Are Michael Tee and Karl Marx pissed about this?

[Plane]

That crass consumerism has led to fulfillment?

Interesting.

Oh yes , If I may quote an expert I have recently read;

(Capitalism offers the opportunity to accumulate vast capital, which funds an endless number of possibilities from charity to education to direct action.)

What other system has humanity  ever had that allows for this result (for persons not born to the nobility)?

[Universe Prince]

We need to end it for more numerous reasons than I can list right now. Economic equality springs quickly to mind along with a classless society.

Reasons that require specific definitions of 'economic equality' and 'classless society'.

The truth is that it will be ended regardless of whether you wish it or not.

Perhaps so, though I think that would be a tragedy rather than a benefit for humanity.

I'll have to answer your question on postmodernism at a different time. I'm surprised though, do you find many works showing that postmodernism has led to less depression, less anxiety, less alienation? That crass consumerism has led to fulfillment?

Interesting.

What I have found is that postmodernism is a broadly, and therefore in the overall vaguely, defined term that has been applied mostly to art in various forms. I have not ever seen an explanation that postmodernism offers or is responsible for "a life of alienation, destructive individualism, selfishness, and crass consumerism". I have not seen an explanation that postmodernism offers or is responsible for "less depression, less anxiety, less alienation". But then, I have not seen argued that modernism or any other generalized and broad artistic movement creates, mitigates or negates any of those things to any great degree in society as a whole. They may reflect society or parts of society, but that is not the same thing.

But your complaint about postmodernism seems like the complaint of every era. "Back in my day, young fella, people respected one another, and we helped our neighbors. We got along without all those fancy gadgets you youngsters have nowadays. We might have been poor, but we were happy." You know, the good old days spiel. So again, I am left wondering upon what are you basing your conclusion.

[_JS]

I find it very peculiar that you've heard of postmodernism only in relation to art, but not to philosophy, literature, or religion - perhaps the three areas where it has had the most profound effects. Yet, postmodernism is not something that exists separately from capitalism or liberal democracy. The three are very much related to one another and dominant in the times in which we live. Does postmodernism contribute to alienation? Yes, but only insomuch as it is caused by capitalism. Does postmodernism enhance the notions of fulfillment in crass consumerism? Of course, but only through capitalism separating us from what we produce.

Perhaps so, though I think that would be a tragedy rather than a benefit for humanity.

Yes, just as those who clung to feudalism were certain that the bourgeoisie were leading us to our demise. People often believe that history ends with them, that no further advancement in economics or governance can be made. This has been especially true of the bourgeoisie and capitalism, peculiar for such a short reign. Unfortunately for capitalists, history does not stop and the proletariat will remove the bourgeoisie and the class struggle will be ended.

[Universe Prince]

I find it very peculiar that you've heard of postmodernism only in relation to art, but not to philosophy, literature, or religion

I said mostly to art in various forms, a category I would in which I would place literature. I have heard of postmodern philosophy, but the term 'postmodern' is so vague that it seems a sort of catch-all into which people seem to throw anything that seems contemporary. I once heard Entertainment Weekly referred to as the "postmodern Farmer's Almanac." I still have no idea what that means. I've heard that a movie about making movies or making a movie is by definition postmodern. So is "The Bad and the Beautiful" a 1952 postmodern film? Most research I've seen says postmodernism started in the late 1970s or early 1980s. That I am not familiar with the notion of postmodern religion is true, but again, the term 'postmodern' leaves me no clue as to what a postmodern religion might be. Of course, I have also heard that postmodernism is coming to an end. Given the time frame, that sounds about right to me.

Yet, postmodernism is not something that exists separately from capitalism or liberal democracy.

Little in our society does.

The three are very much related to one another and dominant in the times in which we live. Does postmodernism contribute to alienation? Yes, but only insomuch as it is caused by capitalism. Does postmodernism enhance the notions of fulfillment in crass consumerism? Of course, but only through capitalism separating us from what we produce.

