Before we consider "Postmodernism", we need to look at that which it replaced - modernism.

Modernism really began in the sixteenth century (not so 'modern'!) and became the philosophical foundation of all science and society. It particularly stressed the assumption that there is an objective reality independent of what anyone thinks, and so there is a single true way that things are; the truth. On top of this is the modernist assurance that we are able, to some extent, to know this truth. Postmodernism denies these assumptions.

So if we now deny this 'single objective truth', what does it mean?

Well, the old saying, "beauty is in the eye of the beholder", is a concept we understand. Some people may think this web site is wonderful (we do of course), but someone else may think it is rubbish. One person may love a particular painting, another loath it. So we are comfortable that beauty (aesthetics) is a subjective notion, and that different people will have different views; there is no absolute.

What has happened now, is that this thinking has been applied to such issues as truth and morality. As with beauty, so with truth and morality. No-one has the absolute truth. No-one can say that there is an absolute morality. There is no 'right' and 'wrong', only shades of gray.

Of course, this ideology can be applied to anything, for instance, religion. Where it used to be accepted, even by some who would not call themselves card-carrying believers, that there is an absolute truth about God, postmodernism says, "No, there is no one single truth about God or the divine, but many different perspectives, and no-one can say that they have the exclusive truth. There is no single true way that things are in the area of religion".

Apply postmodernism to science and we have the view that there is no one way of looking at the natural world. There are many different theories; no-one has a right to say that one is the single true way that things are, no single true account of the world.

Apply postmodernism to any area of life and whereas there were certain absolutes by which we worked, now there are none. The result is that history becomes a matter of different views, not facts; literature has no single meaning, just different perspectives. The same can be applied to economics, politics etc.

Postmodernism can, and is increasingly, being applied to every area of life and says, "there are no longer any absolutes about anything in any area of life; no one way that anything is, and no-one has the right to say that there is any single absolute truth". As Humpty-Dumpty said in "Through the looking Glass", "When I use a word .. it means just what I choose it to mean - nothing more nor less", and we all know what happened to him!

Therefore, as there is now now absolute truth, that truth is relative, it is now impossible to lie.

Psychologist Robert Jay Lifton, has said that President Clinton, is the World's first postmodern president. This may be an exageration, but serves as an apt illustration.

Not being tied to any absolute standard of truth (an affliction of many politicians world-wide) President Clinton, during the recent Monica Lewinsky scandal, continually adapted his version of the truth to fend of the clear proven facts. He was totally flexible in his application of 'his' truth, adapting his behaviour, demeanor, behaviour, and personality for his own ends.

While this is not unusual in poiticians and others, what was striking and should send a warning shot across the bows of every right thinking person (except that postmodernism says there are none!) is that this behaviour was accepted by the population, senate, congress and the media. The result was that, 'he got away with it'. He wasn't the first 'teflon president' nor will he be the last, but his presidency marked a key-change in the way we all react to, 'truth'.

What, therefore, are the implications of such an ideology? Taken to its logical conclusion, all laws cease to be effective; there is no 'right' or 'wrong'. No-one can say what is true, and there can be no lies; one persons version of events is as valid as another's. It is no longer acceptable to say that there is any one religious truth; this has already led to multi-faith services in Christian cathedrals. This intellectual - or more accurately, psuedo-intellectual - ideology is nothing more that the application, through reason, of anarchy.

The Bible has a term for it; "Everyone did what was right in their own eyes".

Postmodern thought and process is possibly the most destructive ideolgy to have emerged in the last century. As we move futher in to the 21st Century it stands as the greatest obstacle in the path of progress that we have ever seen; the greatest threat to the moral, emotional and spiritual well-being of people everyone

The Curious? Website makes a stand here on this issue. We have no fear in saying that there are absolutes of morality and behaviour and truth and all the other things that give context, structure, framework and meaning to human existence.

There is an absolute for our morality. It IS wrong to kill, murder, steal, lie, commit adultery, abuse other people, worship at the altar of paganism, put material gain above human need, suppress the freedom of others, and a hundred other things.

There are absolutes in every area of life and if we abandon them we shall simple be cutting ourselves adrift on an ocean of torment, confusion and illusion. Our fate shall be to be wrecked on the million hidden rocks that await us, and to be cast up on some lone desolate shore, bereft of everything that makes us human.

There is truth, after all

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