Michael Patton in his Reclaiming the Mind Ministries blog, Parchment and Pen, wrote a very intriguing blog recently called "My Heretical Postmodern Sympathies". I wanted to share with you. And as usual, I have added some of my own commentary below:
"I believe that the internet will be seen as the catalyst to postmodernism in the same way the printing press was to modernism."
"The age of communication has changed everything."
"The sheltered reality that prevented postmodernism is no longer a luxury of any community."
"My postmodern sympathies do not affect reality, but they may cause me to approach things differently. My postmodern sympathies do not change the Gospel, but they do affect the way I present it."
Even I, as young as I am can testify to the fact that our society and culture has changed a lot due to the power of communicating via the Internet. I grew up on a dial-up connection in a VERY small town of WV. The only people I really knew where at church and school I had a few friends that were neighbors, but most of them were too old for me. The dial-up connection was slow. I did not get on it much really. it was neat to look at Yahoo and play games or check email every once in a while.
But today I live in a suburban neighborhood with a high speed cable connection. I access Y! more than once a day. I check my email compulsively. And I like to blog, IM, and stay connected to my friends through a ton of means online whether email, messaging, blogging, instant messaging, twittering, or other ways. I feel like I know a lot of people pretty well simply through my online interactions with them. Not to mention how much these websites and interactions online increase and benefit my already existing real-life relationships. It is extremely different from my childhood dial-up connection before Facebook, MySpace, and all the other sites I visit regularly.
Culture is changing a lot. I have an interest in studying the changing culture. and I also have similar convictions that Michael speaks about in his blog. We are no longer naive and sheltered to "all of those people 'out there.' " We know that they exist and we all know and have relationships with them. I sympathize this way too.
