UserPass  
 
Subud Radio



From The Gallery
3506 Happy woman-Mujer contenta
3506 Happy woma...

Album: Susilowati

Who's Here
Currently no members online.

You are an anonymous user. You can register for free by clicking here

Site Stats
Members:   Members:
Last:   Total: 2085
Last:   Last: rrb-Jackson1797

Shout Box


Post new topic   Reply to topic
View previous topic Printable version Log in to check your private messages View next topic
Author Message
Guest
Post subject: post-modernism  PostPosted: May 16, 2003 - 10:45 PM






This topic spins off the previous thread 'relationships outside of marriage'.
It's sort of an essay - just food for thought in the context of Subud.

This doesn't apply to everybody, but for most people born in the so-called 'developed' or 'Western' world since about 1950 (and especially 1960) it's rather difficult not to be indoctrinated into post-modernism, even if you don't know what the word means.

Post-modernism can be described as a certain tendency in how people see life, the universe and everything that takes into account the fact that we all possess different "points of view". Post-modernism, therefore, basically emphasises the 'relativity of truth'. It sort of says, "If you saw things through my eyes, then you would agree with me. And if I saw things through your eyes, then I would agree with you."

There are many reasons why people might see reality differently. It could be simply the way our brains are wired, or maybe it depends on our different cultural or social backgrounds, or possibly it's due to how our respective parents raised us. Perhaps we've just had different experiences of life, or it could be because of our educational backgrounds, or maybe some of us have encountered various traumatic incidents whose influences are embedded in our subliminal minds. Who knows?

Anyway, post-modernism emphasises that although individuals might have different "viewpoints", there's no ultimate test of whose viewpoint is 'more true'. According to post-modernism, one viewpoint is just as valid as any other - providing that it is self-consistent or at least not totally off the planet.

Another way of expressing this is: "the medium is the message". The 'mode' in which any viewpoint is put forward is actually part of the viewpoint, and represents a crucial aspect of it. Post-modernism suggests that we cannot readily separate the 'content' of someone's perspective from the 'platform' or 'worldview' on which that perspective was formed. Furthermore, since all perspectives inevitably originate on platforms of somewhat arbitrary 'location' (in an abstract sense), then there is no such thing as a truly "objective" platform that's free of arbitrariness or bias of some kind. Therefore no point of view ever exists in a 'value-free' context.

This doesn't mean that different viewpoints can't be compared. It can be still be very useful to do so. However, it does imply that we need to be extra self-aware and self-reflective in the process. Post-modernism always calls for questioning of ones own platform of values, especially when criticising alternative perspectives. Post-modern art is generally recognised in terms of its introspective and yet reactionary focus on context and arbitrariness to provoke self-reflection.

Lots of people object to post-modernism, but this can be a little paradoxical because it doesn't really present any view to argue against - like wrestling with water - we just end up wrestling with ourselves. Post-modernism never inhibits anyone from holding 'personal' values or beliefs. It is basically made manifest through social interaction. As such, it usually lends itself to more or less tolerant attitudes and liberal standards, but it can also be seen as supporting a 'nihilistic' approach to ethics and morality, as if post-modernism stands for "anything goes".

In my humble opinion, such reasoning is faulty. In recognising that perceptions vary according to individual circumstances, post-modernism highlights the understanding that people are all of one kind "on the inside". Consequently, a consensus basis for the shaping of ethics and morality falls naturally into place as the appropriate model for human beings in responding to one another. Of course, how we respond to our own inner existence is quite another matter, beyond the context of post-modernism.
 
   
Reply with quote Back to top
Guest
Post subject:   PostPosted: May 16, 2003 - 11:54 PM






Postmodernism Post-Structuralism; Post-Taking Yourself on.

Ultimately, their only value lies in them as tools or rather a demistification of power. Whom is dominant, who controls who, what, why and where. In such way they are tools for the underdog, subaltern lardy dar and lardy do, a source of empowerment and counter-balance. This is where it ends.


