What Is Postmodernism and How Does It Affect Our Culture Today? | Dr. Jamie Dew

Postmodernism is a word that often gets thrown around in our culture, but what does it mean and is it even relevant anymore? In this video, President of New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, Dr. Jamie Dew, gives a crash course on postmodernism and how it's being adopted in our world today.

The entire video is above, and the transcript is below.
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Now postmoderns certainly have ideas of truth, but they don't believe about truth the same thing you and I believe.

So for example, here's a statement we all think to be true: I'm wearing a gray suit. You think that's true because the statement itself corresponds to the way things really are. That's called a correspondence theory of truth. That had been the premodern and the modern assumption. Postmoderns reject that. Truth now is simply what works for us. Or truth is simply which is consistent with other things. 

And so they have ways of defining truth, but there is no longer anything like Truth with a big T. No what we'd call metanarrative, that is meta meaning overarching, narrative meaning story. There are no overarching explanations of reality. There's no truths. So you shouldn't pretend to have one. I shouldn't pretend to have one. That's at least what they say, but notice in our culture these people that dub themselves as postmodern. What they're really after and what they're really against is our truth. They want to substitute it with a different truth, with their own morality, and things like that.

So one example of where you're gonna see postmodern ideals flesh out in our culture is really what you're seeing happening in this sort of culmination of the sexual revolution and the movement into transgenderism and other things like that. We're now in a place where people will say things like, "I know I'm in a boy's body, but I'm not a boy. I'm something else underneath that." And we're left to define, not just truth out there anyway we want to, we're now able to define ourselves in any particular way we want to. 

And there's this getting rid of these classical, traditional ideas that go well back before Christianity. They would go back to the classical period of the philosophers. This would be Plato and Aristotle. It would come up through the Christian tradition. It would come up through the medieval traditions. It would come up all the way through modernity. It would even come up pretty far into the 20 and 21st century, but now you're seeing it come to full fruition where we're gonna redefine or get rid of definitions of what it means to be a human, what it means to be a male, what it means to be a female, and we're free now to just define that any way we want to. 

This is very much a good example of the way postmodern thought has infected our culture and shaped the way we think about very, very important things.

So in short, that's a crash course on postmodernism. It is still very much alive in our culture and we do need to know what it is.

[jkam]

That was an excellent overview right up until your biases came into it at the end. Still, appreciate the concise explanations of modernity.

[Estuways]

Ending gets pretty iffy but otherwise really well done!

[tomharveyjamieson]

Haha it’s so funny how you went from dense to nonsense

[gracezaky]

speaking to the ending bc i more or less agreed with most of it:

you have a flawed understanding of transgenderism. if someone born a male transitions, they are not claiming, “i am a male“ (metaphysical), they are claiming “i feel like a boy.” and according to modernism, there is indeed a difference between sex and gender (like that one isn’t even debatable my dude). so while i see postmodernism’s influence here, it’s not quite as simple as you make it seem, and it certainly manifests itself in different ways, not always by rejecting the idea of truth.

but why would i expect nuance from a 6 minute video on a heavily biased channel?

[lunthuak]

i would like to thank you for the explanation but now I'm not even sure whether you 'thank you' for me even mean the same for you.😅

[markmittens]

These is one of the most biased explanations I have seen of something that is very complex. As he said some of these things were "settled" during the age of Socrates and Plato and came up through Christianity and other periods. Totally disregarding that someone made it up literally, no one is making up the fact that someone has certain reproductive parts. What people are rejecting is the box that puts them in. To put it simply people who are born WITH certain parts doesn't mean you ARE something. If you are born a boy does that mean you have to like the color blue because when you are born that's what they will drape you in. Who decided that was a thing?

[charlottebristow]

this was the first video I genuinely understood about it, thank you

[billlee]

Thank you, I finally understand what a postmodernist is. It's good to know we have a label we can use to dismiss the beliefs, morals and ideas of anyone we don't agree with. Even if they have been in our society since before Descartes and Bacon, we should other them and deny the truth of their existence. That will make a better world. Praise Him.

