more than typing practice and a way for me to get thoughts out of my head that I know don’t matter to keep them from littering the place up. Just sayin’
Don’t over-think anything I write here and we’ll all get along just fine.