Moral vacumn. If postmodern society has said nothing is worthy of human respect, rectitude and loyalty then humanities rampant moral and value dilution merry-go-round is the order of the day. Oh I support feminism, I respect my fellow man, hell I'll do anything, but place no boundaries on me - oh no I can forget about my family, forget about my community and watch my society collapse around me, and hey bonk fifty people in between. Just like Sartre was with Simone, supported her position and yet did as he pleased with countless other Parisians. Hypocrisy and a blank cheque for not taking oneself on. I may have liberated my mind from the constraints of my oppressors but now I am at the mercy of my unchecked drives.


Post-modernism represents the deprivation and despair of the post-industrial post-enlightenment world. Where any semblence of unity, consistency and order is lost in the morass of insubstantiality (yes anything goes). Great tracts of Art, History, Literature, Philosophy are cast aside by child-like philistine's theory. Things worthy and that have value are eaten by its cancer, the result is todays dumb-down cultural desert. Where many of the oppressed have risen and been heard a good thing, however, such achievement pales by postmodernisms glorification of shit.


It in many ways is a revolt against the uniformity, ideological and ethical rigidity which so much 'modern' thereom presented. Deterministic theory which provided the ground for humanities great barbarity in the 20th century. Modernism created industrial warfare, facism and communism and the consumer age. God have mercy on our arragonce.

The net outcome has not been oneness with God but dissillusionment and aimless drift. Because there is an impasse in so much modern political philosophy etc, where no one overarching theory has justifiably taken the mantle of the ultimate truth, the western political, cultural and sociological scene gasped in despair and fell into semantics, textual obsessiveness and inherently frothy nothingness.

A reflection of humanity's tendency to fail to bow ones ego, to control ones mind and its twisted knots of wonderings. So honestly, I have a will, and ego and I don't want to bow it before you God. So two fingers up at you God, I have no alternative that fulfills my yearning, my moral bankruptcy festers. When the 'greatest minds' finally get to the bottom of their selective theory they wail in utter agony and ultimately present this sack of shit as a smoke screen for their inner solitude and despair.

Dear Guest above, in the interests of harmony, nothing personal. One day we might both have the guts to put our names to certain words.
 
   
Reply with quote Back to top
Guest
Post subject:   PostPosted: May 18, 2003 - 08:47 AM






I don't feel so pessimistic about the dominance of post-modernism. It might be a good thing. It undercuts a lot of mental nonsense, and if taken seriously, it puts the responsibility for leading a good life back on on the shoulders of the individual. In many societies, this might be well detrimental and unworkable, but in our present Western society, perhaps it is appropriate. Then, depending on the person, developing some sort of additional, 'metaphysical' faith might well be ennobling, or at least useful in terms of calming the mind and providing a sense of anchorage. To me, such a strategy seems quite compatible with maintaining a post-modern approach to the social domain.

Maybe post-modernism gives us a wonderful opportunity to acknowledge the limitations of the mind, and yet, within this context, to none the less embrace humanity's most precious values! This scenario; of realising that we are willing and able to care for and love and respect each other even without any 'publicly authorised' belief system being imposed upon us; isn't this the direction in which the latihan is leading us?
 
   
Reply with quote Back to top
Guest
Post subject:   PostPosted: May 18, 2003 - 02:00 PM






Maybe you read to much into what postmodernism represents, and are transmitting other values onto it.

I am also not sure you make the case for many of your claims. Many of the things you seem to claim as postmodern ground are already apparent and alive in other theory and ways of viewing the world.

