THE METANARRATIVE AND SELF-MUTILATION

I like the German word Geschicte because it has two brilliant meanings. On the one hand it means "history", and on the other hand it means "story." Americans generically view the two words differently. When asked "Tell me about your father," you are being asked to provide facts. When asked "Tell me your story," you are being asked for an interpretation. I like the German word because it converges the two ideas: interpretation utlizes facts while facts are the elements of interpretation.


The metanarrative storyline has been the dominant, interpretive methodology of Modern culture. The metanarrative converges the "little" histories into an overarching history so that the "little" histories are subject to the interpretive structure of the overarching drama. The "nationalist" story form is a metanarrative: the "story" of the nation provides the lens through which ancillary stories (the stories of the "other" nations) are contextualized. The Christian metanarrative is a salvation-based plot of creation-fall-redemption (or some similar version). For example, within this overarching framework the English primarily founded America to be a "city on a hill" for all other nations to follow as well as the African-American primarily being brought to America to "hear the Gospel and be saved."


Similarly, this structure is replicated in most relational structures, too, so that marriage is a "sanctifying" ordinance and children are to be "blessed" if they endorse parental values. In this view the government's basic function is to punish the "bad" and to reward the "good", therefore, perpetuating justice (the righting of wrong). Even in the church, "discipleship" emphasizes salvific replication until the "earth is full of the glory of the Lord like the waters cover the sea." Another way to say it is that the metanarrative determines the history, the story.


The metanarrative is not an invalid way of looking at history. It is, however, not only invalid but dangerous when viewed as the absolutely only perspective. To do this is to equate this "one" narrative to the "deductive" perspective of God. Such is the replication of Platonic or gnostic heresy where one finite perspective is elevated above others, rendering the others not only susbtantially inferior but morally inferior (aka, ungodly). A singularly strict interpretation of the metanarrative exacerbates the POMO's panic over determinism, namely genetic inheritance. It is a trait of the POMO to pierce, tatt, and otherwise alter himself. The POMO reads a suffocating determinism into an absolute metanarrative interpretation of history. Simply put, the POMO tries to transcend the "story" given him by his Modern ancestor by "marking" himself in a way that genetic inheritance or DNA cannot replicate. Look at the Goth who paints his face a deathly pallor or the crumper who masks himself with clown paint or the increase in symbolic tatts or piercings in significant places like the eyebrow, lip, tongue, nipple, navel, etc. Understand that these are all forms of circumcision, and circumcision was originally introduced as an imposition upon the human body that transcends genetic inheritance. The symbolic alteration of his body is one way that the POMO distinguishes himself from his Modern parent. For the POMO it is freedom. It is a new beginning. He is creating a new person, a new people, a new story.


So the POMO rejects the metanarrative or is fine with the metanarrative so long as it is accompanied by the interpretation of several "micronarratives", lessening the absolutist implication of the metanarrative. The POMO arrives at truth by the correlation of micronarratives (personalized stories); so the POMO will generalize the similar ideas common to each micronarrative. For example, the POMO will look at the creation narratives of several people-groups and conclude that all people-groups have a creation narrative or story that embodies their own particular primordial values. Or they will look at the religions of various people groups and ascertain that Jesus is to Allah what Allah is to Eastern consciousness and so on. The POMO then concludes that 1) the tendency in every people group is to deify a personality, and that 2) the desire to worship a deity is inherently human.


Notice how in this micronarrative the content is important to the specific people-groups, but not necessarily important to the whole (global). In other words, the micronarrative says that it is good for a Christian to worship Christ just as it is good for a Muslim to worship Allah just as it is good for a Buddhist to worship consciousness. The post-modern micronarrative allows for the vicarious attribution of one to the other. Because the POMO sees faith as a universal (that it is inherently human to worship something), he sees faithlessness as an atrocity though he will not impose his content upon another. That is why the POMO says that it does not matter what you believe in but that you must believe in something. You must believe in something. That is why the POMO emphasizes that each individual must be true to himself, so the content varies from person to person but faith is there all the same. That is why a POMO can be friends with people of other cultures, religions, and backgrounds (that to the Modern seems incompatible) and not have a problem at all. He does not look through a metanarrative expecting the replication of the same content. He looks from one micronarrative to another micronarrative to yet another micronarrative expecting the generous correlation of contentless similarity: a generous ambiguity.

POMO RACIST TENDENCIES (2)

Modernism reinforced the concept of empirical racism by enforcing nationalism. It is impossible to understand Modernism apart from nationalism, and it is impossible to understand nationalism apart from empirical racism (a visual emphasis upon race). Throughout the 19th & 20th centuries, the true nationalists of a nation tended to be the racial majority of that nation (apart from colonialism). This model trickled down to other sub-governmental forms within that nation: industry, media, regions, districts, community organizations, churches, neighborhoods, communities, clubs, gangs, schools, families, etc. so that relationships & interpersonal relationships were largely developed along the lines of race or what I term The Old Fraternity.

It is not racist to be nationalistic or patriotic or even a racial majority or minority. However, it is racist to be nationalistic or patriotic when no final authority exists save the state and when the individuals of that state themselves embrace a statist mindset. Why? Because statism is the political form of Atheism. Statism subscribes to no transcendent authority and claims to be comprehensive of all reality. Because statism is not comprehensive of all that exists, neither will it be comprehensive of all humans. Because it is not comprehensive of all humans, statism excludes certain humans. By design.

On what basis does statism determine which humans it will exclude? On the basis of empiricism: material distinction. Why on the basis of empiricism? Because Atheism is materialistic, it argues that the final reality is matter. So it will make decisions based on the superficiality of the visual or what it terms "natural law" or the "apparent."

Christianity is set against Atheism, because Christianity says that God exists back of matter and that He is the Final Reality. So decisions about matter are to be made on the intrinsic character of God's revealed character: not what God has not said about Himself and his world but what God has said about Himself and His world. Atheism is oppositional and makes distinctions on the basis of material alone, so race is the critical factor to understanding the interpersonal human relationships of the Modern era. It is the chief determining and empirical factor to distinguishing humans.

Atheism had it's own "sacred-secular" distinction. It's "secular" portion took credit for the "sacred" portion it intellectually argued did not exist. So it annexed the Christian concept of personality by making superficial judgments about private property. Atheism will claim the aspiration to protect the property rights of individuals. Nevertheless, it will provide a form in which certain persons or peoples have their property rights suspended or revoked. Atheism lacks an intrinsic integrity to deal with the "everything" it claims.

The Modern concept of race cannot be overcome by more Modern logic. Racial reconciliation is a good example, especially the way it happens in the Christian church. In the face of a choking, post-modern environment, the religious Modern for the past couple of decades has been faced with the repugnance of many "theological" positions he held that were as arbitrary as Atheism's statist ideology, empirical racism being an obvious one. So how did the Modern try to "escape" with an ironically "righteous" indignation the racism intrinsic to his own religious expression?

The Church has sought to intentionally graft minorities into majority congregations. The current emphasis upon racial reconciliation in the American Church is largly an emphasis upon the reconciliation of Blacks and Whites, other races being ancillary. The roots of this approach are engined by the old generation’s repulsion of the racist sins of its past. My first response whenever I see this kind of thing happening is to analyze whether or not the motivation is along the flow of the post-modern world spirit which is towards a lack of distinctions. Remember that the drift of Modernism was the creation of a new world on the basis of artificial distinctions. The drift of the post-modern world spirit is the reconciliation of exremes or an emphasis upon a lack of distinctions.

It is easy to champion "racial reconciliation" because it is the drift of POMO culture. Moderns who embrace this post-modern spirit yet who still think on the basis of antithesis are deceived into believing that their repentance of Modern racism equates that they are no longer racist! Yet they go on making empirical judgments in every other category of life (including race) because they have not repented of their idolatrous fixation upon material.

Suffice it to say that the current Modern generational lament against chattel slavery, against unbridled industrialism, and against chauvinistic tendencies does not automatically qualify as repentance. In addition, I would argue that if only Modern racism is being renounced and not the entire Modern system (which is the development of "non-theistic" culture), then it is probable that such renouncement does not qualify as genuine repentance. And much of it is not. Much of it is sentimentalism because the Modern wants to be indispensable. The Modern revolts against being transient. The Modern wants to be "relevant" because the POMO is relevant. The Modern wants to be POMO. But he is not. It is not intrinsic to him.

