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In Praise of Folly
Postmodernism, Part 2
BY Melinda Selmys
October 4-10, 2009 Issue |
Posted 9/25/09 at 11:46 AM
The
fundamental disease of postmodernity is despair. Postmodernism is like a
bereaved bride, weeping because her beloved is dead. There is nothing to
console her — better if she were dead. Yet show her a reason to hope, and she
will cling to it with all her strength.
Postmodernism has lost hope in
truth, because the modern world was promised the wrong sort of truth: a truth
that would save, not at the end of time, when the heavens open and the symphony
of history is played before the throne of its author, but here and now. A truth
that would end suffering, hunger, poverty.
Western man craved that truth, fixed
his eyes on this world, and forgot about the next.
The frustration of postmodernism is
therefore the frustration of a world that was not saved. Far from redeeming the
world, modernism left it scarred by the machinery of human pride and greed. It
turned man against man in the race to become more developed, more knowledgeable,
superior.
In the modern age, reason reigned
supreme, and it was necessary to emphasize the rationality of Christianity. Yet
reason alone is a cold and unforgiving mistress. She is not the savior of
mankind. Unless she is wed to faith, compassion, wonder and wisdom, she is a
proud and overbearing tyrant.
“It has happened ... that reason,
rather than voicing the human orientation towards truth, has wilted under the
weight of so much knowledge and little by little has lost the capacity to lift
its gaze to the heights, not daring to rise to the truth of being” (John Paul
II, Fides et Ratio, 1998).
Despairing of reason, postmodern
humanity chases after novelty. Postmodern art is notoriously disorienting and
incomprehensible, because the artists are trying to outdo each other in the
quest for new forms and styles. They want to break through the shell of ironic
despair that cloaks the postmodern adult, to re-engage the human person in his
or her humanity. As though the human race was in a coma, they stand at the
sidelines and try to get a reaction. Any reaction at all.
The novelties of the postmodern
world are often disturbing in their content, but they reveal a fundamental
desire to reclaim the original wonder that man feels about his world.
“[The] fundamental elements of
knowledge spring from the wonder awakened in [men] by the contemplation of
creation: Human beings are astonished to discover themselves as part of the
world, in a relationship with others like them, all sharing a common destiny.
... Without wonder, men and women would lapse into deadening routine and little
by little would become incapable of a life which is genuinely personal” (Fides
et Ratio).
It is this deadening, impersonal
routine which modernism, in the name of efficiency, seeks to impose upon the
world. It is this same deadening routine that postmodernism is seeking, often
with violent and disturbing images, to annihilate.
Few people are explicit
postmodernists, but almost everyone is familiar with the stifling boredom and
superficiality of the modern world. The ubiquity of consumer culture creates a
climate of demand in which covetousness is constantly excited, and where the
repetitive satisfaction of empty desires leads to profound frustration.
Advertising presents a constant stream of false promises and dubious claims
that leave the postmodern person in a state of constant ironic suspicion. It
becomes impossible to give voice to our deepest sentiments or appreciate the
most sublime realities, because we have seen them used too many times to sell
us bubble gum and hamburgers.
The ennui and frustration of the
postmodern world cannot be argued away. Christian apologists who try repeatedly
run up against Pontius Pilate’s age-old question: “What is truth?” The bored,
the cowardly and the despairing cannot be moved by reason. What is needed is a
reawakening of wonder, a rediscovery of mystery.
For
a long time now, our faith has felt the need to turn aside when asked about the
contradictory, the paradoxical, the mysterious, the unseen. Modernism mocked
our miracles and angels, our Trinity and our transubstantiation.
Now is the time to proclaim these
doctrines with a new and decisive force, to put them forward in all the
shocking splendor of their implications. To show them not as antiquated,
sentimental notions, nor as philosophic propositions cushioned by layers of
sound reasoning, but as raw, terrible, awe-inspiring realities.
The postmodern world will not engage
with us on the level of reason. It is too saturated with slogans, too numbed by
empty rhetoric, too exhausted by duplicity and disingenuousness. Postmodern man
must be convinced through images. He must be shown the truth in all of its
paradoxical glory.
Melinda Selmys is a staff writer
at VulgataMagazine.org.
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