The claim that postmodernism undercuts the mental nonsense of others is flawed by the fact it engenders a whole raft of often illegible semantics and circular musings. Multiple layers of nonsense are replaced not taken away. Postmodernism is an eclectic movement, originating in aesthetics- architecture and philosophy. Postmodernism espouses a skepticism of any grounded theoretical perspective. In essence it is a recipe for aimlessness. Its emphasis on subjectivity is noble in its search for empowering the individual and places the responsibility for ones social existence back to humanbeings rather than letting some higher ideology command one's decisions. Yet how does liberalism fail to do that? Islam seen to be an oppressive and rigid way of existence is if anything a glue that maintains inherently dangerous wonderings innate to humanity. Islam does however, in tandem empower the individual to take responsibility for one's community and in turn individual self discipline and self-improvement. And for that matter in such way where does postmodernism hold sway over Mahayana Buddhism, and countless other philosophies besides.

If anything postmodernism is not so dominant in western society as is claimed. According to postmodernism objectivity is an ‘illusion science’ according to the ideological argument, subverting those of oppressed groupings whom have not been given a position and are marginalised by the dominant paradigms. It is therefore in the social sciences at least only a vehicle for those outside the mainstream. If anything its often trendy to pay lip service to it, but for most its often held in derision and laughed off as a not so credible, incomprehensive and unworkable set of tools for looking at social and political existence.


Postmodern chic, postmodern froth.


As I have said in my last post – postmodernism is an inherently western, and limited perspective. It is historically and culturally specific and a net outcome of the impasse of western society and culture which such is finding itself in today. If anything it is not the empowerment and revitalization of western society, but it reflects the decadent and aimless wonderings of a society with an ailment eating away at what is valuable and worth maintaining, in the west’s past and present. Another way of saying this, according to Jean Baudrillard, is that in postmodern society there are no originals, only copies--or what he calls "simulacra." Simulations and artificialities, reflecting well the bankruptcy of the consumer world we all inhabit, fake, hollow and empty.

God Save of us!
 
   
Reply with quote Back to top
lorenzo
Post subject:   PostPosted: May 22, 2003 - 11:47 AM
Jiwa Dancer
Jiwa Dancer


Joined: Feb 14, 2003
Posts: 19

Well... what an interesting spin-off from my 'relationships outside of marriage' thread! I have only one question: is this "discussion" on post modernism all just one person? And also, perhaps one shouldn't be making semi-intellectual remarks on post modernism unless one has a community of people who know about post modernism taking part in the 'discussion', otherwise we don't really know if you're talking utter rubbish or not - see any conspiracy web site for examples.

Many Kind + Warm Regards,

Lorenzo

P.S.: it's considered rather rude to express academic-like views without first indentifying yourself, as otherwise, purely hypothetically, you may well be a crack-pot who doesn't want to be identified, no offence intended.
 
 View user's profile Send private message  
Reply with quote Back to top
davidweek
Post subject:   PostPosted: Nov 25, 2004 - 11:08 AM
A long way to the 7th Level
A long way to the 7th Level


Joined: Oct 03, 2004
Posts: 68
Location: Sydney
lorenzo wrote:
Well... what an interesting spin-off from my 'relationships outside of marriage' thread! I have only one question: is this "discussion" on post modernism all just one person? And also, perhaps one shouldn't be making semi-intellectual remarks on post modernism unless one has a community of people who know about post modernism taking part in the 'discussion', otherwise we don't really know if you're talking utter rubbish or not - see any conspiracy web site for examples.

Many Kind + Warm Regards,

Lorenzo

P.S.: it's considered rather rude to express academic-like views without first indentifying yourself, as otherwise, purely hypothetically, you may well be a crack-pot who doesn't want to be identified, no offence intended.
Hmmm

I'm kind of sad that this thread ran out. I think a discussion of postmodernism is certainly relevant to Subud, and to understand why, one might consider a variant on the term, which is postmodernity. Postmodernity is an era in which we live -- the era after modernity. Modernity itself is the culmination of a long thread in Western history, that started with the Greeks, who were the first people (apparently) to split the world into exactly two pieces: a glowing, ideal world of perfection, and its shadowy other, the flawed world in which we live. The kind of thinking that comes from this split is typical called "Platonism", after Plato, it's greatest exponent.

