Below is an excerpt from my forthcoming book…
© Mahabodhi Burton
5 minute read
This excerpt is from the beginning of the chapter ‘Postmodernism and the academic mindset.’
Beyond the Postmodern Mind
In Beyond the Postmodern Mind, Huston Smith states; ‘The dominant assumptions of an age colour the thoughts, beliefs, expectations, and images of the men and women who live within it’;[1] he outlines three great ‘configurations’ of such basic assumptions; the Greco-Roman or Classical period—which flourished up to the fourth century CE; the Christian worldview—which dominated Europe until the seventeenth century; and the era instigated by modern science, which ‘has come to be capsulated in the phrase ‘the Modern Mind,’[2] or just ‘modernity.’
Modernism[3]
The modern outlook can be summarized by identifying its three controlling presuppositions.
‘First, that reality may be personal is less certain and less important than that it is ordered. Second, man’s reason is capable of discerning this order as it manifests itself in the laws of nature. Third, the path to human fulfilment consists primarily in discovering these laws, utilizing them where this in possible and complying with them where it is not.’[4]
Modernism took its cues from the new worldview that Science introduced, but Smith claims that twentieth century science has abandoned not just that worldview but worldviews generally.[5] He uses a great image to illustrate this: ‘the Modern Mind’s mistake was to think that seeing further in a horizontal direction would compensate for loss of the vertical dimension.[6] If we visualize a line that wanders upward and then downward again to silhouette the Himalayan range, it is as if Modernity grabbed hold of both ends of that line and stretched them apart.
Image by 12019 on Pixabay.
This collapsed the humps to a straight line along the base of the range, but Modernity reasoned that since that line could be indefinitely extended, it would enclose a volume greater than the one the line originally defined.’[7] In other words, Modernity—underpinned by the natural attitude (the philosophical stance of science)—has ‘flattened out’ values. In Chapter 1 I explored how this is inevitably the case because Science and values occupy different domains—Science deals in third-person evidence, whereas values—represented by Religion (of whatever sort)—are an ‘affair of the heart’, and are thus represented by first-person evidence.
Ketumati expresses his personal impression of the state of the world in early 2022 at the beginning of his talk Ethics and Transcendence in the 21st Century–Lifeview as Primary.[8] He talks about the distasteful end of the year orgy of consumption as problematic given the general state of the planet and the mood of darkness that he feels has settled upon us; in fact, he feels that ‘at that time of year there is a strong sense of disintegration, a sense of collapse in value and direction and with that also being played out in the public sphere, where there is polarization and disintegration as well, feeding further that sense of collapse.’ He goes on to ask the question; where, within all of this, is value? What is value?
In his philosophy Friedrich Nietzsche argued for the centrality of ethics and the primacy of personal ethical responsibility but feared the disintegration of civilization into nihilism. The true meaning of his statement that ‘God is Dead’ was that moral values of any sort would cease to be taken up. Instead, what he called ‘the last man’ would emerge; the individual concerned with being ‘nice’, ultimately going nowhere, disintegrating, an individual without values. And this may be what we are coming to in 2022.
I remember vividly going on a guided tour around the sculpture section of the National Archaeological Museum in Athens. Our guide pointed out how the earliest human representations—the kouroi—all had smiles on their faces, but then as the sculptures progressed into the classical period their expressions levelled off and became refined. I can’t remember if those which post-dated the classical period looked relatively miserable, but the point was that when a civilization is building there is much to look forward to, but once it has peaked things become less certain, hence the change of expressions.
Postmodernism
Smith proposes that Modernity ran its course around the middle of the twentieth century and has been replaced by ‘what in the absence of a more descriptive term, is being called Postmodernism’, primarily because ‘reflective men are no longer confident of any of these three postulates.’[9]
‘Frontier thinkers are no longer sure that reality is ordered and orderly. If it is, they are not sure that man’s mind is capable of grasping its order. Combining the two doubts, we can define the Postmodern Mind as one which, having lost the conviction that reality is personal,[10] has come to question whether it is ordered in a way that man’s reason can lay bare.’[11]
Smith has a different image for Postmodernism;’ For the error of Postmodernism, we can visualize the same Himalayan range … but now we are inside a bungalow … the air is cold outside, so our breath begins to fog the window … at some point it becomes difficult to determine whether the shapes we see are mountains or frosted textures of our own breath. … the mistake of Postmodernism is to assume that human beings look out onto the world through windows so befogged that it would be unwise to assume that what they see is the world itself.’[12]
Matthew Mullins denies that Postmodernism is a movement, it is ‘more of a setting, a space.’[13]
‘But if Postmodernism is not dead, neither has it ever been alive–well, not as an ism anyway. Literary history typically casts Romanticism, Realism and Modernism as historic and aesthetic markers. The waxing and waning of these isms’ hallmark characteristics demarcate their rises and falls, demonstrating, for instance, that Romanticism was the prevailing ethos of mid-nineteenth-century US literature before it was usurped by a Realist commitment to life as it is actually lived in the years following the Civil War. No literary scholar would claim that we are currently living in the age of Romanticism. Romanticism was alive and now it is dead. In contrast, Postmodernism was never alive because it is not a set of hallmark characteristics but the very atmosphere in which such characteristics play out. Postmodernism, unlike Romanticism, cannot end. It does not distinguish itself or separate itself out from other isms; it has no self,[14] no unique set of criteria.’[15]
‘Postmodernism’s persistent incoherence marks its greatest success: the primacy of the particular, the material, the everyday, the mundane. The actors, both human and nonhuman, that occupy the material domain of postmodern fiction relate to one another in constant states of flux. Their singular properties and their collective relations are always in process. Postmodernism is the space and the process of change that takes place within space. Change is at once both a state of being and a resistance to any one state of being. Similarly, postmodernism is at once a state of being after isms and a disavowal of any set of fixed features of its own.’[16] (My emphasis)
We might say then that Postmodernism is about change, about deliberate incoherence; it is about not taking refuge in any structured way of viewing things—as represented by the various ‘isms’ which preceded it—but facing whatever the everyday throws at us and bearing it.
