The human brain is a little too simple to understand this fully. Have we created the idea of a divinity to offer some explanation for this strangeness? Our simple, hyperactive minds jabber away at the questions. We constantly fail to live in the moment. We think our use of language and our ability to invent stories are what make us human and superior to the animals. It’s possible, though, that we need language and stories because of this inability to achieve what Buddhists would call mindfulness. My cat is very mindful: when she’s asleep she’s asleep and when she’s chuntering at the birds, she’s chuntering at the birds. She knows when there’s a storm or an earthquake coming. She is always content except when she’s fearful and when she is afraid, she uses her instincts to take her out of danger. She dances with the forces of the universe as easily as the galaxies move around their black holes and salsa around each other. Our need for rationalisation, and for stories where we find none, is possibly a human weakness rather than a strength.  

But because we’re human and have these weaknesses we need both the scientist and the philosopher. The scientist tell us the what, where, when and how. The philosopher questions the why and renders the scientists’ assertions relative.                   

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Truth is relative.

In much the same way, justice, and it’s counterpart criminality, is viewed as a social construct.  A construct which allows those in power to control or exclude from society, those without power. A crime becomes something which in itself is not bad or worthy of punishment. It is simply a person attempting to exercise power outside the established bounds set down by those already in power.

To define post-modernism’s stance – everything is relative. Especially truth.

The Problems with Post Modernism

The problem with post-modernism is that it’s absurd.  Oh, sorry.  Let me rephrase that. Post-modernism is self refuting.  A self-refuting claim is necessarily false.  Post-modernism is not logical.

The position of post-modernism – that everything is relative, is an absolute statement.  Nothing relative about it.  Which means that if post-modernism is true, then it’s false because of post-modernism’s own position. Which makes it self refuting.

Not that this is of any concern to most post-modernists.

One large problem with the concept that everything is relative is that it sets the stage for committing the human based atrocities such as was done by the likes of Stalin, Mao, Lenin, Saloth Sar…all of whom had very good and relative reasons for the slaughters they instituted.  Over a hundred million people killed just in this last century.

Is There in Justice No Truth?

Let’s leave post-modernism behind and forge ahead anyway, does justice exist?  A justice that is not just a social construct, not just people in power exercising their power over people who don’t have any?

The answer to that question is an unequivocal yes.  As a matter of fact it would appear that justice is an integral component of the very fabric the universe is made out of.

The Symbol for Justice

It is interesting, don’t you think, that the symbol for justice is a set of scales?  And not just any scales, balance scales.  The picture of the blindfolded justice and scales we are all familiar with is of the Greek god Themis. Other cultures have also used the scales to portray justice, as well as two bowls, two cups, two piles, etc.  A theme which indicates that humans down through time have seen justice, and injustice, as some type of an imbalance that needs to be rectified.

We also can look to nature, where every last thing, from the movements of the planets down to the movement of electrons is about balance.  Temperatures seek to equalize, water that is higher tries to get lower until a level balance is reached.  Everything in the universe seeks to find balance in almost every fashion possible.

Balance is an essential force or guiding principle seemingly built right into the universe.

Crime and Punishment

Post-modernism aside, the world has viewed justice as a way to deal with inequities.  Imbalances.  The law, or laws, shine a light on the doings of men and expose where such inequities have happened.  Through a system of justice, an attempt to reach a new balance goes on.   A life for a life, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, etc.

There is even a fine tuning control on the balance of justice, mercy. Mercy, seeking a deeper and truer balance.

That is not to say that justice cannot be perverted. But even then, the imbalance is usually so noticeable that balance seeks to be restored.

Justice, karma, come-uppance, fate, a well-deserved end, you getting yours, he got his, it will come back to bite you in the end, all refer to justice and balance.

Justice is just another name for the ongoing balance of men and the universe.  Justice is built right into the very atoms that comprise us.

Yes, Justice exists.

Multiculturalism has been one of the ideas inevitably intertwined with the idea of social injustice and inequality in the American Society. Conceivably, the most fundamental claim of multiculturalism is that the United States of America is a multicultural society and that this fact solely creates and presents a particular conception of injustice in the society (Handler and Segal, 1995, p.392).

