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This video showed how language use to be versus how, as a society, we have done away with that language for a "post-modern" alternative. Elegance has vanished and has been replaced by "slang" and incomplete sentences. Rather than using declarative sentences, question like phrases have been added on to the end of sentences for the purpose of showing people how all ideas are skeptical. The person who performed the poem shows a bias of how this generation has lost the art of language and its fluidity. I understand how he came to those conclusions, but I can also see how people within this generation view their way of language as poetic within itself. It is a different kind of language that has developed over time. Watching this video reminded me of Lyotard and his language games. Overtime the rules of the game have shifted, but a person can still see how they are still agreed upon as they are being used nowadays.

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This whole semester we have been exploring and attempting to pinpoint exactly what postmodernism is and how it is defined. It is interesting that a lot of postmodern ideas can be seen throughout society. What is starting to take place, however, is this movement that is going beyond postmodern thought and ideas. This is called metamodernism. Metamodernism is similar to postmodernism, but is bringing back some of the more sincere elements that postmodernism leaves out. This article relates postmodernism to tv shows and movies. In addition, it also relates the movie, "La la Land" and its themes to metamodern thoughts and ideas.

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ByRachael Kaines, writer at Creators.co

Consuming movies, tv, music, etc. Sometimes writing about these things @rachaelkaines

(WARNING: This post contains mild spoilers for La La Land)
In the middle of January, Damien Chazelle's La La Land opened in cinemas in the UK, and like many other eager beavers, I went straight to see it. After thoroughly enjoying Chazelle's 2014 debut Whiplash - an almost-thriller centered entirely around jazz drumming - and the critical buzz that was building around La La Land, the usual skepticism I would feel on hearing the word "musical" was quashed. I left the cinema feeling like I'd seen something fresh and different, something that paradoxically seemed simultaneously uplifting and dispiriting.

What struck me most while watching the film was that paradoxical feeling and the parts of the story that made me feel each way. It's almost as if it was trying to be the perfect Hollywood romance while knowing that that could never exist.

Postmodernism And Metamodernism

Metamodernism is the name for the movement that has possibly come after postmodernism. Postmodernism is characterized by irony, self-referentiality, and cynicism. Perfect examples are shows like It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, with the gang's never-ending narcissistic exploits without any feeling or sincerity (e.g. the insistent of not dealing with Frank being Charlie's father), and movies like American Psycho, a film that destroys grand concepts like truth using black humor but ending in nihilism. Nothing learned and nothing sincere.

Metamodernism calls back to the sentimentality and sincerity from before postmodernism, but keeps the lessons learned from postmodernism (e.g. the destruction of meta-narratives). Metamodernism often speaks with the language of postmodernism - irony, self referencing, cynicism - but what is said is sincere and affecting. Oscillation is also a defining factor of metamodernism - think of every time you've seen something on the internet that would appear truthful and reputable, only to see the exact opposite of that thing a few minutes later.

Examples Of Metamodernism

Examples of metamodernism are everywhere in current pop culture: Louie, Parks and Recreation, Bojack Horseman, Easy, T he Lego Movie, the list goes on. Rick and Morty is a great example. You would almost certainly assume at first glance that it is a fairly postmodernist show, full of cynicism and many of the stylistic factors we've come to know from postmodernism. However, the sincerity (and therefore the feels) develop quickly in a way that a postmodern show - for instance, Arrested Development - would never accomplish.

Metamodernism In 'La La Land'

La La Land is a perfect example of the feeling of metamodernism. It finely dances (tap-dances) the line between cheesy and genius, either side of that line is the sincerity and cynicism (and the oscillation between the two) that defines metamodernism. It wants to have the naivety and sincerity of the earlier time it idolizes, but the lessons are learned. It has optimism but with the knowledge of postmodernism. It also features many of the typical aspects of postmodernism: genre-mixing, referencing other movies, self awareness, and the destruction of meta-narratives.

A good example of metamodernism is fairly near the beginning of the movie. We have had the two main characters' days shown to us from their own perspectives leading to the scene where Stone's character hears Gosling's character playing the piano from outside a bar. Cue the most perfect meeting you ever did see. However, as she begins to gush to him about his piano playing he shoulder barges her and walks out. Flawless.

