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Ivan Alexander
Username: Humancafe
Registered: 12-2017
| | Posted on Wednesday, December 27, 2023 - 12:49 pm: | |
ADDENDUM: Post-Postscripts.
It was twenty five years ago on 22 December 1998, winter solstice, we launched HumanCafe People’s Book as a forum of ideas on topics from philosophy, culture, and history to science, physics, and mathematics. Now on 22 December 2023, with a metaphor, “Confessions of a cultured Yogurt”, we have brought the forums to a close. The exception will be at ADDENDUM: Post-Postscripts, to address extraordinary events, such as victory of freedom and democracy over dictatorship and Russian imperialism and Communism; eventual peace in Palestine; or future discovery that Newton’s gravity ‘universal constant’ G in reality being predictably variable, ushering a new world of physics and space travel, as had been explored in these forums. As a tribute to the people of planet Earth we have all been contributors, directly and indirectly, as we are all connected, by metaphor and in real sense. We leave you here. Thank you.
HUMAN CAFE
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Ivan Alexander
Username: Humancafe
Registered: 12-2017
| | Posted on Wednesday, March 13, 2024 - 07:51 pm: | |
Post-Postmodernism's paradox paradigm.
Our twenty-first century is an age of Postmodernism, where interactions between truth and politics and social paradigms are all relative. Whereas earlier centuries dealt in absolutes, moral and scientific, the previous twentieth century had a paradigm of relativity and paradox. Quantum theory showed us there was no absolute measure of reality, while Einstein's theory of relativity showed even time is relative, observationally lacking absolutes. This paradigm has carried over into our present century, that truth is relative and truth or morality are malleably based on the perspective of the observer. Greater truths were paradoxical, meaning they can be both true and untrue, depending on whose narrative is being believed. There are no absolutes we can rely on, as all are contingent on how viewed.
Belief systems come and go, but truth remains always what it is, regardless of what we may think of it. What we believed in earlier times are subject to change. The Ptolemaic universe with Earth in the center was replaced by the Copernican universe where the Sun is central to our solar system; the static universe of past cosmology was replaced by a Doppler expanding universe that originated with a Big Bang creation, where in the beginning even time did not exist; and that we are not at the center of the observable universe but a dot within the complexity of an infinite universe; a universe with no center and that can double back upon itself in the gravity manifold of General Relativity. We now believe that narrative, that it is all relative and truth is whatever we define it to be, until it changes.
We are now with our evolved intelligence masters of the universe, where our reason is the impetus of our understanding what is reality, though paradoxically we cannot know what that is. In a Cartesian universe, we are creators of reason and understanding, while reality is something separate from us, and the human condition is one dependent on our understanding rather than existing in its own right. We define reality with our minds, not the other way around. So it is for us to mold reality in our image, much like the Pioneers' imperative to tame the wilderness, to conquer nature and prevail.
But is this true? Are we separate from reality, with only our intelligence bringing order into a chaotic existence? Is the violence humanity experienced through history but a manifestation of that chaotic state of existence, where only human reason can tame its violent nature? Are we masters of our universal existence? In some ways, yes, we are at the center of that existence, and from that existence we can glean a reality we wish to be true, even if paradoxical. The greatest paradoxes were 'truths' we had come to believe, as in religious belief that you have to 'die to have eternal life', or the belief the known universe is 'unknowable' to us. This led to the inescapable consequence that narrative is more important than philosophical 'truths', and that a wild human nature must be forced to accept order, coerced into accepting the social order of a defined reality imposed on us by stronger wisdom than we individually possess; nature is to be conquered. Was this not the paradigm of some religions, to conquer into submission, or social contract of Fascism? Hitler and Mussolini, or Lenin, Stalin and Mao, believed they were to impose an order on society, to straighten out the chaos of the masses in democracy, or tame free wheeling capitalism? Control by force was the paradigm of our past century, to save humanity from its inherent chaos for the greater good. But the opposite happened, wars on a world scale, and death of millions at a staggering cost. What went wrong?
Postmodernism believes, not unlike Fascism, that 'the narrative of ideology controls political power'. So when Putin rewrites Ukrainian history to suit his narrative, that Ukraine has no right to exist and is a part of Russia, he is acting in the 'relative truth' postmodern paradigm to suit his political ambitions, and thus feels completely in his right to invade a sovereign nation. Is Putin a postmodernism dictator? Or when Pope Francis says Ukraine should not be ashamed to raise the white flag against Russia's aggression, he is invoking a paradoxical belief that 'surrender is peace', which every tyrant in history would heartily applaud. Is Pope Francis a postmodernist pope? But Ukrainian freedom is not up for barter for postmodernist beliefs, that narrative is reality, nor is it for political power to define human freedoms, if that freedom is not a relative value, but instead is absolute. In a non-Cartesian universe, where individuals have an integral connection to their reality, the right of that individual to be free of coercions is defined by the sanctity of his or her being, that freedom is an unalienable right to exist. There is no relativity paradox to that right, if the universe is self defined as an integral part of our existence, because that is our inherent absolute reality.
In a universal post-Postmodernist cosmology, the universe is not some abstract existence outside our being; it is the absolute essence of that being. If we are the product of a cosmic matrix of interrelationships that connect us, each and every one of us, to how the universe is self defined as an infinite web hugging us down to quarks and atoms of our being, we can be no other possible way in existence other than how that infinite pressure of existence had molded us to be; we are defined in the Self of our being by infinity. That is the true reality within which we exist. Postmodernism is an interesting diversion, a fine fiction, but it is not reality. The paradoxical paradigm that our truths can be un-true is not a star we can hitch to, or the consequences can be horrific, as our world wars have shown, and as Putin's postmodern rewrite of history is showing now. That leads to authoritarian power, social oppression, destruction and war. The sublimely humble claim of Habeas Mentem is that, having a mind, we have the natural, universal right to be Who we are, free of coercions and free to form our agreements in this existence. There is no paradox to this, for it is not self contradictory, it does not confuse truth with un-truth, and the 'given word' has the power of an infinity behind it. There is a reality, and we are at its center, each and everyone of us, connected to an infinite universe that defines our mind and being. From our awareness exists the complete reality of our being, and from that reality radiates back into the total existence of our Who; this is how we are in this life. Be respectful of that Who and our right to happiness and peace are sacrosanct.
IDA |
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