II. U.S. Multiculturalism and the Concept of Culture

            This article presents us with a thesis that states how multiculturalism – because of the nature of the respective societies’ concept of culture– affects the societal perception of injustice in the contemporary American society. It identifies injustice with the “privileging of a singular dominant entity and the marginalization of others (Handler and Segal, 1995, p.392).” U.S. Multiculturalism duplicates, to a much greater extent, the continuing objectification of U.S. identity groups. In the authors’ view:

            “U.S. Multiculturalism needs a culture concept that does not construe the difference as a set of singular things, does not separate the study of the familiar and the exotic, does not abstract the identity groups of U.S. society from the formation of class position, and which renders authority something that is continuously questioned rather than something that is easily granted. Contesting the hegemonic sense conceptualization of absolute, naturalized difference – rendering identity groups rather than mixed – will, provide a more robust opposition to the majority tyranny that continues to plague U.S. society. (Handler and Segal, 1995, p.402).”

Their thesis is backed by five essential points of which are conducive to the fact that the American concept of culture is distorting the view of multiculturalism inescapably leading to social injustice and inequality.

A.     Detachment of the Study of the Familiar from the Study of Global Diversity

In the first point that Segal and Handler raised to reinforce their thesis, they mention the idea that although “U.S. multiculturalism in the academia broadens the category of the ‘familiar’ by questioning established principles of domination, this same multiculturalism does so little to bring together the study of the familiar and the study of the exotic (Handler and Segal, 1995, p. 394.).” The failure in catalyzing the two studies results in social unrest in terms of inequity and injustice.  Additionally, the authors’ see the studies as two inseparable entities, of which each now serves as their respective basis of recognition. This meant that having a constrained view of diversity not only limits our perception of others’ existing culture, but in a sense, it also restricts our analysis of what is close to home. For if we come to know less about human capacities and possibilities, the less we are able to correctly perceive and recognize the study of the familiar (Benedict, 1934, p.19). The substantive study of other cultures is an indispensable component of a “strategy of defamiliarization” or comparative separation (Handler and Segal, 1990, p. 9). This strategy employs the work of making the “strange familiar and the familiar strange (Handler and Segal, 1995, p. 395),” which, in the exhaustive study of culture, becomes a recurrent action of going back and forth. In this way we obtain an experience of other cultures, be it momentarily or in an extensive period of time. In this experience we hope to achieve the enlightenment in the resistance of existing social norms, arrangements or “favored alternatives (Handler and Segal, 1995, p.395)” of which are more or less binding to us. We refute these in their claims of absolute sagacity, their basis in human nature or their certainty. In this context, in the resistance of such claims, we contest the “hegemonic limitations on the imagination of alternative social arrangements and insist that the existing social status qou is a product of human will and agency and not by necessity, rationality, or nature (Handler and Segal, 1995, p. 395)”.

B.      Objectification of the Identity – Groupings in Contemporary U.S. Society

As it was stated, multiculturalism represents the United States as a society that displays a great deal of diversity due to the presence of multiple constituent cultures (Handler and Segal, 1999, p.396). These cultures are represented as elemental and self – evident and now act as the visible identity – groupings of the contemporary society. In this sense we recognize that there are multiple differences within identity – groupings no matter how much effort is given to destroy and remove these differences and at the same time, there are potentially relevant connections and commonalities no matter how much effort is given to obscure them (Handler and Segal, 1995, p. 396). These differences constitute social boundaries in the society. It is to be noted that;

“The most material and substantive distinction between social groupings are not, in and of themselves, the cause of social boundaries; rather, every social boundary is an interested and meaningful interpretation of differences. Moreover, no matter how much social authority such an interpretation attains, it remains only one among the range of possible interpretations (Handler and Segal, 1995, p.396). ”

Visible identity – groupings are a significant dimension of differences in the United States today. But the recognition of the dimension of differences does not necessitate the need for objectification as a set of elemental units of humanity or the need to be labeled as “cultures”. Moreover, as Handler and Segal put it, objectification is an indispensable element in the patterns of power and differences that multiculturalism avowedly contests (Handler and Segal, 1995, p.396). Here it is distinguished that objectifying differences as a set of elemental units implies an undeniable allegory that makes domination intrinsic. It tells us that domination is an inherent natural human response to the encounter of what seems to be different and unusual – “Others” – and is not something people do to “their own kind.” This creates a definition of culture where it is as set of persons within which there is only unifying solidarity and no relations of power exist (Handler and Segal, 1995, p.397).

