Anti-foundationalism
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John Stonestreet:
This is a very awkward time to be human, because it’s a very awkward time to try to figure out who you are. Can you think of any kind of cultural expressions right now, in which our culture is expressing this kind of struggle to go in and out of identity and trying to find who they are and identity becomes this kind of fluid dynamic ever-changing always chosen and chosen and re-chosen sort of idea? Can you think of anything like that? Yeah.
Transgender.
The transgender thing is clearly an example of this. We talked a little bit about this the other day. Yeah. What is identity, right? You can actually deny biology, right? It’s irrelevant. What sort of plumbing you have, and you can just kind of become the gender that you want. So this is an interesting thing. What else?
Facebook.
Facebook. You know, this is actually important. You’re the generation that can have 500 friends and be a terrible friend. You see what I mean? So now this is what we talked about yesterday was Sherry Turkle, right? She’s talking about this whole sense of what does it mean to be human? What does it mean to be one of us? Yeah, so those are two anybody else? Yeah.
I think you’ve got a really good point there. I think a lot of times it’s because it gives them a sense of belonging, right? It gives them a sense of, they don’t have a story that can actually embrace a group of people and it gives them some sense of stability in this. I think that’s actually a really good point. So identity becomes this really unfixed thing. Okay. Let me give you one more. And that is of course, Eminem, the rapper, (laughing) the artist. So Eminem, has a really interesting line. He really characterizes this, by the way, how would you feel if I smack you upside the head and the headache went away, but you couldn’t remember who you are. How would that make you feel? Tell me about your feelings. You wouldn’t what? You wouldn’t like it. You wouldn’t like me very much. You wouldn’t remember that I hit you (laughing). So, then think about that one did you? (laughing)
Never, never messed with a Christian school kid graduate. It’s true, isn’t it? We’re slimy. We’re completely hypocritical. Okay. We can get out of rules. Isn’t that true? Who are Christian school kids? Aren’t we good at getting around the rules? You know what I’m talking about? Yeah. So I’ve already, I’m way ahead of you on this plan. How would you feel? Let’s go back to that. The word here, is typifies essentially 1990s, grunge music, Kurt Cobain. Some of you are like, I’ve heard of him. He’s in the Smithsonian.
Yeah. What typify, what adjective typifies that? It actually carries on, in a different form, but it was really kind of present in Kurt Cobain’s music. What?
Speak up. Misunderstood. He felt misunderstood all the time. Yeah. There’s an “A” word for it. What is it? Angst. There you go, A-N-G-S-T just this kind of sense of frustration, loss of identity and that sort of stuff. I think you saw in a lot of Eminem’s early music. Then he had a kid and he settled down, but he said something really interesting about identity too in one of his early songs. He said, “I am, whatever you say that I am.” It wasn’t “I am, whatever I want to be”, or “I am tougher than you” or “I am better than you.” It was. “I am, whoever you say that I am.” Last, really old, outdated pop culture reference, because this is where post-modernism lands is in the nineties and now it’s transitioned, but you get the the point here. We’re dealing with the residue of that. Is this movie, the Matrix, what was the worldview of the matrix? Yeah.
Nothing is real? Yeah, but so what worldview would that identify with? If reality, physical reality is an illusion, you got the Buddhist kid who bends the spoon, right? So we’re talking about east, kind of an Eastern religion, right. But what created the illusion of physical reality, in the Matrix?
Well, yeah. It was really intelligent robots out of control and that’s like secularism on steroids or something, right? And then you had Neo, what’s that word mean? New. And he’s hanging out with Trinity and he’s on his way to Zion. What’s that sound like? Christianity. So when someone says, what worldview is the matrix? The correct answer is yes, it was all of them.
So this is the next one. And this is really important that you get this, just write this one down. Some of you are going to have an aneurysm when you hear this, but write it down anyway. Ready? No worldview is true. So all worldviews are valid. No worldview is true. So all worldviews are valid. Now, some of you are thinking, what? “How can a worldview be valid if it’s not first”, what? “True”. And the idea in postmodernism is that everyone’s trapped in their own worldviews. So the emphasis on worldview in a postmodern context, it’s not on the world, it’s on the view. And it’s legitimate just because someone believes it.
Now we have like little goofy ways of saying the same sort of thing in our culture, when we trying to be nice to everybody. It’s like this, every opinion counts. You ever heard that? Is that true? No. Some opinions are stupid. Some opinions should not count. Right? Some opinions are dangerous. How many guys here from Texas? Yeah. There you go. Some opinions deserve to be smacked in Texas. Know what I’m talking about? Yeah. See, they’re violent. They’re like that.