Even the struggle both the characters go through in relation to their idealistic dreams of what they want to do and the realistic challenges of everyday life can be seen through the same lens. They are constantly caught between these challenges, and in the end when Mia leaves for Paris the story opts for something between optimism and realism.

The ending is bittersweet. They're both successful and Mia is happily married with a child. She's back in LA and heading out for dinner with her husband when she's pulled into a bar by the sound of jazz, just like when she first met Sebastian. Of all the gin joints in all the world, she has stumbled in to his. Seb then plays the song that drew here into that first bar and we get a devastating dream sequence of their relationship working perfectly, à la 25th Hour. Before she leaves they smile at each other.

In the end La La Land shows that just because we don't have the perfect happy ending, it doesn't mean we can't be happy. We're not naive, but we're still optimistic.
I don't actually really know anything about Metamodernism, but these guys do: What did you think of La La Land?

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Exploring The Elements Of Metamodernism In 'La La Land'

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ByRachael Kaines, writer at Creators.co Consuming movies, tv, music, etc. Sometimes writing about these things @rachaelkaines (WARNING: This post contains mild spoilers for La La Land) In the middle of January, Damien Chazelle's La La Land opened in cinemas in the UK, and like many other eager beavers, I went straight to see it.

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This article from Scientific American discusses how college students, who are being taught these postmodern ideals, are now using postmodern methods to combat against their educators. This article interested me because of our discussion in class talking about common core and Montessori curriculums. I think it is rather interesting how these students are being taught about postmodernity and then use it for their advantage. Now people are considering this as madness among the campus.

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In a 1946 essay in the London Tribune entitled "In Front of Your Nose," George Orwell noted that "we are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right. Intellectually, it is possible to carry on this process for an indefinite time: the only check on it is that sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield."

The intellectual battlefields today are on college campuses, where students' deep convictions about race, ethnicity, gender and sexual orientation and their social justice antipathy toward capitalism, imperialism, racism, white privilege, misogyny and "cissexist heteropatriarchy" have bumped up against the reality of contradictory facts and opposing views, leading to campus chaos and even violence. Students at the University of California, Berkeley, and outside agitators, for example, rioted at the mere mention that conservative firebrands Milo Yiannopoulos and Ann Coulter had been invited to speak (in the end, they never did). Demonstrators at Middlebury College physically attacked libertarian author Charles Murray and his liberal host, professor Allison Stanger, pulling her hair, twisting her neck and sending her to the ER.*

One underlying cause of this troubling situation may be found in what happened at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Wash., in May, when biologist and self-identified "deeply progressive" professor Bret Weinstein refused to participate in a "Day of Absence" in which "white students, staff and faculty will be invited to leave the campus for the day's activities." Weinstein objected, writing in an e-mail: "on a college campus, one's right to speak-or to be-must never be based on skin color." In response, an angry mob of 50 students disrupted his biology class, surrounded him, called him a racist and insisted that he resign. He claims that campus police informed him that the college president told them to stand down, but he has been forced to stay off campus for his safety's sake.

How has it come to this? One of many trends was identified by Weinstein in a Wall Street Journal essay: "The button-down empirical and deductive fields, including all the hard sciences, have lived side by side with 'critical theory,' postmodernism and its perception-based relatives. Since the creation in 1960s and '70s of novel, justice-oriented fields, these incompatible worldviews have repelled one another."

In an article for Quillette.com on "Methods Behind the Campus Madness," graduate researcher Sumantra Maitra of the University of Nottingham in England reported that 12 of the 13 academics at U.C. Berkeley who signed a letter to the chancellor protesting Yiannopoulos were from "Critical theory, Gender studies and Post-Colonial/Postmodernist/Marxist background." This is a shift in Marxist theory from class conflict to identity politics conflict; instead of judging people by the content of their character, they are now to be judged by the color of their skin (or their ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, et cetera). "Postmodernists have tried to hijack biology, have taken over large parts of political science, almost all of anthropology, history and English," Maitra concludes, "and have proliferated self-referential journals, citation circles, non-replicable research, and the curtailing of nuanced debate through activism and marches, instigating a bunch of gullible students to intimidate any opposing ideas."