“If a grouping of persons is perceived as a ‘culture’ then differences of power within it are masked; and if differences of power are perceived, then multiple cultures are said to exist. This view of power relations – as occurring across essentialized differences – naturalizes and psychologizes domination (Handler and Segal, 1995, p.397; Wetherell and Potter, 1992, p. 89).”

This view reinforces the thesis that the culture concept of the United States of America creates an arena conducive to social inequity and injustice.

C.    History on the basis of the Objectified Identity – Groupings and Possessive Individualism

A group’s legacy is said to be embossed in what is commonly known as “cultural property (Handler and Segal, 1995, p.397).” These so called properties are what we see and in a sense remember now as monuments, museum objects, buildings and sites where rituals or certain evens occurred, etc. The proven existence of this property is offered as a proof of the existence of the culture that is said to be its owner.

“In short, the property validates the existence of the culture. And like the concept of private property itself, heritage is understood to be bounded, discrete and unique – that is, a unitary ‘possession’ of an individuated social unit. History is thus divided into a number of unique past which belong respectively to contemporary identity groupings or cultures (Handler and Segal, 1990, p.58).”

Now the problem sets in when the allotment of history as property on the basis of contemporary identities acts to obscure parts of the past, thereby making them harder to recall (Handler and Segal, 1995, p.398). This idea means that in the allotment of history, certain specific cultural and identity – groupings own or claim parts of history and these historical monopolization results to a failure of other cultures and groups to relate to that “specifically owned” part of history. This in turn creates a vortex of problems and intercultural misunderstanding arising solely from the failure to relate.

Another problem the authors distinguished regarding individuated history is the issue that it privileges studying contemporary identity groupings in relation to the respective cultures own past (Handler and Segal, 1995, p.398). These meant that each group is positioned historically and exclusively in the domain of “itself” only. In sum, the individuation of history degrades human and cultural disparity and radical distinctiveness to the boundaries of historical study further obscuring human contingency.

D.     Power Relations and its Implications on the Abstraction of Social Stratification

To begin with, the objectification of differences as a set of elemental units figures stratification as an absolute ranked hierarchical order of seemingly unchanging entities where each of these is seen as having a particular position on an apparent imaginary social ladder (Handler and Segal, 1995, p.399). It can be observed that so strong and evident is the association and connection between these two that each can come to serve as a symbol of the other. This image of stratification appeals to the public and the academe alike, to the concern with the reasons for the relative standing of different objectified identity – groupings. This same image of stratification means that the concern with the relative positions of particular groupings is treated as independent of the system of stratification itself (Handler and Segal, 1995, p. 399). It is apparent that in U.S. multiculturalism, what counts as diversity are groupings that occupy social positions and not the social position themselves. Directly coming from this perspective;

“The issue of why a given race has a particular economic standing is a separate matter from the issue of why there is one system of class positions rather than another. This obscures the many ways that race and class are not autonomous, but are mutually constitutive (Handler and Segal, 1995, p.399-400).”

U.S. multiculturalism clearly disregards the issue of power relations with ethnicity and the implications they bring into the society. Racial distinctions are economically evident in terms of labor and pay ratios in the contemporary American labor scene. Invented and binding racial distinctions has clearly disadvantaged other cultures, the existing concept of culture has severely ignored what has to be put in the final equation.

source:

Handler, R. & Segal, D. (1995). U.S. multiculturalism and the concept of culture. retreived from http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~db=all~content=a921923685

If you have anyone around you, just ask him or her the purpose of life. 9/10 would say the purpose of life is to stay happy. For most, happiness is yet another human psychological mystery. Science, religion, philosophers etc. have tried defining happiness and its causes. The most common definition is that it is a state of the mind where the person feels content, satisfied, pleasure, love or joy.

