The
matrix presented in the last post tells the same story as did the Indian
parable of three millennia ago of the blind men who encounter an
elephant
They have never come
across an elephant before and learn and conceptualize what the
elephant is like by touching it. Each blind man feels a different part of the
elephant's body, but only one part, such as the side or the tusk. They then
describe the elephant based on their limited experience and their descriptions
of the elephant are different from each other. In some versions, they come to
suspect that the other person is dishonest and they come to blows.
The moral of the parable is that humans have a tendency to claim absolute truth based on their limited, subjective experience as they ignore other people's limited, subjective experiences which may be equally true
The moral of the parable is that humans have a tendency to claim absolute truth based on their limited, subjective experience as they ignore other people's limited, subjective experiences which may be equally true
This
seems to put post-modernism and its claims in its place – is it really all that
new?
That’s
the question which this post considers…
Some time ago I came
across a reference to a short book written in 1944 which I had never heard of
– The Abolition of Man – which seemed to
anticipate the threat which the “anything goes” strand of post-modernism would
bring (which I have taken to calling - the “whatever” response). It was penned by
a very well-known figure of CS Lewis and is summarised here – the full version
can actually be downloaded here.
It seems that Lewis
(father of Daniel D) took the threat so seriously that he wrote a dystopian
novel about it – That Hideous Strength whose plot is summarised in great detail here; serialised here; and available (courtesy
of Gutenberg) in entirety here
Rashomon was a famous Japanese
film, made in 1950, which considered an event from four different perspectives – a few years before I learned this
knack, operating as I have described elsewhere in the no-man’s land between
classes, between different academic and
professional fields
and, from the age of 50, even between different countries.
And
it was political scientist Graham Allison’s Essence of Decision –
explaining the Cuban missile crisis (1971) which helped me appreciate the
significance of what I had felt, in my youth, to be, quite simply, personal
tensions.
That
book set out three very different
ways of understanding the events of October 1962 when the world stood
on the edge of nuclear war (see the diagram at p23 of that link). His 1969 paper in the American Political
Science Review rehearsed the basic argument – which outlines first a “rational
model” of decision-making; then one based on “organisational behaviour”; and
finally one based on “governmental politics”.
The clearest explanation of the
phenomenon, however, is probably the earliest – American sociologist Peter Berger’s The social
construction of reality (1966) whose significance I didn't recognise at the time
Frame analysis” – variously attributed to anthropologist Geoffrey Bateson (1972) and Erving Goffman (1974) – was the technical term given to the recognition of diverse and divergent perceptions of “reality” and one which I came across during a part-time course I was taking on policy analysis – actually the UK’s first such course in the mid 1980, run by Lewis Gunn.
I can still remember the room I was in when we discussed the concept and the frisson experienced - although when I google the term, I can’t find a satisfactory article – all gibberish, associated with the field of communications studies.
But it was, probably, Gareth Morgan who
popularised the notion that we could view organisational reality in many
different ways.
His Images of Organisation appeared in 1986 and
pointed out that nine different metaphors (or “ways of seeing”) had developed about
organisations eg as a “machine”, as a “brain”, as “cultures”, even as a
“psychic prison”. And each of these have very real and distinctive effects on
the way we think about organisations.
A
drawing made the same point visually – see, for example, p 26 or so of Stephen
Covey’s Seven Habits of really
Effective People
(1990) – some saw an old woman, others a young thing with a bonnet….
Like David Harvey in The Condition of
Post-modernity – an enquiry into cultural change; (1989), I’m not sure when I first
came across the expression “post-modern”
to describe the age which has taken the celebration of diverse ways of
looking at events to such extremes that “anything goes” and “fake news”
flourishes.
Harvey is a geographer and
better known for his exegesis of Marxism – and it’s only now I have come across
this book of his on postmodernism which seems at first glance to be quite the
best thing I know on the subject
Of course, the question
everyone poses when the subject turns to postmodernism is – what was modernism?
For which the best read is Marshall Berman’s All that is solid melts
into air
(1982) which was the subject of a famous exchange between
Perry Anderson
and the author in 1984 in the pages of
the New Left Review
Further reading
https://www.preceden.com/timelines/62885-postmodernism-timeline-1939-2001;
The
Preceden website is a very useful tool I didn’t
know about – and this entry helps us understand PM
The
Saturated Self – a collage of postmodern life; K Gergen (1991) A
psychologist’s take on the matter
Self
and modernity on trial – a reply to Gergen which contains a great summary
of the book
One Dimensional Man; Herbert
Marcuse (1964) which can
be accessed here
Common
cause (2010) a vivid example of how postmodernism now drives the marketing machine