For that to make any sense at all, you need to define precisely what you mean by postmodernism. You say postmodernism contributes to alienation. How? Perhaps you should also define what you mean by alienation. Capitalism separating us from what we produce... because most people work for others?

Perhaps so, though I think that would be a tragedy rather than a benefit for humanity.

Yes, just as those who clung to feudalism were certain that the bourgeoisie were leading us to our demise. People often believe that history ends with them, that no further advancement in economics or governance can be made.

Have you been away so long that you have forgotten to whom you are talking? You are making some obvious assumptions there. For one, that ending capitalism is an advancement, and apparently the only economic advancement. For another, that I am somehow reacting and/or advocating against advancements in economics or governance. Both assumptions are wrong.

This has been especially true of the bourgeoisie and capitalism, peculiar for such a short reign. Unfortunately for capitalists, history does not stop and the proletariat will remove the bourgeoisie and the class struggle will be ended.

I have serious doubts about that, but let's deal with the issue of "postmodernism" first.

[Plane]

Unfortunately for capitalists, history does not stop and the proletariat will remove the bourgeoisie and the class struggle will be ended.

There you go again , you like many people, often believe that history ends with them, that no further advancement in economics or governance can be made. That your favoriate theme is the most ultimate development and that nothing further will ever be found to advance the meme any further.

Struggle will most certainly not end with Communism , in fact communism has already had its day in the sun and is being abandoned as a tried and failed dead end . Reactionarys are always around , just as those who clung to feudalism were certain that the enlighenment was leading us to our demise. Nostalgia for the times when Marxism encompassed half the planet will last a while but will continue to shrink in the manner that Monarchists do , because the more workable systems and the more successfull systems have better appeal than systems of proven failure.

Fairy tales still harken back to Kings , they are a legacy of an earlyer age , I guess that there will always be a remnant of Marxism in the same sort of vein.

[_JS]

Struggle will most certainly not end with Communism

Certainly not Plane, class struggle will end with communism, yes. History will most certainly not. The simple fact is that we do not know what will follow communism because the written history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles. So no, you accuse me of violating a rule of history to which I most certainly do not contravene.

Has communism had its day, the Soviet Union, blah, blah...of course not. Feudal lords were certainly celebrating the first failures of bourgeoisie revolution. Yet, in the end the sheer inertia of the bourgeoisie class was enough to topple the Feudal system. It took a great deal of bloodshed and horrific brutality, but the dominant class can (and will) be overturned.

[_JS]

Here's my problem UP:

I can go through and define what are rather vast concepts, which require more than a mere definition, but a full explanation. Then what will you do with that?

If I am going to spend the time, and I do mean a considerable amount of time, will this exchange of knowledge be rewarded with a useful discussion or are you going to search for holes and semantics to argue a definitional, legalese style debate from which nothing fruitful can possibly come?

As you've already gathered, I cannot define these concepts with a simple dictionary definition. I have no intention spending this time discussing postmodernism, alienation, or any other Marxist concepts only to be given some semantic bullshit in return. I'm not accusing you of anything, but if you are planning to make some minor point, please just make it without putting me through a lot of extra effort.

[Universe Prince]

I'm not an academic. I'm not an economist. I'm a graphic designer with a lot of opinions. I'm also reasonably intelligent. I get that this "if you are planning to make some minor point" bit is the debate version of a sh-- test. Am I worth your time? I am very tempted not to answer this and tell you just forget it. But I'm in a generous mood.

You don't want to waste your time here. I understand that. I don't want to waste my time either. Which is why I refuse to make some sort of guarantee that you're going to like my reply. My rudder for my discussions here, and discussions in general with people who disagree with me, is understanding. I try to understand. Once I get some measure of understanding, my tendency is to express my opinion. That may be to agree or to explain why I do not agree. I'm just crazy enough to think that by talking about your ideas and mine, I, at least, will gain more understanding. Sometimes my arrogance leads me off course, but I'm only human.