Here’s another theory.
We can only define happiness in comparison to others or in comparison to the past. Let’s face the bitter truth: The Theory of relativity. We aren’t talking about Einstein here, so science-detesters need not worry! According to me, the only sensible reason for happiness is sadness. Ironic, but put your thinking caps. In simple terms it would mean that without sadness, there would be no happiness;just like without darkness, we would have no notion of light. For example, we often look at our peers and friends and develop some kind of inferiority when our eyes meet their expensive gadgets or clothes. That’s when you feel deprived and expect more. With comparison to them, you are ’sad’. If you manage to get what you wanted, you get happy.  

Someone once said, ‘Expect less, you’ll be happy.’ What I understand is that expectations are proportional to happiness. The more you expect, the more is the probability that your expectations would not get fulfilled. If they do not get fulfilled, you are going to enter into depression mode. I don’t believe in this.
Following this statement is certainly going to hinder your development. Expecting less would mean dreaming less. Expect less, then what else is life all about? Sleeping, eating and following your daily monotonous routines? If you did follow the statement, you would lose that spark in you; the spark that could ignite a thousand goals in you! It is a risk that’s worth taking. Life would turn meaningless elsewise. Expect more but at the same time learn to accept defeats or losses, so that when your expectations do not get fulfilled you can move on with your life with a smile on your face.

Sources of happiness are innumerable!
Everyone loves chocolates! There’s a reason behind that. Chocolates are know to produce happiness inducing chemical substances called endorphins. Endorphin rush is also caused by physical exercises. 
Humans are social beings and relationships form a major part of their lives. A person’s friend’s circle, marital status, employment, occupation, all determine a person’s happiness. The people around you,  may be sad and can produce a sad aura around them that can affect you but if you can find even a simple reason to bring a smile, no ray of sadness can touch you.

Do what you love, Eat what you love but don’t forget to exercise(Remember, the endorphin rush?). There’s an important thing to note here. If you do something you love that harms others, you won’t be a  happy man for long. A terrorist who claims his source of happiness to be terrorizing innocents, is lying. If you’re a terrorist, you know you aren’t happy. So living in co-operation with fellow living entities, forms an important ingredient to happiness.

Try to find happiness in every simple thing and make every life story have a fairy tale ending. “And so…they lived happily ever after.”

If you are facing trouble finding time, visit this article. I am sure you’ll benefit!

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Abhipray Sahoo, writing under the pen name of Alexanderlegend, is a budding author and a science enthusiast. He offers knowledge on topics ranging from the latest gadgets, science innovations, film industry to even sports. He also shares his travel experiences and suggests tourist-must-visits. To view all his work and to subscribe to his posts visit his blog at Triond.

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This means that if you were to get into a space ship and travel to a close star at close to the speed of light and then decelerate and turn around and come back then the trip would have seemed to taken a few years. However it is possible that over 1000 years have passed on earth.

This phenomena can also be seen at much lower speeds. The Hafele–Keating experiment proved this.

 -Michael Giles

Now, this is my believe but I do think after reading this and thinking about it some of you will be convinced. This all started when I was about 14, my dad always liked to “think” about… about anything. I inherited that.

One day I was thinking, I was on philosophy class, supposed to be learning about Relativism. Relativism says everything is subjective so I already knew about that. These guys doubted everything was real or true. They only believed in their own experiences. I consider myself a modern Relativist.

The thought I was talking about was the following was about colors and sight. It was the following:

Do we all see colors the same way?

My answer is MAYBE. Nobody can get into other people’s heads and see reality as they see it. Which means, unless they find a way to do it, nobody will ever know if we all see and perceive reality in the same way. Now to my argument:

When we row up, we are all taught the different colors. Blue is blue, red is red, green is green, etc. Lets talk about blue. We are all taught that the sky is blue. That’s our reference. Now, how do you know the sky is the same color for everybody?

You just can’t know. Maybe what you see as blue is my red or my yellow! But we were both taught that the sky was blue so we all think we see it the same way. We don’t know for sure if we see the same actual color. Not by names because they are just words and they don’t make it the same color for everyone.

I’m a Spanish speaker so this might be a little extra confusing. Apart from having to understand relativity, you have to understand it through my English writings. Sorry for that.

