The Literary Dictionary's definition of:

POSTMODERNISM --
... [The word] "applied to a cultural condition prevailing in the advanced capitalist societies since the 1960s, characterized by a superabundance of disconnected images and styles—most noticeably in television, advertising, commercial design, and pop video. In this sense, promoted by Jean Baudrillard and other commentators, postmodernity is said to be a culture of fragmentary sensations, eclectic nostalgia, disposable simulacra, and promiscuous superficiality, in which the traditionally valued qualities of depth, coherence, meaning, originality, and authenticity are evacuated or dissolved amid the random swirl of empty signals."

POSTMODERN TRAITS
• Moral relativity
• No absolutes
• Cynicism toward historical relevance
• Attention to emotion of the present
• Isolationism
• Pursuit of individualized fragmented "realities" through iconic media, technology, and micro culture association.

INTRODUCTION:

I'm revolting. Not in the way you're probably thinking. Rather, my revolt is a protest -- against postmodernism. Postmodernism -- which is directing our current social thought and condition, should disturb us deeply, because its definition above is a very real dynamic for most people. Its precepts dictate scripted and unreasoned responses to information. Post-modern thought is eroding the depth and joy of life on many levels.

With its widely unknown definition, postmodernism has quietly seeped into virtually every aspect of our society: fine-arts, faith, media, education, government, social interaction, and more. Postmodernism is like natural gas. Natural gas has no odor or color. When there is a gas leak, the odor we smell has been artificially induced by the gas company, simply so we will recognize the leak. Otherwise, natural gas in its purest form creeping into a building can kill life, by displacing the oxygen in the body. The analogy is fitting, whereas postmodern thought is silently and rapidly asphyxiating our well being in every sense -- both socially, as well as individually, -- largely because we have not known what it is, nor that it is even there --affecting us. It's an elusive thing.  But it is very much disconnecting us from each other, and reality.

Like the odor added to natural gas, knowledge of postmodernism is vitally important. As with most subjects we want to learn more about, it is advantageous to understand its historical origins, in order to address the present day issue with accuracy. Postmodern study is no different. Postmodern thought consumed our culture in the latter half of the 1900's, as the Modern era ended. However, the stage for postmodernism was being set in the late 1800's, during the Industrial Revolution.

Let's go back in time, and investigate one of the fastest societal shifts ever.

A BETTER TIME...

Imagine living in a place where a child's father and mother lived in the same house. Through thick and thin, the parents worked together to raise the children. Imagination and self-sufficiency would be stimulated through music in the home, stories on front porch, and work for everyone to share. Cast yourself in such a family. You would find your father teaches you a rich heritage about your family. He might also ingratiate you into the family trade, of which you could incorporate into your tooling or education. Your mother actively partners in your educational and nurturing needs you as you grow.

In this place, the entire community is accountable to each other, and it shows in the way each is treated. Because life is not perfect, the community has a solid support system, to help one another out in times of need. Doors are un-locked, as people look out after each other. Citizens take personal responsibility to care for each other. Delinquents' malice is distanced, and thwarted under vigilant community involvement. Family and friends all live in the same neighborhood and regularly meet, often partaking in meals, concerts in the park, and other social settings for bonding. Kids are safe to run free all day, (when there is no school),-- and they do so without parental fear of human harm lurking against them.

Remember this picture. For a majority of Americans, this is their community, just over 100 years ago.

PART I -- DAD SHIFTS WORK OUTSIDE OF FAMILY

1890-1915:
1) Fathers limit family leadership for factory work.
2) Companies foster workers' dependency.
3) Darwinism conflicts with individual purpose
4) Faith-based science spreads.

By the early 1900's, many men daily left their homes, their family ventures, and their paternal presence --all to work in the new factories of the Industrial Revolution -- and the Modern World. While men used to have a hands-onpresence in the home, leading the family in farming, trade, business, faith, and purpose, men's lives now revolved around a company. The rest of the family often had little connection with Dad's hard labor within these unseen companies, often situated out of daily access to the home. Likewise within this daily physical separation, Dad began loosing his understanding of his wife and children's milestones and struggles at home.  While dad was working in the preludes of impersonal urbanity, the home fires subtly began losing connection with its fuel -- its unique mission.