Students are being taught by these postmodern professors that there is no truth, that science and empirical facts are tools of oppression by the white patriarchy, and that nearly everyone in America is racist and bigoted, including their own professors, most of whom are liberals or progressives devoted to fighting these social ills. Of the 58 Evergreen faculty members who signed a statement "in solidarity with students" calling for disciplinary action against Weinstein for "endangering" the community by granting interviews in the national media, I tallied only seven from the sciences. Most specialize in English, literature, the arts, humanities, cultural studies, women's studies, media studies, and "quotidian imperialisms, intermetropolitan geography [and] detournement." A course called "Fantastic Resistances" was described as a "training dojo for aspiring 'social justice warriors'" that focuses on "power asymmetries."

If you teach students to be warriors against all power asymmetries, don't be surprised when they turn on their professors and administrators. This is what happens when you separate facts from values, empiricism from morality, science from the humanities.
*Editor's Note (8/18/17): This sentence was edited after the print article was posted online. The original stated that students at Middlebury College "physically attacked" Charles Murray and his campus host, Allison Stanger. In fact, a police investigation determined that it appears several participants in the demonstration against Murray came from outside the campus community and that those wearing masks used "tactics that indicated training in obstruction and intimidation." Although the attackers were never identified, and thus the police were unable to press charges, Middlebury maintains that the masked assailants were not students but outside agitators. It has also made an official statement that "the College disciplined 74 students with sanctions ranging from probation to official College discipline, which places a permanent record in the student's file."

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The Unfortunate Fallout of Campus Postmodernism

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In a 1946 essay in the London Tribune entitled "In Front of Your Nose," George Orwell noted that "we are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right.

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This article regards a boy named Mack. Mack is in the process of transitioning from female to male. Because his birth certificate still labels Mack as female, he is unable to compete in the boys division of his high school wrestling matches. Mack competes against the girls even though he is known as a guy and receives testosterone injections to give himself more masculine features. Aside from the ethical dilemma regarding this situation of Mack's, what the idea of transgender is doing is crossing these objective ideas of male and female. Essentially the ideas of them are blurred and, therefore, brings about the abolition of man.

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Over the weekend, headlines out of Texas told of a transgender boy, Mack Beggs, who won a high-school state championship in the girls' wrestling division.

To clarify the opening sentence, let me rewrite it: A biological female taking testosterone injections to "transition" from female to male overpowered competitors to rack up a 56-0 season record and then went on to win a state championship against other girls who were not taking strength-enhancing hormones.

Texas law - rightfully - requires individuals to compete in divisions based on the gender indicated on their birth certificate. In normal times, such a regulation would be uncontroversial. But we are not living in normal times. We are living in an era when political correctness demands that society accept, wholesale, the patent falsehood that men or boys who declare themselves to be women or girls (and vice versa) can actually be members of the opposite sex, simply based on how they interpret their own gender.

Several aspects of this story raise questions. What would happen, for instance, were Beggs to face off against biological males? In that scenario, Beggs would be fighting opponents who, based on biology alone, were likely to be stronger than virtually any girl, and Beggs would surely lose. Facing biological females, Beggs had the obvious advantage of taking hormones that provide strength most females do not possess, and Beggs would surely win.

The news out of Texas reveals the deep cultural confusion that follows from teaching that gender is fluid and not connected to one's biological sex - an idea based on progressive ideology and not on empirically verifiable data.

As I write in my forthcoming book, God and the Transgender Debate, efforts to sever gender identity from biological sex will stir up many contradictions and much turmoil. Paradoxically, the push to accept transgenderism also undermines the very thing it seeks to affirm: manhood and womanhood.

The idea that women are one-half of the human species - and that "female" at its core is an objective and unalterable category - runs afoul of today's zeitgeist. It also undermines the ability to value womanhood as something distinct and beautiful on its own terms. If anyone can become a woman, womanhood does not exist. And the same is true in the reverse circumstances involving men. In a transgender world, the blurring of the male and the female results in the abolition of authentic manhood and womanhood.