Enjoy the thinking.

Postmodernism, therefore, is a rejection of these modernist beliefs. Inevitably, at least some postmodernists took an exactly opposite or inverted approach to the world: consequently, postmodernism involves the privileging of individual understanding over ideology, subjectivity over objectivity, the death of monolithic political parties and religions and the rejection of the triumph of humanity over the physical laws of science.

These postmodernist positions can be applied to a wide variety of different intellectual pursuits. For example, postmodern art presents items which would never previously been thought of as ‘art works’ and places them in the special places which transforms the everyday into the artistic. So, a dead and embalmed animal is not customarily considered a piece of art but when it is displayed prominently in public at a reputable gallery, then it becomes an item which must be considered a work of art (although not necessarily a very good one). In this way, ‘modernist’ understandings of art are rejected.

In philosophical or sociological terms, postmodernism has come to be associated with the rejection of large-scale or popular thought systems and their replacement with the idea that everybody’s personal interpretation of reality is equally as valid as anyone else’s. In terms of popular culture, if a would-be contestant appears on American Idol or a similar show and performs an act which the judges reject as technically incompetent but the contestant defends as a personal belief or practice and, hence, just as good as anyone else without need for training, then the judges are taking a modernist position and the contestant a postmodernist position.

In recent years, increasing numbers of people have begun explicitly to reject postmodernism and to proclaim the important of universal (or at least widely-held) beliefs. In part, this has been intensified by the September 11th, 2001 terrorist attacks. Postmodernism has been associated with the idea that everyone’s beliefs are more or less valid and the terrorist outrages inspired many people to claim the opposite.

In the “emo” term, it obviously shows the negative and darker side of emotions but rarely shows the positive side. It came from the word emotion (emo/tion) invented in the modern time. As for some people, the word “emo” is particularly familiar because it resembles a type of rock band and music but in the present time it is used as a noun to refer to emotional people.

Emos of Today

Emos aren’t just mentally different but also physically trendy different. They are likely to be seen with black garments, dark trendsetters, and some pagan signs. They usually have long hairs or bangs to hide one eye or just for the-must-have for being “emo”.

Girls usually wear neckties, black or red skirts, black and white long socks, dark torsos, and for the finishing touches, a sad, enigmatic, or angry face.

As for boys, they usually wear black or other negative colored jeans or skinny jeans, dark t-shirts with a hood, dark shoes, and most of all a scary bad-boy image.

Enough with the style, lets talk about their behavioral changes.

When they become a full-fledged emo, they also start to act like one. For starters they usually don’t talk too much but stay still and quiet, they will try to control their emotions so that excitement or surprise won’t overcome them, and their outgoing level starts to deteriorate. Emo’s tend to be alone in a dark corner, they become much more immune to the rise of anger and stay calm, they are introverted and by the looks on their face, somehow depressed, and they tend to be ignored in such a way they won’t be bothered.

The law of Attraction, Gravity and Relativity is most definitely golden universal answers to almost everything. We thank Newton and Einstein everyday for their gifted minds. Spiritually and emotionally these laws have been taught to us in the form of “Love thy neighbors” or just Love and everything it represents. We thank Jesus, our mothers and fathers, Gandhi, Mother Theresa and many others for their insight and wisdom.

Action: Reaction for Dummies

Being aware of these powerful laws constantly dictating the playing field and setting the rules, is something we seldom do. For example, somehow our thoughts got wired not to apply the theory of action – reaction in an argument which can result in chaos, domestic-I hate You’s, divorce or even murder. The funny thing is, this chain reaction of “action-reaction” is something we are all in control of. Therefore, the questions is:”What makes a human being realize how much choice he has in a matter that seems out of his hands?”

The story of Hellen Keller, the first deaf blind person to ever graduate from college might serve as an example. She had a choice, her actions set forth reactions that made history. One of her favorite quotes were:”I do not want the peace which passeth understanding, I want the understanding which bringeth peace”. Hellen Keller understood the significant forces at work, she gave it her all and she received so much more in return. She is paying it forward just by having such an extraordinary life.

