If postmodernists reject the “truths” discovered during the modern era, what do they believe? Let’s look at some of the key generational distinctives of the first postmodern generations and see not only what they believe, but why they believe it.
Technology
The massive technological advance of the twentieth century has forever changed our world and deeply impacted the way people live. Beginning with the generation known as the Busters, those born from 1964 to 1980, and continuing with the generation labeled by Thom Rainer as the Bridgers, born from 1980 to the present, technology has drastically changed the methods of communication, recreation, education, and work into a lifestyle that has never been seen before. As a Buster, I remember computers being integrated into the school curriculum for the first time ever when I was in high school. As I sit, I am writing this paper for credit in a class that is being taken almost completely over the internet. We are almost done with our Christmas shopping for the year, all of our presents so far were bought over the internet. One of our neighbors “telecommutes” to work with his firm in San Francisco, 250 miles away. E-mail, cellular phones and text messages have become a commonplace way of communicating. Cable and satellite receivers and the internet have made news viewing a 24 hour a day possibility. College students no longer gather in a room to play the board game Risk until 3:00 in the morning, but network together from their own computers in their own houses over the internet to play Age of Empires instead.
“For most of the bridgers, the world of high technology will be the world they knew. Computers will be as common as televisions early in the 21st century” (Rainer. The Bridger Generation, 46).
The key question is whether this technological world will have a positive or negative impact. “…The media impact will be strong and pervasive in this huge generation (the Bridgers)…[but] most of the evidence today indicates that the negative influences will far outweigh the positive” (Rainer 42). There will be positives; “…young Americans take in information visually as never before, and they are adept at visual interrelationships of objects and images…Conversely, they are less-developed verbally and interpersonally. They drink in visual information quickly, and have a far quicker boredom trigger” (Rainer 40). They tend to think through issues less deeply and without an overall framework of how different issues fit together. In a discussion I had with a high school student during the Presidential campaign of 2000, she said that she supported increased governmental services, but not higher taxes, completely unaware of the connection between the two. They also tend to form fewer, and more superficial, relationships.
Crime
Perhaps the greatest negative impact, however, will concern the effect of violent television shows on children’s behavior. “…Accumulating evidence indicates a clear link between the amount of television watched and increased behavior problems” (Rainer 42). “Never in America’s history has such a high proportion of one generation (Bridgers) been touched by criminal activity… ‘The most vexing problem is the small minority of teens who kill or maim with little moral compunction…Police officers are encountering more “kids with no hope, no fear, no rules, and no life expectancy,” says John Firman of the International Association of Chiefs of Police’” (Rainer 44-45).
Relativistic Worldview
Undoubtedly one of the reasons for this high incidence of crime among postmodern generations is the change to a relativistic worldview. In the modern era, the world shrunk in size considerably. People developed a keen awareness of other peoples, cultures, values, religious systems, in general other belief systems. Global communications became an every-day commodity. Faced with these different belief systems, moderns strove to discover which one was valid. Postmoderns, however, have rejected the notion of any kind of absolute truth, and have embraced all belief systems as equally valid. I still remember a classmate in college asking me to agree with the proposition that, if I had been born and raised in India, I would have believed in Hinduism just as strongly as I, being born and raised in the United States, believed in Christianity. He failed to recognize that he and I were both born in the US, yet we had much different convictions about the truth of Christianity and Hinduism. It was not our “common cultural belief” that determined our personal belief. It was not the strength of my conviction, nor the strength of his hypothetical Hindu’s conviction that caused him to question ultimate truth; it was the weakness of his own conviction in either.
In light of postmodernists’ lack of conviction, their pervasive thinking seems to be that “a billion Chinese couldn’t be wrong,” therefore their beliefs must be true…at least to them. If this is true for the Chinese, it must be true for Indians, Tibetans, Arabians, and all other groups. Speaking of the Bridger generation, Rainer says that they “…believe in almost any expression of a higher being or higher power. And they resist any claim that one faith system is superior or exclusive” (13).
If this relativistic worldview is true of religion, why shouldn’t it be true of knowledge in general? The postmodernist says, “It should!” Veith notes that postmoderns believe that “Knowledge is no longer seen as absolute truth; rather, knowledge is seen in terms of rearranging information into new paradigms. Human beings construct models to account for their experiences. These models – whether worldviews or scientific theories – are ‘texts,’ constantly being revised. These paradigms are useful fictions, a matter of ‘telling stories.’ But the stories are now indistinguishable from what was once assumed to be knowledge: scientific ‘truth,’ ethics, law, history” (57).
In a recent survey quoted by Thom Rainer, 91% of respondents agreed that what is right for 1 person may not be for another person in a similar situation. 80% agreed that no one can be absolutely positive that they know the truth. And 57% said that lying is sometimes necessary (43). In other research quoted by Gene Veith, 66% of Americans believed that “there is no such thing as absolute truth. Among young adults, the percentage is even higher: 72% of those between 18 and 25 do not believe absolutes exist” (16). Even within the church, 53% of those who call themselves “evangelical Christians” believe that there are no absolutes (Veith 16).
It is important to understand that postmodernists do not seek to change the basis, or foundations, or truth; they seek to completely eliminate all truth, all foundationalism. Speaking of the stories, or narratives, weaved together to form worldviews, or metanarratives, Patricia Waugh, a leading postmodern spokeswoman, said, “…in the past (in Romantic thought, for example), the critique of reason was accompanied by an alternative foundationalism (of the Imagination). Postmodernism tends to claim an abandonment of all metanarratives which could legitimate foundations for truth. And more than this, it claims that we neither need them, nor are they any longer desirable” (Veith 49).
Fragmentation of People and Relationships
The huge amounts of information given to postmoderns through the depersonalizing media of technology have contributed to their relativistic worldview. If nothing is ultimately right or wrong, one’s own selfish appetites are left to drive our behavior, resulting in a much higher incidence of crime. In a society like this, it would be a miracle if some kind of fragmentation didn’t occur. “Postmodernism swims, even wallows, in the fragmentary and the chaotic currents of change as if that is all there is” (Veith 73).
This fragmentation begins in the deepest parts of an individual’s own self-image. “…Just as the postmodern critique of reason goes on to undermine all claims to absolute truth, including those of Biblical doctrine, postmodern anti-humanism goes on to diminish human beings, attacking personality and the very concept of the individual” (Veith 71). A young female punk-rocker said, “I belong to the Blank Generation. I have no beliefs, I belong to no community, tradition, or anything like that. I’m lost in this vast, vast world. I belong nowhere. I have absolutely no identity” (Veith 72). Yet action must be motivated by something, so postmoderns rely on their own personal desires and drives for direction in their day to day life. A study quoted in Rainer found that 64% of people surveyed said that the main purpose of life is personal enjoyment and fulfillment (43).
With such rampant selfishness as the main motivation of action, it’s easy to see how the fragmentation within people expands to the fragmentation among them. Relationships within marriages, families, workplaces, and neighborhoods are all affected.
Veith notes that in this relativistic environment, “Abstract ideas are not the only casualty. When the objective realm is swallowed up by subjectivity, moral principles evaporate. Other people – even spouses and children – are valued only for what they can contribute to my pleasure” (58). The result is a horrendous divorce rate, an increasing culture of fatherlessness (with 27% of children growing up in one-parent homes {Rainer 11}), alarming amounts of vocational and geographical change, and neighbors who don’t know, and consequently don’t support or protect, their neighbors. In short, one is left with a nation of individuals, each pursuing their own self-interest over and above the interests of others.
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