I don't know how to discuss the concepts with you if there is no clear understanding of the terms. I will not tell you I'm not to going to discuss the meaning of your definitions, because I very well may do just that. But I will not do so for the sake of a semantic nit-picking. I may do so for the sake of clarity. If you're going to make a broad explanation and then get upset if I seek further clarification, then perhaps we are both better off ending things now. If you're going to do what Michael Tee does and get upset at me for not reading some meaning you have not clearly expressed into your statements, some meaning that I'm just supposed to understand you meant because supposedly thinking people know what you mean, then feel free to call this off.

If I did not want to discuss the ideas with you, then I would not have asked you to explain them. Think of that as my debate sh-- test. I want to know if you've actually got something to say, or if you're just throwing out words to posture yourself as superior to the people who don't agree with you. In other words, do you have some idea that is worth my time to try to understand, or is it all just blowing smoke? If already thought you were, I wouldn't have bothered to have asked for the explanation in the first place. At the same time, if your explanation doesn't measure up, I feel no obligation to do more than say so.

Either 'postmodern alienation' means something significant and should be discussed, or it doesn't and shouldn't. If you give me some long explanation, and I think it's excrement, I'll say so with no apology. I would expect no less from you if I gave a long explanation you thought was excrement. If you use a word or a phrase, and my understanding of that word or phrase leads me to think you're incorrect in something you say, I'm probably going to express that. If that bothers you, then say so, and we'll end this now.

And if I think you're wrong, I generally have no problem saying so. I don't believe that has been a problem for you in the past. But while I'm willing to explain myself, I am not going to apologize if I challenge the ideas you express in some way you don't like. And I'm not going to make promises about how I'm going to respond to something you say when I don't know what you're going to say.

So, say what you have to say, or don't.

[Plane]

Has communism had its day, the Soviet Union, blah, blah...of course not.

Of course ...Not?
I would have said, Of course.

Having been given one century and half of the planet to prove itself it has been found wanting in a big way.

It deserves a bigger test ?

I don't see any point .

Everythign about Marxism can be studyed for discovery  , as one would conduct an autopsy.

But you can't conduct an autopsy to discover why the subject is bursting with health and success now can you ?

If Marxism really had an advantage in effeciency , or the love of the people subject to it , or any other feature of significance , it would not be moribund and  thrashing with its  death throws right now.

[_JS]

Fair enough UP, I will get to it a bit later when I have ample time.

[_JS]

I thought about putting a lot of extra research into this, but I thought it would be more genuine if I wrote this without any notes, so to speak.

What is postmodernism?

The easy answer is that it is the dominant intellectual school of thought after modernism. Of course, that is a definition of little value. It is important though to remember that postmodernism is not necessarily in opposition to modernism, though it can be on some points. I think the best way to understand postmodernism is going to be to contrast it with modernism.

What time period are we talking about?

1. Modernism: Late 18th century to the mid 20th century, the peak was around early 1900's
2. Post-Modernism: Roughly began in the 1920's to the Present, especially flourished post WW2

How can there be an overlap?

We're talking about dominant intellectual schools of thought, these things don't just stop and start in small periods of time.

Let's get to the point.

Yes, let's.

Modernism was a time of optimism. Science, reason, and rational thought could conquer anything. The world was filled with objective truth. History was a progressive movement forward for mankind. This was a common belief among most thinkers, whether they be on the political right or left. Think of Hegel here, he inspired many with his view of history as an ever-progressive guided movement.

Modernism also held to hierarchies and ordered society. Monarchs still reigned, and where they did not, even elected leaders were considered to be of "higher stock" than those they governed. Aristocrats still held power in many countries and hierarchies prevailed amongst the higher classes where women and "lesser" races tended to be dominated (and this was generally accepted by an imperialist society as being good for all involved).

This was the age of the "Great Narratives": liberating the workers across the world, finding a "theory of everything", the theory of evolution, preparing God's Kingdom on Earth, even determining the subconscious meaning of dreams. 

What Happened?

