With the grandly-titled retrospective exhibition “Postmodernism: Style and Subversion 1970-1990″ opening at the V&A next weekend there’s been a bit more talk than usual about postmodernism in the press over the last couple of weeks. Though, appropriately, even the label “postmodern” itself is fluid and without clear boundaries, I presume the V&A exhibition will focus on postmodernism’s influence in art and design which is essentially short-hand for irony, ambiguity, juxtaposition, elevation of the mundane, frivolity and many other things you might want to apply the label to.

Interestingly the fact that the V&A have a “retrospective” and have chosen to put a neat end date on postmodernism of 1990 suggests that, at least in art and design, we have progressed to something new worthy of finding a new name for. That may well be the case (though I don’t know what that name is – I hope it’s not post-postmodernism) but I’m more interested in the core of postmodernism (at least if you look it up on Wikipedia) – the rejection of meta-narrative and the objective truth – particularly with regard to Christianity (and faith and philosophy in general). Here the postmodern conversation still seems very relevant and current though there are signs, as I shall discuss, that in some places the conversation is moving on. First though, let’s talk a bit of history…

The God of the Gaps

Back in the day, it used to be quite easy to sell God (or a particular conception of God or gods) – whenever there was something we couldn’t explain we could use God to fill in the gaps in our understanding and, conversely and simultaneously, use the gaps in our understanding as evidence for the existence of God. Answering the question “why?” was as easy as “because that’s the way God made it”. Fortunately for human progress, some people didn’t find that a satisfactory answer so they began to dig deeper into the nature of things and so science and philosophy began the long process of filling in the gaps. Nevertheless, there are still those who are obsessed with finding gaps in the hope that they’ll find god within.

The Provable God

Obviously, with the gaps that god was inhabiting shrinking and disappearing all over the place, something had to be done before god was squeezed out completely. Taking a lesson from the scientists and philosophers (or in an attempt to meet/beat them on their own terms), so began a long campaign of trying to “prove” the existence of god with the tools developed by the scientists and philosophers – logic, experiments, etc.

On the logic/philosophy side, far too much anger and energy is wasted on debating this every day by people who have very solid meta-narratives, believe theirs is the right and, for people engaged in a debate, aren’t very interested in an 2-way exchange of ideas!

On the experiment side, occasionally academic papers claiming such things as “people who pray live longer” make it through to be reported in the mainstream media but I’m not sure anyone takes such things seriously who’s not already chosen a side (I don’t mean the science is necessarily bad – just that I’m not sure the papers published on either side have much/any impact on the debate).

As with the god-of-the-gaps, the search for the “provable god” remains with us and is very much alive on the internet!

Can We Have Our Ball Back?

The argument continued on these terms for some time and some interesting ideas developed within the conversation but then, somewhere around the 1920s, just in case we thought we were making progress in proving anything on either side, along came the beginnings of postmodern philosophy which eventually threw up the disturbing question “what if we, as subjective humans, can never access (or perceive) objective truth?”^[1]. It didn’t move the goal posts – it tore up the rulebook, demolished the pitch and ran off with the ball.

The impact of this for the very idea of god (some would say the ultimate meta-narrative) and for the process of seeking god (a search for some kind of truth) is obvious but the conversation has by no means ended and indeed has been going in some interesting directions and it’s the current conversation and where it might go in the future that I hope to look at in future posts (hence ambitiously labelling this Part 1).

Think about the last meal you cooked – the process of preparing the ingredients, boiling or frying them, waiting for them to cook – we remember these things in a linear process of “I did this and then I did this and then I did that”. For mechanical things such as cooking a meal, we generally see the narrative as essentially just a series of actions – there’s no real emotion attached to each of the steps and we’ll soon forget that we ever went through those instances and possibly forget the meal entirely. How many specific meals can you remember cooking last year? The actual act of cooking them? I know I cooked a lot of meals but all I have are non-specific memories of being in my kitchen that I could just as easily be dreaming up in the process of trying to recall them.

Now recall the last time you had a conversation where you strongly disagreed with someone about something you care about. Though we may not remember the words that were spoken we probably remember the frustration of our point of view being rejected by someone despite our protestation and obvious reasoning that we are right. These kind of events leave us with a different kind of story – one invested with emotion and often a judgement that we’ve imposed on the other who couldn’t understand us. We leave with a different opinion of them – they’re stubborn, they’re irrational, etc – but underneath that we’ll invent a story that belittles them or the formation of their opinion so that we can remain justified in sticking with ours – “she’s scared of facing up to the truth because she’ll have to change”, “he’s too emotionally invested in his current position to accept he might be wrong”, etc. These stories we make up may or may not be true sometimes but we need to recognise that there are equivalent stories underlying our own beliefs that we would do well to look at too. I don’t know much about psychology but I imagine one of the purposes of therapy is to help people to recognise and draw out these underlying stories in the hope that bringing them to light will effect or allow for a change in behaviour.