Secondly, the church has sought to diminish the emphasis upon racial distinctions. Dimishing distinctions is a Modern solution to the problem, because Moderns are all about empirical uniformity. If everyone looked and acted like me, then we would not have a "Modern" problem anymore but a wholly different one. As I have said before, the general drift of post-modern culture is towards the resolution of extremes or the abolition of distinctions. The problem, however, is that these resolutions are largely coming from the Modern generation which means that Moderns are wanting a "place" at the table of the new cultural discussion and are willing to make certain cultural concessions that are not in alignment with their beliefs, cultural or religious.

In addition, the tendency of the Modern generation is to discuss the deficiencies of the past. It is not that hindsight is 20/20, but that hindsight takes less effort than foresight. That is not to say that there are not thousands or hundreds of thousands of Moderns who are after "racial reconciliation" the right way, but it sure is not the commercialized way and it can never be genuine if it is compartmentalized. Nature doesn't allow for such distinctions!

So what does this mean for the POMO? The very same negative, racial stereotypes championed, the POMO embraces positively. That is why Hip Hop culture which was formerly an ethnic subculture, universally embraces people groups of every tongue, tribe, and nation. It is a rebellion against the artifical categorization of humans into "kinds." That is its swag. And that is the one illustration of how the post-modern is trading The Old Fraternity for The New Fraternity: relationships based upon behavior.

POMO RACIST TENDENCIES (1)

Modern science argued descriptively because it was rationalistic. As a rationalistic system, it argued from data and only from data to which it was predisposed. Modern science could describe to you the color green, but it could not tell you why hunter green was to be preferred to olive green in a particular situation. This is one way science divorced itself from the classical discussion of morality.

Similarly, Modern science could describe to you the differences in skin melanin, say, between Whites and Blacks, but it could not tell you why a White was to be preferred to a Black—though it did. And that was a characteristic problem with both the Modern Christian and Modern non-Christian.

Modern science defined itself too narrowly to discuss information morally, because it only deals with matter. Matter is its final reality. Modern science, having no authority save the “fact,” did not have a self-consciously moral context for making moral determinations about facts even though facts were moral determinations in the first place (for they are either “right” or “wrong”). Modern science discussed facts divorced from their moral context. That resulted in science exploiting whatever it discussed. Why? Because it was only descriptive.

The Modern, atheistic world-view uniquely bred amongst the religous and non-religious the concept of segregation based upon race. Modern racism emphasized the superficially visual and behavioral (aka, scientific) aspects of people groups so that it believed, for example, that “Black” and “White” people were genetically programmed to idiocy or brilliance, immorality or high culture, superstition or intellectualism, respectively. It did not take into consideration moral aspects like religious belief or ethnic (world-view) history.

It interests me that the same POMO who rejects Modern racist culture, is affected by Modernism all the same in a very underhanded sense. For not only does the POMO accept people of different races as his close associates because of his extreme tolerance, but he foremost embraces the superficially behavioral aspects of those races. So not only will the POMO youth have a best friend who is Japanese, and not only will he develop a taste for Sushi and the martial arts, but he will also seriously consider the commercialized virtues of Zen via Yoga meditation techniques and reincarnation via the recycling culture.

POMO'S & SPIRITUAL REALITY

Though he believes in the Judeo-Christian God and believes that He created the world, the Modern Christian, nonetheless, divided that world into regions of sacred and secular: a realm where God allegedly was and a realm where God allegedly was not. The Christian would consider the reading of the Bible to be a sacred exercise in which God existed. However, the Christian did not consider, say, the reading of Beowulf or of Newsweek to be a sacred exercise, but a secular one in which God was—at the very least—absent.

The typical Modern Christian was not committed to either realm of reality as exclusively governed by God, though he maintained that the two worlds existed, nonetheless. The problem—as you can see—is that if much of an individual’s life is lived within the “secular’ world, then God does not exist where it matters. After all, how do you Christianize air or earth or water, three very essential things to human existence?

This truncated position created within the Modern Christian a schizophrenia, for he operated differently in both worlds. When he ate a candybar, he had no thoughts of God. When he took Communion, he suddenly had thoughts of God. Because he was not committed to either world as totally comprehensive of reality, he capitulated to the atheistic argument that God was not Lord (over everything).

This is a fundamental religious difference between the Modern and his POMO: the Modern is frustrated that the POMO will not compartmentalize life as easily as the Modern can. The POMO sees compartmentalization as artificial, because it does not transcend the matter with which it deals. The POMO is not familiar with the atheistic orientation of Modernism save that it stands for everything against which he is in revolt. That is one of the reasons why the POMO revises everything Modern from music to movies to history, tainting it all with a mystical tinge.

The POMO cannot tolerate the idea that mechanics is the final word on reality. He prefers a world in which mechanics is diminished, which is why he shuns serious systems of thought. The POMO does not mind acquiescing to a system so long as he is allowed to view it as a game (artificial), but he begins to feel claustrophobic around Moderns who take any ideology seriously (artificial system). Fundamental to the POMO's revolt against mechanics is his rejection of the Modern concept of determinism: the idea that a man is the sum of his DNA.

The POMO also rejects the Modern toleration of two views of reality: sacred and secular. To the POMO, the secular view denies those items of the world with which the sacred deals—like God, the soul, meaning, revelation, etc. That is why the POMO is always remaking Modern music, Modern art, Modern fashion, and Modern movies by recasting them within a spiritual light. Spirituality is the air he breathes.

In short the POMO rejects the exclusively sacred and the exclusively secular realms and vies for only one realm. As a result, the POMO has retrieved the concept of deity. That concept, however, is one that champions not a particular deity but only the concept of deity. The POMO affirms a multitude of deities and does not necessarily prefer one over another.

The POMO does not champion a particular god but only the concept of a nebulous god who provides a nebulous context. The Modern, atheistic alternative either 1) acknowledged that an infinite God existed, yet apportioned Him only the sacred realm of reality, making Him impotent in the secular realm or 2) did not acknowledge that God existed yet talked and talked as if a god existed. Either position does not embrace all of reality.

My point is that one can converse with a POMO if one acknowledges the existence of a god. That is one reason I do not believe in "evangelizing" the POMO. I know that sounds counter-cultural to most church ideology, particularly the conservative strain, but I am telling you there is merit in my position which I will explain in detail a few blog posts from now.

POST-MODERN "GAMING" TRUTH

When asked a question such as “Have you finished your homework?” the typical POMO child gives various ambiguous answers: 1) he will evade (I did not bring any homework home), 2) he will imply ignorance of the question by stalling (I normally don’t have homework on Tuesday nights), 3) he will answer in the interrogative (Did I tell you I had homework?), or 4) he will deny any knowledge of the answer (I don’t know), etc.

Modern parents—especially those who strongly want to relate to their children—tend to tolerate inconsistent statements from their children for stretches at a time. However, they usually have a breaking point for the sake of their own sanity. What is often difficult to explain to the frustrated, Modern parent is that his child is not merely lying, being ignorant, or playing dumb. Rather, the POMO views himself as humble, open-minded, and honest next to his absolutist Modern parent who thinks on the basis of authoritative statements. POMOS see themselves as making far fewer mistakes in judgment than Moderns who accuse intolerantly and assert narrow-mindedly.

The POMO tends to feel castigated by the attempts of his parents to "get" the truth out of him which is one of the reasons physical punishments have had and have deliterious affects on the POMO. The Modern could survive physical punishment and categorically get over it. The POMO endures punishment with a martyr's psychology or with psychological breakdown.

The Modern parent will insist to his POMO that the truth is simple! But we no longer live in a culture dominated by the simplicity of Newtonian physics. Space and time are elastic and truth is just as elastic to the POMO! What the Modern does not understand (or even care to understand in some instances) is that the Modern generation is the last in a long line of generations in which confidence in antithesis has deteriorated and given way to the kind of cultural absurdity that alienates him from his child.

Because he does not understand his child’s view of truth, the Modern parent does not realize how far removed he is from his Post-modern child. The Modern knows that a tree is a tree—not a non-tree—and he can say something affirmatively about the tree. In one sense, that logical reliability is a great privilege.

The POMO is too humble to agree that a tree is a tree, because for him it is arrogance to affirm as true any statement over which a variety of persons, peoples and faiths disagree. POMOS preface every statement with an unspoken sentiment of uncertainty: If anything can be known for certain, then I feel well today, If anything can be known for certain, then I am happy to see you, or, As far as we know, World War I began in 1913.

The POMO affirms nothing save that we do not know for certain anything we think that we think we know. Right about this time the Modern parent begins to be nostalgic about his own inferior era. What the Modern does not understand is that, though he thinks on the basis of antithesis, his cultural view of truth is “relative” truth which is not the “absolute” concept of truth he is always hailing!

