From: rcheek@access.digex.com (Richard Cheek)
Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian
Subject: POST-MODERN PARADIGM
Date: 13 Dec 92 04:59:03 GMT
Organization: Express Access Online Communications, Greenbelt, MD USA


		THE COMING NEW POST-MODERN PARADIGM

	With all due respect to the experts in various fields on whose
toes I may be about to step with this rather long article, I put this
forward in a spirit of congenial curiosity, and not malice or egotistic
presumption. I hope merely that some may find this an interesting thread
for discussion.
	There is coming a new world view that is going to fill the gaps
and open seams exposed in the curent modern view of things. These world views
Thomas Khuns (sp?) labeled paradigms, and though I can't remember the
exact spelling of his name, I found the ideas very interesting. The assump-
tions of our current paradigm of modernism are well worn and due for
replacement. That this process will be accelerated by the speed and avai-
lability of improving information systems is apparent, and we will see more
organised pushes for change in the modern paradigm untill the pushers simply
chuck the whole thing and start with a fresh analysis of the facts to date.
	To explain what I'm speaking of, I must review the previous paradigm
of the Mideaval world and how the modern paradigm contrasts with it. There
were, of course, many varied cultures of the Mideaval world, as there are
today; I wish to describe the basic ideas of Europe as they generally were
prevelant and my understanding of them, since the present paradigm began there.
	To understand a way of thinking one should look at that cultures view
of the ideal, and to the Mideaval mind the ideal of a subject seemed to be a
reflection of the contrast between heaven and Earth. The Mideaval person saw
things die on Earth and decay into the soil, but the heavens were the same year
after year. The Earth was not immovable, it sometimes shook, but the heavens
were never affected by random events. The rolling hills and sharp mountains
were not the Euclidean geometric perfection that was eximplified by the spheres
of not only heaven itself but the orbits of the stars and sun as well. The ideal
of a thing was thus reflective of the qualities of heaven, immutable, constant,
and regular in their rythyms and geometric shape. Man, being of the Earth, was
also corupt, mortal and flawed, but his creator had imbued him with the 
potential of the heavenly and man was therefore expected to strive mightily to
partake of heavens perfection.
	This is reflected in many aspects of the mideavals life. The government
was not a mere contrivance of humanity, but apointed by God and led by Him in
a mysterious way. To question authority and suggest change, was to kick at the
foundations of society itself, for man was expected to be humble and try to
understand his world, not change it, and to follow authority not question it.
Religion, as well, was seen as immutable, eternal and distant. Man was to meekly
seek God's aproval through the church and do penance for his sin. Scholarly
authority was first grounded in the revelation of the magisterium, and then
perhaps illumined further by the wisdom of the ancients, but was required to be
of the necessary pedigree, tracing backward in time, and upward in the hierarchy
of knowledge represented by the institutions of learning and the church. By
these men the Universe was understood to be, like its Creator, orderly,immut-
able, and intuitively understandable as natural law.
	By the nineteenth century various different schools of thought arose
that questioned many of these tenants and finally came to forms that were mutu-
ally supportive in a new system of viewing the universe. Kant had derived a new
analysis of the universe that saw God and heaven as entirely 'otherly' and not
of the same perceptable world we live in. Thus, since God is unknowable in an
objective way, He is, therefore, only understandable in a subjective sense,
and each person becomes his own arbiter of the True. Voltaire suggested that
the Ancients were out of date, and the world of his day could only be held
back by an undue regard for them. Reason was enthroned as the only true measure
of knowledge, and science was the new repository of the wisdom of greatest value
and religion faded into a prop for those unable to face the new modern world.
	Through the investigations of Darwin and other biologists, it was
realised that the Earth had many seemingly unnecessary or extinct forms of
life. This brought into question the unchanging nature of the universe and
implied that either God was also changing or He was even more distant from the
universe than had previously been imagined. The concept of an impersonal proc-
ess of change or evolution replaced the idea of a anthropomorphic Creator
and the ability to reproduce ones own kind became the measure of living organ-
isms. Freud expressed the application of this view to humanity when he said
"biology is destiny" and summed the struggle of human existence on the personal
level as a process of coming to terms with our sexuality. The concept of guilt
became outmoded as man was no longer expected to rise above his nature, fallen
or not,and human behavior became the product of genetic drives and social cond-
itioning. The long suffering victim, like Ghandi, replaced the virtuous hero
as the ideal of human potential, patiently awaiting their tardy fellow men to
develop as they endured the pains of merely irresponsible, not evil, behavior.
	Scholarly authority was seen as the product of narrow specialization
and expertise, and the world of knowledge became subject to a process of
division that splintered science into evermore diverse specialties. Marxism
became the basis for viewing the processes of states and nations, reducing the
flows of history into the simple bed of economics and class struggle. Monarchs
were no longer the anointed of God, but merely the foremost of an oppressive
class alliance born long before to thwart the nobles that had undermined royal
power. All these schools of thought came to buttress one another in the ninet-
eenth century and the many intellectuals, aware of the new world dawning began
to address instead the question of how to bring their vision to reality.To sweep
away the dead hand of the past was all that seemed necessary to realise a
utopian age as science, wed with reason, became the guiding light of
civilizations advance.
	The success of the dissemination of this paradigm was mostly due to the
circumstances of the day, but the proponents of the new world view also establ-
ished networks of fraternity in the universities and academic organizations that
slowly carried their message through the educated classes. When World War One
revealed the willingness of the ruling classes to slaughter commoners by the
millions, the modernists had their final proof of the inhumanity and barbarism
of the dominant monarchical system. Through the twenties and beyond the new
generations of students were abhored by the gross dimensions of the war. How
can this be considered the behavior of civilized people? The discovery of canals
on Mars, Piltdown man, the rapid advance of technology, and the disappearance
