Pseudomodernism and the Question Concerning Technology
by astriede
This is about as ‘creative’ as I get. Life is handed to us in a nice plastic wrapped box. Heidegger prophesied wisely in his fear about the coming technological tyranny (“The Question Concerning Technology”). It is here. No longer can one dream about the future without the input of modern technology. My entire career as a philosopher is trying to find some place where I may think freely unconstrained by the collapsing stainless steel walls that surround me with no window to look at the beauty outside: Magic does not come without a price and surely does not our ‘modern magic’. I read awhile ago an article declaring that “postmodernism is dead and buried” (http://philosophynow.org/issues/58/The_Death_of_Postmodernism_And_Beyond) and in its place the author defined a new framework for meaning in the world he called it “pseudomodernism”. In postmodernism the reader of a text had all authority to interpret the text however one pleases, because who in their right mind would ever believe that the author of a text had any intention of conveying meaning with it? In psuedomodernism (if I remember correctly what the author meant by his writing) we are the text and our lives are redefined by who read us. With the rampant advance of social networking and the blogosphere we post our daily lives online for anyone to change or modify or misinterpret the text (us) or so it is thought. In golden age of communication you would expect that the text should have meaning; although, it seems as though it is meaningless, because now the text never has a final form it is always up for alteration or for improvement. This is much in the same way we dispose of our “old” iPods for every new one that comes out. At least, in some ways the text may be considered on more solid ground then within postmodernism. At least now (in psudomodernism) the text is not simply a fashion but a muddled reflection.
Mind, Energy, and Spacetime 
Philosophically, when the Taliban took power after the Soviets left they took away kite flying. They could not, however, take away peoples’ imaginations of flying kites. Einstein and many others have, over the ages, worked menial jobs in order that their imaginations could run wild, even though preoccupied otherwise.
Our reflections are momentary, illusive, changing. I reflect in my blog on Jesus Christ and find only limitless expanse for dimension on the matter; for, in the pages of the Bible one can find one meaning in one text, then, a year later, find an entirely different meaning for the very same text, due to whatever is going on in ones life at that time.
Best of luck on the philosophy pursuit as it is where I am as well and will be, as I imagine, forever – but in a good way.
Thank you very much for the comment. I found it encouraging and will certainly continue my philosophic pursuits. Best of luck to you as well. I am interested to read your posts.
Good point…are all these ‘modern’ realities helping to advance our lives or just further complicating our media-soaked brains?
Postmodernists believed that all reality is “text”. The postmodernists believed that the meanings in books was completely up to the reader and not the author of the book. Further, they viewed reality as a type of “text”. Given all this they concluded that whatever our perception of reality means is completely up to the present observer, therefore, between two different observers there may be no agreed upon meanings. So postmodernism would “further [complicate] our media-soaked brains” because we would struggle to find shared meanings. Pseudomodernism is different in the sense that it acknowledges some intersubjectivity in perception.
Thanks for clarifying that for me. I hope that your generation will be able to cut through the sea of information and actually be able to find the real truths that are relevant in the 21st century.