Relative truth is truth suspended: truth that is right at certain times and wrong or irrelevant at other times. The most acute example I can give of Christian “relative” truth is the sacred-secular distinction, the elevation of spirit over matter, which I will address at length later.

Let me illustrate POMO communication with the popularity of reality TV. Reality TV attracts the POMO for five reasons in particular. There is 1) a defined world or reality (Survivor’s island, Trump’s business world, American Idol’s stage, etc.), 2) a defined hierarchy of authority (the host, judges, and an order amongst team players), 3) defined ethics (rules governing the rounds), 4) defined allegiances (standards to which both the judges and players agree), and 5) defined consequences (being voted off the island, being fired, not moving to the next stage, etc).

The POMO likes this context and he is certain about this reality because for him the context for the reality has been defined. He understands the breadth of the game’s universe. He has his bearings. He might personally disagree with a player’s action, but he understands that the game rules define the moral “right” and “wrong” within that reality. He might personally disagree with a judge’s call, but he understands that the consequences are essential to the reality and he will only employ those tactics (including the various forms of immunity) for which the rules provide. The context for the reality makes all of the difference in the world for the POMO, and he can maintain this kind of respect, this kind of equilibrium in gaming situations that he cannot in "real" life.

Moderns must understand that it is the bent of POMO culture to assume that nothing can be known for certain but to speak as if something can be known for certain. The truth of our greater reality is a context that has yet to be established for the POMO. It does no good to roll ones eyes or to snicker at the absurdity of this generation’s logic, for the POMO is clearly communicating himself all the same. The POMO does have a logical form, it is the insistence of the Modern to impose an artificial grid upon the POMO's reality that has exacerbated the relationship of the two generations. The problem chiefly lies in that the Modern wants the communication on terms with which he is familiar: relative truth!

Moderns want to speak with POMOS. POMOS do not necessarily want to speak with Moderns. They want to speculate with them. The Modern does not know what to do with this except 1) to demand that the POMO communicate with him in the Modern way at the expense of real communication or 2) to play along with his POMO logic while still not understanding it at the risk of becoming absurd himself.

The Modern parent assumes that he is really communicating to his child when his child speaks affirmatively about anything. However, those affirmations are usually personal and not universal affirmations or convictions. The truth of the matter is that the POMO is fundamentally more honest than the Modern, for the Modern takes relative truth too seriously when relative truth in reality is arbitrary. Though the Modern thinks on the basis of antithesis, he applies antithesis when he wants to apply it and he does not apply it when he does not want to apply it.

The POMO does the same, except that antithesis is a game to him in the first place! The Modern observes this disregard for antithesis, and he is incensed—even though he himself demonstrates a lifestyle that truth is relative! It is the POMO who should be incensed, because the POMO is told by the Modern that relative truth is back of everything. The POMO goes, "Well if truth is relative, then let's play with logic!"

AND THEY CHOOSE ANIMISM INSTEAD OF CHRISTIANITY

Antoine Rutayishire, a Rwandan pastor who survived the Hutu genocide of the Tutsi minority of the 1990s, writes in his book Faith Under Fire: Testimonies of Christian Bravery "Before the massacres, no one would have believed that such a thing could happen in a country like Rwanda. Tucked just south of Uganda, west of Tanzania, north of Burundi and east of Zaire, this beautiful green and hilly land was considered one of the most Christian in Africa, with 90% of the population calling themselves either Roman Catholic or Protestant."

One of the most Christian countries in Africa? By what standard? Were family units, village and city life, schools and universities, local and national governmental agencies saturated with a life-system uniquely Christian?

"The 1991 census showed that 89.6% of the population was Christian with 62% belonging to the Roman Catholic Church and the rest of the Protestant Churches. In Protestant circles, Rwanda was equally known as the cradle of 'the eastern Africa revival.'"

The Cradle of the Eastern African Revival? What revival? What constitutes a revival? Over one million people were massacred. Were the 20% who did not call themselves Christian solely responsible for the violence? What was the standard for measuring conversions? According to Rutayishire, it was “European culture and concepts.”

"The period between 1927 and 1942 marked this progressive conquest of the ‘Christian kingdom in the heart of Africa’, actualization of the long dream of the founders of the missionary societies...When you read carefully the excerpts of missionary reports, there is no single mention of conversion, repentance, obedience to God’s laws; the elation is about ‘conversion to European culture and concepts.’"

Herein is another example of the religious fixation upon Modern, measurable means to validate or invalidate spirit. It was the same sacred-secular view of reality that hindered the Chinese church from stabilizing and growing: an emphasis upon an ambiguous spirituality and a "sacred" disregard for the physical world.

The collective results of 20th century missionary efforts were1) the exportation of Modernism, and 2) the simultaneous destruction of the native fabric of Third World culture. In other words, not only did this Modern form of missionarying give nothing to illustrate its authenticity by giving the culture something measurable, something tangible it could grap onto, but it also eroded what was already unique to that culture.

Keep in mind that of much native culture was targeted for annihilation by the Christian West because it was not compatible with Modernism. In the end, what did the native have that was uniquely his own? Nothing. Cannot Christianity have as many valid expressions as there are cultures, or is it uniquely American? Wherever the secular-sacred distinction takes hold, it tends to produce the same bland, monolithic culture in which 1) there is a philosophical disregard for the physical world (including international, national and regional culture) and 2) there is the destruction of what was already there (pagan or non-Christian culture).

In Cry the Beloved Country Alan Paton is speaking about Western culture through the African John Kumalo:

"I do not say that we are free here. I do not say that we are free as men should be. But at least I am free of the chief. At least I am free of an old and ignorant man, who is nothing but a white man’s dog. He is a trick, a trick to hold together something that the white man desires to hold together."

Modernism not only provided the false aspiration of superior culture , but it also destroyed any semblance of covenants the native had to his tribe. By the time Modernism took its toll on the African male during this period, any covenantal duties he previously had to the tribe were smashed. What was left?

"'But it is not being held together', he said. 'It is breaking apart, your tribal society. It is here in Johannesburg that the new society is being built. Something is happening here, my brother.'"

In the end, animism was preferable to Modern Christian culture. And that is exactly where the POMO is.

SACRED-SECULAR ABSURDITY

The sacred-secular distinction has played itself out in discomforting ways during my education career even, my problem largely being with zealously religious families. I will ferret out that their children are not as upright as the parents have showcased them to be and will discover, say, a drug addiction, deep-rooted lying, or a sexual deviance to name a few. And you know what parents will tell me the very next day?

"Oh, we talked with our child, and you WILL see a difference today. We talked for hours, we prayed, we cried, and she really has changed. The Spirit of God was REALLY at work." I will smile and tell the parents I am very hopeful, but then I will say something like this:

"Insofar as your child's interaction with drugs, did you call the numbers your son was texting to find out who his suppliers are? Did you tell the youth leaders at church the names of the kids who are doing drugs with your daughter? Did you get your daughter drug-tested and would you furnish me the results? Are you still giving your son large sums of cash for allowance? Did you take your daughter's license away so that she can't drive?"

"Insofar as your child's lying, what gives you cause to believe your son is sincere? Did you check up on whether or not your daughter actually was at church last night or at a friend's house? Why did you give your son four hours of unsupervised free time with his friends after you told me you were going to monitor him?"

"Insofar as your child's promiscuity, did you or are you going to get your boy tested for STDs? Are you still going on that trip today and leaving your daughter home all weekend? Did you turn off your son's phone service perrmanently? Do you think that your own infidelity has anything to do with this? Are you monitoring your daughter's Internet use? Does your daughter still have cable TV in her room?"

Nine times out of ten, do you know how these families will respond? They will preach at me. They will tell me that I don't understand teenagers, or I don't understand forgiveness, or I don't understand what it is like for them, or I don't understand faith, or I need to come to their church where the truth is being spoken and learn from their pastor, or they will give me some asinine reference from Scripture that allows them to remain in this sacred-secular fantasy. However, when their "special" child commits the same offense again and again, the parent will shell out thousands of dollars for drug rehab, for intensive counseling, or sometimes they will give up their child altogether when they could have shut their mouths and looked at the total reality in the first place.

This example serves to underscore how you cannot show-case authenticity, and it is equally absurd to apply this thinking to areas of spirituality or missionarying (even though mission organizations/mission brokers expect periodic, measurable evidence). You can count the members of a church and end up with a number, but you cannot count the number of authentic Christians in that church. You can measure the authentic Christian influence of that church bythe volume of its various relationships to the community (the highest marks given to its ultimate indispensability), but you cannot tout that means as exclusively sacred.

