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Navigating Paradoxes of Postmodern Worldviews: Exploring Tensions Between Ideas, History, and Truth

Writer's picture: Luke GirkeLuke Girke

The strange thing about adopting an overly "postmodernist" worldview or a worldview that views competing ideas as equally valid or capable of adjudication, is that this default baseline is often seized by the individuals unwilling to entertain the ideas that would likely trump theirs - historically, empirically, culturally, ethically, morally, as indicated by preference - or merely on a pure 'numbers game' - as those who clutch to mathematical or scientific certainty - or even probability - would likely prioritise. Karl Popper's Paradox of Tolerance would explain this in a political science sense. Nevertheless, if everything is merely theoretical - why do some theories precede others? It would be willful ignorance to say that they do because of efficacy.


If it was indeed a competition of ideas, the ideas that have subsisted over generations would win out - reflecting some pseudo-hierarchical-structure - rather than appeasing the sensitivities of those who think that a reinvention of reality's conception is on par with their creative endeavours - as if to say that the fabric of reality can take shape like a nudist painting at a cheese and wine night - that their abstraction of what was and what is, is a matter of dabbing the paintbrush on the pre-existent molecules of carbon - reinventing the brush, canvas, and paint forever.


Astrophysics dictates that there is a progressive or continual expansion of the universe - and, too - there is an expansion of culture from emanation to present. Of course, psychologically, one can pretend that what has unfolded has not unfolded and seek to manipulate this through words or inoculating doses of cognitive dissonance - but this does nothing to render the chain of events leading up to the present as any less real than they were when they occurred. Event A + Event B results in Outcome C - yet Event A remains unchanged irrespective of retrospective, lofty manipulations of the process.


There is an inherent logical contradiction here: those seeking to erase the past often want to bring it forth for their means. Can you have it both ways? I highly doubt it. Two separate events exist in equally established circumstances from the exact temporal location. One bears weight, and the other does not - on what basis? Subjectivity? Preference? Individual perceptions of significance? They say the victors write history - but what about if it was written by the persecuted? The oppressed? The unlikely to triumph?


Of course - there is a minion at work in my mind any time I make an admission within one cylindrical line of reasoning - the counterargument comes back to play - is that the literary form of the Devil?


HG Wells said: "I am an historian, I am not a believer, but I must confess as a historian that this penniless preacher from Nazareth is irrevocably the very centre of history. Jesus Christ is easily the most dominant figure in all history."


Given this admission - I think there is a persuasive case that one has a moral obligation to investigate why.


Should they take this challenge? What is one likely to find?


Should they find nothing, one may continue on their merry way and never return to the matter again - confirming once and finally - with the highest degree of certainty that what they have investigated is a thorough and expansive investigation of nothing more than mere myth.


In a recent conversation with a dear friend, I made the elitist and snarky confession that "most thought experiments do not last longer than twenty-odd seconds." However, should they last a lifetime - what could arise?


In writing, in the English language, in literature, there is this notion of the "present continuous". I believe this to be the closest identifiable concept to the eternal.


Words. Information. Code.


They transcribe. They dictate. They inform. They take effect.


What could be more real than that?


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