{"quotes":[{"text":"But these are sad times, the 'prentices wanting to be masters, and every little tradesman wanting to be a Senator, and every dirty little urchin thinking he can giveimpudence to his betters!","author":"Hope Mirrlees","tags":["fantasy","hope-mirrlees","involution","lud-in-the-mist","oliviu-craznic","postmodernism","selected","social-class","social-injustice"],"id":2334,"author_id":"Hope+Mirrlees"},{"text":"Worship, then, needs to be characterized by hospitality; it needs to be inviting. But at the same time, it should be inviting seekers into the church and its unique story and language. Worship should be an occasion of cross-cultural hospitality. Consider an analogy: when I travel to France, I hope to be made to feel welcome. However, I don't expect my French hosts to become Americans in order to make me feel at home. I don't expect them to start speaking English, ordering pizza, talking about the New York Yankees, and so on. Indeed, if I wanted that, I would have just stayed home! Instead, what I'm hoping for is to be welcomed into their unique French culture; that's why I've come to France in the first place. And I know that this will take some work on my part. I'm expecting things to be different; indeed, I'm looking for just this difference. So also, I think, with hospitable worship: seekers are looking for something our culture can't provide. Many don't want a religious version of what they can already get at the mall. And this is especially true of postmodern or Gen X seekers: they are looking for elements of transcendence and challenge that MTV could never give them. Rather than an MTVized version of the gospel, they are searching for the mysterious practices of the ancient gospel.","author":"James K.A. Smith","tags":["christianity","church","gospel","liturgy","mtv","postmodernism","seeker-sensitive","tradition","transcendence","worship"],"id":17076,"author_id":"James+K.A.+Smith"},{"text":"What was true of an ancient community of Christian believers struggling with a powerful and appealing philosophy is also true for Christians in a postmodern context. Arguments that deconstruct the regimes of truth at work in the late modern culture of global capitalism are indispensable. So also is a deeper understanding of the counterideological force of the biblical tradition. But such arguments are no guarantee that the biblical metanarrative will not be co-opted for ideological purposes of violent exclusion, nor do arguments prove the truth of the gospel. Only the nonideological, embracing, forgiving and shalom-filled life of a dynamic Christian community formed by the story of Jesus will prove the gospel to be true and render the idolatrous alternatives fundamentally implausible.","author":"Brian J. Walsh","tags":["capitalism","church","culture","postmodernism"],"id":17294,"author_id":"Brian+J.+Walsh"},{"text":"This is not the 'relativism of truth' presented by journalistic takes on postmodernism. Rather, the ironist's cage is a state of irony by way of powerlessness and inactivity: In a world where terrorism makes cultural relativism harder and harder to defend against its critics, marauding international corporations follow fair-trade practices, increasing right-wing demagoguery and violence can't be answered in kind, and the first black U.S. President turns out to lean right of center, the intelligentsia can see no clear path of action. Irony dominates as a 'mockery of the promise and fitness of things,' to return to the OED definition of irony.This thinking is appropriate to Wes Anderson, whose central characters are so deeply locked in ironist cages that his films become two-hour documents of them rattling their ironist bars. Without the irony dilemma Roth describes, we would find it hard to explain figures like Max Fischer, Steve Zissou, Royal Tenenbaum, Mr. Fox, and Peter Whitman. I'm not speaking here of specific political beliefs. The characters in question aren't liberals; they may in fact, along with Anderson himself, have no particular political or philosophical interests. But they are certainly involved in a frustrated and digressive kind of irony that suggests a certain political situation. Though intensely self-absorbed and central to their films, Anderson's protagonists are neither heroes nor antiheroes. These characters are not lovable eccentrics. They are not flawed protagonists either, but are driven at least as much by their unsavory characteristics as by any moral sense. They aren't flawed figures who try to do the right thing; they don't necessarily learn from their mistakes; and we aren't asked to like them in spite of their obvious faults. Though they usually aren't interested in making good, they do set themselves some kind of mission--Anderson's films are mostly quest movies in an age that no longer