Postmodernism isn't quite as prevalent today as it once was. The postmodern trend and culture is generally considered to have immediately preceded, or even coincided with, the secular project. I have heard it said that we are now in a post-secular society, where all of the previous deconstruction of ideologies has ceased, and people are now beginning to reconstruct their world views, shifting their focus from the individual to larger groups. That being said, it is clear to me, from various conversations I have had, that many of the dominant postmodern ideas still echo today. So I now seek to address these. Bear in mind that, while I do have very strong opinions on the ideas presented in this post, my main purpose here is descriptive, not prescriptive. I am attempting only to explain, to the best of my ability, how things are. Of course, I will make it very clear which worldview I subscribe to, but if I did not do this overtly, it would undoubtedly be conveyed nonetheless through subtleties and inherent bias.
In short, there are two camps of truths, and two groups of people corresponding to these two camps. There are those who say that some people are wrong, and there are those who say that all people are wrong.
In the first camp, we have those who have chosen a particular truth. They may call it religion, philosophy, science, logic, politics, common sense, respect, humanity, citizenship, love, or something else. At the end of the day, though, they have ideas, however vague or explicit, about how things are and how things ought to be. All who agree with their ideas are correct, and all who disagree are wrong. This is not to say that these people are confrontational, disrespectful, or arrogant about their belief (in fact, we shall see that those in this camp are often more open to a change in beliefs than those in the other). It simply means that, whatever they say (or think) that they believe, they actually believe it to be true. And if their truth is really true, then necessarily some other, incompatible truth cannot be. Once again, this does not necessitate that a member of this camp will make a point to let you know when you are wrong. But, if pressed enough, they will likely admit that, yes, according to their belief, you are wrong for believing another. This is the camp to which I belong.
Now, some people are overly zealous about informing others of their wrongness, just as many people are overly sensitive to being informed that they are wrong in another's eyes. Since we are dealing with the fundamental beliefs of a person about life and the world, it stands to reason that any rejection of those beliefs can very easily be perceived as a rejection of the person that holds them. The second camp of truth is often born from such an offense.
In the second camp, we have people that, on the surface, appear the same as those in the first. Often (for reasons that will become clear) their chosen truth is slightly less well-defined, and maybe not all-encompassing, but it exists nonetheless. However, beneath that truth there is a deeper, more fundamental belief. It is the belief that all truths that can be held by a person deserve equal treatment and acknowledgement. This is the defining belief of the second camp, and it is easy to see why it is attractive. Like in the first camp, each person is allowed to find a truth, but there no longer need be any offense given or taken for seemingly incompatible truths, because any truth held by a person becomes valid, by the sheer fact that the person believes it.
Unfortunately, this "miracle cure" of a truth turns out, like so many other miracle cures, to be too good to be true. It advertises options without the need to call anybody "wrong". But take a deeper look at this, and you will likely see a contradiction. By this assertion, every belief is equally valid simply because it is believed. This logic is taken from enlightenment logic used to describe people (i.e. every person is equally valid and valuable by the mere fact of being a person). But in taking this logic, we have to also take with it the limitation in which it applies; namely, that this automatically restricts the truth in question to the person that holds it. In other words, if we wish to use this reasoning to call all truths equally valid, we can only really say that a person's truth is valid for that person. Indeed, this is often the language that is used by postmodernists. As a truth, this is perfectly fine, as long as the implications are fully understood. The only way that seemingly incompatible truths can coexist is if they never occupy the same realm. This says, then, that anyone whose truth claims to say anything about anything outside of the person who holds it, is fundamentally wrong.
And so we see that postmodernism, in an attempt to avoid having to call anyone wrong, has actually succeeded in calling everyone wrong. It says that, at the end of the day, what anyone believes doesn't really matter, because at best their belief can only be true within the confines of their own mind. So either we all resign ourselves to exist forever isolated within ourselves (which no being, save One, has ever done), or we surrender any hope we have of our truth actually being true. This is why many postmodernists don't concern themselves with the specifics of even their own beliefs, because ultimately, it makes no difference.
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