All right. Let me give you one more example of this cultural mood of postmodernism. We’ll go to architecture. Anybody here want to be an architect? Any architects? Yeah, maybe? You want to build? You too? So you’re serious about it? Because the guy behind you is doing this. I don’t know what that means. Does that mean like, you might want to be an architect? Yeah. I hope you get a little bit more serious about buildings before you do that. “Maybe I’ll build a building. Maybe I won’t.” We’ll let it go.
Anybody seen this building before? Anybody here from Ohio? Yeah? This is on the campus of Ohio State. You know what it is? It’s your school. Is that where you go? Nice. What year are you, Yeah, it’s a cool building. Isn’t it really is kind of cool to watch. Right? It’s called the Wexner Center for the Performing Arts. The architect said, “it’s a building, waiting to be a building”. What does that mean? Do you know? Did they give you guys a tour of this or do you get to go, no? Do you have any classes in it? So you try to stay away from this kind of crazy postmodern stuff. Postmodernism doesn’t work well in nursing, does it? Not at all. (laughing) “What does health mean to you?” (laughing) That sort of contradiction actually is illustrated in this building. It’s an interesting building.
You can see from the outside, it’s got this kind of juxtaposition of all these different kinds of shapes and forms and that sort of stuff. And then you’ve got this, that’s kind of set outside. What is it? Any idea what you think this might, should supposed to kind of look like? Scaffolding. Yeah. When you see a scaffolding outside of a building, what does that mean about the building? Yeah. So this is the building waiting to be a building. It’s a building waiting to be constructed, and who constructs the building?
Everyone that, yeah, the viewer, everyone that walks in it. Right. So you see all kinds of things here. You have shapes that aren’t holistic, an arc that doesn’t go all the way over. You can’t really see it, but over on this kind of far side of the building, there’s this whole landscape there, at least there was when I visited. I don’t know if it’s still there or not, but there’s a whole landscaped area that just has broken glass everywhere. And there’s a sign that says, “don’t walk on the glass”. Actually, there’s not, but there should be, because somebody could really get hurt. What’s the idea of just broken glass instead of beautiful flowers and landscaping? What’s the idea? Life is what? Broken. Life is fragmented. Life is not whole, right? When you look outside the building, you can see some references to history.
First of all, the building was built on a, I think a site or at least nearby a site where there was a factory. So here you have a picture of a factory kind of smoke stack, a sign of the industrial revolution. Industrial revolution was supposed to be a time of great progress and advancement. What do you think the architect is trying to say about that particular time period in history? Yeah, it wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. What about this? What do you think this is a reference to? Yeah. Which era is this? Kind of medieval, a time of chivalry, of glory, of honor. What do you think they’re saying about that? Yeah.
So here’s another one. CS Lewis coined this phrase called Chronological Snobbery. Not a great phrase, chronological, snobbery. What did he mean by that? What he meant by that, he was living in an era where everything newer was necessarily what? Better. Postmoderns have a different form of chronological snobbery. It’s not everything. Newer is better. It’s everything older was necessarily, what? Worse. Everything older was oppressive. Everything older was chauvinist. Everything older was homophobic, everything older was this. So a lot of times, for example, this has really impacted history curriculum. We’re looking at old dead guys, not for what they brought to the world, but what they kind of did to ruin the world. All right. And then when you go in the building, it gets even more interesting. You see here, this is a column that doesn’t go all the way to the floor. This is a cross beam that doesn’t go all the way to the wall. Why are columns so important?
Yeah, they support things. What do you think it’s saying here? No foundation for, any guesses? In fact, here’s the word, I’ll give you the next one. I’m out of room, but here’s the word, the next characteristic of a postmodern. And this is an idea given to us again by Richard Rorty, it’s called, ready, anti-foundationalism. Anti-foundationalism. That’s one way, a philosophical way of talking about postmodern concepts. The idea of anti-foundationalism is that there’s no legitimate foundations for knowledge. Descartes said, “I think therefore,” what? “I am”. That was a foundation for knowledge. He was trying to give to the world. In John chapter one we hear “in the beginning was the” what? Word. That’s actually a foundation of knowledge, that idea of the logos. And we’ll maybe if we have time, we’ll talk about that a little bit later.
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