Introduction

For our Triad Paper on Chapter One of A Primer on Postmodernism, we chose to take a post-modern approach to collaborating long-distance across three different states by each beginning discussion threads to which the others were invited to respond. In this way, we could present our own original ideas while at the same time engaging and learning from each other. Our discussion threads and responses are presented below, in the order of their submission.

“A Societal Spiral” by Karyn Ratcliffe

On page 1 of A Primer on Postmodernism, Grenz refers to Star Trek: The Next Generation as an illustration of how the reader might understand the 20th century societal shift from a modern to a post-modern worldview. Grenz says,

the creators of the [Star Trek] series discovered that the world of their audience was in the midst of a subtle paradigm shift: modernity was giving birth to postmodernity. As a result, The Next Generation became a reflection – perhaps even a molder – of the worldview of the emerging generation.1

I am struck by how, whether he is aware of it or not, Grenz presents the proverbial question of the chicken-and-the-egg: Did modernity give birth to postmodernity or did postmodernity give birth to itself? I raise this question because Grenz uses the word “molder” and is therefore talking out of both sides of his mouth. Modernity, according to Grenz, gave birth to postmodernism because postmoderns rejected the modern worldview in favor of something they were more comfortable with. By implying that The Next Generation somehow “molded” postmodernity, Grenz is suggesting that, as moderns became exposed to a postmodern worldview presented in the The Next Generation, their worldview “shifted” as they learned to look at things in a new way. The fact that “the creators of the series discovered that the world of their audience was in the midst of a subtle paradigm shift” indicates that the creators weren’t fully aware of the postmodern worldview that they were presenting. Instead, as they made this discovery, they responded to their audience’s new worldview by adapting the worldview they were presenting in the series. This in turn shaped, or molded, their audience’s worldview, further feeding the spiral. The more the audience watched the series, the more the audience changed, and the more they changed, the more the series evolved, sparking further change and requiring further evolution.

“Knowing What We Possess” by Karyn Ratcliffe

A Primer on Postmodernism was published in 1996 – only 2 years after the final episode of The Next Generation – but a full 14 years before we read it for our D.Min. class. The shift in worldview that Grenz is describing can be seen today with even more hindsight than Grenz had at the time, though not necessarily with more light. The “emerging epoch”2 that Grenz is describing has emerged even more fully, yet its implications are still unknown. It is commonly recognized today that we are in the midst of a major societal shift, but those of us who remember the modern worldview still don’t know what to do about it. There is much discussion about the need to let go of modernity and embrace postmodernity, but, for good reason, there is also much resistance. One reason for this resistance is that there is much about modernity that doesn’t deserve to be lost. Indeed, there is a certain responsibility to future generations to help the present generations navigate the paradigm shift so that the world we are about to create doesn’t become a world full of regret. The best example I can think of to illustrate this point is a quote from Proust and the Squid in which the author, MaryAnne Wolf, chronicles not only how the invention of writing has shaped the human brain for the past 6,000 years as successive systems of writing evolved, developed and died out over time, but also how the loss of an oral and written culture will adversely affect the development of our species as digital information replaces printed words on a page. Wolf says,

Understanding the origins of a new [literary] process helps us see, as the neuroscientist Terry Deacon put it, “how it works.’ Understanding how it works, in turn, helps us know what we possess and what we need to preserve. 3

I would argue that the same caution ought to apply to the shift from modernity to postmodernity. If we can understand “how it works” – why postmoderns are rejecting modernity and what that means for us – then we can identify the aspects of modernity that deserve to be preserved, and we can choose to bring them along with us. In other words, we can continue to read books that are printed on paper even as we gather most of our information by digital means.

“The Modern Quest” by Karyn Ratcliffe

In Chapter One, Grenz introduces the term “The Enlightenment project” to refer to “the human intellectual quest to unlock the secrets of the universe in order to master nature for human benefit and create a better world.”4 I find the term “Enlightenment project” to be misleading because it makes it sound as if the modern worldview was an invention of the Enlightenment era. This is the same chicken-or-the-egg question I raised above. If, in fact, people like Isaac Newton were examining the universe for the secrets about “how it works,” then by definition they had already shifted to a modern worldview whether or not they were aware of it. The term “Enlightenment project” seems like an anachronism that ought to be replaced with a more meaningful term such as the “Modern Quest.”