As C. S. Lewis wrote in The Abolition of Man: " When all that says 'it is good' has been debunked, what says 'I want' remains." Lewis's quip, written decades ago, was prescient, and his concern rings true today. Lewis is urging us to reckon with the nature we have, not the one we think we can manufacture. We can gladly accept this nature, with its limits, or we can attempt to throw it off in a power play that seeks to undermine the very concept of a natural order.

Mack Beggs, the student wrestler in the news, is not the problem in this story. No person made in the image of God, and therefore endowed with immeasurable worth and dignity, is ever a problem. From a Christian point of view, Mack Beggs is a biological female who has gender-identity issues that ought to be treated with psychological counseling and support. But Beggs will not receive such help, because Mack Beggs is actually a victim - a victim in a society peddling deception and confusion under the guise of tolerance and social justice. Society does not aid Beggs and thousands of other gender-confused persons by enabling falsehood.

Society does not aid Beggs and thousands of other gender-confused persons by enabling falsehood.

Ultimately, the path our culture is going down is not sustainable. Contradictions and deceptions do not come without tradeoffs. How long until colleges can begin recruiting transgender students of one biological sex to compete in a college sport of a different biological sex? This is not fear-mongering or empty conjecturing. It will happen. If a competitive edge can be found, someone will find it and exploit it so that in the future a biological male who identifies as female will have the opportunity to play on a women's basketball team if criteria - established by a panel of "experts" - are met. This is just one example of the tragic consequences we invite when we cede the definition of human nature to progressives.

Man is not a machine that can be remade in his own image according to his own will. That's what this debate is ultimately about - whether man is a creature or a creator, a being with a fixed nature, or an Übermensch who makes Faustian bargains in a limitless quest for personal power at the expense of true human identity.

- Andrew T. Walker is the director of policy studies at the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission.

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Over the weekend, headlines out of Texas told of a transgender boy, Mack Beggs, who won a high-school state championship in the girls' wrestling division. To clarify the opening sentence, let me rewrite it: A biological female taking testosterone injections to "transition" from female to male overpowered competitors to rack up a 56-0 season record and then went on to win a state championship against other girls who were not taking strength-enhancing hormones.

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In this article posted by CNN it discusses interesting points of comparing World War I to the Chronicles of Narnia stories as well as J.R.R. Tolkien's books The Lord of the Rings. Both men served in WWI in France. The article tells not only of the men's time there, but also of how the war destroyed the nature that happened to be the area where the war took place. Nature was a victim to the conflict of man. At the end of the article it states, "assault on nature carried spiritual significance: Man's sins against nature will not go unpunished, and nature will take its revenge." This statement in itself seems bold, but makes you more aware of the selfishness of man in regards to how nature is treated when man attempts conquests.

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By the summer of 1915, a year into the cataclysm of the First World War, the combatant nations had settled into a deadlock of industrialized slaughter. Millions of soldiers already had perished in the trenches and barbed wire and mortar fire along the Western Front, with nothing to show for it.

"Injuries were wrought to the structure of human society which a century will not efface" wrote Winston Churchill, "and which may conceivably prove fatal to the present civilization."

Often neglected in the story, though, is how the Great War destroyed not only countless soldiers and civilians, but also their environment. Across much of Europe, entire forests disappeared; fields and farms were turned into craters.

Describing a scene near Amiens, author Vera Brittain, looking for the grave of her fiancé, found "grotesque trunks of skeleton trees, with their stripped, shattered branches still pointing to heaven in grim protest against man's ruthless cruelty to nature as well as man."

World War I produced, in essence, an environmental holocaust.

This aspect of the conflict left a deep impression on two Christian authors and Oxford dons, J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis. Having personally experienced the awful prodigy of modern industry and technology -- both men fought in the trenches in France -- they enlisted nature itself as a protagonist in their epic stories of good vs. evil.

