Week 2: Pigeon-Holes

The differences between the modern and postmodern perspectives are rather stark. Like political positions, I would be surprised to find if any person were completely in one camp or the other. I certainly feel this way about my own inclinations. The extremes exemplified in McKee's writing are both off-putting to me. The modernist whinging about the "degradation of an ideal" is a very old-man-shouting-at-the-neighborhood-kids sort of willful obliviousness. Has there ever been anything so perfect? Is the ideal anything but a pipe-dream? No and no. There never has been and there will never be an "ideal" anything.

So does this make me a postmodernist? No. McKee's examples of this perspective leave me just as cold as the modernists. While my political leanings definitely place me left of the center (further left than I care to admit, sometimes), McKee's examples of postmodern thinking sound too much like the political correctness and moral relativism that many on the left dubiously espouse. This way of thinking is just as silly as the head-in-the-sand closed-mindedness of the modernists.

So what, then, do I say for myself? Mostly, I want to look at what's happening in the public sphere currently and really examine it honestly. This means leaving defined perspectives completely out of the question entirely. I certainly understand the usefulness and importance of understanding perspectives like modernism and postmodernism for their historical significance and as a sort of lens through which to see the way we, as a society, examine our own culture. For me, however, I'll sit on the fence. I'll take the enlightenment values of the modernists and a splash of the acceptance inherent in the postmodern perspective, but the most important thing I think we can all do is keep our minds open.