antipostmodern

the funny thing about anti-postmodernism is we’re all postmoderns until we move on from/stop obsessing over the problems posed by (post)modernism

which we very very much have not

some of the big ones are

– acknowledging the flaws in science

– failure of language and interpretation

– perfectionism

– structuralism

– social construction (esp. treating social constructs as playthings)

– most existentialism, absurdism, etc.

– self-loathing zeitgeist

perfectionism’s an interesting one, but you see it in how people’ll identify problems in an idea and then abandon it entirely (science, religion, governance, etc).

i’d argue existentialism’s only a big deal because all the natural sources of meaning are flawed/require work, which means they can be rejected/ignored, whereas a lot of existentialists seem to want a sort of meaning they cannot resist no matter how hard they try (which isn’t going to happen).

So it’s an interesting claim that meaning doesn’t exist naturally when, imo, there’s plenty. lots of things are naturally and brilliantly meaningful if you don’t demand that they unilaterally solve all your emotional problems. the natural meanings all tend to naturally reinforce each other and are most meaningful in tandem, rather than as a lonely “meaning of life.”

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