First came World War I. There was still a sense of Modernist optimism in World War I, some thought that it could be the "war to end war." It was truly horrific, unlike any war fought in the many centuries preceding it. Yet, in some ways World War I simply sloughed off the dead skin of long dying empires that were never much respected by modernists anyway - Austria-Hungary, and the Ottoman Empires, along with the Czarist Russians had long been in need of changes. Perhaps this was a good thing?

Then came World War II. The scale of horrors involved in World War II is stunning. The systematic murder of Jews and Roma in the death camps of Auschwitz, Dachau and many other locations throughout Nazi territory brought the world a sense of collective terror. More than that, there was a blitzed London, a superheated Dresden, an atomic-bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Add to that the millions of dead civilians and military. Add to that the policies of the United States, Britain, and Soviet Union that left WW2 survivors baffled. Nazis, not mere functionaries, but true Nazis were placed right back in power in the newly formed West Germany. Newly formed South Korea was put in the hands of a nasty dictatorship led by Japanese-collaborators who had committed horrid war crimes. Khrushchev released the crimes of Stalinists, so appalling, so abhorrent as to shock the entire eastern bloc. And still...nuclear weapons kept being built, perfected, constructed in a dual annihilation policy that bordered on insanity.

Yeah, so wtf is postmodernism?

With the aforementioned history, modernism no longer seemed to make sense. Optimism? Progressive history? God? Where was the progression of history when millions were dying? Where was God when Jews and Roma were being gassed? You can take optimism and shove it you know where (sorry, got into the spirit there). Once can see where postmodernists were a bit turned off.

Cynicism replaced optimism. A healthy dose of relativism was added into science and reason to ensure that we didn't put too much faith into it. History was no longer seen as progressive, but just existing and relative. Individualism was stressed over hierarchies and disorder was given more of a break compared to order. The great narratives were discarded for fragmentation and "think global, act local."

[Universe Prince]

Okay, I have done a little more research into postmodernism. While it may be the dominant school of thought after modernism, I'm not convinced it's dominant right now. It seems at the very least on the wane, giving way to (for lack of a better term) a post-postmodernism.

The presentation of postmodernism seems to largely be as a sort degradation away from social order and the "Great Narratives". This is a presentation I am not convinced is accurate. For instance, the Green Revolution seems a great narrative to me, but it seems to be a postmodern event. Nor am I convinced we have moved away from social order as much as we have moved away from hierarchical social order, which is to say the structure of social may have changed, but there is no less order than existed before.

I keep seeing individualism as presented as a negative thing. As a libertarian, I have to question this. Individualism seems to be considered individualist anarchism, as if somehow people are exiting or rebelling against society, and yet this is clearly not the world I see around me. If anything, people are finding more ways to connect to one another, not less. Subcultures are growing in size and number, and even those subcultures who might be considered countercultures by the more traditional, are only marginally so. There is even plenty of overlap from one subculture to another. Goths can be and often are also computer geeks. Members of the SCA can be sci-fi fans. A philosophy academic wrote one of the longest and most famous BDSM novel series ever published. And all that doesn't even begin to account for the internet.

You said, "Postmodernism offers a life of alienation, destructive individualism, selfishness, and crass consumerism pushing us further towards the collapse of bourgeoisie societies." I don't agree. I believe I am beginning to grasp why some people think so, but what I find is not a society of people living alienated lives, rejecting society and engaging in self-destructive behavior. Yes, some people have some of these problems, but that is not unique to postmodern times. There have always been such people. What I find in society overall is an increase in individual expression that does far more to strengthen society than to weaken it. What is weakening us as a society are the actions of those who seek to cling to an authoritarian, hierarchical, top-down, modernist model of societal control.

One of the more common complaints about postmodernism is people being cynical. The most cynicism I found in looking into postmodernism seemed to come from the critics of postmodernism. They criticized individualism, capitalism, deconstruction (in various forms), entertainment, and on and on. Where I see people more free to define themselves and pursue happiness, the critics of postmodernism seem to see fragmentation and decay. Which seems to bring me back to a point I made before. The criticism of postmodernism sounds a lot like the good old days spiel. And this notion you have that postmodernism is some how a road to "the collapse of bourgeoisie societies" seems a close cousin to the cry of the crotchety old man who insists the kids of today are ruining society.

