Eli5: What is modernism and post-modernism?
In: 81
Imagine you’re sitting in a car. There’s a fly buzzing in the car. How fast is that fly moving?
Well, to your senses, he’s only going a very slow speed. You could flick your hand and be faster than him. Surely he’s going slow, right?
Well, modernism argues “Not exactly. He’s in a car going 60 mph, so he’s actually going super fast! There are all these things about the movement that you can’t immediately sense, but if you study them (i.e. look out the window), you will find them.”
Postmodernism says “Well, in that case, it’s not just the speed of the car. Really, the earth is rotating at some absurdly fast speed. And that earth is also orbiting the sun, moving at some absurdly fast speed. And that solar system is on the spoke of a galaxy, rotating around some center. Everything is relative!
…But hear me out. The Universe is also constantly expanding. There is, truly, no ‘boundary’. Really, truly, there is no actual speed of ‘zero,’ all things are just moving relative to each other.’ There is, really, no objective measure of speed.”
And so, postmodernism, argues, is that the case for truth. If you keep looking to find ‘truth,’ you’ll keep needing to define larger and larger contexts, until one day you realize, it’s all just context. There is no ultimate truth.
At least, that’s how I understand it. You all have such a different way of explaining it that I’m thinking this might not be the accurate way of seeing it.
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