Choice

We are all faced with decisions everyday and our choices have consequences, the reactions of our actions touch people around us, influence our thoughts, and it navigates our destiny. We are surrounded by answers to our most daring and challenging questions if we become aware of life’s formula. So, go achieve and be anything you want to be, it’s your birthright!

In the Middle Ages truth was what the Roman church said it was, or if you were in Greece or Russia it was what the Orthodox Church said it was. Wycliffe, in England challenged all this with his translation of Jerome’s Latin Bible and the Lollards, and later, the Independents and the Baptists, argued that truth was what God said it was. They understood the Word of God and the Bible to be identical so everyman could find out The Truth for himself by reading the Bible. Of course there was the problem that people interpreted the Bible differently and often people failed to recognize that it was their own interpretation they quarreled over and not the actual meanings of the actual words of the Bible.

With the Renaissance came the tendency to look away from the Bible and instead to study nature both human and material. Renaissance paintings, instead of a virgin and child, a sort of ethereal goddess sort of person with an ethereal baby, depicted an ordinary young woman with an ordinary baby. Most people except the reactionaries in the churches thought this seemed sensible since this was probably how Mary and the baby probably were. In fact neither position could explain the truth of this simple “truth” of the incarnation. We still find it difficult, or impossible, at Christmas to get our heads round it and turn instead to eating, drinking, giving presents, and having a good time.

After that things really went from bad to worse. Kierkegaard, fed up with the formalism of the state church and the difficulty that religious “truth” presented to the Enlightenment mind decided that “faith” was “a leap in the dark”. In other words you did not know that God was there or anywhere, or that He existed at all but you believed. You leaped out into the void and hoped that someone was there to catch you. If there was then you at least had an experiential reason for believing. If not then, hard luck!

Meanwhile Britain was going through a period of Christian renewal. Churches and Chapels were springing up everywhere and there was a lot of enthusiasm. People claimed both a rational and an experiential reason for believing God. Nor was their leap one that was into the dark, but, lit by the light of a rational reading and application of the Bible, they set about a series of reform movements such as had never been seen before in the history of the world.

If you had asked them, a lot of those who believed and who spread the Gospel all over the world, would not have been able to give a fully coherent explanation for this enthusiasm of theirs. Some would certainly have done so. The leaders and the intellectuals among them certainly did. The Bible answered the big questions as nothing else did. On top of that it clearly demonstrated in the lives of converted criminals, drunks and losers, that it really did work in practice. When challenged as to the miracles in the Bible, one working class preacher answered, with the humor and the confidence of the British working class. “You don’t believe in water being turned to wine? Then come to my house and I will show you beer turned into furniture.”

But the confidence of the nineteenth and early twentieth century evangelist was not only a pragmatic one. He also believed that there were no contradictions in the Bible. This was no leap in the dark though to some of the patronizing intellectual classes it seemed so. Our working class evangelist had read and re-read the Bible. He read it every day, morning and evening. He read it completely through, from cover to cover, often once every year, perhaps a bit more. He studied it and argued it and he took on the world in debates about it wherever people gathered to speak and to hear and to heckle.

This was a movement of power, of crude lower class language which expressed magnificently eternal truths and witnessed boldly to The Truth. Then came Darwin. At first there was uproar, but not much. Gradually the idea that the universe had come about, out of nothing, over vast aeons of time, by chance, took hold. Gradually it ate away at the convictions of the evangelicals.

The sons and daughters of the working classes were educated, some went to university and the new thinking, the modern thinking, affected them and the old ideas were leavened with the new. And the new, at first giving a certainty as of scholarship and scientific progress, finally threw all into doubt and confusion. The old ideas of truth as something which corresponded to a reality “out there” began to break down. Preachers in the churches were becoming educated men. No longer were they Bunyans, or Booths but they had the letters of University degrees after their names and people respected them as educated, better taught and of a superior intellect.