Even before the war, Tolkien and Lewis had come to resent the encroachment of industrial life into rural England. Tolkien lamented "the tragedy and despair of all machinery laid bare," meaning the modern attempt to enhance our control over the world around us, regardless of the consequences.

In "The Lord of the Rings," Saruman the wizard "has a mind for metal and wheels; and he does not care for growing things, except as far as they serve him for the moment." The hateful realm of Mordor is sustained by its black engines and factories.

Likewise, Lewis viewed respect for nature as intrinsic to human happiness.

In "The Chronicles of Narnia," his series of books for children, the various animals play a central role in the story. The smallest of creatures -- such as a mouse named Reepicheep -- display the greatest of human virtues.

As biographer Alister McGrath observes: "Lewis' portrayal of animal characters in Narnia is partly a protest against shallow assertions of humanity's right to do what it pleases with nature."

The experience of war deepened this sensibility. Both men enlisted as officers in the British Expeditionary Force and saw intense fighting at the front.

Lewis was injured by mortar fire -- the shell killed his sergeant standing a few yards away -- and was shipped back to England to recover. "My memories of the last war," he wrote, "haunted my dreams for years."

Tolkien survived the ferocious Battle of the Somme, but contracted trench fever and was taken out of harm's way. In the horror of the Somme he was given a vision of Mordor: the "dead grasses and rotting weeds" and "a land defiled, diseased beyond healing."

As Tolkien acknowledged years later, the Dead Marshes "owe something to Northern France after the Battle of the Somme."

The two great authors met at Oxford in 1926, where they discovered a mutual love for mythology and English literature. Tolkien, a devoted Catholic, helped convert Lewis to Christianity. Lewis persuaded Tolkien to pursue his story about hobbits and Middle-earth.

Their influence on each other's literary imagination was subtle, yet profound. In the climactic scenes in both of their epic works -- stories framed by a great war -- nature itself is caught up in the conflict.

In Lewis' "Prince Caspian," the character Trufflehunter explains to Caspian that it will be difficult to wake the spirits of the trees in the battle against Miraz, the unlawful King of Narnia.

"We have no power over them. Since the Humans came into the land, felling forests and defiling streams, the Dryads and Naiads have sunk into deep sleep." Yet the war cannot be won without their help, and Aslan, the great Lion, summons them to join the battle: the "woods on the move."

Tolkien's humanoid trees, the Ents, are among the most memorable figures in fantasy. Led by Treebeard, the oldest living creature in Middle-earth, the Ents were created as guardians of the forest.

Earlier wars had decimated the land, forcing the Ents to confine themselves to Fangorn Forest, where they hoped to avoid the War of the Ring. But Sauron's advance compels them to abandon their moral neutrality.

"A thing is about to happen which has not happened since the Elder Days," explains Gandalf. "The Ents are going to wake up and find that they are strong."

At the start of the 20th century, when Tolkien and Lewis began their Oxford careers, enthusiasm over "the conquest of nature" was at a fever pitch in the industrialized West. The fever raged with horrific fury during the Great War.

In the Christian imagination of these authors, the assault on nature carried spiritual significance: Man's sins against nature will not go unpunished, and nature will take its revenge.

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c.s. lewis and j.r.r. tolkien defended the environment - cnn

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C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien defended the environment - CNN

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By the summer of 1915, a year into the cataclysm of the First World War, the combatant nations had settled into a deadlock of industrialized slaughter. Millions of soldiers already had perished in the trenches and barbed wire and mortar fire along the Western Front, with nothing to show for it.

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This article talks about the importance of language within the society of Singapore. With language it is one of the greatest challenges to develop the dialogue in order to help the evolution of society for the better.

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Informed debate a necessary part of Singapore's evolution

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We commonly use post to not only describe the era in which we live but more importantly to also define a fundamental break with that which preceded it.We have lived in successive eras described as the post-World War II post-colonial post-Cold War post-911 and post-industrial

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This article discusses what it would be like if Nietzsche were alive and submerged in todays society. It talks about how Friedrich Nietzsche would respond to the different cultures of society, such as the university lifestyle, social media, and movements taking form and action.

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Patrick West's new book casts a searching, Nietzschean eye over the present.