If you start to understand this split, you can see that it pervades almost every aspect of the way we see, and live in the world. For instance, the idea of progress, of things getting continuously better. Or its opposite, the idea of things getting progressively worse. Any kind of "teleology" like this, the idea of a big trend in history, is riddled with Platonism, because when you start looking into the language, its always about the world moving towards or away from an idealised or imagined state. The words "better" and "worse" come from a Platonic idea of "The Good" -- a state which can be defined, and which we can gradually align our actions towards. Other old Platonic ideas are "Truth", "The Beautiful", and "The Just".

Subud has direct historical link to Greek thought, which runs like this... The schools of Athens were very successful in setting themselves up as the prime centres of learning in North Africa and the Middle East. Everyone thinks of Jesus, for instance, as speaking Aramaic, but most of the early Bible is written in Greek, and its likely that Jesus spoke Greek. And definitely, very early on, the Christian religion took on many Platonic ideas; there was a fusion with Greek thought. This is not radical stuff -- any serious historical theology written by Catholic or Protestant scholars will say as much.

For instance, one of the ideas that we think of typically Christian is the idea of the "immortal soul". Was this an early Christian idea? No. It's a Greek idea. It's Platonist: the idea that the behind our obvious, mortal, corrupt "ashes to dust" bodies, lies a luminous, permanent essence -- the soul.

Christianity was original a sect of Judaism, and Judiasm (I was really surprised when I found this out) does not believe in immortal souls. Even today, some Jews believe in them, some don't, and others believe they exist but are largely irrelevant. But cross this Jewish sect (no pun intended) with Platonism, and immortal souls start to become a very big deal.

Islam took on the Platonism in two ways. First, as Islam expanded militarily across North Africa, it came across and absorbed Greek learning from the Greek schools. Second, Islam sees itself as a successor of the same tradition as Judaism and Christianity. Either way, Islamic thought is pervaded by Platonism.

Now we come to Subud. Subud is supposed to be "without teaching", but the fact is that most Subud members and Subud culture (the habits of thought and practice we take for granted) are strongly influenced by Bapak, and Bapak is a child of Java. (As we all are the children of our parents and the places from which we come.) Jave in turn, is an outpost of Islam, albeit one in which Islam is mixed in with the Hinduism that preceded it (all of the stories from the Mahabharata -- the wayang kulit) and the animism that preceded that (magic krises, the Queen of the South Seas, giants and demons prowling the landscape, all the ancestral stuff.)

Example: Almost every Subud member knows about "the nafsu", and "material, vegetable, animal and human forces". These come from Bapak's talks. But Bapak was raised in this way of thinking in Java, and in particular by the Naqshbandi order of Sufis. The Sufis are a branch of Islam, and take much from mainstream Islam, but mix with it a certain ecstatic sensibility -- the idea that you can achieve a state of mystical union with God. (All of this developed in Iran, which had been conquered by Islam, but which apparently had a more ecstatic view of life than the dry desert literalists who had conquered them.) And with Islam we are tied back to the Greeks.

Now, if you want read what is probably the first writings about the four forces: material, vegetative, animal and human, with almost the same meaning that Bapak gives them, where do you go? You turn to Aristotle, and there you'll find models of the human being which are eerily familiar, because they are the historical source of that way of looking at people. And if you wonder about the distinction between the nafsu, which comes from the Arabic nafs, which means breath, and is the same word as "spirit" (which also breath, as in "inspire" and "exspire" and "respiration"), and the "inner self" or soul, you can again turn to Aristotle.

The point is this: to understand Bapak's talks, it pays to understand (as it does with all things) the history behind them. And much of what they say makes sense to us because it falls in the same tradition, within which we are all steeped, which is Platonism. Most of Bapak's talks are, in this sense, modernist. It means that they postulate an ideal, a "pure" form of human being, of which we are all polluted or imperfect examples, and towards which we must strive, through a process of "purification".