"But with the falling out of three global empires—the Chinese, Russian, and American—who will now guide the emerging global culture? What will be at the core of the culture of the twenty-first century? Would it be raw, selfish materialism? Or will the gospel of Jesus Christ take its rightful place at the heart of the new cultural synthesis that is now emerging? That is the question."

When Ling uses the word "materialism", do not mistake him for meaning an infatuation with material possesions. He means a worldview emphasis upon the material with material as the validating factor of every portion of reality. According to Ling, Third World culture was “ready for harvest” because they were more easily susceptible to the appeal of Christianity than the Modern because they already subscribed to a deity of some sort. I know that this is a harsh thing to say, but it is true. However, as Samuel Ling cogently ascertains, back of the esoteric nature of Western missionary endeavors was materialism, which means that, though a genuine sentiment to “reach the lost” existed, the framework for reaching the “lost” was absent deity (authentic demonstration) and to be found in statistical averages, probability factors, and a mechanistic view of cause-and-effect.

THE MARGINALIZATION OF THE THIRD WORLD THROUGH THE 20TH CENTURY MISSIONARY MOVEMENT

The Third World was the Modern Christian's ally, especially during the 20th century. Whether or not he wanted to admit it, the Christian had more in common with the Third World native who offered animal sacrifice and genuflexed to his ancestors than he did with the average Modern who owned a television or subscribed to the New York Times. Both were brothers in that they both subscribed to deity.

I do not believe one can properly understand the marginalization of the Third World unless one understands the marginalization of Western Christianity, because the marginalization of the Third World hinged upon the marginalization of Christianity. The scientific West dubbed Christianity inferior because of the grapple-hold “superstition” had upon it. You could not be taken too seriously outside the religious demographic if you did not subscribe to a materialistic (beginning with matter), logical construct.

What the Christian did not realize was that the Modern considered the Christian to be equally superstitious to the Third World "savage." In other words, the Arabic tribal chief, the Haitian witch doctor, the Gypsy fortune-teller, the Hindu psychic, and the Christian fundamentalist pastor were all related because they all subscribed to the existence of an amaterial entity who was the Final Reality.

Had the average Christian realized this, the fervor with which he pursued missions overseas would have been 1) greatly diminished overseas and increased within the West or 2) rapidly streamlined overseas to convert and to strategically develop the entire Third World nations in order to create a formidable ally against the materialistic West. As it went, religious faith was increasingly rendered a subculture in the Western Hemisphere during the 19th and 20th centuries. Again, had the Modern Christian understood his chief enemy to be against deity of any sort, then he would have seen the Third World nations as a strategic ally to some level.

Much of the 20th century missionary movement was transfixed upon China, Africa & the Far East.Why? For all the focus the Western Church put upon these regions, Modernism provided the framework for most, if not all, Western interaction with these nations. Samuel Ling, author of The Chinese Way of Doing Things, says that despite American missionary efforts in the 20th century, the Chinese Church had to start over after 1900, 1927, 1937, 1949, and 1960 because the cultural institutions were not strategically targeted and substantially changed.

"Dwight Moody’s revival called thousands of American and British university student’s to go overseas to 'evangelize this world in our generation,' but the Gospel brought to China, India, and Africa was often an anti-intellectual and anti-theological gospel. The result was that the Chinese church and Chinese theological education suffered; we have inherited a second-rate model of ministerial training and an anti-culture stance." (SAMUEL LING)

That "partial" view of Christianity that says God is not Lord over everything was in many cases the foundational impetus for overseas evangelism. The Christian consensus (at least in America) thought the world to be divided into regions of sacred and secular, so it attempted to "make" Jesus Lord in those parts of the world absent "Christianized" culture and devoid of the Christian message, respectively. "The uttermost parts of the earth" functionally meant those cultures that were "backward" in relation to Western.

Samuel Ling's complaint is not that missionarying was happening or that the Chinese were necessarily being patronized. His problem was that the paradigm in which the missionary effort was being executed followed the dictates of the sacred-secular distinction which was uniquely Modern. It was interested in individual salvation experiences and not in measurable, cultural advancement. The missionary movement exported a [Modern] culture Ling calls “second-rate.”

"What about the twenty-first century? Are we ready to move on beyond the 'starting over again' phase, to build something more mature and more permanent, something which bears a meaningful relationship to our social context (global culture) and to history?" (SAMUEL LING)

By “meaningful relationship” Ling means that which does not see life in artificial portions of sacred and secular. You cannot develop a "sacred" idea unless it has a "secular" expression. How do you measure the success of Christian conversions? You don't and you can't anymore than you can measure love or hate. You can demonstrate its integrity by the influence it has in measurable areas, namely, in the area of ethics, but you cannot have "hundreds accepting Christ" and think that something was truly done. You have no proof other than "evidences" in the physical world.

ATHEISM & THE FRENCH REVOLUTION OF 1789

The atheistic inheritance of the West comes down to us directly through the French Revolution of 1789. Originally, the French Revolution stood against the oppression of the masses by the aristocracy. The aristocracy, however, was backed by the Church. So the Revolution stood against the authority of the Pope. However, it did not differentiate between sacred tradition and the revelation of Scripture. The Revolution lumped together the traditions of the Church (which are finite) and the authority of the Bible (which is infinite). Because the Revolution believed both the Church hierarchy and the Bible to be the source for all of the inequality in the world, it would not allow the Church or the Bible to provide answers for its problems.

It is correct to say that the French Revolution was a revolution against inequalities. However, those inequalities were not fundamentally social, economic, or racial inequalities. The Revolution superimposed the social inequality or injustice in the world due to abnormality by sin upon the material, created order. In a nutshell, t wrongly attributed the abnormality by sin to the order of creation.

So the Revolution did not properly distinguish sinful divisions from intrinsic distinctions. The inherent distinctions determine how the world works like the Circadian rhythms of evening and morning, spiral-cyclical motion of six days work one day rest, lunar and menstrual rhythms, and the general trend from birth to maturation, ignorance to wisdom, immaturity to maturity. However, these rhythms belonged to the "old" order that the Revolution rejected because of its association with sacred tradition and Scripture.

Without intending it, the Revolution warred against the concept of a transcendent God Who created his own distinctions in nature because He wanted to do it and not because He had to do it. By tinkering with these intrinsic rhythms, it began to dismantle the universe. For a while, even, the Revolution changed the seven-day week because of its direct association with the Church calendar and the Biblical account of creation.

By “distinctions in nature,” I mean that God created dogs, trees and water, and they are all distinguishable as themselves. That is a very different thing than chauvinism, vertigo and cancer cells: distortions of the created order. The problem with the Revolution was that it did not just want to find a cure for chauvinism, for vertigo or for cancer: it wanted to find a cure for the dog, for the tree, and for the water.

AN EMPTY APOLOGETIC OF EVIDENCES

Several years ago a student confided in me his unbelief in the Judeo-Christian God. He was writing a paper contrasting Christianity & Islam and was alarmed with similarities between the two faiths. The more he talked, the more clearly he was able to explain that he did not disbelieve in a god—he was just not certain which one it was. "Is that all?" I asked. My concern was short-lived. "Get back to class." And I never spoke to him about it again.

Whenever I encounter conversations about religion with a POMO, I do not try to evangelize him. The Modern parent faults me for this, but I think that he is mistaken. Religion concerns questions of ultimacy, and those questions span the total of reality. The quality of one's religion is illustrated by its ethics: its evaluation of right and wrong action. In other words, there are not only right and wrong ways to to pursue justice, to punish evil, to believe, to pray. There are also right and wrong ways to vault a fence, to ride a bike, to eat a bagel, to vault a fence, to read a book, to wash a window, to make pancakes. Narrowing religion to the artificial domain of “spirituality” makes it partial like the elevation of a holiday over the other days of the year. Religion does not just look like something. Religion looks like everything.

One fifth grade student spent an entire lunch period with me describing her grandmother’s atheism. How could it be that such a loving sage did not believe in God? "Oh, but she does believe in God," I told her. I first affirmed her grandmother’s position: she says that she does not believe God exists. I believe that to be her intellectual position. But she does not live as if God does not exist. I asked my student "Your grandmother loves you, right?" She agreed. ""Then that contradicts what your grandmother thinks." Her grandmother’s Atheism did not, nor could it, change the reality of what is. You can have one thousand atheists intelligently arguing against the Christian faith, and that will not add one thing to the reality of what is. Conversely, you can have one thousand Creation scientists intelligently arguing for intelligent design, and that will not add one thing to the reality of what is.

