The world today has regularly been called
postmodern. What ever you think of the term from this or that angle, I think it can be generally seen to refer to the world where things have become increasingly relative and uncertain in nature. To put it rather harsh, postmodern world seems to hold that there are no objective truths. On a more practical level, postmodernism touches also others than academics. Life has become more uncertain for everyone in many ways, things have turned more and more into projects. The old basic safety havens of life, such as job and status involved, preferred place where to live, as well as relationships, have all lost their previous positions as relative safe havens of life for one's sense of identity. You can not be so sure anymore about having this particular job for the rest of your life (or most likely for the next two years), you can not be so sure you can live in the place of your preference for the rest of your life, you can not be so sure that your relationships will last for the rest of your life the way you would prefer. Of course, things have been uncertain throughout the ages. But if you compare postmodern to modern, or 2006 CE to 1956 CE, you probably get the point here.
The dynamism of the world has turned itself into a change that seem to put people more and more under mercy of winds of whims of the Universe. This can be really disillusioning for many for many reasons. People get easily rootless and unable to base themselves into anything profound in a
Zeitgeist like this. Profound systems of meaning (such as religions and philosophies) seem to turn more and more into systems of self-deception if they claim to have more in them than just subjective truths (and many of them really are systems of self-deception). But for many of us our
psyche's are profoundly not resonant with this easily nihilistically colored view on existence. For many of us there is deep within a sense for more profound knowledge. That sense comes from direct inner experience of the Truth of Being, which is dynamic in its nature, and in this much more than just 'subjective' in the totality of the Universe.
What you can be sure about even in a
Zeitgeist of postmodernism is that
you are the ultimate source of happiness and power in your own life. If you step outside the magic circle of your own Self-based conscious power, you let psychic vampires to feast on you and you fool yourself to play with categorically bad cards with your
Master Game - your life. As long as you remember to not compromise regarding staying in touch and being informed and inspired by your most noble sense of the Truth of your Being, you base yourself to the most profound source of power and happiness in the world - your Self. This is something that no one can take away from you, that no one can make uncertain or relative - no matter how postmodern the world may be.
Aletheia.
At his trial after Second World War, Hitler's Minister for Armanents, Albert Speer, delivered a long speech in which, with remarkable acuteness, he described the Nazy tyranny and analysed its methods. 'Hitler's dictatorship', he said, 'differed in one fundamental point from all its predecessors in history. It was the first dictatorship in the present period of modern technical development, a dictatorship which made c0mplete use of all techical means for the domination of its own country. Through technical devices like the radio and the loud-speaker, eighty million people were deprived of independent thought. It was thereby possible to subject them to the will of one man... Earlier dictators needed highly qualified assistants even at the lowest level - men who could think and act independently. The totalitarian system in the period of modern technical development can dispense with such men; thanks to modern methods of communicati0n, it is possible to mechanize the lower leadership. As a result of this there has risen the new type of the uncritical recipients of orders.
