Modernism: A Short Vignette

Our honeymoon was a little delayed, but was spent in New York City. This one event remains ever vivid. We walked a lot and took some side streets, one of which had a tiny Russian restaurant. The restaurant had just three tables, all empty. We sat and ordered, I have no idea what, and when the meal was delivered, the owner-chef-waiter sat down with us.

This man was completely filled and and fairly bounced with joy. He had come from Russia, still the USSR back then. The freedom of the Modernist west fairly leapt from every sentence as he described his past and what he had found in the USA. I was struck by his infectious and consuming happiness in the freedoms and Rights, which we enjoy daily - without thinking about them. I was so happy for that man, myself.

Later I thought about difference between those of us who have never experienced the loss of our Constitutional Human Rights, and the glorious relief of those immigrants who pledge allegiance as they receive their citizenship. It is those immigrants who provide a renewal of the spark of Modernist Human Rights in the blanketing darkness of Post-Modern relativism where there is no truth and therefore no logic or justice.

Further, their origins contain all the elements of Post-Modernism, which is eerily similar to Pre-Modern chaos. In much of the world today, Pre-Modernism reigns as civilization there consists of survival mode morals, or rather lack of moral principles altogether. Government lies and collusions of power abound. As do revolutions and terrorist rebel hordes.

Modernism is not a natural state: chaos is. That's why Modernism cannot ever produce an egalitarian utopia: Modernism promotes the rise of personal excellence. Newton, Einstein, Feynman - these had no equal, and were celebrated for that. And under Post-Modern chaotic faux egalitarianism any such deviation from the utopian norm (all human bell curve deviations collapsed to the mean) would be punished, not celebrated.

And we are finding that Post-Modernism is quite interested in punishing deviants from their arbitrary norms. In fact, purging to the point of genocide fits their model. I wonder what that Russian entrepreneur thinks of Post-Modernism...