of any major monarchical factions in Europe, all seemed to make the old
mideaval view seem quaint and bizarr. The old order was dismissed and then
laregely forgotten or ignored.
	But here we stand, at the threshold of a new century and there are
many who still voice doubts, fears and opposition to this modern paradigm, and
their numbers grow. Across the world, many nations have rejected Western culture
and reaffirmed their own, even to reestablishing their ancient monarchies or
new theocracies. Freud, Marx, and Darwin are now toppling from their perches
in the halls of academia, but their inertia continues to carry onward like
a dead corpse, smothering newer theories and newer questions. Human behavior
is seen now as too complex to be completely explained with such simplicities as
sex drive or economics. Changes in sexual mores caused even more problems 
and fatal ones at that. The void of religious discussion has created a spiritual
desert whose consequences are unknown, yet we delve further and further from the
wellsprings of our heritage each year as even yet more of our faith and it's
expression are bleached from the public forum. Darwinism is under increasing
attack as everyday additional scientist find the rigors of gradual and uniform
evolution too binding. Darwins theories are simply not reflected in the fossil
record, and what we have come to learn of microbiology suggests that there
must be other explanations. Except in China and and American faculties, the
theories of Marx are regarded as having been a failure in practice everywhere
they have been tried and even Sweden is striving toward more free market
policies. The sexual revolution has been a failure with a catastrophic spread
of sexually transmitted disease and ever more rapes and sexual disorders.
	What will be the new paradigm of the next century? Will it be the
greens philosophy, bringing man to an equal level with creation, along with
vegetarianism and technophobia? What will be the next major ideology to
to step into the gap left by Marxist-Leninism? What will happen? I will
hazard some guesses stemming from conversations I have had with some friends.
Fundamentaly I think that people will put a balance back in their view of
the relationship of seemingly contradictory concepts such as science and
religion, romanticism and reason, etc, but that share truth between them.
God will be brought back into the realm of the relevant and necessary, 
particularly to buttress what would otherwise be mere assumption, such as
an orderly universe,ordered liberty, and the special value of human life.
It seems another basic change will be in the sense of the 'ideal' in design.
The change here is already occuring, in the direction of human-friendly
designs. The concept of trying to force humanity into rigid containers will
ebb, and the specialization of markets to each type of person will add to
this hightened goal of designing things around the person, not merely some
abstract idea. Life won't be such a phyaical struggle and in fact the absence 
of such a driving force will leave a void people will attempt to replace with
service to causes outside or tangential to their everyday issues of putting
food on the table, salaries, etc. The ease of everyday living will be itself
a type of crisis, and the stress of making constant choices will be the biggest
threat to contentment, because people need to feel accomplishment with their
life. Ergonomic comfort will disquieten the soul.
	To compensate for the ease of everyday living, rigid frames of refer-
ence will be seen as more desirable to restore parameters to a chaotic life-
style, filled with choices in every moment of the day. Traditional faiths will
resurge around the world, especially christianity, not the accomodationist
variety, but the sort that calls for sacrifice, and to be different from a
secular society that regards nothing as permanent or forever binding. A healthy
sense of skepticism about academic theory will come about as people begin to see
that the tension between seemingly opposite truths must have an enlightened
balance to maintian the most responsible principles, for instance the
tension between freedom and order, and the belief that everything that one might
find naturally occuring among men has a place. Ways of thought that exclusively
emphasise one end of twin truths will be seen as extremist and a product of
the rare air of purely academic speculation. Ordered liberty will be popular as
the concept of responsible, peaceful freedom displaces anarchical libertarian-
ism and society recovers from the excesses of the Aquarian Age. For instance,
instead of laisez-faire capitalism, there will be a resurgence of the simple
concept of responsible management and consumption, inviting government regul-
ation to maintain equal compliance with guidlines that are seen as better for
all society.
	I suspect the theory of punctuated equilibrium will displace Darwinism
as the various flaws of Darwinism continue to become apparent in its inablility
to anticipate or explain various phenomena, like the sterility of Mars. Adapt-
ation will be seen as a response to the environment on a genetic level and not
the fortuitous bounty of random mutation. The replacement of natural selection
with its mandatory uniform gradual adaptation will be replaced by a concept of
adaptation to a rapid series of changing environments due to planetary catas-
trophy. Instead of a constant search for the best adaptation to a particular
environment, having the best set of adaptions for the greatest range of environ-
ments will be given equal weight. Gestation may be seen as one of the greatest
developments of survival if it is true that the adaptation of the mother can
assist the adaptation of the fetus through sharing her physiological responses
to her environment in hormones, adrenalin, and other body chemicals. The inter-
action of the various elements of the environment will be seen as an almost
mystical whole.
	Limited monarchy will come to be seen as a unifying, natural element
in nations splintered by ethnic rivalry, and class competition. The rebirth
of the ideal of the Renaisance man and the courageous hero will fill a void in
popular pantheons because of the chaos that will erupt in our communities as
the consequences of libertinism peak in tumult. Narrow specialization will be
passe' as information on virtually any topic becomes readily available to the
public on home information systems far surpassing any encyclopedia and emphasis
will become placed on gathering the benifits of the cross-polinization of
interdisciplinary work. Neo-traditions will be born of ecclectic attempts to
bring about hybrids that are tolerant of different cultures yet affirm a special
place for their own. It may take a century or three decades, but I think
the new post-modern paradigm amd its effects will resemble something like this.
	I know I generalised quite abit, and the introduction and triumph of
modernism has spanned about four hundred years. But I think I have given the
gist of the matter correctly, given the limits of space here.If you think I've
had too much time on my hands, sorry. Just food for thought.


				Merry Christmas,
				Richard
 

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