Kierkegaard had started it. Faith was not believing what God said but believing first before seeing and understanding. Nietzsche continued it and his idea that modern man had killed God, or at least the idea of God, the relevance of God, began to fit in with Darwin’s theories. The rug had been well and truly pulled out from under the feet of the Christian world. If everything had happened by chance then there could be no purpose, no meaning and no rationality. If God was irrelevant at the best or actually non-existent, then there could be no morality. The Ubermensch seemed to be the answer. The idea of “man come of age”, who made his own morality and needed no God to do it for him gave a sense of pride to the humanist and the atheist. In Germany a new ethic was born, that of the race, the leader and the struggle for national identity and dominance.

Religion, if we may use the term to contrast with the evangelical fervor which had fired the hearts and driven the movements for reform in Britain, retreated into itself. The medieval Mysticism of the “saints” of religion became popular with new enthusiast for new visions and for old ones. Mystics like Theresa of Avila, Joseph of Cupertino and St.John of the Cross became popular. In the USA and in Britain the new charismatic movements gave back the enthusiasm expressed in music, clapping and dancing and a certain amount of confidence that religion “worked” because if gave good feelings.

In secular terms the slogan, “if it feels good, do it!” became a yardstick for secular activity including the protest movements of the sixties. Existentialism had merged with politics and religion to give a feeling of reality in experience without asking if the experience was one of reality. Increasing numbers of modern translation of the Bible also gave a sense of constant improving which was not actually improving permanently because it had to be repeated ad infinitum. More change was simply more of the same thing. It was a confusing world we lived in and everyone had a sneaking suspicion that Pilate may have had a point to his cynicism.

Existentialism itself encouraged this since Sartre argued for commitment, but without being sure of what you were committed to. It probably did not matter as long as you were committed but his brief romance with the Communist Party was something of a disillusionment. It is not particularly strange that if there is nothing true, or worthwhile, or good then “commitment” is an empty word.

Of course the strong strand of Romanticism in modern culture could do all sorts of things with words so that language became a game of semantics where words were small on content but large on connotation. So “commitment” sounded good, it was even good for a slogan, but it had lost all meaning. Inevitably the commitment did not last. Some people looked for more commitment or other commitment that might give satisfaction but they seldom found that ideal creed, party, or love affair for they all looked inviting at first but all turned to dust or took up too much time or energy. People instead, now watch sport or game shows on television and “nobody thinks too much on Desolation Row”.

As confusion turns to disillusion so philosophy tries to understand and academics work out a theory and write a paper on what it is all about. Post Modernism, Post Christianity, and Post History and all the other Post Whatever, are simply existentialism where the despair and the angst has been replaced by a belief that we can do it ourselves. Reality is socially constructed. Well that is partly true. The reality out there is reflected in our thoughts, so what? It is still reality out there, and we do our best to perceive it.

History is socially constructed. Of course it is, we can only interpret and apply the sources for our historical investigation. What we have may not be way it really was but there are some obvious factors that guarantee the skilled historian can get some way to understand the past and its people. We have a common humanity for a start. The passions and the fears are the same for everyman and for every woman. The hopes and the ambitions may have different cultural clothing but they are, in the end, the same. They are hopes of love, for security, and for recognition. So what is the problem?

Morality is socially constructed. That is partly true in that we make the laws, but on what basis do we make them and is it a just one. Our thinking, from Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, is that we have pulled the moral rug from under our feet. Neither of these, nor Kant, nor Hegel, have been able to solve the problem. They have not been able to show us how we make a morality that is not based on absolutes. That is, one which is based on a reality that is really out there. Truth is not expediency, nor is it preference, my perception may be far from the truth but truth persists and, by a dialogue with my fellows, I may learn enough to get a bit closer to it. Maybe in this life I shall never attain to it but it is there nevertheless.

We cannot of course live with the Superman of Nietzsche, nor with Kierkegaard leaping off the high board into the void, without knowing whether there is water in the pool or not. In a court of law the witness is required to tell the truth, “beyond all reasonable doubt”. The judge and jury accept it as truth if it can be backed up by other independent witness, or by other, irrefutable facts. The Judge, of course interprets and applies the law to the case, but that is another matter. The witnesses and the jury are concerned with truth and they do not understand that as something which is socially constructed. We cannot live with Post Modernism. As soon as we enter the realities of every day life whether it is an office, a factory or a court of law we find we are stuck with the truth and we feel cheated if we cannot find it.