believes in quests, and this gives them both an old-fashioned flavor and an air of disillusionment and futility.","author":"Arved Mark Ashby","tags":["disillusionment","fantastic-mr-fox","film-criticism","ironist","irony","pomo","postmodernism","rushmore","the-royal-tenenbaums","wes-anderson"],"id":17726,"author_id":"Arved+Mark+Ashby"},{"text":"Do you believe that every story must have a beginning and an end? In ancient times a story could end only in tow ways: having passed all the tests, the hero and the heroine married, or else they died. The ultimate meaning to which all stories refer has two faces: the continuity of life, the inevitability of death.","author":"Italo Calvino","tags":["bookstores","literature","postmodernism","reading"],"id":26001,"author_id":"Italo+Calvino"},{"text":"Postmodernity means the exhilarating freedom to pursue anything, yet mind-boggling uncertainty as to what is worth pursuing and in the name of what one should pursue it.","author":"Zygmunt Bauman","tags":["inspirational","postmodernism","social-sciences","sociology"],"id":33290,"author_id":"Zygmunt+Bauman"},{"text":"What has our culture lost in 1980 that the avant-garde had in 1890? Ebullience, idealism, confidence, the belief that there was plenty of territory to explore, and above all the sense that art, in the most disinterested and noble way, could find the necessary metaphors by which a radically changing culture could be explained to its inhabitants.","author":"Robert Hughes","tags":["1980","art","avant-garde","confidence","culture","david-foster-wallace","ebullience","idealism","irony","meta-modernism","metaphor","post-ironic","postmodernism","shia-lebouf"],"id":38475,"author_id":"Robert+Hughes"},{"text":"The popular concept–that we should each determine our own morality–is based on the belief that the spiritual realm is nothing at all like the rest of the world. Does anyone really believe that? For many years after each of the morning and evening Sunday services I remained in the auditorium for another hour to field questions. Hundreds of people stayed for the give-and-take discussions. One of the most frequent statements I heard was that 'Every person has to define right and wrong for him- or herself.' I always responded to the speakers by asking, 'Is there anyone in the world right now doing things you believe they should stop doing no matter what they personally believe about the correctness of their behavior?' They would invariable say, 'Yes, of course.' Then I would ask, “Doesn’t that mean that you do believe there is some kind of moral reality that is 'there' that is not defined by us, that must be abided by regardless of what a person feels or thinks?' Almost always, the response to that question was silence, either a thoughtful or a grumpy one.","author":"Timothy J. Keller","tags":["morality","postmodernism"],"id":38494,"author_id":"Timothy+J.+Keller"},{"text":"Women's liberation is one thing, but the permeation of anti-male sentiment in post-modern popular culture - from our mocking sitcom plots to degrading commercial story lines - stands testament to the ignorance of society. Fair or not, as the lead gender that never requested such a role, the historical male reputation is quite balanced. For all of their perceived wrongs, over centuries they've moved entire civilizations forward, nurtured the human quest for discovery and industry, and led humankind from inconvenient darkness to convenient modernity. Navigating the chessboard that is human existence is quite a feat, yet one rarely acknowledged in modern academia or media. And yet for those monumental achievements, I love and admire the balanced creation that is man for all his strengths and weaknesses, his gifts and his curses. I would venture to say that most wise women do.","author":"Tiffany Madison","tags":["culture","feminism","life","maleness","modernity","philosophy","popular-culture","postmodernism","western-civilization","wisdom","women-s-liberation"],"id":42027,"author_id":"Tiffany+Madison"},{"text":"Quick note here: if this crush-slash-swooning stuff is hard for you to stomach; if you’ve never had a similar experience, then you should come to grips with the fact that you’ve got a TV dinner for a heart and might want to consider climbing inside a microwave and turning it on high for at least an hour, which if you do consider only goes to show what kind of idiot you truly are because microwaves are way too small for anyone, let alone you, to climb into.","author":"Mark Z. Danielewski","tags":["genius","genre-crossing","horror-novels","house-of-leaves","love","mark-z-danielewski","metaphyscial","postmodernism","romance"],"id":45407,"author_id":"Mark+Z.+Danielewski"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":70,"pages":7,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}