Postmodernism is a movement that exists within western society that is both literary and philosophical. It is a movement that began in the late 20th century and is a theory that questions the most prominent, basic, and general assumptions of western philosophy. On the other hand, spirituality is when someone has a belief or even just a feeling that there exists, something that is much greater than us that connects all things together.
So how are spirituality and postmodernism connected?
Spiritual people claim that in every one of us there is a small component that exists as a part of something that is divine in its nature or even cosmic. Postmodernism and spirituality are two concepts that are now integrating and weaving into each other, where many claim that it is the rise of the postmodernism movement that pushed forward the evolution of spirituality, transitioning from religion to something else.
However, before we venture into how postmodernism has helped evolve spirituality within this contemporary society, and how the two concepts are related, we first need to look further into what postmodernism is. To do that, we must look at the current aspects of postmodernism.
What Are The Current Aspects Of Postmodernism
Postmodernism is an intellectual stance or mode of discourse, defined by an attitude of skepticism toward what it describes as the grand narratives and ideologies of modernism, as well as opposition to epistemic certainty and the stability of meaning.
Making itself into the vernacular of experts from various disciplines, postmodernism has several different types of current aspects within the literature, media, economy, philosophy, culture, art, and the day-to-day real-world life, and below are some of the important ones:
Beyond Common Structures
Postmodernism is taking a critical view on how modern society operates, and explores the relationships between individuals and countries, raising questions of what is identity, what is the role of governments, and whether or not mankind needs and should have any sort of governance.
It may sound chaotic and describing anarchy to some, but that is exactly what postmodernism is all about, questioning whether or not everything that modernism has brought to our lives. Whether or not modernism had helped the private individual to live a better life.
The movement has gained massive momentum during the 20th century after the catastrophes that the world had seen, of World War I and World War II, the The Holocaust. These events have shaken the norms and standards of people, leaving many to questions whether modern perception is relying on solid basis, and if bring good to people or not.
The End Of Ideaology
All these catastrophes and other ones throughout the 20th and 21st centuries, have happened in the name of some ideology, and its righteousness, it’s superiority over another one. Whether it’s socialism that has failed to provide true social support, the Nazi pseudo-scientific racial superiority, capitalism that has narrowed people to products, or communism that has destroyed the sense of self of people.
Postmodernism states that all of the ideologies above, and many others as well, have failed. That even if these ideologies are supposed to be rooted in positive and beneficial ideas and concepts, they always fail at the end, doing a lot more harm than good.
Quitting Mainstream Narratives
The mainstream narrative of the existence of God, heaven and hell, cause and effect, religion, have become less reliable in the eyes of people than ever before in the history of mankind. This is because of the decay in authority that ‘experts’ have nowadays, as people see that most of the predictions and assumptions that are being made almost never take place.
Major economic crises, that most of the so-called ‘experts’ never predicted, natural disasters, social and moral decay that can be seen through crime and loss of trust in the justice system, and other events that were not predicted, caused people not to trust any of the ‘prophecies’ that were given by our leaders and ‘experts’.
And this of course applies to ancient scriptures and their description about the nature of man and God. How many people were killed in the name of religion throughout history? How many religious misconceptions about the nature of the world have been disproved by science?
All of these made people to stop believe in authoritative explanation and theories about the world, leaving a vacuum that needs to be filled out.
The Truth Doesn’t Exist
As a direct continuation of the former aspect, people are becoming less and less comfortable with the idea of one absolute truth. Though it has been scientifically proved that there’s no such thing as truth, people seek for something to be true as it gives them a sense of feeling secure, of feeling that justice exists and that our world is established by firm foundations.
But in our modern life, even before the era of fake news, people have witnessed numerous times that the truth is becoming rarer and rarer to find, as technological advancements, global information exchange, and the deterioration of authority of the world’s leadership, are making the average person more potent to understand how fragile our world is, as they are exposed to the failure of modern regimes and structures to provide answers and wellbeing.