Although Bapak's talks are very modernist in their content, Subud's very existence is postmodern. Because inherent in Platonism -- as a way of thinking, as a way of living, as way of being in the world -- is a form of oppression. Inherent in the idea of a "pure" form of something, towards which all imperfect forms are striving (whether it be truth, beauty, justice, or "spiritual development"), is an array all being in the world along a spectrum -- those that are more pure, and those that are less pure. Those that are more progressed, and those that are less progressed. Those that are more developed, those that are less.

And that in turn sets the scene for a political, social, and epistemological world in which some people can claim to be more advanced, more knowledgable, more developed, than others.

But what's happened over the last century is that many of the people who have been categorised as "less" in one form or another -- whether it be "heathen" religions, "underdeveloped" nations, or "pre-scientific" cultures, have found their feet. The idea of the pure, the progressed, the developed, has been undermined from within by intellectuals who showed that not only did the idea not hold water, but was actually counter to what the West considered it its best and highest ideals; it was underminded socially by women and gays and blacks and latinos and immigrants, who demanded that their beliefs and forms of knowledge be accorded equal status; and it was undermined internationally by events like the Vietnam War, and the Asian Economic Miracle, which showed that you didn't have to be a Platonist to win.

Part of this throwing off of the very subtle oppression of Platonism (to see how subtle, try imaging a world in which the word "better" has no meaning -- see below for examples of worlds in which it doesn't), was a re-examination of religion. And part of that was an opening up of the boundaries of what constituted religious "orthodoxy". Those boundaries are wide open. And part of that opening was Subud.

Without postmodernity, Subud would not exist.

So I think that we need to take postmodernity seriously, not as a abstract high-falutin academic dialogue -- and the best writers of postmodernity are anything but -- but as a real social phenomenon which you partake in every time you take you go to a Subud hall. Not only a real phenomenon, but a healthy and liberating one.

Now, many discussions of postmodernism get into linguistic tangles for a very simple reason: the shift from modernity to postmodernity changes everything. And so you start with one thing -- the idea of "perspectivism", that there is no knowledge that isn't knowledge from a particular historical perspective -- and then you realise that in order to accept that you are going to have re-think what you take for granted about learning, science, ethics, practicality, theory, witchcraft, religion, history, truth and reality... well, suddenly you can find yourself chasing your tail. (Or is it tale?)

Imagine back in the early days of the Enlightenment, when people started thinking that God was not the immanent King hiding behind every tree, sending you signs as to what he was angry or pleased about, but rather a beneficient Creator who had designed the world millenia ago, which now ran according to mathematical laws it was up to you to discover.... that's the level of shift we are talking about.

So postmodernity is inherently disorienting. Some people want to turn back to modernism. They're the ones that insist that truth lies in science and technology. Some want to turn back to pre-modernism. We can all become devout Catholics or Muslims or Protestants, living by the clear written instructions to be found in religious texts, or alternatively according to Wiccan or other New Age religions, which attempt to pre-date even the Judaeo-Christian-Islamic tradition.

Some go forward -- into nihilism, or into playfulness, or into irony. Buddhism is growing like topsy, because so many aspects of Buddhism echo aspects of postmodernity. One aspect especially: that everything that we know and perceived (and I mean *everything*) is "maya" -- illusion, froth on the waves of the sea, ephemeral variations with no lasting importance, all created by our constant attempt to "grasp" something solid. But at the heart of things there is nothing.

Sounds nihilistic, doesn't it? But oddly, many of the most moral and socially effective people I know are Buddhists, and anyone who thinks that a belief in an existential emptiness leaves you devoid of meaning or ethics doesn't understand what's being said.

I said above I would describe some alternatives to Platonism. Two stories come to mind. One is from the Soto school of Zen, which has it that when the Buddha attained Enlightenment he saw the Morning Star and said "Wonderful, wonderful. Everything is enlightened, exactly as it is." Another is one of my favourite Zen stories in which a famous Zen master, before his Enlightenment, went into a butcher shop and asked for the butcher's best cut. The butcher said "Look around you. Everything you see is the best." And at the master became enlightened.