Though his role used to daily model responsibilities of a teacher, trainer, spiritual guide, and mantle bearer, fathers stepping into the Industrial Revolution began practicing a more monolithic role: that being simply a provider. The mother began carrying the tremendous load of raising the children and maintaining the home, (sometimes working in the factory, as well), with dad absent from the home 12-16 hour days.

Factory Workers at IHC McCormick Works
1900 -- Chicago, Illinois

Dad's physical, emotional, and spiritual absence of heading the family unit, commenced a generational decline, away from equipping his offspring to be: explorers of individual purpose. The descent would spiral deeper throughout the generations of the 20th century.

"We have not come into the world to be numbered; we have been created for a purpose; for great things: to love and be loved."
-- Mother Teresa

Without a purpose, some of these adult children were susceptible to a wide array of ideology.

An external ideology also thwarting individual purpose was gaining acceptance during this same period: Darwinism. English naturalist Charles Darwin's study on "natural selection" theorized that human beings are not intelligently designed. Darwin concluded that humankind was a product of random evolutions, which have gradually morphed or became extinct. (Hitler -- a Darwinist, chose to speed up the extinction rate, to create a master human race.).  Darwin's theory of evolution rests on the still unexplained division of just one single celled organism. Evolution theory is further developed by the phenomenon of cells magically merging together by some other unknown force. Some believe it was lightening, or a cosmic blast causing the first merge.

As the age of invention progressed, certain groups began following this new "explanation of species origin" with faith-like zeal. Doubters of the theory point to evidentiary wide gaps in the species types as well as the astronomical leaps of the "human mutation," characterized by: faith, ethical awareness, self-consciousness...but I digress). Observers on both sides contend: Evolution requires an enormous amount of faith, due to the infinite number of "random" mutations missing in evidence, both in past archeological and present day evidence.

Also contributing to the faith requirement of evolution: the absence of 21st Century knowledge. Had today's knowledge been available to Darwin, his theory would have to explain the origin of all of the infinitely complex yet necessarily perfect DNA chains to sustain cell life. One other coincidence: each chain conspicuously resembles software code, (no duplications, whatsoever). His theory also could not consider the undiscovered --bio molecular sciences, in which cells whose operation conspicuously resembles human engineered motors -- really, really, good motors ...motors which science today claims are the most superior ever known. Considering a very liberal 1 billion years, for these properties to slightly mutate to the present day human beings, this is random chance at its miraculous best.

Darwin prophetically states:

"If it can be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down."
"The Origin of Species" Page 171
-- Charles Darwin

PART II - "CUTTIN' THE RUG" --

THE NARCISSIST DREAM

1915-1929:
1)Invention, economy, and meta-physical powers incite culture.
2)Personal Responsibility evacuated for self-indulgence.
3)Hollywood, "Faith" based leaders, and Avante-gard circles lure masses into manufacturing reality.

In the early 1900's as the Industrial Revolution morphed to Modernism, it seemed humankind had "made it"....and boy, were we riding high!  Our world became symbolicly rich, where ideas based on theories and principles could create extradordinary results.  From math, to science, psychology, to liberal arts, the symbols out of these disciplines ran the modern age. Businesses, inventions, social movements, and scientific theories grew exponetially.  We could do and make anything: automobiles, electricity, air-conditioners, airplanes, even motion pictures. This celebration climaxed with the Roaring Twenties, (1920's). "In the mornin', in the evenin', ain' t we got fun?..." was the mantra to fill the dance halls, where people would dance until the sun came up. Some circles already disillusioned with the limits of science and the world of absolutes, had begun to experiment with a new found luxury: expressing their ideas in a fanciful, self-absorbed way. Writers like F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940), were natural literary leaders of the time, with fantasies of individualized self promotion themes between their pages.

F.Scott Fitzgerald,
"The Great Gatsby" 1925

Some were lured into socio-psychological faith performances : a hybrid Hollywood/"healing" exhibitionism, peddled by megalomania personalities such as Aimee Simple McPherson (1890-1944). McPherson was the first mass media evangelist, and the first of such to fall from scandal. The staggering revenue drawn from such dramatizations would be modeled by the next three generation of religious racketeers to rehash these manipulative techniques into the world-wide Signs and Wonders Apostasy, circulated into the later 20th Century.