Friedrich Nietzsche is an ambiguous figure today. Fragments of this infamous philosopher are all around us. He invented the word 'superman'; his pronouncements on the nature of good and evil, on self-empowerment and overcoming through struggle, are echoed throughout popular culture, from Harry Potter to Kanye West; and an entire self-help industry, enthusing about the 'gift of failure' and churning out books with titles like Feel The Fear And Do It Anyway, is heavily indebted to Nietzsche.

Yet when named directly, Nietzsche remains controversial. He is accused by some of being a proto-Nazi, and he is considered by others to be responsible for two world wars. While those claims are overblown, there is little doubt that Nietzsche's fierce criticism of an emerging mass, dremocratic society put him firmly on the side of anti-democracy. So surely Nietzsche, for all his influence on our intellectual and cultural development, is a thinker best understood in his context, rather than someone whose ideas we would wish to revive today?

Perhaps not. In his new book, Get Over Yourself: Nietzsche For Our Times, Patrick West, a columnist for spiked, rejects the idea of contextualising Nietzsche in order to explain away the less palatable aspects of his thought. In fact, West is not really interested in judging Nietzsche. Quite the opposite; he asks Nietzsche to judge us. And it is an incredibly rewarding move, because while Nietzsche's thought offers few concrete solutions, it does offer a tonic against all manner of contemporary social ills.

Take identity politics and all its attendant narcissism and navel-gazing. Nietzsche attacked this kind of thinking at its root, firmly rejecting any suggestion that national, cultural, racial, religious, gender or sexual identities should be recognised, let alone respected. For Nietzsche, West argues, labels imprison us. 'Life is concerned with forever becoming, for striving to go beyond oneself', writes Nietzsche. Indeed, his philosophy of the superman, outlined in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, concerns the individual who goes beyond himself: 'Man is something that should be overcome', says the titular Zarathustra. 'What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal.' There could be no sincere true self to whom one's identity must be true, for a fixed, true self does not exist. Introspection is the enemy of achievement: 'Acknowledge yourself through action, not observation.' Nietzsche would urge us not to be true to ourselves, but to rebel against ourselves.

The modern cult of 'safe spaces' would also grate against Nietzsche's exhortation to 'live dangerously'. We live in a culture where words are deemed to wound, all manner of subject matter is deemed 'triggering', and mere thought is considered dangerous. Nietzsche's approach to ideas could not be more different: 'Build your cities on the slopes of Vesuvius! Send your ships into uncharted seas! Live at war with your peers and yourselves! Be robbers and conquerors as long as you cannot be rulers and possessors, you seekers of knowledge!'

Stephanie Gutmann

West tells us that Nietzsche wouldn't be surprised that much of today's assault on free speech and free thought comes from universities. In his day, he rallied against the 'state philosophers' of academia, as he characterised his colleagues. His famous adage of 'what doesn't kill you makes you stronger', while not true in a literal, physical sense, is most relevant to training our intellectual and moral muscles. In Ecce Homo, Nietzsche writes that 'one must never have spared oneself; harshness must be among one's habits, if one is to be cheerful and happy among nothing but hard truths'.

Nor would Nietzsche have much time for today's keyboard warriors on social media. Although, as West explains, the term 'virtue signalling' was only coined in 2015, Nietzsche would immediately recognise 'that Pharisee tactic of the sick, the loud gesture', clogging up our newsfeeds. Such forms of public emoting represent a surrender to our baser, more animalistic urges, where Nietzsche would counsel us to stick to 'rigorous reflection, compression, coldness, plainness... restraint of feeling and taciturnity'. The flipside of public virtue is righteous indignation, mostly found today in the form of Twitterstorms, which Nietzsche would equally decry as a product of the herd instinct, in all its 'lustful greed, bitter envy, sour vindictiveness, mob pride'.