Intertextuality
Another interesting take on postmodernism is how it is being expressed in literature. Since postmodernism lays a significant amount of importance upon how different text can be interconnected, which also includes how one type of text can reference multiple others, intertextuality is one of the most significant current aspects of postmodernism.
This current aspect of postmodernism can not only be seen in the spiritual realm but also in the literary and media worlds where there are many authors, novelists, and thought leaders, who use intertextuality as a technique that helps them in highlighting their work, linking it, and some are even known to put in direct references of other authors within their literary work.
So, the current aspect of intertextuality within postmodernism treats its ideologies as a network, which then helps a postmodernist individual to pick up texts in the form of a cycle. So, they will pick up a text that relates to a different type of text that relates to their personality.
How Postmodernism Helped Evolve Spirituality?
The recent evolution of spirituality is something that has taken decades, as evolution is not a phenomenon that can take place overnight. So, what is it in postmodernism that drove the evolution of spirituality? One of the drivers is intertextuality. Since the essence of spirituality is that there is something much greater at work, spiritualists, over the decades, have been adopting different ideologies from different types of scriptures.
This intertextuality and connection of different texts have greatly driven the evolution of spirituality. Another aspect is the quitting of mainstream narratives of religion and how people connect with God. This of course also greatly drove the evolution of spirituality. Since it means to embrace the connection with God without any rules or law one has to carefully follow, postmodernist spiritualists are encouraged to look for spirituality in anything and everything.
Another major aspect is the loss of trust in modern structures, as people are seeking meaning in life and are open to new ideas, after many of them have failed to find one in the materialist career-focused lifestyle. This openness has lead to an unprecedented amount of people embracing non-traditional spiritual conceptions as a way of living.
The combination of all of these together, allows them to break the boundaries that have been defined to them so that they may be able to find spirituality within its true essence, as a means for finding both answers to their questions and for both living a better life.
How This Evolved Spirituality Has Left Traditional Religions Behind?
This comes as no surprise that as the years progress, people are now moving away from traditional religions and focusing their attention on something that is much more all-encompassing. So, how does this newly evolved postmodern concept of spirituality leave traditional religions behind?
The human need for connecting with God and the need to live for a greater purpose has always existed. In the past religion was the main address for the first need, but for the other need, the address is not as clear as it used to be, as ideologies and modern structures have not fulfilled mankind’s need for a great purpose. At least according to postmodernism.
After the other need was not fulfilled by modern structures and ideologies, people started searching for something else that will give them what they need. And this search, that had gained more and more momentum throughout the 20th century, has led people to first start question the address they chose for their first need.
Unlike secularity, when people don’t believe in God, and/or not looking for a connection with God, we’re talking here about people that do look for and need a connection with God, and after they’ve started questioning their lives, they began being open to the possibility that this connection could be found outside religion as well.
And that was the catalyst for significant and profound spiritual awakening, as people have stopped trying to fit themselves into a religion that for at least some of them, was not a good fit at all. Whether it is because of sexual tendencies, gender, or lack of identification with certain aspects and customs of religion, people have found a way to fulfill their first need, without being ‘locked’ by a set of values that did not feel right to them.
Though they may seem in some ways alike, there is no doubt that postmodernism and spirituality are two unique and differing concepts that perfectly complement each other. One must consider the concept of postmodernism when they look to explain the evolution of spirituality.
So, while there must be several other factors at play here, one cannot, in any way, diminish the role that postmodernism played within the evolution of current spirituality. In fact, postmodernism and spirituality go together so harmoniously that many see these two concepts as the foundations of true future autopia, rather than the old concepts of heaven and hell that set the boundaries of religion.
As we are living in a technological era where changes in our lifestyle and perceptions are occurring faster than ever, these changes may seem scary. But it’s important to remember that at the beginning, every big change is inevitably scary due to its unknown nature, but who said that this new reality has to be bad? Perhaps, it can even awaken us into a new awareness.