How can I say this? Because the nexus of man is not his brain. So the initial problem with man is not with his brain. So the answer is not man's brain. The Modern Christian feared that a growing consensus of unbelief would intrinsically change the truthfulness of what is. So it concentrated its efforts by its own increased amount of data in favor pro God to defeat all atheistic opposition. Surely you have heard the following statements (or similar statements) countless times: "The science of the human eye proves that God exists" or "Ancient extra-biblical texts prove the Bible to be true" or "Current political events prove the Coming of Christ to be imminent."

When the children with whom I work express unbelief of or a dislike for Christianity, they have never meant that they do not believe in God (or a god). They do not see unbelief in God as an inescapable Atheism. Maybe they see unbelief in God as a rejection of my explanation of God. The POMO lives in the ethereal, in the theoretical, in the plausible, so he is not an Atheist in the classic Modern sense as having categorically shut out any possibility of God or deity or spirit whatsoever. To think so is to wrongly represent this generation.

What I have found to be true about the evangelical efforts of "evidences" is that the pressure of evidences has funneled both Modern and current POMO generations into a generic monotheism: not Christian monotheism, per se. The emphasis of evidentialism has largely been to move someone from an intellectual position of unbelief to an intellectual position of admitting or at least entertaining that "a" God must exist. From that point on, gravity does the rest of the work: it is statistically arguable that a person will "become" a Christian. It is a science, and that science equates monotheistic persuasion to Christianity.

The Modern monotheist will tend to be persuaded of a monotheism of evidences on the basis of science. The POMO finds the same evangelistic strategy of evidences to be an uncomfortably sinister form of coersion. You might as well put your hands down his pants. You don't need to convince a POMO of God's existence! That is not his problem! You don't need to convince him that a little "i" intelligence or big "I" Intelligence has designed the world and has a destiny for him. Save your breath. That is already the baseline of every POMO, atheist or not.

EDUCATIONAL DISORDERS

Let me illustrate the discrepancy of the Modern and POMO views with the multiplication tables. For the Modern, the multiplication tables are a system of truth. That means that the Modern does not worry about the validity of the system (the rightness of the multiplication tables), because he already subscribes to the logic of the tables (aka, the system itself). The Modern, therefore, largely concerns himself with the soundness of his answers or with correlating facts within the system itself (if 0 x 0 = 0, then 0 x 1 = 0). Such certainty is vital to the Modern, because he can make valid projections if certain answers are undoubtedly right and certain others are undoubtedly wrong. Because his generation’s problem is not with the system itself, all he has to do is merely to correlate the proper information within that system.

For the Modern, memorization aids his systematic reliability. Partly for that reason the Modern had a good education. You must understand that when prayer was officially banned from public schools, public education did not deteriorate because of the new manifestation of the atheistic world-view. That Supreme Court decision to “ban” God was only another manifestation of the Modern world-view that had existed for almost two hundred years.

In addition, the response by Christians to “get God back into public education” was equally an atheistic impulse. Why? Because the atheistic public believed that God could—through human effort—be banned from the secular world, and the Christian Church—which should have known better—believed that God could—through human effort—be put back into the secular world! Both subscribed to the Modern atheistic dichotomy that either God totally does not exist (atheism) or that He partially does not exist (sacred-secular distinction).

This Modern atheistic position amongst Christians, I would argue, is largely responsible for the POMO’s rejection of logical systems. The Modern concept of truth relies heavily upon logical systems but allows for the suspension of that system at the will of the individual. When you begin to notice that the Modern concept of truth was relativistic in this way and not objective, then you will begin to understand why logical systems are not reliable for the POMO: every “objective” system has a man behind it.

For example, the moral failures of certain public figureheads in the Christian community during the 1980s—men who publicly preached the systematic truths of Christianity while privately suspending (breaking) the systems themselves—make my point exactly. Those figureheads did not subject themselves to the tenets of the “system”, volitionally admit their faults and step down—which the Biblical system that they flouted demanded they should do. Rather, they chose to remain within the system and to preach the system while all along breaking it. Adherence to religious or “secular” logical systems for the POMO is ultimately submission to the arbitrary will of an individual. It does not matter if the secularist is the proverbial God-awful atheist humping a baboon or if the secularist is a cool, Christian youth minister who has tattoed himself to be relavant. The POMO will reject the bifurcation of the sacred from the secular. Period.

For all I have said about the POMO rejecting systems, his is a generation addicted to technological systems. Is this a discrepancy? I do no think so. POMOS do not reject Microsoft per se. They reject Bill Gates. Why? Because Bill Gates is back of Microsoft. Microsoft cannot manipulate because it is a system subject to Bill Gates. Bill Gates can manipulate because he is the intelligent designer of Microsoft. Although Bill Gates created what looks like a system, that “system” is a mechanistic expression of his own arbitrary design which is not to be taken more seriously than it should be. Microsoft, as a system made by a man, is a game. It is a frame. Understand this!

For the POMO, learning the multiplication tables is doubly difficult than it was for the Modern because the POMO concerns himself both 1) with the logical reliability (validity) of the numerical system and 2) with the rightness of the individual answers. The Modern has only to concern himself with the rightness of the individual answers (3 x 3 = 9) and not with the truthfulness or with the logical reliability of the system (Is 3 really 3, and if so, then why?). The POMO thinks, "Are the multiplication tables a game or the truth? What man came up with the multiplication tables? Why did he come up with them? Was he a good man or a bad man? Were he a good man, what did he mean by coming up with the tables? Were he a bad man, what is he trying to do to me? Can I rely upon the tables? Can a I rely upon this man?"

Modern parents look at me in disbelief when I explain that this subconscious thought process is the crux of their child’s academic dilemma. Being materialistic because of their heavy atheistic culture, Moderns tend to see academic problems as the outgrowth of nutritional deficiencies, genetic inheritance, or any physical predisposition. Rarely do they see academic problems as a moral deficiency. Because the POMO does not subscribe to a mechanistic reliability of logical systems, he fundamentally doubts the reliability of the multiplication tables. Why? Because memorizing the tables is hard? No. He does not believe in the multiplication tables because he does not believe that objective systems are infallible when he knows that every system must be flawed because it has a man behind it. If he is naturally bent to be independent, he will typically flounder in the system because he will allow no one to tinker with him. If he is not naturally bent to be independent, he will typically imbibe what he is given to his ultimate spiritual confusion and undoing.

Because he is not certain about what makes the tables true, he will have one of two broad tendencies: 1) he will be reluctant to commit the tables to memory and will suffer from short-term memory loss or related information gaps in his thinking (ADD, ADHD, OCD, dyslexia, etc.) or 2) he will temporarily suspend the moral dilemma he has with the tables and will wholeheartedly commit the tables to memory.

Because of the future with which he has to live, I would argue that it is preferable that the POMO do the former by wrestling with his moral dilemma. By wrestling with the logical reliability of logical systems, he wrestles with the spiritual obstacle to faith of his own generation. The obstacle to faith for this generation is that Christian children, the children of Christian families, and children who have grown up in the Christian Western Hemisphere do not believe that the God of the Bible is the only Final Reality. And if they do, it is not in the same way that their Modern parents frame it. This is what I mean by calling these children POMOS.

Educational and medical establishments increasingly seek to address this moral faithlessness with medication because they attribute the heightened nervous activity of POMOS almost totally to physical predispositions—not to profound moral insecurities. Educational forums no longer liberate students to think about truth, because they no longer appeal to the classical flow of cause-and-effect. They cannot appeal to it because they have undermined its foundational support which is rooted in a certainty beyond artificial system.

I would argue that both private and public school forums, insofar as they subscribe to Modern ideology, tend to teach by indoctrination and imposition. As a result, education bypasses logical flow and emphasizes arbitrary contexts. Arbitrary contexts can only be memorized; they cannot be reasoned. Virtually all that a student must learn in school today he must memorize apart from proper associations because he does not have the faith and/or contingent intellectual faculties to make logical associations.

Educational forums are not designed to encourage students to think about truth. They are designed to insinuate academic proficiency. Insinuating academic proficiency is nothing but a continuation of the Modern value of a fixation upon the short-term, the artificially quantifiable. However, Modernism is no longer relevant in our world. It is a dinosaur and does not communicate to the POMO.

POMO absurdity is an intentional distortion by POMOS of Modern logical reliability. That is why anything labeled “post-modern” for its farfetchedness could also be labeled “cynical.” It does not matter if it is language, politics, economics, science or media, the POMO rages against the machine in such an unsystematic way that the Modern writes him off as completely absurd. That is a foolish move on the part of the Modern, because the nonsense of the POMO is rapidly replacing the sensibilities of the Modern. POMO absurdity is the new logic.