When it comes to examining Nietzsche in his own time, Get Over Yourself provides some much needed mythbusting, particularly on the Nazi question. As West points out, Nietzsche deplored anti-Semitism and German nationalism. But this is no rehabilitation of Nietzsche - West makes no attempt, for instance, to excuse Nietzsche's virulent misogyny. Likewise, there is no whitewashing of Nietzsche's own narcissism, or even megalomania, best expressed in the chapter headings of Ecce Homo: 'Why I Am So Wise'; 'Why I Am So Clever'; and 'Why I Write Such Excellent Books'. West has no desire to turn us into worshippers of Nietzsche, which is just as well given the man himself would have despised even his own disciples. For West, Nietzsche should be embraced if only to be overcome.

What Get Over Yourself makes clear is that no matter how violently one may disagree with Nietzsche's pronouncements and conclusions, his exhortations to question everything, to strive to go beyond oneself, to be fearless in thought and deed remain vital in an era of staid conformism, righteous indignation and self-regard.

Fraser Myers is a producer at WORLDbytes.
Get Over Yourself: Nietzsche for Our Times, by Patrick West, is published by Societas. (Buy this book from Amazon(UK).)

For permission to republish spiked articles, please contact Viv Regan.

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Patrick West's new book casts a searching, Nietzschean eye over the present. Friedrich Nietzsche is an ambiguous figure today. Fragments of this infamous philosopher are all around us.

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This article is very interesting because it shows the differences between Christianity and Postmodern thought. While it looks like the Gospel does not fit into the principles that postmodernism presents, this article shows how the spreading of the gospel actually fits within a postmodern society.

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Star Trek and The Next Generation on the ship Enterprise wanted to explore and seek out new life and "to boldly go where no man has gone before." The first Star Trek showed a world where humans had gone on a journey to obtain knowledge. Since this was a quest, it would go to outermost parts of the universal in seek out objective knowledge. The shipmates would join forces to overcome problems that came up on the ship. They would collectively come to agreement as how best to proceed. On the Enterprise, all the crew worked together and thought things through in a rationale way unlike The Next Generation, where rationality is not always trusted. The shift between the two shows was that the world was moving toward post modernity, leaving modernity in the dust. Even though this was only a TV series, this was the reality of the new makeup of the world, the way of thinking. As these and other changes became evident, so the challenge for the church became.

The church had to rethink and retool the Gospel to meet the need of the world. In the modern thinking mind, they assume that "knowledge is certain, objective and good, and that such knowledge is obtainable." Men try to seek out and discover knowledge during the Enlightenment Age and beyond. This crusade toward reason and truth was an individual concern. Common folks within the church now read the Bible for themselves to decipher what is truth. The church was pushed out of the business of having the trademark of truth. The biggest challenge for the church now was postmodernism.

There was a time when most people in America believed in God and the Bible as authoritative. But since the birth of modernism and postmodernism, that would change by leaps and bounds. The world moving forward would experience three major earthquakes.

1. The Scientific: Darwin's theory of evolution questioned the authority of the Biblical view of creation.

2. The Philosophical: questioned the Bible's authority to define the meaning of man's life and the reason for his existence.

3. The Moral: questioned the Bible's authority to dictate man's morality.

This worldview has no moral absolutes, everything is abstract and all belief systems are equally true. Just as in "The Next Generation" Data replaced Spock; just as postmodernity replaced modernity. Now not even the very fact of rationality can be accepted. The question now became how could the Gospel be shared within this context? Christianity is based on universal truths, which crosses all landmass and ocean shores. The reality is that the "center of reality" is Jesus Christ. Stanley Grenz proposed two contours that ought to shape future evangelical theology. I. An authentic postmodern evangelical theology must be post-individual.
The church must capture an understanding of how this "culture" thinks. A need to gain an understanding on how we can reach this 21st century mindset with the Gospel message is needed. The challenge of the church is to find ways to preach within this context. The idea of God must be portrayed that He is a personal God. He is a God that looks at each person's individuality. Salvation is offered to each person. The plan of salvation must be communicated to be personal. A careful line must be drawn that while holding true to individualism, that the knowledge of God goes beyond whether or not an individual affirms that is true. The postmodern mindset individualizes the concepts of the world. They sense a private knowledge that creates some problems toward Christianity (which depends on universal truth). The knowledge of God and biblical doctrines (even though it is concerned with each individual) and that this person is part of a larger community of believers must regard individualism in its proper context. The individual does not stand solo, but is within a community.

