NEO-MODERNISM

My friend Jenny is in college studying writing. Or not-writing. It's hard to tell with Post-Modernism. She tries to explain how first the Moderns said that God does not exist and so it was up to humans to make a better world and that someday, with the perfect education, the perfect government and the perfect merchandise, we humans will be, well, if not perfect, happy.

Now your Post-Moderns say that the Moderns got the God part right and the rest is hooey. Ideas like "perfection" require an objective judge. Objectivity crashed and burned when Heisenberg and the boys started fooling around with atoms and cats. Humanity racing to a brighter future is like a hamster with a vivid imagination on a wheel in a cage. And meaning is meaningless so don't delude yourself.

Having said that, PMs (not to be confused with PMS) go on to inform the rest of us what makes good art and politics as if they was objective authority, apply for tenure at universities and then hire like-minded colleagues so's to influence the future of thought for the better, and come up with a whole science of signs to show how to skillfully undermine meaning's meaningfulness.

It's no wonder my friend who went to school wanting to be a good writer is confused. The only way she can be a good writer is to first give up the idea of good writing, and then she can win awards writing carefully crafted but untimately meaningless stories.

It's depressing. This tells me how deep-down unhappy all these PMs are. They're foisting their depressed and meaninglessness vision of the world on others with the filter that has polarized theirs. Me, I'm a rose-colored glasses person. I'm looking in the mirror and meditating on perfection - seeing is believing after all - and understand how the PMs' vision of futility will be fulfilled. Soon, a school of thought will emerge, and it will replace the Post-Moderns as quick as you can say 8-track tapes.

I'd like to suggest one - Neo-Modernism. Neo-Modernism says the PMs got the Heisenberg part right in that you can't ever try to know something without influencing the result, but Neos applies it to God and meaninglessness and perfection - wherever it suits them. Maybe there's a God and maybe there isn't. I can't know that. Maybe life is meaningless and maybe it isn't. I can't know that.

Me, I will continue to experiment with my own life, trying to make happy 'meaning' out of either the random or the designed universe. I don't care which. I can't know that. But I can be happy, give comfort and joy to those I touch, and not sweat what don't work out.