"Now that's what I call ironic!"

Fa-So-La-La

Some of you Beehive faithful may remember a while back my post on haiku and postmodernism, and the discussion it caused. Well, in the wake of all this I have been thinking about how words and language cause postmodernism, to quote Dr. Grant, to 'collapse under the weight of it's own absurdity.'

Postmodernists (forgive me if this is oversimplification, but I'm trying to make a point!) say that there is no purpose or truth or beauty-- they insist on the meaninglessness of all things. And they deny that language can be used effectively to express truths with clarity and certainty. They insist that communication is a lost cause.

I wonder if they have ever thought about how they prove themselves wrong every time they order a pizza?

They use words to express the inefficacy of language, and they state what they believe to be true as they claim there is no truth. They do more to prove their position wrong by simply living than we do by refuting them.

All this reminds me of Thomas Jeffersons' wonderful phrase 'self-evident truth.' I think that somewhere inside them, most men can see the difference between folly such as Postmodernism and the truth. I am not making a theological statement here, I am just saying that plain common sense and instinct will prove many errors wrong. It does not take much profundity to figure out that language is highly valuable and useful.

The postmodernists themselves show this in their inability to escape language-- they still talk and write books and poetry and music. True, they have done all they could to make language obscure and vague -- as evidenced by much modern poetry-- but they are still using it. They cannot escape-- they condemn themselves with every step. They are trapped and ambushed by their own armies every minute of every day.