Both our disillusionment with the existing medical model and our efforts to revitalize and reconfigure our approaches to health and healing, emerge from this pregnant historical moment. For the purpose of seeking guidance in our efforts to reconfigure our approach to health and healing within the context of the larger cultural movements of our times I would like to set forth four perspectives that now appear to be critical elements of the emerging post modern world view, perspectives that must be central structural supports for a post modern medicine. The modern world view requires that reality be objectified, sensory-based, impersonal, measurable, quantifiable, opaque, and collectively experienced and validated. The post modern view of reality is far more complex. It rejects the view that reality is limited to the receptive capacities of our five senses, and validates the legitimacy of non-sensory, intuitive knowledge.
Reality is extended, revitalized, and personalized.
It is seen as a multidimensional amalgam of sensory and non-sensory knowledge. The modern world view postulates that all phenomena are caused by unchanging universal laws that exist independently of human consciousness. In essence, causality is seen as physically based and upward in its direction. The post modern perspective validates and legitimized the causal nature of consciousness which is individually willed and downward in direction. The modern world view assumes the distinct separateness of subjective and objective, external and internal., material and immaterial, mind and body, reason and intuition, and man and nature.