We respect your opinion, provided that it was our opinion first.

We respect your opinion, provided that it was our opinion first.

March 11, 2008

Byzantine Postmodernism

On the Beauty and Complexity of Modernity
Luke Olson

Despite the beauty and complexity of the modern world, there are some who speciously allege it to be bereft of purpose or propriety. Some even have the audacity to call modern man ignorant. These accusations are not only subversive, but ignorant not only to the social breadth of the modern world but of its intellectual, psychological and sexual compass as well. The modern world is like a big party on a rainbow and everyone is invited! I intend to address these assertions, as I am one of dissimulation and satyriasis, by reinforcing the complexity and superiority of the modern world. I therefore put forth these twelve considerations:

1. After centuries of obsequious submission to the strictures of religion and the “Father,” we are now triumphantly free to consult the horoscope, our magic 8-ball and therapists. Never before have our mothers so dictated our fate.

2. Instead of adhering to a transcendent principle of truth, goodness or beauty, we have now shed the limitations of “truth” and celebrate relativity, which is a euphemism for the “booty principle”, that is, agreeing unequivocally with the most attractive girl (or that which most resembles a girl in desperate situations) in the room, no matter how idiotic she is.

3. After protracted oppression by the constraints of belief in a hell and a Satan, we have discovered the true root of evil: George Bush. This has been known ever since Kanye West revealed that Bush caused Hurricane Katrina, ate the last unicorn and is a robot recharged by children’s tears in his recent hit “You ain’t no man.”

4. Why read old Arthurian tales with big words like perspicacity, hirsute or insipid when every tale of love, betrayal and nobility can be adequately expressed in a 3-minute youtube video with vegetables and falsetto?

5. We have the new Star Wars trilogy, which invariably involves more flashing lights and shiny stuff than the old ones.

6. Linguists have consistently shown that languages develop towards simplicity, and English is no exception. Modern vernacular allows men a vast expanse of expression never previously available to such masters of language as Tolkien or Dostoevsky, e.g. “Man, that straight-billed baseball cap is dope!” or “Damn Herman, show me ya grill!” It’s only a matter of time before I can score a smokin’ hot wife with a series of grunts and bodily contortions.

7. “You my hoe” is finally a compliment.

8. Antiquated forms of dance that merely disguised men’s intentions behind a curtain of manner and a fluidity of movement have now been extirpated and replaced with a much more flattering and primal form of dance referred to as “spasmodic loins,” in which the man violently gyrates his hips into a frenzy so as to most naturally express his intentions for the recipient of his murderous hips.

9. Modernity has everybody’s loveable, but slightly effeminate little brothers: Canada and Zac Efron.



10. Unlike antiquity, modernity presents us with a myriad of solutions to boredom, such as chillin’, just hangin’ or being real.

11. In an attempt to more fully pronounce our primal virility we have strayed from the harmonious and soothing piano concertos of Chopin to a more expressive reflection of our discordant soul – Kanye West and his impeccable appraisal of the human condition, “Do that mean God gon’ make my kids be stupid as well.”

12.a. The emergence of relative truth and the sexual revolution have given us an unprecedented amount of sexual outlets involving every orifice or appendage imaginable, despite their utter superfluity in reproduction. This manifests itself in sexual relations involving two men, or two women, or two women and one man, or two men and one woman, etc. Perhaps with continuing assiduity in this area, we will one day be able to shed the confines of same-species relationships to extend this list to a man and a dog, or a woman and two kangaroos, or two men, a woman and a gaggle of geese, or even a man, a bear, an elephant walrus, a platypus, the Kool-Aid guy and several congenial turkeys. Of such I dream.

b. This erosion of platitudes is in no way related to an atrophy of modern intelligence. I mean, just look at all the ways I can intelligently express my sexual frustration! I am salacious, I’m as prurient as a heifer in heat, even Jesus couldn’t heal my lechery, to be libidinous or not to be unlibidinous, I am licentious to kill, or even, I have extreme bouts of satyriasis.

With these twelve considerations, I hope to have exculpated modernity of ignorance and excess. If modern man successfully continues to shed his strictures perhaps he will soon be enlightened enough to shed his humanity...and his clothes.


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