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!"

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.

THE BASELINE OF MODERN LOGICAL RELIABILITY

Modern logical reliability is no core value of the POMO. The most competent of POMOS prefers debilitating ignorance, mental anguish and copious amounts of anxiety medication to the common sense of Modern predictability, and this repulsion spans every cultural variant in his life from airbags to religion. The problem, I believe, hinges upon a proper framing of the Modern concept of truth.

For many reasons I will provide, the Modern "liberal" and "conservative" concepts of truth are both relative. I know that the especially conservative Modern argues that he has stood and continues to stand solely upon "absolute" truth, but I am going to eventually explain how every Modern, regardless of his religious or political affiliation, is a product of a relative view of truth. Then I am going to explain how the POMO's context and baseline of truth has been this relative view of truth. Then I am going to illustrate from the POMO's cultural perspective how if truth is relative, then the POMO is obligated to "play" with logic.

Modern logical reliability relies upon a mechanistic system indispensable to the rational thought of the Modern, whereas the POMO navigates mechanistic systems with incessant suspicion ultimately undermining his ability to reason with Modern logic. The net result is his genuine inability to logically deduce within the constraints of Modern thought-forms. Let me be clear: Modern and POMO thought forms are not the same. Because of incompatible referential frames, Modern common sense is not the same common sense to the POMO. And I am talking about a baseline standard.

Key to understanding the matrix of POMO reasoning is analyzing contrasts between POMO and Modern cultures. Observing their differences in science is a demonstrable way to extrapolate the values of each. I will outline the development of these two views through three scientific developments: Newton's Laws of Motion (1687), Einstein's Theory of Relativity (1905) and Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle (1927).

Newtonian Physics is the direct ancestor of Modern logical reliability and largely responsible for the development of Modern sensibilities, aka, common sense. In his Laws of Motion Newton outlines three rules of deduction to be applied to physical objects:

Law 1: Every object remains in a state of rest unless acted upon by an equal or greater outside force. Every effect has a sufficient (strong) cause, so that it is impossible to attribute an effect to an insufficient (weak) cause. For wood to burn (effect), it must be produced by a cause strong enough to produce the burning. A series of sufficient causes and effects is called a “chain of events” and makes it possible to trace an event back to its original cause. The ability to "link" ideas in this way is a Western value and a hallmark expression of a free individual.

Law 2: Any object enacted on by an outside force will respond in the direction of a right line from the point at which it was enacted upon. An object forced upon by another object is “forced” to move in the direction of a right line from the point of impact. Notably called the law of entropy, an object at rest will move in the direction of a right line eventually to return to a state of rest once more. A fire will burn up wood until the wood is no more. A fire “wants” to extinguish itself. So the Western aspiration to satisfactory “conclusions” was codified. Perpetually inconclusive motion (like anxiety) is no original Western value.

Law 3: The effect of an action upon an object results in an equal and opposite reaction of the subject. The action-reaction law or reciprocal motion maintains that not only does fire interact with wood, but the wood reciprocates by “wanting” to be burned. The wood, assumed to be passive, is equally contributive. So the Western value of reciprocal motion (reciprocal engagement) via organically covenantal or mutually contractual relationships is an expectation unique to the Western Hemisphere.

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.

FOREWORD

During my last semester of college (1996) I sat in the classroom of an elementary school in Pensacola, Florida for fourteen weeks to complete an internship required of me to graduate. I was assigned to an observation post at the back of the classroom for twelve of those weeks to “learn” how to teach. Despite sincere and innovative attempts to please the teacher, I was subject to weekly, scathing criticism about my common interaction with the students and my irreverent view of discipline. Granted, I liked the students so I spoke with them outside teaching hours. This behavior, however, was viewed as delinquent. I later learned that it encouraged familiarity which we all know breeds contempt.

What was not on Teacher's radar was the wide range of dysfunction that lay behind the sweet white, brown and black faces she taught. None of that dysfunction mattered to her. Further, she did not care to see that these problems vied for the attention of their brains: students and family members embroiled in the effects of attempted murder, arson, chronic illness, emotional detachment disorder. Despite the full school days which regulated activity to the minute, no talking was allowed at lunch time, no free play allowed at recess, no unscripted talk during classes. Essentially no time lay within or outside the program to address concerns and interests fundamentally linked to the human condition. Oh, and it was a Christian school.

I spent those twelve weeks in a little, red chair writing an educational abstract called “The Structure of Non-reason" in addition to the copious observational notes I was required to take. In it I sought to describe the irony I saw before me: the perpetration of a religious ideology claiming world significance, dominance and influence, yet in no way, shape or form addressing the essential problems of moral conscience, psychology or physiology in its classrooms. The religious portion of the curriculum was relatively nonsensical, for it did not reconcile its tenets with the very problems the students were becoming. The students, I concluded, would be better off just learning information and bypassing all of the disjointed, religious parts. I was fascinated by the hubris and ignorance of the instiution and was intent to encapsulate the metamorphosis of the problem as it unfolded before my eyes.

On the left side of my open notebook I kept scrupulous observational notes such as “Children explain their answers on the board” and “Earnest is left-handed” and “The children laughed because the Midianites were killed.” On the right page I wrote “There’s this bit of non-reason that frees man up as autonomous in the created universe.” Twelve years later, I am ready to share my observations.

I originally wrote this book for parents, only to realize that the majority of parents who read my book or discussed with me the thoughts in my book thought it to be so much scholastic pontification. They could not wrap their modern brains around the nexus of what I was saying: a fundamental shift has occurred in the way people understand truth and that shift occurred as recently as 1989. Being free of their criticisms and increasingly marginalized sensibilities, I am writing my analysis of the strange amalgamation of post-Cold War youth I call POMOS.

I have specifically rewritten this book for those who have a legitimate professional interest in one of the largest sub-cultures alive in the West today, the POMO. These are children raised by Moderns (Christian or not) who raised them on a culture of science-vs-faith emphasizing traditional absolutes (like freedom) proven to be largely founded upon a relativistic concept of truth, sketchy social objectives (like freedom) supported by romantic religious platitudes, and a transient value system (like freedom) on the cusp of another cultural shift. I have worked with POMOS in my own school for ten years but have been aware of a strange, cultural transformation since 1989.

None of the illustrations I give you here are specifically attached to a parent or student of Stone Table (or its affiliates). Rather, they represent actual conversations and interactions I have had with hundreds of children and parents over the last twelve years of my educatonal career. Any actual illustrations I give do not have names attached to them and are altered enough to not be recognizable by such persons were they to read my manuscript. However, I would dare say that these Everyman examples will be uncomfortably recognizable across the wide spectrum I intend to describe.