I know you think the end of bourgeoisie societies will lead to some sort of Marxist/communist society rising up, and you think that is a good thing. But I don't agree that we are heading for a societal collapse. Societal change, yes. But then, society is always changing. I think the folks who want to try to direct the change by imposing socialist ideas or by trying to tightly control immigration or this or that scheme to mold society into something better are never going to achieve the betterment they say they want. The closest society will get to communism is the break down of top-down hierarchies as solutions to large-scale problems. The change will be gradual, and society will not collapse. It will simply keep evolving set by step. Capitalism will not vanish, it will simply be modified by the evolving society to meet society's needs.

(And for that matter, socialism/communism/Marxism would not, imo, result in a classless society. There would always be some sort of class, even it was ruling and non-ruling, or the people and the "enemies of the people". Or academic and worker. There would always be a justification for stratification, because there would never be the consensus of thought necessary for there to be none.)

And in any case, I think we are moving to something past postmodernism, due in large part to the expansion of the internet and computer technologies, and in 10-20 years, someone will be explaining that whatever they end up calling post-postmodernism will be "pushing us further towards the collapse of bourgeoisie societies." Though I doubt we will be any closer then than we are now.

[Plane]

I thought about putting a lot of extra research into this, but I thought it would be more genuine if I wrote this without any notes, so to speak.

What is postmodernism?

And why would Postmodernism last so long?

The Civil War was shocking to the public for its huge losses , but it seems that only a thirty years later everyone could be full of "modernist " optimism .

Ronald Reagan proclaimed "Morning in America" and the public embraced his optimism rejecting the mild pessimism and vanilla flavored depression that seemed to have gripped the nation after the debacle of Watergate and the weary war in Vietnam.

So depending on low often one looks one could find long and short cycles of optimism - pessimism , trying to caricterise any period longer than a decade with a single theme underestimates the speed at which society digests and understands itself severely.

How can there be an overlap?

We're talking about dominant intellectual schools of thought, these things don't just stop and start in small periods of time.

Why would one say this? These are things that often can be seen stopping and starting or becomeing the lead and looseing the leadership frequently during the course of election cycles of two , four and six years.

It has been observed that President Obama (like some previous Presidents) would like to accomplish something that is contriversial as early as possible to maximise the time for the public to be chilled out and forgetfull, the hot anger engendered by the uglyness of the Health care bill is likely to have ebbed signifigantly in the course of the comeing year and by November other equally important things may have happened.

Did you ever hear the one about the guy who asked his buddy whether his turn signal was on?  The guy stood behind the car and said No , Yes , Yes, No ,No , Yes , Yes, No ,No , Yes , Yes, No ,No , Yes , Yes, No .  The period of times that one looks at a reoccuring phenominon can influence strongly the accuracy of the observation.

So I say to ask if the present dominant philosophy is modernism or post modernism is like asking whether the tide is come in this month.

[Plane]

Struggle will most certainly not end with Communism

Certainly not Plane, class struggle will end with communism, yes. History will most certainly not.

Why would class struggle end with Communism?

Will there not be a ruleing class , an educated class , urbanites and rural , I can't even see why there shouldn't be haves and have nots within and without national borders .

I for one would energeticly do good works during times of Communism (If they ever reoccur)by raiseing the consciousness of the classes , especially where it can devide the ruling from the ruled.

[Plane]

Struggle will most certainly not end with Communism

Has communism had its day, the Soviet Union, blah, blah...of course not.

Of course ....NOt?

Where were you during the seventy years that Marxism was taught as the orthodoxy in every school of the Soviet Union or the fourty years that it was the theme of University education in China?

What more trial is required?

Do you wish to try the same thing again hopeing for a diffrent result?

Communism didn't just come in second in a race , it was rejected by generations raised to it.