Aimee Simple McPherson
Hollywood, California

New Thought/Metaphysical concepts of "speaking your own world into existence", and "positive thinking" flourished along the eastern seaboard, and particularly in Boston's Ivy League circles. This New Thought movement, a kind of super-charged humanism, believes that human kind is basically "good" at its core, and to date continues to morph its way to depths beyond reason. These early 20th Century New Thought thinkers were the fore-runners to Postmoderns in the late 20th Century.

PART III -- THE FIGHT ABOVE/

THE RUMBLING BELOW

The Great Depression

1929-1948:
1) Media and philosophy manufacture "escapisms" during chaotic times.

2) Depression ravaged country demands revolutionary big government to manage Modern era's growing pains. Federal bureaucracies expand, with establishment of: work programs, welfare, social security, etc.

3) Indifference to sacrifice: an experimental expression begins within underground New Thought circles.

4) Social Sequestration is made possible by combination of urban population explosion, and governmental dependence.

Never before had the United States government expanded to the levels it did during the Great Depression. Citizens turned to President Roosevelt's "New Deal" put them back to work.  By this time, it became clear: many struggled in the new symbolic world of ideas, finance, and leadership.  The depression called for a much more powerful government to relegate commerce, jobs, retirement, unemployment, and more. We begin to see heroes being born out of the youth of this era. These youth are now known as The Builder Generation. The Builder Generation was determined to press in to scrape what they could for their families, sacrifice beyond our understanding, and get America back to work. The depression would be just the beginning of the Builder Generation's long mid 20th century struggle.

American fears and needs were extoled in MGM's literary metaphor the 1938 film production of the Wizard of Oz. The country identified with the missing pieces of themselves, (which were really still there all along), and longing for a place far away from their troubles...over the rainbow. 

The movie industry was one of the only industries thriving during the Great Depression, as troubled folks could escape their problems for a brief two hours, and only for about a dime.

The truth was unfolding: It became painfully obvious since the industrial revolution that society maintained a consistent split perpetuating from one generation to the next: 1) There were those who could negoitiate through the symbols of the new modern world, such as letters, numbers, literature, speech, music, and social code — and 2) There were those by whom this abstract realm eluded them.  The latter group -- three generations into the future -- would be computer illiterate.

And an entire geo-political product was birthed. President Roosevelt was compelled  to move the United States toward a socialistic collective to save it from collapse. In other countries moves like this were very common as they experienced the same unequal grasps of the symbols in modernism. Many looked to a strong centrist governmental control as the broker for equity.

It didn't work. The politics of attempting social equity eventually would decend into historical “cultural warfare,” which came with the criticism of encouraging coveting or envy between classes and ethnicities.  Such regimes' social targeting, isolation, and  genocide  -- all to "purify" social thought reform -- was justified by believers, but frowned upon by humanity. 

Yet, in the early 1930’s something had to be done. All people matter. And an entire group were disenfranchised from the modern world’s abstract functioning, left without jobs, retirement, homes, food, or income.   What does the world do when most countries revolted against the old monarchies in favor of democratic freedoms?  But now, freedoms billowing into complex systems way over-the-heads for many? What do people do when nation-wide choas strikes? They always re-think the relationship between their govenrment and its people.

(Click to enlarge)

In this era of the Great Depression, we see people everywhere getting comfortable with government's new mammoth role for the modern era.  Individual citizens quietly add the government to their corporate/industrial support system, while still accompanied to a certain extent by family and community.

How does government dependency factor into postmodern thought? Simply that, individuals and families are now facilitated to be less personal and local responsibility, by leaning deeper into outside and impersonal forces of the federal government for care. Although this time period finds most folks still practicing tremendous virtues of interpersonal responsibility (rallying to one another's needs), the accountability escape hatch was widening with each decade, revealing a hologram of a social entitlement society on the other side. (Following WWII, some politicians, itchy to cast the lure, would morph this new terminology for "big government" into the term "entitlement."). Roosevelt's New Deal summonsed a dramatic controversial shift in dependency, as compared to the interdependent family described at the beginning.

