Comment by pnexk | Hacker News Reader

Comment by pnexk | Hacker News Reader

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First off, I think you're a bit convoluted with your timeline with modernism and postmodern. Most of what you seem to criticize seem to be related to postmodern sensibilities, rather than modernist one. Modernism attempted to make new, but with a belief in progress and a utopian/ideal vision. Postmodernism in contrast often would have been interested in breaking down long held assumptions, and an inert opposition to grand narratives and a promotion of complex meanings. [1]

Second, looking through the binary lens of 'creation' or 'destruction' is reductive. Plenty of anthropological, sociological and historical evidence seem to suggest that as a species we are capable of being organized in many different arrangements. I acknowledge that marriage 'feels' like a more straightforward institution to enforce with clear benefits to individuals, but I would suggest that you strongly consider that it too has sharp limitations, including aspects of oppression or suppression (e.g. for the more naturally promiscuous) historically.

In general while the assertions and influence of the postmodern project are a mixed bag. They've led to overt widespread cynicism and loss of meaning for many in our time, but they've also brought with them an invaluable tearing down of assumptions that would otherwise be treated as unquestioned narratives of reality. [2] I would hope that awareness of such realities won't lead us down disarray but to an embrace of the fact that there is great diversity in the way we live, and that fixed constructs such as marriage might no longer be capable of solely accommodating that, but might instead co-exist among other arrangements and notions that can.

Thirdly, I would suggest looking into 'metamodernism' which we seem to be slowly beginning to enter. One description you might consistently hear of it is that it's described as if it's an "oscillation" between aspects of modernism and postmodernism. - In other words, an answer to postmodernism's shortcomings and negative effects, while still not abandoning its realizations. [3] [4]

[1] https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/p/postmodernism [2] https://qz.com/1388555/everyone-hates-postmodernism-but-that... [3] https://thesideview.co/journal/what-is-metamodernism-and-why... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metamodernism

> Postmodernism in contrast often would have been interested in breaking down long held assumptions, and an inert opposition to grand narratives

I don't understand why postmodernism is described like this, when the typical presentation of postmodern ideas (even, and perhaps especially, in the primary sources) is literally phrased as a grand narrative, albeit one that points towards a forcefully stated skeptical outlook where even "complex meanings" are ultimately unknowable. Isn't the whole thing a little self-defeating at that point? There are more and less meaningful ways of "tearing down assumptions", and the postmodern approach just tends to come with a lot of theoretical baggage (much of it essentially tacked on from modernism itself) that ultimately weighs it down.

I'm not sure if metamodernism fixes this issue, but your description of it suggests it does not. Philosophical pragmatism ultimately seems to do a better job of shedding the "grand narrative" tendency, and that tradition is largely independent from postmodernism.

> literally phrased as a grand narrative

Can you point me to one serious postmodern theorist that holds this view? There are many different views of the postmodern, but rejection of meta-narratives (academic speak for "grand narrative" here) is pretty much universally accepted.

I would look at the methods of Jean Baudrillard, particularly his book Simulacra and Simulation which is a collection of parables each of which could be the plot of a movie starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and each of which attacks the reality principle in one way or another.

These are all small micro-master narratives which each have a totalizing perspective and collectively reduce the ‘truth’ to the ‘truth that is out there’ in the intro sequence to the X Files.

Furthermore I would point to his book On Seduction which is is even more accelerationist than Simulacra in that he tells you exactly how to tear the roof down.

It's a pretty standard criticism of Lyotard, with whom that description of post-modernism is perhaps most widely associated. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy - which is a quite well-regarded source - has a very readable account of Lyotard's intellectual background https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/lyotard/#InteBack which relates quite plainly that he was far from intellectually consistent in his rejection of metanarratives (or "narratives about narratives"). Rather, a number of contingent political shifts in his outlook on the French society of his time seem to have played a larger role in how he chose to frame his arguments.

Given how closely this description of post-modernism is associated with Lyotard, one can only surmise that other post-modern authors were, if anything, even less consistent with it.

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