These kinds of stories paint a picture of world which is not Platonist, in which there is no "better", no "worse", no "more enlightened", no "less enlightended", and yet is profoundly humane and ethical. I'm not trying to tout Zen Buddhism per se, rather than to point out that "modernity" versus "postmodernity" is not a matter of "common sense" versus "nonsense", or "morality" versus "anything goes". In fact, if you delve into Sufism, or Christian mysticism, or Zen or Tibetan Buddhism, or Reform Judaism, you find much -- if not most -- that is profoundly postmodern.

So the question for me is -- can Subud cope with postmodernism, and the liberation it entails. Can Subud cope with postmodernity -- the condition of our world today, not some abstract academic dialectic. To make that more precise -- can Subud members (because we are Subud) cope with this sweeping away of essences and foundations?

In order to sharpen this question, I'd like to identify 5 or 6 specific Subud doctrines (do we have them? -- of course we do) which would be profoundly challenged by a postmodern perspective. But its getting late, so before I do that I might also just test the waters, and see if this thread is live or dead.

Best

David
 
 View user's profile Send private message Visit poster's website  
Reply with quote Back to top
MahmudHenry
13 Post subject:   PostPosted: Nov 26, 2004 - 12:20 AM
7th Level Skirter


Joined: Apr 17, 2003
Posts: 161
Location: Britain
Dave,

The problem I have with post-modernism is that as a meta-narative, it is full of far to many truth claims.

I think David Hume had the right idea as to how to deal with such ideologies:

Commit it then to the flames, for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion

All my love, Henry
 
 View user's profile Send private message Visit poster's website MSN Messenger  
Reply with quote Back to top
Helissa
Post subject:   PostPosted: Nov 26, 2004 - 01:34 AM
A long way to the 7th Level
A long way to the 7th Level


Joined: Nov 20, 2004
Posts: 67
Location: Sacramento, CA, USA
David,

As for me, I'm a fan of the Gnostic philosophies, whose world view was shaped by Hellenism and Neoplatonism, as well as esoteric Judaism, Zoroastrianism, and various ancient heritages such as those of Egypt and Mesopotamia. I think Plato got a lot of it right. As great as he was however, I wouldn't credit him with inventing the dualities of good-bad, and better-worse. Those came into being with the first chomp on the ol' proverbial apple. As long as we're here in these bodies, in this dimension, we're pretty much stuck with that way of thinking-- it's part of the rules of the game--nothing to do about that! I also can't see the problem with viewing humanity as being in various stages of spiritual evolution. That doesn't guarantee oppression, any more than humans having physical developmental stages automatically means that one stage has the right to oppress another-- certainly there's reason to be watchful and reason to work to set up a society so that every person in each stage can maximize their potential for healthy growth--but the stages themselves are just a fact of reality.

Well, we don't need to agree about the ramifications of Platonism, by any means. I would like to hear your "beefs" about various "Subud doctrines", maybe in a more direct manner; we might be able to have a good discussion about that.

Helissa
 
 View user's profile Send private message  
Reply with quote Back to top
davidweek
Post subject:   PostPosted: Nov 26, 2004 - 01:37 AM
A long way to the 7th Level
A long way to the 7th Level


Joined: Oct 03, 2004
Posts: 68
Location: Sydney
Henry wrote:
Dave,

The problem I have with post-modernism is that as a meta-narative, it is full of far to many truth claims. I think David Hume had the right idea as to how to deal with such ideologies: Commit it then to the flames, for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion.

All my love, Henry


But Henry -- by far the most dangerous ideologies are those that don't imagine themselves to be ideologies.

What's yours?

On a practical front, I work with people from different cultures -- bureaucratic, corporate, Aboriginal, Samoan, Lao, Cambodian... Post-modern relativism allows me to interact with these cultures in a positive way to a degree that was -- from my practical experience -- not possible back when my world was framed by modernism... or "pre-post-modern" if you will.

