What does "Postmodern" mean?

What is “Postmodern”?

Thomas G Bandy

The terms “modern” and “postmodern”, just like descriptions of other eras (“Victorian”, “Edwardian”, etc.) reflect an overall cultural bias, predisposition, public attitude, or behavior pattern. The shift in culture eventually influences disciplines like philosophy and theology, as well as economics and business practice, or educational method and priority, or communication, technology and the arts. I think, however, that to define “modern” or “postmodern” as an “ism” (modernism or postmodernism) is hasty. Culture shapes all rationalizations and expressions, not the other way around.

Since I agree with Tillich’s observation that culture is the form of religion, and religion is the essence of culture, the first clue to cultural shift is often change in religiosity or spirituality. I do not mean the forms of religion per se, but rather the inclinations toward Spirit or the perceptions of meaning and purpose in life. The changing perceptions will modify the forms of religion, but these are prior to religious change just as culture is prior to change in any rationalization or expression.

That is one reason why spiritual practices like worship are early clues, first to shifts in culture, and eventually to changes in intellectual disciplines. Worship, and spiritual practices in general, is a kind of canary in the mineshaft. As the cultural quest for meaning and purpose changes, we can anticipate and perhaps make better sense of the philosophical, social, or political turmoil around us. This is why there is no such thing as “good worship”. But it is also why it is impossible not to “worship”.

Of course, I wrote the book Worship Ways for a church audience, and so the book inevitably focused on methods and styles and topics with the view to relevance and increasing participation. But I have never been very interested in how to worship, but only in why people are compelled to worship at all. I ask: Why can’t people not stop worshipping?

Back to the larger question of what “postmodernity” means.

I think as a cultural phenomenon it means an overall acceptance of, and perhaps a deliberate preference for, inconsistency. Things do not have to make sense. Truth is always relative. Religion is purely personal. Responsibility can only be selective. Society is essentially a competition. Personal empowerment is the same as personal fulfillment. Relationships are replaceable. And death must not, cannot, be the end.

I think this overall preference for inconsistency plays out differently in different societies. For example. In the contiguous United States, I think postmodern behavior is revealed in radical individualism, rude behavior, and excessive capitalism. (In my experience, I would treat Hawaii, Alaska, Puerto Rico … and perhaps New Orleans and Miami, differently). In Australia and Canada, I think postmodern behavior is revealed in cultural diversity, political correctness, and excessive socialism. (In my experience, I would treat indigenous cultures differently.) In western Europe I think it is revealed in national romanticism, ethnic tension, and the temptations of nihilism. (In my experience, I would treat South Africa and former African colonies differently).

If postmodern culture were to be summarized as a philosophical movement (postmodernism), I agree with your summary that it is a movement that questions the assumptions of modernity, especially the ideas of objective truth, universal reason, and linear progress. It emphasizes plurality, relativism, and skepticism toward grand narratives or totalizing ideologies. The positive side of postmodernism is that it asks a great many questions. The negative side of postmodernism is that it tends to be content to live without adequate answers or get by with simplistic answers.

On the other hand, there is a deeper and more promising development in postmodern behavior. There is a growing impatience with all the above, and a new, seemingly original, quest for meaning and purpose, which is to say, sorting out significant questions that require significant answers. All too many years ago, when I entered college, we were all required to read Frankl’s Mans Search for Meaning, but I think the quest today might be better described as our shared search for significance. (Hence, my latest book entitled Pilgrim Band). Of course, this only seems to be new to postmodern culture, but the roots lie in pre-modern culture. I think I would expand on your summary of postmodernism by breaking it out into specific disciplines.

                In epistemology, I think postmodern culture rejects knowledge as external relations and embraces knowledge as internal relations. Long ago, I was influenced by Brand Blanshard (the “last” of the great Idealists) and his opposition to empiricism (positivism, atomism, pragmatism) is I think echoed in postmodernity. The last item may seem surprising, since most students think postmodern thought is “pragmatic”. The propensity in postmodern culture to do things that are decidedly against one’s self-interest, however, reveals this is not so. The imagination of postmodern culture is decidedly “romantic” or “idealistic”, escaping from the dull or mundane.

                The doctrine of internal relations means that the internal constitution of everything is interconnected with the internal constitution of everything else. It is a line of thought extending from the “Life Philosophies” of Bergson and early British Platonists, through A.N. Whitehead, and into so-called “progressive” theology today. Our Tillich colleague John Thatamanil likes to replace the word “truth” with “truing” because there is a never-ending mystery of “knowing” implicit in “knowledge”.