UNIFORMITY OF NATURAL CAUSES IN AN OPEN SYSTEM

Perhaps, it is important to now relate the POMO cultural aspiration to absurdity to the Uncertainty Principle. Heisenberg's Law (1927) says that when it comes to quantifying a minimum of two measurements, it is impossible to calculate both to high precision within the same system at the same time in the same way. It is only possible to calibrate the system to one measurement at a time. To try to calibrate both at the same time would result in inaccurate measurements.

This elastic nature no longer allows the system to be traditionally viewed as a fixed frame. The illusion of the "absolute" disturbs the Modern who has been oriented to the rigidity of systems and who frankly would be hindered from functioning if he is not allowed his categorical frames in which to operate.

Just as the Modern subscribed to the uniformity of natural causes in a closed system, the POMO subscribes to the uniformity of natural causes in an open system. What that means is that the natural world (or physical portion) is not all that exists. A final reality of which we are unaware exists outside the physical universe and "interferes" with it of its own will and according to its own rules. Therefore, that final reality makes all of the difference in the world in the determination of which facts are right or wrong.

So the POMO's paradigm is bent to be antagonistic towards the mechanistic (the machine portion of the universe), because it believes there is something greater than mechanics to which all things are oriented. If you do not understand this point, then you will be lost when it comes to understanding the absurd communication forms of this generation. The POMO has an ambiguous uniformity, the illusion of a natural world, and an “openness” that cannot rightfully be called a system because so many nebulous factors play into it so that no one is ever sure to get them all right at any given time. So everyone everywhere is always theoretically right and always theoretically wrong. Anything is possible if you give it enough time and if you let interplay enough factors.

Because the POMO affirms that a final reality exists outside the natural world and that it is beyond the full comprehension of man, the POMO refrains from making absolute judgments about the nature of that final reality. He will speculate, but he will not make an absolute judgment. A variety of opinions exists as to what that final reality is. He does not rely upon one logical system but keeps many logical system options open-ended. Variety, or tolerance, is the Achilles heel of the POMO.

Steve Carell's THE OFFICE is also a brilliant illustration of POMO parody of the open system. Michael Scott is forever interrupting the effective systematic flow of the [[Dunder Mifflin Paper Company]]. Though company protocol has been established and procedure is at his dispense, Michael Scott injects his own disruptive "solutions" to problems for which the management system has already provided. What is the result of each episode after Michael Scott's meddling? Human bonding. Human connection. Something the system cannot in its best of moments achieve.

The POMO does not commit to one system because he has no certainty in the presence of other conflicting contexts that his particular system is right. By not being committed to one system, he remains open to all. In a nutshell, this quality is what I mean by “post-modern.”

POST-MOD CRUMPING VS. MODERN BREAKDANCING

POMO culture parodies Modern culture. It is important to understand this if you are to read sense into POMO "absurdity." Just as POMOS are the direct offspring of Moderns, POMO culture references Modernism. It is vital, however, to understand that POMO culture is not incidental. As a cultural movement, it is unique in that it acquiesces to the gravity of Modern culture by parody: an intentional but cynical compliance in which it is "forced" into.


For example, breakdancing belongs to the Modern because it imitated the technology of Modern industrialized culture: the reduction of matter to hydraulic motion, robotic movement, and wave theory. What made the dance Modern was its emphasis upon precise mechanical imitation and the most number of rotations exploited from an efficient move. Just like the mechanistic, Modern world-view, breakdancing was a mechanistic expression of that worldview. That is not to say anything negative about the dance, per se, unless a person has bought into the mechanistic worldview. I am only trying to contextualize it. Many customary norms of the Modern can be observed in every strata of culture that link it back to its mechanistic emphases, not just breakdancing.


In the following clip, notice the predictable "orbital" motion of the floor moves. Notice the "waves" and "machining" of the popping moves. Also, notice how the breakers dance, synchronized to the music, not against it, indicating the "staged" choreography. Perhaps, the most obvious Modern convention is the fact that the dancers are spaced or "alienated" from each other at a generous distance from each other so as to be discerned from each other. Also, each dancer specializes in a particular section of the dance genre: fracture. You are watching Modern compartmentalization in action.



As the 1980’s came to a close and the world spirit shifted from a Modern, deterministic view of reality to a Post-modern, spiritual one, breakdancing lost media favor and gave way to a Hip-Hop form more compatible with POMO culture: crumping. Whereas breakdance was predictable, crumping defined itself by its impredictability and attendant absurdity. It is the quantum version of breakdance in that it sections a predictable dance move into exponentially small portions and reframes them in a stream of glitches, aesthetically imitating the uncertainty principle. In fact, properly done, no two Crump dances ought to look the same (RIZE documentary).

In the video clip first listen to the deconstruction of the classic song at the beginning, a post-mod convention. Next, watch the several selections of crumping. Notice in several of the dance selections how close in proximity the onlookers are to the main crumper: the onlookers are "feeding" the crumper energy just as they are "receiving" that energy back. Notice that they do not respond to "staged" moves but only to the novel move or the "unprogrammed" move. These dances are not staged. Also, notice in a few sections how the crumper "stutters" or "skips" very much like a scratched CD "loops" back on itself. It is as if they are breaking out of a "predetermined" act. Also, notice the definitive movements that have a "pull back" to them and the aggressively angular contortions that go no where. Do not watch to criticize. Watch to understand.



What is intriguing about this "ghetto ballet" born out of the 1996 L.A. Riots is that crumpers looked on breakdancing as bling or show because it was fashionably simplistic, pretentious, and commercial. Breakdancing was interested in the precise imitation of mechanics whereas crumping was in revolt against mechanics. Being Modern, I have been culturally partial to breakdance; that is to say, I understand it and can appreciate it.



I have told my students that with my new understanding over the past decade, I would fall on the side of crumping because it is a relevantly cultural expression of the signs of the times. In the proper spirit, it is beautifully choreographed post-modernism exhibiting no faith in truncated predictability and running with a wide-arm embrace towards the unknown or "faith in faith." And I wouldn't crump on stage or in a circle surrounded by an non-participatory audience either like breakdancing demands, being performance-oriented. I would crump outside the circle, in the crowd, on a building, in a tree. I would crump until I was exhausted. I would crump until the Modern crowd went from ridiculing me to awkwardly murmuring about my nonsense to finally giving in to a reverent silence until someone in the crowd says "I think he's trying to say something." And I would do it as a Modern full of compassion for this generation, and not as some POMO wannabe sporting tattoos I really don't want or eyebrow rings I really don't like or speaking a lingo I really don't know or listening to music I really don't understand. No, I would do it as a member of my own optimistic but narcissistic Modern generation before 1989.


And what would I be saying? I would be saying that it is time to wake up to the fact that the world is no longer a Modern world! Even though Modernism has two hundred years of momentum, I am telling you that if you are a Modern you are being marginalized. You are becoming quickly redundant. And it is no fault of the encroaching post-modern world, because eras are subject to change. It is the fault of the nostalgic Modern who wishes it to be 1940 again or 1950 again or, God forbid, the 1980's again when those decades themselves embodied cultural failures we have so tried to escape. Can a man crawl back into his mother's womb and be born again? Of course not, and neither is it a solution to talk about the "good old days" when in reality they were only good because they were familiar.


The movie Beat Street (1984) which featured the East Coast New York City breakers was about breaking out of poverty. The movie ends with a death and a memorial. The plot of the movie Breakin 2 Electric Boogaloo featuring West Coast Electric Boogaloo was about "breaking the system." However, the breakdancers capitulated to the system by using an aspect of Modernism to fight Modernism. In the end their promise to revolt ended up in their raising money to save a local arts hangout. Crumping is different in that it is very very personal. You can't "get crump" unless you are spiritually and emotionally motivated. It does not come any other way. Crumping has finally become commercialized to the ire of its many founder-contributers, but it will remain grassroots because of its emphasis on individual expression.


Youtube breakdancing vs. crumping. You will see that the two Hip-Hop dances have no love for each other. That is because they are two different world-view expressions. Crumping is a quantum expression of breakdancing which is what I mean by POMO culture parodying Modern culture. POMO culture, being derived of Modernism, will always use a Modern sensibility as its reference point. But the key to understanding POMO culture is a veneer of compliance plus a cynic's twist.

