6 "Let me tell you a story"

6 “Let me tell you a story”

We have already touched on the subject of postmodernism and we now need to look at this a little more closely. I have referred several times to the fact that the Western world is in a state of flux and that the modern world, stretching back to the Enlightenment, is now crumbling. It has far from disappeared and is unlikely to do so for a very long time, but serious cracks are growing in all directions, and out of the cracks of this crumbling culture a new postmodern world is emerging. It is a world which understands itself through biological rather than mechanistic models; a world where people see themselves as belonging to the environment, rather than over it or apart from it; a world distrustful of institutions, hierarchies, centralized bureaucracies and male-dominated organizations. It is a world in which networks and local grassroots activities take precedence over large-scale structures and grand designs; a world in which the book age is giving way to the screen age; a world hungry for spirituality, yet dismissive of systematized religion.1 It is a world in which image and reality are so deeply intertwined that it is difficult to draw the line between the two.2…