From a broken heart to a broken system

Dearest Postmodernism,

The two short decades since we first met have felt like jolly centuries. I remember with no lack of warm regard our young days together. They would, from across the room, tell me that we should be nice to everyone, be accepting of other cultures, and never hold ourselves in such a pulpit of high regard so as to exclude the voices of others. I saw traces of you around then, bored in my desk, shyly admiring your gentle loveliness.

Later, as we read stories of magical realism, race relations, and cultural connection in high school, we had so much. I felt that you were the end of everything. Just the glimpse of such a shining ideal showed to me that all other aspirations were senseless, that only through rejecting our ability to find truly objective truth could we abandon pretense, that we belonged together, and all the while you twittered along. Ah youth, the flowers, the butterflies, the warm summer days, and foremost, the mental conceptualizations of cultural relativism's latent influence on our ideology.

I knew that things were becoming serious when you followed me to college. We spent long evenings cuddling together in the grass as the smooth sun set, and longer nights struggling through freshman essays, with you helping me forwards all the while. It seemed as if nothing would ever change.

But then you did, or rather, I realized what you really are. One day a close friend asked me about you; he knew we spent so much time together after all; he asked me what you were like, who you spent your time with, what you were all about. That's when the trouble first began. I couldn't tell him. It wasn't that anything was particularly embarrassing, or that there were no stories of the two of us and our time together. No, the problem was that I really don't even know you at all. I stammered, “Well, she likes to talk about Foucalt, sometimes Derrida, she spends her time ensuring that overbearing discourses don't dominate the sphere of life, and she can say something surprising on any topic .” My friend and I looked at each other for a moment, him slightly confused, me horrified that I knew only so little, and with a slow draining feel setting into my stomach. Hurriedly, I looked for a source of my confusion.

Had I been too self centric and never listened while you talked? Surely not, for you were always speaking so much, and I had listened to what you had to say. Were you lying to me, hiding yourself? This couldn't be so, for we had spent enough time together for this to be impossible; I simply would have noticed. What could it have been then? Then the unthinkable quietly asserted itself, that you really had no substance at all.

I thought further on those things that were supposedly so you. In their time, certain literature, criticism of literature, film, photography, music, dance, poetry, policymaking, policy punditry, news, protest, cultural movements, and even fashion movements had all supposedly manifested as products of your self. How could one be so many different things, unless, unless you were really none of these, and just a piece of academic lingo? I tried so hard to tell myself that you were something more substantial than a flashy phrase, than a trend, and really would have been able to find comfort despite never knowing your true self, but this was but the beginning.

I realized that you always hung around with those snooty academic types. Part of our original infatuation was your appeal to the masses. You were open and accepting of all, or said you were, but there you were, spending your time with professor hootensnoot, dancing with doctor debonair, all the while quietly wrinkling your nose at the common man. I noticed how very nuanced were your terms and habits, your technical jargon, and it occurred that not only could no one clearly outline you, but most could not even engage in your dialogue. For a girl who spent her time telling everyone that we ought to sever the dominant discourse, this was a surprise, for it looked very much as if you were perpetuating it. But for you, even this I could forgive.

And then you started to get possessive. I can handle, and actually embrace, some closeness; we did come to college at Whitman in part to be together after all, but what you have been doing lately is frankly disturbing. You sneak into all of my classes, and just sit there, watching me. In English subjects, no one's analysis is wrong, everything is excellent and engaging, a great yarn, and all this for you. In debate, everyone is an evil, ecosystem hating, simulacrum perpetrating, colonialist, anthropocentric, fear mongering, abusively statist, theivingly capitalist, chauvinist, and this is because of your presence. In fact, the only place you don't chase me to is Modern Philosophy, and I don't doubt that you would if you could, but being postmodern, you can't quite slip into modernity. It has been getting uncomfortable.

If this were not enough, certain things you have been saying are, well, a little bit crazy. People talk. I am certain that you mean well, dear, but not every book is Fruedian, not every imaginary tree, gun, walking path, or representation of power phallic, and not every children's book about gender and sex. Your insistence that all things are subjective bothers me even moreso. Certain things, that the sky is blue, that one plus one is two, that Seattle cannot have a respectable sports team in any one activity for more than three seasons at a time, that I am now writing a letter which pains me much, are just plainly true. You act as if everything is this vague societal construct, that we are fully entitled to make the wildest and freest extrapolations, since after all, everything is all false anyways, that probability didn't exist, and it worries me. How can I lay these blatant facts aside in good faith?

Look, I may not know the precise score, but I am no fool. I know that if you poke a bear, the odds are high it will eat you, that certain chemical processes almost always work the same way, and that when authors write a book, they do initially mean something and there is at least one reading that we can find more probable than others. It is absurd to assert that we should talk every which way about everything, as it is to say that dice end up differently sometimes, so a one is as likely to be rolled as two through six combined. I say this as no offhand comment, for at night I lie awake and ponder us. Postmodernity, your disassociation from the real world pains me.

I would tell you that it's not you; however we both know that it is. I read modern philosophy books in class now, and whenever Descartes, Leibniz, Locke, Berkeley and Hume make a reference to the intangible nature of reality, I think of you, and become sad. It feels like reading a story to which I already know the horrible ending. There really is only one way to put this: we both know what has to happen. Postmodernity, I have found something better, I like it, and I am not ashamed. Empericism just feels so right, and with that I must say farewell. I'm sure you'll find many ways to interpret this.

Regretfully, Tim