Equally in the way we live our lives we are often trying to live out the stories about us in other people’s heads (by which I mean trying to live up to the real or imagined expectations of others) – “if I can succeed at this, my parents will be proud of me” – or trying to live in rebellion against the stories we imagine other people have about us – “I’ll show him/her/them”.

We can’t help but tell stories to ourselves and each other about ourselves and each other. They may or may not be true. Maybe it doesn’t matter. It’s how we make sense of the sometimes chaotic world – we all think of ourselves as the hero in the ongoing story that is our lives – but sometimes life throws something up that makes it feel like a series of chaotic and essentially meaningless events. This is seen most clearly where life doesn’t live up to the story we thought we were writing – the death of a friend, the break-up of a relationship. When our best laid plans our taken away from us, when a story ends before we’re ready, what then? Suddenly we are orphaned – people without a story. Either we despair or we have to start again and write a new one.

To whom are we telling our stories? Ourselves? Each other? God? Is there any value in deconstructing our stories or will we just replace them with new or deeper stories? Maybe holding onto our stories, grasping them and trying to live them with integrity, is more valuable.

Just dropping a few links here from things that were good at Greenbelt…

The Story That Loves To Be Told from ikon’s event.

Nadia Bolz-Weber’s Communion Sermon

If the good news is about me doing something then I’m screwed.

The message “here’s the problem and here’s what you can do about it” has never been good news to me.

- Nadia Bolz-Weber

To tell the truth is not easy.
Especially to ourselves.
- Peter Rollins

Beckon us beyond the borders of our belonging.
- Padraig O’Tuama

I asked…
I didn’t get what I asked for.

I still ask…
I still don’t get what I ask for.

I sought…
I’m not sure what I hoped to find.

I still seek…
But now I’m blind.

I knocked…
Defiantly closed remained the door.

I still knock…
I guess I’d better knock some more.

I stopped…
I couldn’t stop.

I waited…
I still wait.

So does he.

From about 3:30 onwards…

BANDWIDTH / Foy Vance from Bandwidth on Vimeo.

I’ve been blessed and been chosen
for a life of sufficiency
needs met in an instant
through unfair prosperity.

There’s a mountain of wants
always one step ahead of me
and it’ll continue for years
through modern medical longevity.

A small god am I
with whims I must satisfy
then I’m on to the next thing
always searching for novelty.

The rat race keeps running
testing rodent ability
hoping that I don’t glimpse
the inherent futility.

When did we relinquish
our human civility
selling our souls
for more profit ability?

I’ve been burdened and cursed
with a life of sufficiency
no need for grace
and no place for humility

But there’s a voice from the outside
that questions me intimately
is this gospel prosperity
or is there good news in poverty?

And despite all my stuff
I’ve got a fear of inadequacy
I can’t love my neighbour
because I covet his property.

I’ve been burned and been broken
by a life of sufficiency
and my only outlet
is through my hipster poetry.

Whoah! – meta.

This is something I’ve been thinking about a little bit recently and today it was reported in the Evening Post that 20% of shop units in Bristol are currently empty so it seemed like a good time to question whether the high street is still a relevant space.

As I’ve tried to shop a bit more ethically (whatever that means) over the last year or so, I’ve noticed that by far the majority of my spending now takes place online. Like the average yuppie male that I am, a fair percentage of my spending is on books, music, films and electricals. These are pretty much always cheaper on Amazon or eBay than on the high street (eBay is great for 2nd hand books btw).

I spend money on clothes which I always resisted buying online due to wanting to try things on but as I’m trying to be more ethical in that, the high street is less helpful there too – Oxfam’s online shop, eBay and small ethical brands have been the solution there. I’m probably in a minority here but even shoppers who do buy clothes in person (off-line) increasingly want to do it in a dedicated area with convenient parking, minimal distance between shops and a food court like Cribbs or Cabot Circus rather than pound the high street.

For the other major regular expense – food – it’s now much more convenient to go to an “out-of-town” supermarket where you can park your car for free or increasingly convenient to do it online and have it delivered to your door.

What, then, is the high street for if it’s no longer the most convenient place to buy clothes, food or anything Amazon sells?

Well I would say we can already see the future to some extent in Bristol – the success of Cabot (97% occupancy since opening) and the minor revival of the wider Broadmead that this and a monstrous Primark have brought has seen our more linear high streets (Whiteladies, Park Street, Gloucester Road, etc) increasingly filling in the gaps with yet more coffee shops and mini-supermarkets.

This is not in itself a problem (unless you don’t have a car or a computer) but presumably with our consumption habits moving away from the high street, we are inevitably going to find that there are just too many commercial units to fill profitably. This raises a couple of questions – How many coffee shops can one high street support? and, assuming that not all units on a high street will be filled with coffee shops and restaurants, what do we do with the remaining units?

As we have seen to some extent in Stokes Croft, empty shop units can be seen as an opportunity for the community to reclaim them and use them productively if not profitably (though this requires landlords to be cooperative). With all of us increasingly disconnected from our neighbours is there a way we can sustainably turn these empty units into spaces that foster communities? Or is that just another coffee shop?