Postmodernity and the Objective Correlative

Well since PearlWaters was foolish enough to provoke me, I thought I'd start off our period of deep-seated thought with a real zinger. We're currently living in an age that poets and philosophers like to refer to as 'postmodernity,' this being a response to and deepening of the ideas and values put forth by the modernists early in the 20th century (e.g. Eliot, Joyce, Woolf, etc.). Modernism postulated that one can never truly know another-- all that can be known is the self. Postmodernism extends this concept and applies it not only to ethics but also to morals, in a sense-- Pluralism is a common philosophy in contemporary thought as regards religion, etc. Absolutism is thrown out the window.

While really, only one religion can be True ('religion' here includes atheism, by the way; I'm not making any sort of statement along those lines) since each teaches all the others to be unTrue, I hear people say all the time that religion is okay for people 'if it's true for them.' Basically, in a disenchanted attempt to heal wounds and close gaps between people groups, postmodernism has stretched Truth and compartmentalized it to the point that the old question, 'What is truth?' is no longer relevant. Truth is whatever one makes it to be. What's true for one is not true for another.

I would like to challenge this to a certain extent. I do not mean for this to turn into religious discussion, necessarily, but I would like to offer a few questions: Is there Truth? Can absolutes still exist? Can we say anymore that someone is wrong for what they believe in?

Sounds like the tripe that the English department at colledge got wound around the axles with.

And they wondered why I didn't want to do honours...I should have directed them to Gerald

by asking "is there truth?" do you mean is there truth to one person or an absolute truth?

cheers

I once saw a cartoon show (bear with me) in which a philosopher walks up to the Devil, aptly named "Mr. Hell", and asks him, "Do you know me?" Mr. Hell replies, "No, I've never seen you before in my life." The philosopher then says, "Well, if you don't know me, then how can you really say you've never seen me before? You see, there are no absolutes." Mr. Hell then proceeds to push the philosopher in front of oncoming traffic, killing him, then adding, "Well, I absolutely won't be seeing you again."

Mr. Hell later reduces philosophy to nothing more than a waste time through a series of questions. I don't know whether or not that is true, but it made sense to me. Which pretty much scraps one of my ideas for a college major. Of course, television is looked down upon as a source of information, at times. But really, within the premises of the argument, how can anyone really percieve what is true and what isn't? Books or magazines I don't find to be any better, because in the end, as close to being objective and unbiased as they try to be, they never will be truly as such until individuals cease to exist. Generally, information is conveyed with either sterile facts, which doesn't clear up much towards any abstract concepts, such as the question 'why?', or the facts are pulled through the looking-glass of one person's, or persons', truth. Even what we sense directly is a virtual image and will vary from person to person. The big facts, sure, may be less skewed than others. For the most part, though, how can anyone really know what someone else experiences? Language still doesn't help. We understand the concepts -- love, happiness, hate, sadness, etc -- but we are using dead, concrete language to describe intangible ideas. When someone says the word love, we say we understand, but most likely our perception is unique from anyone else's, including that of the person who said the word. Logically, if logic exists, there is no reality, but rather perceptions of it. You know, the whole Matrix, there is no spoon stuff.

And as a final thought, is it so far out there to think that maybe no one has hit the mark as far as religion goes? Maybe we're all wrong? I suppose we'll find out in the end, but, feasibly, we may just die and have that be the end of it. But, the after life is a whole different discussion.

Well regardless of whether we can ever actually arrive at Truth, do you think that there is a Truth to be arrived at? And Sydney echoes my point-- Is there really such thing as 'truth to one person'? Not to call her out, or anything. I simply mean-- Just because someone believes something does not make it true in any sense of the word. Someone can believe that something is true, but that doesn't give it any credence whatsoever.

Icky mentioned that it's quite possible that no religion has gotten it right so far. That's the thing that bothers me: no one seems to care if a religion is right, really-- people only seem to care if a religion 'fits' someone. But really, regardless of how happy your religion makes you, if it turns out you're wrong about it and you don't go to heaven or nirvana or the UFO following the comet or whatever, doesn't that ultimately make you worse off? Why do people seem to have this feeling that truth is relative?

That's a really good point. How do we know that what we belive in is the right thing. I'm a firm beliver in "the truth to you" thing. So if you think that something is the truth than it must be. I don't mean stupid things like people thinking that 2+2=2 or anything like that. I mean things like religion and personal beliefs. I don't know what I belive yet so is that my truth?

cheers

But if you believe, for example, that if you kill yourself on a certain day with 38 of your friends, then you will get transported to a UFO following a comet to heaven, and you do that, does that mean that that will actually happen to you, because you believed it?

I stopped reading after the first sentence, what's everybody eating?

no it won't necessairly happen to you. Like I think that no matter how good you've been you won't necessarily go to this so called heaven place. Plus what is heaven!?!! if it is clouds and harps I don't wanna go thanks

cheers

Well you did say that if you believe that something is true then it must be. I'm just trying to figure out your stance.

lol, I don't know my stance. Like I belive in the truth to your thing but you're making me question it see?

cheers

I'd say that it isn't always well and good to let people believe whatever they want to believe. I'm not trying to suggest that we should impose restrictions or guidelines on belief-- far from it-- but I think we need to be far more critical than we currently are.

Well, as long as there is no clear evidence that a certain thing is false, it may be believed as true. Damn, that was hard.

Sure, it may be, but should it be? Doesn't life function a lot better when we believe what seems to be more likely rather than whatever hasn't been proven as false?

Yes, you are right. I just said that anything that hasn't been proven as false can be true. You can't say something isn't true until you have clear evidence. Anything is possible.