With a group of people believing the same truths, this will place them into an overall community. According to Grenz, the greater discovery is that Christianity is a community, in the highest sense. Each individual must feel that they are part of the community. The discovery of truth must be personal but not point where the individual falls outside the community of believers.
II. In addition to being post-individual, a postmodern evangelical theology must be post-rational.
A person is not in isolation but in a personal relationship with God. Meaningful relationship is needed. A postmodern evangelical theology must make sense and use reason to be effective. In Acts 17, Paul used reason as he presented the Gospel to the philosophers and their followers of his day. The hearer must be able to grab the basic concepts of the theology we present. Even though our theology does have "mystery" to it, the overall message must be clear and relevant. The Gospel must be able to meet the needs both spiritually and physically and be able to impact the individual with "realness."

There is a need for realness today to help balance emotion and spiritual aspects of life. Gaining and sharing objective knowledge is not for informational purposes only. "Knowledge is only good when it facilitates a good result, specifically, when it fosters spirituality in the knower." It is more than knowing that counts. Our theology must be focused on the inner being, to bring out a glorious character and lifestyle. The ultimate purpose for our theology is to change the individual. The knowledge without true change or repentance is only head knowledge and not heart knowledge. The heart knowledge is what counts. Following the framework of these two basic contours, Christianity can reach where it has never gone before. The generation who were raised on Star Trek, would be able to identify with a evangelical theology structure to reach them. The beauty of the Christian faith is that it can be preached effectively within the context of postmodernism without preaching at postmodernism.

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Postmodernism And The Future Of Evangelical Theology And The Christian Church

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Star Trek and The Next Generation on the ship Enterprise wanted to explore and seek out new life and "to boldly go where no man has gone before." The first Star Trek showed a world where humans had gone on a journey to obtain knowledge.

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So I'm not really sure if this article is an accurate depiction of what Marx was trying to display in his views of communism, but I found it rather interesting to thing about. It is about how the movie, "A bug's life" correlates to a revolution that Marx would have supported. It is fascinating to thing about since, I do not know about most of you, but I watched this movie several times growing up. I guess it shows how Marx's views are voiced to people at such a young age without them knowing it. (Also I don't suggest reddit for factual articles. This is just an idea to think about and not necessarily have to agree with.)

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You’ve been blocked by network security.

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Weber discusses a lot about a person and their calling. Specifically in this article, I appreciated the vocational insights that it has to offer with different verses to help clarify the information and points being made.I think this gives a fair understanding of what a calling is, with a Christian lifestyle, and living out that calling within today's society.

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In case many of you have not heard, there is a trend going around where girls call their boyfriends daddy. Personally, I think the trend is rather odd and I do not know why this is a current "fad". But, it does help to verify that parent child relationship Freud talks heavily about. It seems like in this instance, the girl is relating her love for her father towards her boyfriend. While Freud talked about how people take that helplessness and channel it from their parents towards a god or religion, nowadays it appears that people are channeling it towards their significant others. Also, I thought this meme was rather amusing about this topic.

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I thought that this meme describes exactly what Darwin talks about. Those who are weak without capability, or in this case, common sense are the first to fall. Darwin said that only the fittest will overcome and survive. This picture helps demonstrate a society that Darwin was all for.

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Can Science Help us with our Addictions In the Present Age?

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Can Science Help us with our Addictions In the Present Age?

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National geographic talks about the scientific reasons of how addictions take place in the brain. The craving that people experience is stimulated by dopamine, which is a hormone that, when released, gives people pleasure. After scanning addicts brains and conducting different social experiments, scientists have come up with a medication that people can take to inhibit the release of dopamine. By taking this, when addicts are in situations where their cravings would start they don't have the same desire or pleasure for their addictions. Is this modern medicine and way of thinking, that a pill will cure you, an advancement for this present age? Is this enlightening us? Are we becoming more passionate? Or are we using medicine as a form of escape in our passionless society as Kierkegaard would have us believe?
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2017/09/the-addicted-brain/