The post-modern world.
Postmodernism. A term we may or may not be familiar with, but unfortunately are in one way or another products of. Understanding postmodernism means understanding the current worldview, the bias we may have ingrained in us due to growing up in a certain time period and culture.
What does postmodernism mean? It’s complicated. It’s philosophical. But it’s key, because it’s the understanding of the world we are immersed in. For the sake of the average reader like me, I’m going to condense a long complicated nuanced topic into a short simple outline.
To understand postmodernism, we must understand what is meant by pre-modernism and modernism.
During premodern times, people understood the world as follows: there is a metaphysical world or reality (more than what we see), we can know what we know through faith, we are created by God and subject to God (he has authority), we live collectively and care about others, we have an objective truth and reality. Of course there were variations of this, maybe God was replaced with Gods, or some form of divine power. But in general the worldview had these elements.
During the period of technological advancement, we see society change in multiple ways. In no particular order, we see capitalism take root, urbanization, secularism, individualism, an idea that new and different is good and old is bad. In short, we see the development of a new worldview that we now term modernism. People during this era believed they now no longer need God or faith/religion. With technology man can be “God” and science can replace religion because science can result in the progress of humanity. The world now believed that everything is discoverable and known through science (instead of faith), man is a product of nature and nurture and has autonomy, the freedom of an individual is more valuable than collective society, and science is the authority.
We see subsequently that people get disenchanted due to problems arising with this worldview, capitalism, inequality, individualism, climate change etc.
So what happens when all of a sudden we realize that science and technology cannot alone lead to success and see flaws with modernism? Cue postmodernism.
To me postmodernism is what logically follows when you replace religion with science and God with man. When humans realize that science alone cannot arrive at truth, you are left at a crossroad: go back to the belief in your previous objective truth-religion and God- or claim there is no objective truth. We as a society, unfortunately, have chosen the later.
The postmodernist believes that there is no objective truth, everything is relative (what’s true for me may or may not be true for you), that we can live collectively but promotes egalitarianism (all people are equal and deserve equal treatment in all things). Truth is whatever the individual believes to be true. “Be who you want to be, do what you want to do” mentality. And if some of these things are sounding nice to us, then lets admit we have been indoctrinated, or at the very least influenced.
To say truth is relative, to say there is no objective reality and there is no authority, and that everyone is equal with no difference, this all has very real consequences. Consequences that we see around us today and frankly are frightening.
What tangible consequences do we see? Today it means I can be a man, a women, neither or both or maybe even an “it”. It means I can be biologically a mother, but I can ask to be called a father. This is acceptable now because to us truth is relative, and biology or faith have no role. In this worldview, a family unit has no meaning. It can be two dads today, a group of friends tomorrow.
In this worldview, morality is also relative. So if in a few years, people decide clothing is not necessary because it is a social construct, we can all be walking around completely naked. These are just a couple examples. Things which we couldn’t fathom as moral or right 25 years ago, are a reality today. If there is something we can’t fathom today, it may be a reality tomorrow. It’s a slippery slope with unspeakable implications, and we’ve started sliding.
The thing is postmodernism isn’t truly a sound philosophical worldview. The reality of this postmodern worldview is rooted in “self-worship”. A concept most religions warn against. It’s self worship wrapped in the disguise of a plausible worldview. The downfall of such a worldview is evident.
There is however an alternative world view, one which Islam offers. It’s correct application can guide humanity to perfection. How and why?
Read PART 2 coming soon.