                In ontology, I think postmodern culture rejects secularism and the limitations of scientific verification as a means to contain truth and manipulate facts. Exactly what it embraces is unclear, because it can range between weird supernaturalism and alien invasion to eastern mysticism and religious syncretism. Yet what is clear is that postmodern people are using technologies less to analyze reality and more to expand realities. In a sense, postmodern people have asked modern people: Really? Is that all there is? There’s got to be more!

                In ethics, I think postmodern culture suffers radical ambivalence about absolute relativism. They embrace and reject it at the same time, perhaps even on alternate days! At the moment, that is just part of an overall commitment to inconsistency, but it cannot last. And that is part of the political polarization we experience today between free choice and authoritarian obedience.

                The general perception is that postmodernity is all about relationships, and relationships are less about external interaction than about internal coherence or empathy. I think the predicament of postmodernity, however, is that the boundary between persuasion and coercion is so blurred. It’s not about what is right but who says its right. The quest for absolutes in modernity was about principles. I think, for example, of Kant’s moral imperative to treat people as persons rather than objects. The dilemma for postmodernity is that it is no longer clear what a “person” is that we might treat them as such. A person is a category, party, ideology, or demographic statistic. What more?

                This is why lifestyle research is replacing demographic research in the postmodern world. But it is precisely this awareness of lifestyle diversity that changes the nature of our quest for absolutes. It is no longer a quest for basic principles, but a quest for credible authority. If a crisis of vision typified modernity, a crisis of trust typifies postmodernity. Who is “credible”? Who do we trust?

                Obviously, this ambiguity opens the door to authoritarianism, but postmodern people are not stupid. In modernity, what mattered was policy. In modernity, the mission statement, policy platform, prepared sermon was the key to influence. In postmodernity, the unrehearsed deed and spontaneous action is the key to credibility. Postmodern people search for a credible leader the way Diogenes once carried a lamp during the day to search for an honest man. Only postmodern people compare personality inventories in social media instead. What does credibility look like? Who are we to believe?

                In communication and technology, I think postmodern culture has shifted away from a word-based symbol system to an image or data byte symbol system. It changes the methodology through which we quest for absolutes. On the one hand, postmodernity is losing the subtleties of language. Vocabulary, grammar, syntax are all being undermined, replaced a more simplistic vulgarity of expression. On the other hand, postmodernity is developing a “cinematographic” methodology (Bergson’s term in “Life Philosophy”) in which images or moving pictures communicate sophisticated nuances of meaning, as do a wide variety of musical genres. In a sense, the search to capture the meaning of an event has shifted to expressing the mood of an event.

                It is not a very Greco-Roman thing to do. It is, however, a very Viking-Hunnic thing to do. The tattoo and runic symbols reveal more to us than the well-turned phrase of a rhetorician. I think it is telling that in the postmodern world our identification with “heroes” has changed. Our heroes – those we endow with greater credibility – tend to be entertainers and athletes, the financially successful and the influential, or perhaps risk-takers and those who have made great philanthropic sacrifices. They do not tend to be preachers, teachers and authors, or politicians, Ph.D.’s, and newspaper columnists.

                I think, perhaps, too much and too little is made of technology in connection with postmodernity. It is true that miniaturization and the internet, mobility and retail gratification, dominate culture. But these are really the brainchildren of modernity, not postmodernity. Boomers created them and Gen X embraced them, but Millennials and Gen Z are the ones addicted to them, and Gen Alpha are trying desperately to break the co-dependency. Modernity loved progress. Postmodernity is, at best, ambivalent about it and, at worst, fearful of it.

                So, finally, all this brings me back to the existential anxieties defined by Tillich and contemporary psychoanalysts. As you know, I have somewhat expanded and redefined the anxieties in my books (particularly Spiritual Leadership). The eight anxieties are emptiness and loneliness, fate and death, guilt and shame, estrangement and displacement. The four life threats behind them are depression, dread, anger, and abandonment.

                In my view, modernity was most preoccupied emptiness, death, guilt, and estrangement … and life was characterized by an abiding sense of depression and alienation. This meant that the compulsion to worship was driven by the need for education, inspiration, fellowship, social assimilation, and philanthropy. However, postmodernity, I think, is most preoccupied with loneliness, fate, shame, and displacement … and life is characterized by a sense of dread and abandonment. This means worship is driven by the need for vindication, healing, personal transformation, and hands-on service.

                I hope these reflections help students understand better what lies behind and motivates the threads of thought in my past 25 books and other writings.