A WELL-MEANING, CULTURAL ATHEISM

The POMO will not compartmentalize life while his parents' chief goal in child-rearing is the creation of an automaton with formatted body, mind and spirit. The POMO cringes when expected to compartmentalize his life. I have listened to hundreds of students express as much to me, to each other, and to their parents. They write it in their essays. They talk about it at lunchtime. They etch it on their skins. They express it in their clothing. In their insomnia. In their boredom. The POMO aspires that all compartments of life be a fluid one and only one. Ultimately, this is what a POMO means when he speaks of being genuine or true or honest or authentic. How authentic is it to express truth in Newtonian terminology when Newton's simplicity denies the extraordinary complexity of the universe we now know? The POMO believes that most, if not all, of life's categories are artificially imposed, propping up a very artificial system he is told is reality. As artificial, those categories are hampering to the pursuit of an successful and enjoyable life that desires above all things to exist in harmony with itself and with the world around it.

The fundamental confusion of the Modern Christian’s logical (doctrinal) position is that God (as absolute) is to be seriously considered in one area of reality but not in another. For example, many Christian schools teach students that an object returns to the ground because of gravity, yet in a “spiritual” sense (though functionally impractical) because God wills it (if they ever get around to saying that). But that reality is not sensible. Newton argued that, because God wills it, an object will return to the ground and that, if gravity works, it works because God wills it. Natural law and supernatural law are not to be divorced if both are to make sense. Natural law exists in a practical and predictable form upon which men can project material results because God is already there willing natural law to work.

On one hand, the Modern Christian mindset demands exhaustive and logical, physical knowledge of the universe in a way that it does not expect exhaustive and logical knowledge of the “spiritual” world. The result is that blatant, logical glitches in “spiritual” truth pockmark the Christian faith and become the logical reasoning of a totalitarian subculture.

I encourage you to compare and contrast the levels of consistency you expect from scientific knowledge and church doctrine, respectively. You will find more often than not that the tendency is either to speak haphazardly about spiritual things but to speak with precision about physical things or to speak with precision about theoretically spiritual things that do not make one iota of difference in this world and to speak theoretically with precision about physical things that make no difference in this world. Either way, you have a bifurcation of spirit and matter, where it is either the world or the spirit that matters at any one time in any one place. This dual expectation is an arbitrary value shift which is as equally atheistic as a “totally” atheistic position, because God is to be barred from where it truly and effectively matters.

The POMO is different. He tends to speak haphazardly about spiritual things AND physical things because his is one world. The sincerity with which he combines both worlds into one is the absurdity against which the Modern revolts. That absurdity (which the Modern does not so easily recognize) is the POMO parodying Modern culture.

THE CULTURAL STRESS-FRACTURE

One hears the term "absolute" quite alot amongst Moderns in religious and political discussions: absolute truth, absolute values. In this sense, absolute is the antithesis to "relativistic" which I have already explained is often confused with legitimate relativity. A premodern view of "absolute" would reserve the term for God or as descriptive of God, not as a term for the entity of creation or for any material particular. Because matter is created, it is transient. Because it is transient, it is not absolute. Only God is absolute. What about ideas or culture derived of God? It does not matter: as derivative they are transient. The Modern ultimately believed scientific law to be absolute and spiritual truth derived of that scientific law to be absolute, too. So, for example, an evangelist who scientifically "proves" to an individual the existence of God is expected to necessarily convince him of the Christian faith. Material, imminently discernible, is primary. Spirituality, less discernible than matter (in this view), is derivative.

The Modern orientation acknowledges that a mechanistic system encases the total of natural law and, as a system, is independent of any other factor. For those who subscribe to deity, it is outside the system so as not to affect the integrity of the mechanistic system. James Gleick says of Modern science "A God that does not intervene is a God receding into a distant, harmless background." Modernism does not rely upon an a-material entity for a total answer to reality that embraces both physical and spiritual realms. From beginning to end, the Modern mind is formatted with the architectural blueprint, with the five-year business plan, with family planning, with the fiscal budget, with the Romans Road. Even the concept of the business core value is conceptually structured as an independent solar system affected by no more factors than the material environment in which it finds itself.

The strength of the Modern is that he can project with scientific accuracy the end of many material things. He can do that because his logical reliability projects a constant into the future, be it only a physical constant. The Egyptians did not have this kind of reliability, and to them is attributed the 24-hour day, the 365-day solar year, the decimal system. The Greeks and Romans did not have this reliability either, though to them has been attributed the foundations of mathematics and Western civilization. Each of these civilizations had a complexity of mythological deities that diluted the logical reliability unique to our Modern view.

After the advent of the Modern system, a man could do what men before the system could only hope to do: make approximate or accurate material projections with no consideration of deity whatsoever. That is what James Gleick meant when he said of the Scientific Revolution "The more competently science performed, the less it needed God." In here we have two admissions. First of all, Modernism was a transitional era where a classic Christian consideration of God was greater before the advent of Modernism. Secondly, Modern sensibilities are best understood on the basis of quantitative measurement. "The equation knows best." (Heisenberg)

The POMO mindset does not naturally embrace this framework for two critical reasons. First, the optimistic Modern worldview was crushed and finished with the end of the Cold War. Any serious view of Modernism since then has been jettisoned for the preferential consideration of shattered ideological systems. Secondly, any child born after 1989 is no true Modern, no matter how hard a parent might try to constrain him or her into faith in Newtonian predictability. The POMO hears, ingests and frames information differently.

The Modern is surprised when this generation rejects Modern sensibilities. "Why would a POMO want to forfeit the certainty of projecting a physical constant?" they ask. True, having confidence that the universe and its parts are programmed with a reasonable measure of accuracy is a strength. It is especially a strength if an entire culture is programmed to operate that way. However, what if that view of the physical world is only a truncation of total reality? What if a physical constant does not properly demonstrate the broadest possible view of accessible reality? And of what practical, cultural use is it if the culture is no longer organized that way?

The chief weakness of the Modern mindset is the tendency to subject life to an efficient scientific view of reality. The uniformity of natural causes deals only with matter. The Modern applies scientific law to spiritual reality when scientific knowledge is partial and indefinitely in flux. In other words, mechanics is not the ultimate constant or final reference point. Necessarily, the Modern is conditioned to be satisfied with the material results of material projections. The POMO, oriented to a much broader awareness of reality, refuses to organize all data on the basis of the scientific, the categorical, or the observable. The POMO is not oriented to satisfaction with material results. This is the main stress-fracture between the two generations.

MODERN MECHANISTIC REALITY

The Christian Modern affirmed the existence of Deity, but argued for a dominant mechanistic reality over which God had no practical input or control. The Christian Modern would argue. However, ask a Modern Christian what causes an object to fall back down after being thrown into the air, and he will more than likely reply “gravity.” Tell him “The answer is 'God', not 'gravity,'" and he will go "ah" because you should have clarified yourself. He did not understand you to be speaking spiritually but scientifically. Why did the Modern have to speak in terms of disclaimers, clarifications, and rejoinders when speaking about spirituality? Because the largest context and overall tone of Modernism was that what can be known can be known apart from God.

How can two kinds of answers exist for the same question if the Modern Christian really believes that God created one world? How can the spiritual answer be God and the scientific answer be gravity? In this two-dimensional world, which dimension is the more practical? The overwhelming consensus would agree that the practical answer is gravity while the impractical answer is God. Why? Gravity is more practical because gravity is pervasively experienced as a natural law, and natural law has definite negative (flying a plane into the ground) and positive (flying a plane to Rome) consequences.


Gravity is "upon" us every single moment of our lives and is immediately appreciated or sensed. What of God? Well, in a more "spiritual" sense God is upon us, but that explanation is unreasonable within a mechanistic framework. That explanation is not saying anything at all. The Modern is often more conscious of the "pull" of gravity than he is of the "pull" of God. This is his scripting. Oftentimes, the answer “God” has been given as an argumentative acquiescence to Christianity and practically nothing more because it lacks the manifestation "material" things afford.

This schismatic reality is not the systematic reliability Isaac Newton had in mind when he codified the laws of motion. Newton understood that the world has a machine portion that is mechanistically integrated. However, that mechanistic portion is not all that exists. Newton never said it was all that existed. The monotheistic God as described in the Bible was Newton’s Final Reality. Newton's God is infinite, "bracketing" the finite, mechanical portion of reality. Because His God is infinite, He has of His own volition made Himself intelligibly known. Because He has made Himself understood by intelligible means, He, too, has a definite and practical relationship to the world: He created it. He is the most liberal context ever.