And that's what I'm interested in -- positive outcomes. My experience is simply this... a postmodern worldview produces more positive outcomes for more people. And that's why, as an earlier post said, we are all becoming increasingly postmodern.

D
 
 View user's profile Send private message Visit poster's website  
Reply with quote Back to top
davidweek
Post subject:   PostPosted: Nov 26, 2004 - 01:39 AM
A long way to the 7th Level
A long way to the 7th Level


Joined: Oct 03, 2004
Posts: 68
Location: Sydney
To which I would add, it would behoove us Subudians to consciously examine our modernist roots, and imagine what a more postmodern Subud would look like, if only so that we could then make a conscious choice, rather than accept the frame given us by our ancestors.
D
 
 View user's profile Send private message Visit poster's website  
Reply with quote Back to top
MahmudHenry
Post subject:   PostPosted: Nov 26, 2004 - 09:41 PM
7th Level Skirter


Joined: Apr 17, 2003
Posts: 161
Location: Britain
Quote:
My experience is simply this... a postmodern worldview produces more positive outcomes for more people.


How do you judge what constitutes a "positive outcome" in post modernism? You seem to be talking from a modernist, utilitarian viewpoint.
 
 View user's profile Send private message Visit poster's website MSN Messenger  
Reply with quote Back to top
davidweek
Post subject:   PostPosted: Nov 26, 2004 - 10:27 PM
A long way to the 7th Level
A long way to the 7th Level


Joined: Oct 03, 2004
Posts: 68
Location: Sydney
Henry wrote:
Quote:
My experience is simply this... a postmodern worldview produces more positive outcomes for more people.


How do you judge what constitutes a "positive outcome" in post modernism? You seem to be talking from a modernist, utilitarian viewpoint.
I actually deleted some remarks about whether i wasn't sounding like a utilitarian... in fact, one contemporary stream of thinking of which I am fond is not utilitarian, but pragmatism, and in particular Richard Rorty. Pragmatism takes as true knowledge whatever helps people live their lives, in the time and circumstance in which they find themselves. As times and circumstances change, so therefore does truth. But at a particular time, and in a particular circumstance, although truth may not be univocal, it is definitely not "anything goes". What does go is determined not by individuals, or scientific methodology, but ultimately communities. Because communities define a way of life. Since we do not all live in the same community, truth at any one time takes many, often contradictory, forms.

Specifically, in doing architectural design, I find that a postmodern philosophical approach* leaves me with clients and users that feel more heard, more included, more satisfied... and that the inclusion of their diverse and often contradictory perspectives in a design leaves us all (and especially me) with a result whicih is much more surprising in its ingenuity, calmness, and satisfying to the participants. And all of this is facilitated by abandoning (surrendering?) any preconceptions about what is necessary or true in this circumstance, while still acknowledging that we do have such prejudices, and necessarily (and productively) bring them to the process.

So how do I judge? When I look around the room at the end of the day, and the design on the board, and I see 100% agreement on the faces of the people who have a stake in this, and I hear there manager (in the case I'm thinking) say "this is not like any library I've ever seen" and "I want to present this to our annual conference of knowledge managers." When people come up to me and say "This is great. No-one has ever listened to us before." And all of that comes from this attitude -- no-one has a monopoly on the truth, and everyone is (most of the time) sayiing truthfully what the world looks like from where they are standing. There is no God's eye view of the world (or if there is, we don't have access to it.) And there is no knowledge or belief so certain today that in 100 years, or even 10, it mightn't revealed as utter nonsense, and its opposite understood as the salvation of the current age. (Just read history.)

Best

David

*not "postmodern design style" -- same word, no relation
 
 View user's profile Send private message Visit poster's website  
Reply with quote Back to top
Display posts from previous:     
Jump to:  
All times are GMT
Post new topic   Reply to topic
View previous topic Printable version Log in to check your private messages View next topic