Pulp Fiction
Quentin Tarantino has been characterized as a postmodern filmmaker: the Icon Collective blog states:
‘Quentin Tarantino and Post Modernism
Quentin Tarantino’s brand of filmmaking is so well known around the world that “Tarantino-esque” is now an official entry in the Oxford English Dictionary. With such a unique method on directing, this quote from Tarantino may come as a surprise:
“I steal from every movie ever made.”
‘How can someone be so celebrated for their originality and steal from other artists at the same time?
‘Tarantino is a part of an artistic movement known as “postmodernism” which is founded on the idea that nothing is new in art. That everything is recycled. A standard example of postmodern philosophy is sampling in hip hop. Taking pieces of other songs and reconfiguring them into something new. Do you think producers who sample have an original style?
‘If everything in art is recycled why not try everything in art? By approaching your music from this postmodern perspective, endless possibilities of creation can open up before you. The work of other artists transforms into pure inspiration rather than a limit because you can borrow from it freely. From there, focus on your own preferences and passions and your own style will naturally manifest.’[17]
Tarantino famously coaches his actors to portray their characters as vividly as possible and this is exactly what you get in his films: the dialogue is astute, the characters three-dimensional, often highly entertaining and yet there is a feeling that something is (probably deliberately) lacking: any moral commentary on the actions of those characters. The audience is left with no message as to whether violence is or is not a good thing.
The Joker
The 2019 Todd Phillips film The Joker faced controversy for seeming to condone violence when a person is met with social oppression, as Joaquin Phoenix’s character Arthur Fleck, a failed clown and aspiring stand-up comedian had faced. Tarantino comments approvingly on how the director essentially subverts the audience in that were Fleck to have not shot De Niro’s chat show host it would have felt like a disappointment to most people.[18] I only saw the film a couple of years after its release, but I was pleasantly surprised: I thought it Lear-like rather than gratuitous.
But the question remains, to the extent that moral messaging is absent from ‘Reality Media,’ whether that be a Tarantino film, a reality TV show, an episode of South Park, or, in ancient Rome, the crowd at the Colosseum: aren’t we in danger of neutrally observing and thus becoming indifferent to suffering.
Bahiya of the Bark Garment
The Buddha’s pith teaching to the ascetic Bahiya of the bark garment comes to mind:
‘In reference to the seen, there will be only the seen. In reference to the heard, only the heard. In reference to the sensed, only the sensed. In reference to the cognized, only the cognized. That is how you should train yourself.’[19]
Hearing which Bahiya immediately attained Nirvana. Of course, Bahiya was a highly experienced practitioner ripe for such a direct teaching; without a grounding in ethics, the rest of us might struggle to make something of it.
The chapter goes on to explore The theme of ‘Change’ in Postmodernism.
[1] Huston Smith. (1989) Beyond the Postmodern Mind. Second edition. Quest. p3.
[2] Ibid. p4.
[3] Modernism is both a philosophical and arts movement that arose from broad transformations in Western society during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The movement reflected a desire for the creation of new forms of art, philosophy, and social organization which reflected the newly emerging industrial world, including features such as urbanization, new technologies, and war. Artists attempted to depart from traditional forms of art, which they considered outdated or obsolete. The poet Ezra Pound’s 1934 injunction to ‘Make it New’ was the touchstone of the movement’s approach. Modernism. Wikipedia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modernism
[4] Beyond the Postmodern Mind. p6-7.
[5] Ibid. pxii.
[6] For instance, in his book Homo Deus; A Brief History of Tomorrow Yuval Harari talks about the ‘further evolution’ of man – in the sense of small sections of humans becoming super capable (and ignoring the rest) – which is to be contrasted with the ‘higher evolution’ of man in which man grows higher in his values.
[7] Beyond the Postmodern Mind. pxiii.
[8] I want to express my gratitude to Dharmachari Ketumati for many of the ideas in the following section, which were garnered from his talk; ‘Ethics and Transcendence in the 21st Century – Lifeview as Primary.’ David Tyfield. YouTube.
[9] Beyond the Postmodern Mind. p7.
[10] As in the religious outlook.
[11] Ibid.
[12] Ibid. pxiii-xiv.
[13] Matthew Mullins. (2016) Postmodernism in Pieces: Materialising the Social in U.S. Fiction. Oxford University Press. p171-2.
[14] In fact, it has a ‘zombie-like resistance to death.’ p170.
[15] Postmodernism in Pieces: Materialising the Social in U.S. Fiction. p171-2.
[16] Ibid. p174.
[17] A Guide to Postmodernism with Quentin Tarantino. Icon Collective. Accessed 18 March 2024.
https://www.iconcollective.edu/a-guide-to-postmodernism-with-quentin-tarantino
[18] ‘Quentin Tarantino on Joker.’ The Auteurist. YouTube. 5 February 2021. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPNzWsu-M2M
[19] Bahiya Sutta. Ud 1.10. (trans. Thanissaro Bhikkhu 1994) Access to Insight.
https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/kn/ud/ud.1.10.than.html
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