On my last blog I criticized the fictionalize account of the book, A Million Little Pieces by James Frey. What was so concerning was the disregard for the truth both by the author and the book's main promoter Oprah Winfrey. Fortunately the desire for truth does still hold some sway in our country.
If you click on the title of this blog above you will be directed to an article giving the follow-up to last week's discussion. In the time since the story broke pressure has been brought to bear on the author and Oprah for her comments on Larry King Live.
As I said in my last blog, the real concern that I had was the way in which the concept of truth is being dealt with in popular culture. Oprah's initial comments about the book were disturbing if that line of reasoning (or lack of reasoning) were applied in everyday life. No longer would it matter if something is true as long as it has the desired emotional response.
This goes to the heart of the issue in our Postmodern culture. News (or history) is not about the facts but about interpreting events to portray a desired end. According to conventional wisdom there is no such thing as "truth" with a capital T (as Francis Schaeffer commented prophetically years ago) then talking about events or history is only about competing stories vying for power.
Case in point with the initial discussion in my last blog. What was expressed by Oprah (perhaps unwittingly) was that very notion. As long as it had the desired emotional impact and changed people's lives then the truthfulness of Frey's assertions didn't really matter. To use another Schaeffer quip, "Modern Man has both feet firmly planted in mid-air."
If we divorce ourselves from the concept of truth then we are left adrift on the creek of subjectivity without a paddle. As Frey found out, being confronted by truth can be a humbling reality. The nature of true is such that it is very exclusive. Everything contrary to it is inherently false. It would be nice to be able to fashion our own reality. After concluding this blog I would be driving my Ferrari back to the mansion to sit in my hot tub overlooking the ocean while U2 plays a private set for me as background music.
In reality I will be driving my Subaru to my rental house to listen to U2 on my iPod. Oh well!
4 comments:
you're going to start wishing i just didn't read your blog. i'm really sorry about that.
if one man, and one woman, tell larry king that the truth doesn't matter, and hundreds of bloggers cause a PR storm that forces them to change their tune, where is this postmodern culture?
if our culture was really that postmodern, absolutist figureheads would be the ones dragged through the mud.
It has been interesting watching this unfold. I'm glad you posted about it.
Actually Adam I love the fact that you read my blog. First of all, postmodernism is both a sentiment and a philosophical perspective. The type of postmodernism that we see displayed is more the former than the latter.
More to the point, we are neither fully "modern" nor "postmodern." These are handy categories to describe the philosophical and cultrual shifts that people see.
Logically it is impossible to be beyond now so the term itself is a little foolish. What we see in culture are trends that can be tracked over time. It is only by evaluating ideas over time that the cultural trends emerge.
Philosophical postmodernism is actually past its heyday. Many philosophers, particularly in Europe, don't even like using the term anymore because we are post-postmodernism.
However, since there are still a lot of cultural trends that fit into this and since many American philosophers still prefer to use this term I think it has its place.
This does not take away from the fact that we are in the midst of a major cultural shift away from the certainty of absolutes to the uncertainty of "perspectives." Thankfully people don't fall into hard and fast categories.
Surprisingly I am not against all postmodernism but neither do I think that all of the assumptions that defined "Modernism" are wrong either. The shifts are happening I am just making a few observations on these trends.
Brooklyn Public Library reclassified the book.
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