 

While the Builder Generation was A) Fighting for necessities in the depression, B)Fighting totalitarian advances toward the U.S. and Europe in WWII, and C) Fighting to save the world from communism during the cold war, (Yes, they had their hands full, and we owe them a HEAP of gratitude!), the reclusive New Thought philosophers were incubating their agendas, burrowing themselves in a comfortable modernism oustide the chaos.

As people began allowing technology, government, and corporate caretakers to assume our personal matters New Thought pioneers languished in private social sanctuaries, beneath a modern age cocoon, sequestered from the growing world tensions of the 1930's and 1940's. Where once small town folks of wide eclectic backgrounds relied on each other for support and interaction, urbanites' now relied on impersonal agencies, allowing them to annonymously live their lives, without the rich broad sampling of community interaction found in smaller communities.

So why would anyone want to eliminate a broad cross-culture for social stimulus? Many urbanite followers of New Thought enjoyed conveniently select relationships "buffet style", simply based on the sheer numbers of their city's population, presenting a higher ratio of like-minded thinkers. The modern age offered New Thought urbanites this luxury of social sequestration with little accountability to rest of the city population. These tailor-made communities were a broad departure from the interdependent community in the late 1800's. (The urban social sequestration began the hallmark social delusions embodying later Postmodern subcultures.) Social sequestration began seeping into the myriad of hues and lines across all New Thought expressions, reflecting a less multi-dimensional reality.

This simplistic dimensional outlook was mirrored by New Thought artists as some began experimenting with abstract, somewhat cartoonesque art.  It looked "day-to-day." Not too provocative; somewhat whimsical; In some works, edging toward satirical;  It evoked...fun.

Copeland Charles Burg (American, 1895-1961),
“Rhubarb and Two Oysters”, c.1942

Furthering the escapist folly of New Thought's suspension of reality, writers began to emerge such as Ayn Rand (1905-1982), heralding such book titles as: "The Fountainhead"(1943). Rand and her contemporaries marveled at man's ability to create a modernistic society. The book's title refers to Rand's statement that "man's ego is the fountainhead of human progress." Ironically, her philosophy is published right when the egos of fascist leaders led six million Jews to death, and engaging a wars against the world for totalitarian gain.

The book casts the main protagonist, who is Rand's idea of the ultimate man, living for himself and his own creativity, indifferent to the opinions of others. The Fountainhead, was originally turned down by six publishers. By the time it gained publication, the book eventually sold several hundred thousand copies, and is still in print to date. The book became a Hollywood movie with Gary Cooper, laid the foundation for Rand's man-centered religion, ironically entitled: Objectivism. Objectivism's appeal enticed the fundamental nature of man striving to be a god. She borrowed several ideas from science, psychology, and sociology to justify her position:

"My philosophy, in essence is the concept of man, as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute." --from the book "Atlas Shrugged" -- by Ayn Rand

The descent from altruistism dropped further in other circles during this period.

Psychologist B. F. Skinner's (1904-1990) behaviorism theories, derived from animal experiments, were projected toward the motivation of humankind. The behaviorist message: that humans were solely a product of their environment's stimuli and response processes. Behaviorists' denial of human purpose, goals, curiosity, and morality further fueled the denial of individual purpose. Behaviorists actively propagated what they believed as the ultimate engineering for humanity: a programmed utopian society.

English writer C. S. Lewis (1898-1963), inspired by the world at war, argues against New Thought ideas emerging from underground. Lewis critiques New Thought concepts, as an ancient repackaging of man attempting to be a god, for the modern era.

C. S. Lewis

Lewis attempts to correct the inward social spiraling using rationale in several of his fiction and non-fiction books.  His main treatise:  that morality is not relative, rather a common morality is inate in each of us. However, New Thought thinkers rejected Lewis' works. Particularly on Lewis' points of personal accountability, New Thought thinkers were too fascinated by the ever changing colors under their feet.

So ignorant to the world at war around them, this small band of New Thought thinkers embarked on an audacious social expression, something that would later characterize the cynical nature of this movement: They practiced a bold indifference to personal accountability, to thwart any threat of outside manipulation distracting them from their goals. Part of the New Thought "fragmented" outlook encompasses a curious "in the moment" tunnel vision, blinding the New Thought thinker to present and historical sacrifices, which would normally be reciprocated with gratitude and compassion.

