Out of Postmodernism
Why should we put down the glasses of postmodernism and what is “the next big thing”?
Hush! What’s that noise?! There’s the real force field out there.
“Bzzzzzzzzzzzz!” — that must be dreadful missiles bombarding the defenses.
“Too-Doon!” — and that would be something really fundamental collapsing.
Have you got a clue on what’s all the fizz about? It is the War of Ideas over becoming The Twenty-First Century’s New Cultural Paradigm. Haven’t you heard? The post-modernism is in its grave. And honestly, may it rest in peace with all the “conformism”, “second-handedness as a position”, “commercial success” and “anything can be called “art” dogma and above all — its bloody irony and its sarcasm.
Many people despise modern art, find it shocking and repulsive or senseless and foolish and vacant while it is no more than a reflection of ourselves. The art is a quintessence of the culture. And let me develop on this assessment for it is quintessentially important. One of the key ideas of postmodernism is that anything can be called art. That is how those piles of garbage and low-skilled artifacts ever made it to art galleries. Another feature of postmodern art is a commercial success, in other words — if it sells, it is art. Gradually artists discovered that it is shock and fear and disgust that makes media most eager to write about their exhibitions, blowing out the publicity bubble for them. So we ended up having Damien Hirst as the best selling contemporary artist.
But what happens in galleries doesn’t stay in galleries. Ideas expressed in art float in the very air of modern cities. We inhale them and become infected even if we do not frequent to the art-halls. But let me make it perfectly clear: it is not the art to blame for our shallowness and obsession with money. The position of postmodernism is to reflect what it is in the society, exaggerate the key features, wrap them into an artistic or pseudo-artistic package and throw them back into our faces.
And what was postmodernism reflecting on the first hand we might ask? Surprisingly enough it was money. The post-war economic boom fueled by cheap energy resources such as oil and natural gas made us arrogant, self-centered and career-focused. We are destroying the environment at the highest speed made possible by modern technologies. We are unlearning to maintain relationships with divorce rates of above 50% in affluent societies. We are consuming things in the amounts like there is no tomorrow, throwing leftovers away so now there is a garbage island in Pacific Ocean way bigger than Ukraine. And at the end of the day, we are looking back at ourselves with an ironic smile giggling over South Park jokes. Funny enough but the irony is all about postmodernism mindset. It helps us to combat those rare and fair callings of common sense signaling that this party of abundance cannot go on forever. We are like kids in the yard yelling: “No mum! I don’t wanna go home! I wanna play more!”
But you cannot build a thing out of denial. Indifference is infertile. Sarcasm might make you look smart for quite a while but it is counterproductive by its very nature. With all those challenges to face we just cannot afford the luxury of being ironic any more.
We need a shift, a new mindset that will help our civilization to sustain the post-oil era — the times when monstrous cars with engines of 5 liters and more become unaffordable when cheap flights become a legend and an ordinary plastic bottle becomes too expensive to be thrown away.
Those few contemporary philosophers that survived over the sarcasm and denial of postmodernism are now discussing what ideas might reshape our way of thinking. And they agree that we need something much more inspiring, something like modern enthusiasm. And they call it metamodernism. This concept is all brand new and shiny. This prefix “meta” means oscillation, the constant movement in-between the ideas — between naivety and the latest knowledge, between idealism and pragmatism, between romanticism and post-modernism.
And you know what? I am looking forward to see this new world — our eco-friendly technologies, new urban areas and works of art that are undeniably beautiful. I’m well aware that I now sound naïve — I sound metamodern.