Newton did not have to leap from physical to spiritual worlds. Inconsistency in one did not force him to find cover in the other. He did not have to operate within a dichotomy, which is one of the reasons Newton and his generation did not manifest the anxiety disorders so rife throughout Modern and POMO cultures. Newton’s concept of causes illustrates a consistent flow and reference of material to the immaterial, of finiteness to infinity, of physics to metaphysics, of the world to God. Newton’s world is one world.

Newton did not even know the material cause of gravity, but his logical reliability did not hinge upon that specific lack of scientific information. His logic was not rooted in information or in the machine portion of reality. Newton's system was not an exhaustive system that sought to reconcile all data on the basis of matter. Finite things are subject to change, so science can be expected to develop, progress, and expand. He did not have to know everything there was to know in order to say that something was so. He did not have to pretend to stand on "absolutes" in order to validate his faith in God. Newton was free from that mindset which can be described as premodern if anything.

RELATIVITY THEORY AS AN ENVIRONMENT

I am always curious about use of the word "relativism", because it directly derived of Einstein's Realtivity Theory. Einstein never proposed that scientific law was absurd or incontinent (popular use of the term "relativism" or "relative"). He emphasized the uniqueness of relativity in respect to observation: the rules are what they are but appear to be more or less, relative to the position of the observer. Sure, Einstein appears to have undermined Newton's overtly Christian position as theoretical and highly simplistic for modern times; however, simplicity is no fault of Newton. He was an 18th century man and profound for his time. Nature and knowledge by design is transient.


However, when I talk about "funny", to another individual in a different referential frame it will translate as "totally inappropriate." When I talk about "complicated", to another individual I might mean "completely normal." Nevertheless, Relativity Theory is still contingent upon a point: the entire theory leverages a point. That is no inconsistency unless an individual coddles a fictitiously infantile perspective about context.
Around this time was borne the new “relativists” who clearly did not translate Einstein's idea well at all. They gloated over the death of Newtonian simplicity and many of them gloated over the death of Newton's God. Einstein was infuenced by the idea of time travel (the fourth dimension) which was becoming a popular discussion amongst intellectuals. H.G. Wells wrote The Time Machine in 1895, and Henri Poincare wrote Science and Hypothesis in 1902, a text that discusses the measurement of time. We know, for example, that Einstein read Science and Hypothesis and that Pablo Picasso learned about Poincare's book from a Maurice Princet.

I mention Pablo Picasso because he was experimenting with relativity theory in art. Picasso, the Father of Cubism, would break up a painting and depict the various parts of the painting from various perspectives so that as one scanned the painting, one would "see" all perspectives at the same time. Of course, most people, I am sure, did not know what he was doing. It is true that Picasso was morally disreputable, habitually abandoning family after family. However, Picasso's experimentation with relativity did not cause his moral failures. Perhaps, his misunderstanding of relativity supported his infidelity, but that does not diminish the truthfulness of relativity.

Arnold Schoenberg, the 20th century composer, did a similar thing with music. The Father of Atonality, Schoenberg did not set out to create absurd music. He created music based upon the twelve tones of the chromatic scale instead of the traditionally harmonious eight-tone octave. His music had a logical relationship from one tone to the other and from each tone to the whole within the framework he developed. Did people understand what he was doing? Probably not at first. At one concert, Schoenberg's atonal composition was so misunderstood and caused so much emotional agitation amongst the audience that a fight broke out. The police had to be called in, and Schoenberg threatened to end the concert. People initially did not understand what he was doing with music. They assumed it to be both new and disruptive. In this sense, I like to tell my students that Schoenberg is the father of punk music. And that was at the beginning of the 20th century.

Einstein disliked his Relativity Theory being used to support the idea of a sinister moral relativism: the notion that no moral framework is uniquely privileged over all others. Of course, Einstein was a scientist, not a philosopher. Further, he was an exile in America where his ideas and their cultural applications became widely popularized, probably because of media. What we do know is that relativity grew to become the new social framework of the 20th century and was directly responsible for the erosion of "traditional norms" like colonialism. Colonialism could not survive in a framework of relativity (except under very special circumstances) because a political expression of relativity opposes the political subjugation of nations. Under relativity, the nations "parallel" each other: each nation is its own entity. Einstein's relativity was the impetus of the relativist cultural tendency (and of several self-consciously associated cultural movements like Ghandi and Martine Luther King) for wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western culture in the early 20th century as much as its misunderstanding provided a toehold and then an eventual foothold for many destructive changes as well.

It is no mistake that the shakers and movers of the 20th century felt the "traditional" forms of art, architecture, literature, religious faith, social organization and daily life to be outdated in the new economic, social and political conditions of the 20th century. Because nature is finite, it is transient and must change. Relativity, however, was the equivalent of a "quantum leap" and moved at a faster rate than the general culture and its various sub-cultures were able to monitor or regulate. So the beginning of the 20th century was not only the undoing of Newtonian Physics but ultimately the undoing of the religious axioms that underpinned Newtonian Physics. In this way relativism (and its association with relativity) is negatively viewed as a questioning of the axioms, including religious axioms, of the previous age. Relativity, however, is something very different. It is the air that both liberal and conservative Moderns breathe.

EINSTEIN & THE CLOSED SYSTEM

Newton's laws codified the idea of the integrated system and contributed to the normalization of the common Modern man an unwavering logical reliability in the material consistency of the universe. The idea eventually splayed into two very broad, divergent interpretations of Newton's system.


One view was the uniformity of natural causes in a closed system: the material world is all that exists. This scientific emphasis says that material laws are "high" or ultimate. If God exists, he is within the system as a material portion of that system. Because material begets material, God, in any personal sense, is necessarily the product of the material universe. This strictly scientific interpretation of reality was the dominant mindset of the Modern world and can be generally described as atheistic because, as a closed system, it claims a functionality independently of God or any deity whatsoever.


Following the popularity of Newton's discoveries, the 18th century Enlightenment galvanized the closed system position. That closed system can be described as all of natural law, including the total of natural causes and effects in the universe, is integrated (uniformity) into a reasonable way (closed system). To the Modern this goes without saying. To predecessors of Modern, scientific discovery, this was an epic revelation. So the pull of gravity on the moon relates to the pull of gravity on earth in such a way that all objects on earth weigh about one-third their earth-weight on the moon.


I can say “all” because within the Modern systematic mindset is a reasonable relationship between the pull of gravity on the earth and the pull of gravity on the moon. Materially, the entire universe is one environment. Its natural laws are self-contained and provide the Modern with a rigid form of consistency to which he can attribute his logical reliability and subsequent common sense. Consequently, the closed system perspective allowed the West to wrest from nature its mathematical formulae. The Enlightenment was committed to understanding the natural world on the basis of reason alone without the influence of religious belief. To sum it up, it can be said that the Modern worldview converges upon the focal point that what can be known can be known apart from God.


Scientists contributed to Newton's discoveries for the next two hundred years until Einstein changed physics altogether. In his Laws of Motion, Newton's “object” was an idealized particle in which he theorized an infinitesimally small “center” without consideration of the other real particles making up the object. Though eventually proven to be an oversimplification, the idealized particle was used to illustrate such complex behaviors like planetary motion and human behavior. Strict interpretation of Newton's Laws would apply to every particle of the object, resulting in exponentially erratic behavior of the object not yet understood by classical science.


Einstein published his Special Relativity in 1905. Einstein's discovery was a science of space, not objects, per se. Classical physics bifurcated position and motion, studying each separately from the other. Einstein was interested in how objects relate to the overall behavior of space. What he discovered was that space “bends.” Consider how water responds when an object is submerged. It responds totally appropriately: absorbing the object and totally integrating itself with the object's every blemish. Space is similar. An object inserted into space, “disrupts” that space, creating a uniquely complimentary environment. Further, if that object is hurtling through space, how unique is the relationship now between space and the object?


The complexity of Einstein's genius is that he created a science independent of the referential frame of any observer. The simplicity of Einstein's genius is that two observers in the same referential frame (fixed point) moving at the same velocity of earth are likely to observe a single, similar phenomena while two observers in different referential time frames (and, therefore, moving at different speeds relative to each other) may not observe the same phenomena. Though relativity here is contingent upon the referential frame of two observers, the entire theory is contingent upon a point that exists independently of each observer.


Einstein's relativity challenged the simplicity of Newton's assumption of how mass and motion interact. As it became popularized, the effect of Einstein's theory was a significant contribution to the undoing of other classical assumptions that were largely religious and naturally underpinned a multitude of then current cultural expressions. Once Einstein's Special Relativity was published (his General Relativity followed in 1917), Western culture was self-consciously experimenting with the ramifications of relativity.