Up to this time in history, the virtue of sacrificing oneself to help another brought with it honor, respect, and a virtue worth regeneration from one generation to the next. However, underground philosophical views were beginning to surface during the heavily united World War II effort, where the attitude of altruistic respect for sacrifice began to drift toward a self edifying posture of entitlement. Some point to parts of Western Europe, where the seeds of this particular Post modern attitude began: "If it is someone else's job to do the dirty work for me, and they want to do it, what does that have to do with me?" This anti-logic was due in part to the fragmentation (or compartmentalization) of societial issues on virtually every level, a pattern that was rapidly encroaching on people everywhere in the modern world.

PART IV -- THE POSTMODERN REVOLUTION

1948-1973:
1) Sudden prosperity brings hollow purpose to children with unavailable parents.
2) "Mediaemotion"/convenience driven society allows virutous principles to be usurped from the classrooms.
3) Propagation of "moral relativity" begins to spread widely.

Not only did New Thought thinking survive the internationally united WWII effort, once the war ended, the stage was set.  New Thought thinking exploded into our society as Postmodernism. Sociologists point to the ending of World War II when The Modern Era began a full retreat, replaced with The Postmodern Era. During the 1950's the average citizen was weary of fighting, a depression and a world war. In 1948, United States movie goers witnessed on the "News Reels" -- the most vivid results of a cooperative scientific/military effort from our establishment: the creation and detonation of two Atomic Bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki Japan. America had been fighting and clawing for several decades to survive and suddenly -- victory in 1948.

Virtually over-night, financial prosperity was back. Jobs were plentiful, and consumer spending was up, as the aerospace industry boomed. The work force was helping to fight a new kind of war, the "cold-war". The cold-war starred the super-power nations divided into primarily two camps with Democratic / Capitalistic nations on one side, and Socialistic/Communist nations on the other. The battleground, (with the exception of Korea and later Vietnam), was held on the frontier of ideas, propaganda, and the stockpile of threatening military might between super-powers. We were on top of this new world game, and we could now play it from the comfort of our offices and homes, for a while...

"I've got the world on a string ...
sittin' on a rainbow....
got the string around my finger...
what a world, what a life,
I'm in love!"

(Lyric from: "I've Got the World On A String"
Sung by -Frank Sinatra Recorded At Capitol Records 4/3/1953)

By the 1950's people were ready to stay home, exhale, and attempt a carefree life distant from the strife of war and financial depression. This attitude showed in the themes of the then --new larger than life "media-emotion".

Because of technological advances, media such as stereophonic music, contemporary novels, multiple television channels and shows, cinemascopic movies of many genres, and magazines on countless topics, -- all such media became quite diverse, more available, packaged according to the ever widening tastes of all socioeconomic lines. People at this time regular folks began creating their own reality, vicariously living through their customized world of favorite media, and often at the touch of a button,(later -- through the home computer). A wide pool of tremendous talent such as, Frank Sinatra, Truman Capote, and Lucille Ball, provided each sector of society their own "escape de jour". The blithe domestic attitude was glorified in such television shows as I Love Lucy and The Honeymooners. These were the dynamics of many 1950's homes.

Because of postmodern media's own over saturated cliches´, media parody, (a postmodern staple), became in vogue. Commercial art took on the Postmodern staple of iconic figures, with a blend of abstract and cartoon simplicity -- all feeding into the "feel good for the moment" mantra the western world was gobbling up.

"Unnamed"
By Andy Warhol
(Commenting on the repeated,
random, and empty signals
bombarding the public)

For the then, two to three generations of growing underground leaders of Postmodern thought, it was becoming increasingly difficult to tolerate issues that required a larger perspective beyond their fragmented micro cultures. Subjects such as God, sacrifice, evil in humanity, and war, did not have a place for the postmodern ideals. So, as the malaise of consumer consumption soared, these leaders used the nation's prosperous distractions as their chance to advance publicly. Between 1948 through the present, postmoderns began propagating on a national level their new philosophy. Postmoderns chose the United States Courts as their mouth piece.

Advancing the practice of a fragmented reality, attorneys lifted a concept penned: "separation of church and state" from a