It is within these asymmetrical power relationships that people operate as teachers, students, consumers, and citizens. Individuals interact on local levels. All interpretations are local, contingent, and provisional. In this situation, paralogy and dissensus rather than homology prevail. 7. Open systems such as the social interact with other open systems such as the ecological.
Social disequilibrium characterizes the postmodern condition.
Although the concept of history is dismissed as a grand narrative in the postmodern, local narratives tell the histories of individuals and groups. It is impossible for an individual to have a complete understanding of the operations of the entire social system in which he or she lives and interacts. Instead, Cilliers asserts, postmodernism leads us to new ethical horizons and committments. Ultimately, Cilliers is most intrigued by the Lyotardian concept of justice within the postmodern condition. Respect otherness and difference as values in themselves.