“The Postmodern Paradox” by Karyn Ratcliffe

In Chapter One, Grenz says,

"Enlightenment optimism, together with the focus on reason, elevates on human freedom.…The Enlightenment project understands freedom largely on individual terms. In fact, the modern ideal champions the autonomous self, the self-determining subject who exists outside any tradition or community. "5

Here I want to point out a paradox of Grenz’s book. Grenz is suggesting that human reason – “the ability to unlock the secrets of the universe” – leads to human freedom – the ability to live without being at the mercy of the laws of the universe. If, for example, one can discover the secrets of the weather, then one can learn how to avoid its destructive power. This freedom-from-the-law leads to the autonomous individual who is “free…from our vulnerability to nature, as well as from all social bondage.”6 At the same time, however, Grenz points back to the original Star Trek series as an illustration of the modern mindset. He says,

The crew of the Enterprise included persons of various nationalities working together for the common benefit of humankind….The message was obvious: we are all human, and we must overcome our differences and join forces in order to complete our mandate, the quest for certain, objective knowledge of the entire universe of which space looms as ‘the final frontier.’7

The paradox here is that, even as human reason has led to individual freedom and autonomy, so it has also led to a sense of obligation to “the common benefit” and the development of community bonds. When human beings were at the mercy of the laws of the universe, they were bound to a community that suffered together through its problems. But once those problems could be conquered, that same human being became bound to a community that needed each other in order to find the solution to all of life’s problems. Reason, therefore led us out of a helpless community and into individual autonomy, but individual autonomy led us right back into the grip of our community bonds. It can be argued then that postmoderns rejected the modern worldview not because they discovered that “there is…no transcendent center to reality as a whole,”8 but because they discovered that the “transcendent center to reality” is the community that we share together.

“The New Economy” by Karyn Ratcliffe

The undergirding principle of postmodernism – that “[j]ust as a text will be read differently by each reader, …so reality will be ‘read’ differently by each knowing self that encounters it”9 – suggests that the postulate of community as the explanation for why postmoderns have rejected the modern worldview may in fact be true. When Richard Rorty “argues that we should simply give up the search for truth and be content with interpretation,”10 he may be suggesting that we give up our individual opinions and instead embrace community consensus. This again is a paradox of Grenz’s book. On the one hand, he says postmodernism “asserts that the world has no center, only differing viewpoints and perspectives.”11 But on the other hand, he says this:

“The postmodern worldview operates with a community-based understanding of truth. It affirms that whatever we accept as truth and even the way we envision truth are dependent upon the community in which we participate. …there is no absolute truth; rather, truth is relative to the community in which we participate.”12

Here again we see the postulate that, rather than there being “no transcendent center to reality,” the center to reality is the community. Understanding this – understanding “how it works” – allows us then to see that the “gnawing pessimism”13 of postmodernism is not so much a lack of “confiden[ce] that humanity will be able to solve the world’s great problems14, but rather an acceptance that our problems can only be solved to the extent that we are willing to work together. Where, therefore, Grenz proposes “the ‘new ecology’ of humankind in partnership with the universe,”15 I would like to propose an alternative – the “new economy” of humankind in partnership with each other. Where an “economy of words” refers to the ability to make a point in as few words as possible, the “new economy” might refer to the ability to solve our problems not so much in a way that is efficient, i.e. economical, but in a way that is cooperative, i. e. communal. As the African proverb goes: If you want to walk fast, walk alone. If you want to walk far, walk together.

“Postmodernism and the Gulf Oil Disaster”17 by SCReedstrom-Disc Thread 1: Every day in every way things...

“It is day 78 of the Disaster in the Gulf.” These are the ominous words that greet the viewers of the Today Show each morning since the oil began gushing from the blowout of the Deep Water Horizon/British Petroleum (BP) well in the Gulf of Mexico. It is a “centerless”18 disaster – no one is willing to take complete blame for what has happened, in fact when executives of both BP and Deep Water Horizons were brought before Congress, finger pointing and shifting of blame was the order of the day. But more than this, the modern era view of humanity’s ability to “exercise power over nature”19 has come to an end. Faced with the ecological disaster that grows exponentially each day, the optimistic hope that the human intellect will, through rational thought and the use of technology, be able to unlock the secrets of the universe and create a better world seems farfetched at best. Perhaps, this disaster typifies postmodernism in the corporate world.

Tom Brokaw, in an interview with Matt Lauer commented that the gulf oil disaster is a “metaphor for our time.” “We are seeing the limits of our technology,” he said, “everything we’ve been told turns out not to be true.”20 Brokaw’s comments reflect the attitude espoused by Stanley Grenz in A Primer for Postmoderism: “gone is the belief that every day, in every way, we are getting better and better.”21