The Resurrection and the Postmodern Dilemma by N.T. Wright

I thought this was a great description of the present cultural and intellectual crossroads we find ourselves in today. Throw Christianity into the mix and you've got a real good story.

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The Resurrection and the Postmodern Dilemma by N.T. Wright: "Postmodernism. To oversimplify, this has focused on three areas."

First, knowledge and truth. Where modernism thought it could know things objectively about the world, postmodernism has reminded us that there is no such thing as neutral knowledge. Everybody has a point of view, and that point of view distorts. Everybody describes things the way that suits them. There is no such thing as objective truth. Likewise, there are no such things as objective values, only preferences. I heard somebody say at a meeting in 1996, “Today, attitudes are more important than facts—and we can document that!” That statement trembles on the brink between modernity and postmodernity. The cultural symbols that encapsulate this revolution are the personal stereo and the virtual-reality screen; everyone creates their own private world.

Second, the self. Modernity vaunted the great lonely individual, the all-powerful “I,” symbolised perfectly in Descartes’s cogito ergo sum and in the proud claim, “I am the master of my fate. . . the captain of my soul.”1 But postmodernity has deconstructed the self, the “I.” The “I” now may be just a floating signifier, a temporary and accidental meeting place of conflicting forces and impulses. Just as reality collapses inward upon the knower, the knower deconstructs itself.

Third, the story. Modernity implied a narrative about the way the world was. It was essentially an eschatological story. World history had been steadily moving toward, or at least eagerly awaiting, the point at which the industrial revolution and the philosophical enlightenment would burst upon the world bringing a new era of blessing for all. This huge overarching story—such overarching stories are known in this postmodernist world as metanarratives—now has been conclusively shown to be an oppressive, imperialist, and self-serving construct. It has brought untold misery to millions in the industrialized West, and to billions in the rest of the world, where cheap labor and raw materials have been ruthlessly exploited. It is a story that serves the interest of Western industrial capitalism. Modernity stands condemned of building a new tower of Babel. Postmodernity has gone on to claim, primarily with this great metanarrative as the example, that all metanarratives are suspect. They are all power games.
Collapsing reality, deconstructing selfhood, and the death of the metanarrative—these are the keys to understanding postmodernity. It is a ruthless application of the hermeneutic of suspicion to everything that the post-Enlightenment Western world has held dear. It corresponds exactly with the microchip revolution, which has generated and sustained a world m which creating new apparent realities, living in one’s own private world, and telling one’s own story, even though it does not cohere with anybody rise’s story, becomes easier and easier. This, on one level, is what the Internet is about. We live in a cultural, economic, moral, and even religious smorgasbord. “Pick-n-mix” is the order of the day.