Just had a brief dinner with Nicola (bisexual pseudo-neo-conservative) and Noah (gay pseudo-neo-conservative). I had been looking for the Tories, having just read Burke, but they had broken tradition to move to another dining hall. How absurd. Nonetheless, I seated myself and my sticky rice ("Ingredients: sticky rice, water) at the table and engaged in a conversation about meaning. Duh.
Nicola is apparently trying to rediscover or manufacture meaning in life, an endeavor which she calls "post-postmodernism." I immediately launched into my usual schtick of how there is no meaning, and how everything is already manufactured, so what's the point.
"But what will you teach your children?"
How to cheat at cards.
The conversation itself was nothing particularly novel (sorry, Nikki), but it got me thinking about what this whole modernism/postmodernism/post-structuralism/post-postmodernism/antidisestablishmentarianism thing is, anyway. Does it really matter? There either is meaning, or there isn't, and the terms seem to only be useful to the extent that it allows us to categorize eras of thought, which are unlikely to be unified in the first place. If somebody calls themselves a postmodernist, does that tell us anything about them? Is it fair to believe them? Why did they get the chance to say that, instead of talking about something else, like bunnies?
I honestly don't know. I've always tuned out when people use words any more technical than "epistemological," which I only Wikipedia'd last month. If you can talk about philosophy and meaning without sounding like a douchebag, shouldn't you do it? Or is the pretension part of the fun.
The weather, by the way, is pretty nice. Andrew E. was sitting outside in a t-shirt this afternoon. Such is post-postwinter in New England.
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2 comments:
Cheers. Anybody who can't talk philosophy using only words of 3 or fewer syllables is doing something wrong.
As far as I'm aware, there are exactly two (2) legitimate uses of the word "Post-postmodern":
1) When trying to do a little intellectual historiography or map out trends, it's nice to have category words with which to describe common assumptions and influences. On the other hand, none of the isms you mentioned are complete ideologies, so anybody who introduces him or herself by saying "I'm a post-structuralist" or the like is an idiot or a poser.
2) Self-deprecating irony.
So yeah, I agree with the general sentiment of your post. Welcome to the interweb.
As you're someone who believes that nothing matters, of course you won't think this sort of talk matters. If you do want to say it super-duper-doesn't-matter whereas everything else only kind-of-doesn't-matter it seems like you've got to draw a contrast between this and something you think does.
snark, snark, snark
ANYWAY, sure, it's always better to be less pretentious if possible. I can't tell if your beef is with the philosophy or with the terms.
If it's with the terms, I would say sometimes you've just got to put things in shorthand because otherwise sentences get several pages long. It's a lot easier for me to say "from an existentialist perspective..." than "considering the fact that I believe x y z, etc. etc." even if I lose a little precision along the way.
In terms of this whole philosophical thing - I think about it like I think about anything else fun I do at college. I don't know if it matters -- but since I'm not sure anything really matters in any cosmic sense I conclude that nothing is everything.
Where the pretension begins to bother me is when it implies that these things are special and as though meta-consideration of our lives is some unique and privileged project. There is something to be said for living the examined life, but I'm not sure there's such a difference between that and being a great brick-layer if that's what floats your boat.
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