There is no longer much doubt that we have been facing a cultural revolution since the last decade of the previous century. Postmodernism is a term which describes a way that many people think today. There has been a revolution in popular values over the last several decades. No longer are people so ready to think in absolute terms. Postmodernism arms us with a method of “calling everything into question and promoting a new cultural agenda”. For some, this path promises great liberation while for others it seems to lead to despair and nihilism. Something has been happening in our culture. We should take it into account.
Postmodernism denies the existence of an objective reality. It postulates that reality is in the mind of the beholder. To postmodernists, it’s us who are creating our own truth. Every culture has it concepts and ways of looking at things. “Who are we to judge another culture as wrong?”, say the postmodernists, “for are we not conditioned by our own culture and language towards certain assumptions and conclusions?”. They assert that the majority of people are conditioned by the dominant western paradigm or way of looking at things – which has served some groups well at the expense of the others. In particular, white heterosexual males have profited at the expense of women, homosexuals, blacks, the disabled and other disadvantaged and minority groups. Postmodernists often challenge views of the world which they consider as sexist, racist, imperialist or fundamentalist for whatever reasons, seeking to show the equal validity of minority perceptions and cultures.
Postmodernist thinkers see all “concepts” as a product of society. To them, we invent concepts and coin words to enhance our own political agendas – i.e. to get others to accept and to ultimately conform to whatever we want. These ideas and values are therefore merely “constructions” of certain self-interested groupings within society. But why should we accept someone else imposing their...