[krankywitch]

Albert Einstein said that if you can't explain it to a layman, then you don't understand it. After trudging through dozens and dozens of unedifying and jargon-filled explanations by students and teachers of philosophy, I finally found a comprehensive explanation - from a theologian, the most anti-postmodern source available! I guess 'know thine enemy' still resonates in the christian faith :D

[AZTLANSOLDIER]

Why do Christians always have that weird vocal tone?

[infinifi]

I thought it was a brilliant rendition of post modernism Albert Mahler and I agree with your biased end comment totally; about it infecting our culture. I think coming in with Truth, with capitol T, is going to be challenging but after all the obscurities it’s what western society will crave.

[arism]

you mistake 'modernism' (an early 20c movement) with 'modernity' (Enlightenment etc)

[raymonddonahue]

Excellent job defining PM. Your assessment that it has infected our society is also mine.

[godlindaffodil]

That is one good explanation with clear examples! Thank you so much.. Please do more videos on these topics.

[afterthesmash]

3:00 Come on now, the "if everyone" marching band was hardly innovated by Modernism. In fact, you'd be hard pressed to find a more potent origin story for the "if everyone" marching band than the general turn toward monotheism in the three centuries BC.

The tendency for every emergent avant-garde social technology (which subsumes both religion and science) to run "if everyone" up the flag pole amounts to universal strawman fire starter. If everyone was meek before God, we would have justice on Earth. If everyone was rational, we would have peace and harmony on Earth. Yada yada yada we've all heard this yarn before.

Always wrong, always embarrassing, always the rowdy, drunken theme song of every promised salvation (God's mercy is the _other_ potent fermented beverage). More reliably universal than universal sin, hence least usefully diagnostic of any particular metaphysical or philosophic excess.

[andrearenee]

Still learning... Until the very end. Concepts of truth? Don't pretend, search inside...

[jaythefit]

Perfect condensed overview of ideas that are dominant in our culture. Dr. Dew briefly skimmed over truth theories of today but didn't point out the unique philosophy born in American which is pragmatism. Pragmatism says the truth is that which works. Pragmatism doesn't have time to concern itself with ultimate ideas or metaphysical concerns. Pluralism and its handmaiden relativism stepped in to fill some the voids in that thinking. Truth is slain in the main because all something needs to be true is personal preference. John Locke is rolling over in his grave with his correspondence theory.

I think metaphysics was on its way out with Kants critique of pure reason. Things outside the phenomenal realm (the realm of sensation) cannot be known according to Kant and he put metaphysics in a category he called the Noumenal realm. That's a radical change in epistemology and knowing God through nature, or natural revelation. However, if Paul is right then Kant's critique is manifestly false.

[mariamart_]

Many us think we’re postmodernists but actually we’re just only evolving since we live in the Singularity Age of Artificial Intelligence and Nano innovations-

[crono]

I really enjoyed the video until about the last 30 second's. I at first was amazed I had found a religious perception not biased but ideas eloquently explained. In the end you correctly point out that post modernist ideas reject your truth. Thankfully these people came along throughout history and rejected the idea of objective truth coming from a religious source. I cannot fully agree with all post modern ideas as they assume a universal truth exists in all people and can be taught to all people, but it's in a funny way similar to the way churches teach us. Gender is a cultural, social identity and has always been fluid since thousands of years before Judeo-Christian empires conquered culturally diverse nations all over the planet. Your definition of man and woman is based in an assumption of the dominance of biological certainty defining identity. Nature is extremely complex in this matter with unbelievably sexually complex organisms, we are but one of these organisms. If more religious thinkers experienced the felt presence of divinity in nature herself one can examine the assumption of understanding who or what god is, and what role we play in that story. Much love to all.

[Adivisgclaymation]

So it's like how Christians in the US decided to define Trump as honest and worthy of worship. Gotcha.