Tools for Dealing with the Postmodern World
Why the modern era had to be deconstructed
by Mike Meyer ~ Honolulu ~ October 2019
We are now postmodern. Damn, we have to decide what that term really means. All those people who felt secure in mocking the craziness of ‘deconstructionism’, ‘postmodernism’, and ‘poststructuralism’ as the end of the social sciences back in the ‘90s and not worth further thought are being troubled by the reality of the eternal return.
What resulted was not a system or solution but a set of descriptions, tools, rhetorical devices, and concepts that dealt with destabilizing the older concepts of identity, historical progress, and certainty. These devices included repetition, difference, simulacrums, and hyper reality.
Back in the ’80s and ’90s these were purely academic debates and safely removed from real life. We now face the reality of destabilized concepts as objects constantly from diversity in identity to the replacement of truth. This is not academic anymore.
Understanding postmodern society is what we have to do everyday. Somehow it got real and we are struggling to find the mental tools to understand how everything went to hell.
The tools that we need were being worked out by a range of anthropologists, linguists, historians…
