The Importance of Imagination, Part 4

Read Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.

Postmodernity and the Demonic Imagination

Among conservatives, postmodernism is almost universally spoken of in derision. The derisive attitude is understandable, especially given the consequences of what postmodernity has produced. What conservatives sometimes fail to recognize, however, is the significant contribution that postmodernism has made in its critique of modernity.

The advantage of postmodernity is that it emphasizes the bankruptcy of the modern turn. Modernity progressively (the pun is deliberate) sacrificed the transcendent universe, then the moral universe, then the ordered universe. Without an ordered universe, of course, there is no universe at all. Whatever is “out there” can be construed in an indefinite variety of ways.

Far from bemoaning the postmodern criticism of modernity, I believe that we should applaud it. Modernity was an assertion of human arrogance and autonomy. It was based upon the pretence that the facts were clear in themselves and could be understood so as to produce truth transparently. Postmodernism reminds us that brute facts do not exist. Whenever an observer notices an object or event as a fact, that person has already, by the act of noticing, interpreted and assigned a value to it.

Postmoderns are right to insist that the only reality we know is interpreted reality. They are also right to insist that we always interpret reality from within our own situation, and that our interpretation of reality invariably reflects certain pre-interpretive commitments that we have made. In fact, as Christians we go even further along this line. We insist that every human, being depraved, has a pre-interpretive commitment to sin and idolatry. Faced with the facts, in our natural state we invariably construe them in such a way as to legitimate our treason against the Creator.

The advantage of postmodernity is that it has exposed the quandary of modernism. To that extent, it is helpful. The problem with postmodernity, however, is that it has no way out of the quandary. Modernity sacrificed transcendence, morality, and order. In a word, modernity did away with meaning. Postmoderns have never managed to find a way to recover it.

For postmoderns, each person (or each culture, horizon, or tradition—depending upon which version of postmodernism one considers) is shut up in its own car. Everyone is snowed under by the blizzard and isolated by the fog. There is no Truth up there, nor even any truth out there.

In postmodernism, there is something outside of the car, but there is no city. The notion of a city (i.e., of order) is something that each perceiving mind imposes upon whatever random observations can be made through the storm and the frosted windshield. The occupants of each vehicle simply invent their own cities, make their own maps, and then proceed to do their own navigating. The only rule is that they must not crash into the other cars around them (though why this should be a rule is not clear, especially if they can get their hands on a tank instead of a Toyota). For postmoderns, whatever “truth” exists can only be applied “in here.” Occupants of other cars will have their own “truth” and cannot be condemned if they drive according to it.

Not surprisingly, the decay of modernity into postmodernism has produced a generation that sees the world as random, anarchic, and meaningless. This is the demonic imagination (T. S. Eliot called it the “diabolical” imagination).

The demonic imagination takes different forms. The milder forms delight in the chaos. They relish the anarchy. Indeed, the absence of meaning offers a kind of playground to this sort of postmodern.

The more vicious forms express the Will to Power that is sure to emerge wherever anarchy takes hold. Disorder is inimical to human survival. People cannot live indefinitely under chaos. If order cannot be nurtured from within, it will be imposed from without. The Übermenschen are always seeking the opportunity to impose their order—their will—brutally if necessary…and even if it is not necessary. In its worst forms, the demonic imagination brings a rejoicing in brutality, an appetite for cruelty, and a relish for violence. Who can doubt that such viciousness has come to characterize much of the postmodern world?

Postmodernism succeeded in its critique of modernity. The problem is that, once postmoderns dismissed modernism, they had nothing left to put in its place. They were and are surrounded by meaninglessness, immersed in anxiety, and bathed in despair.

For postmoderns, the options are limited. They can seek for some encounter that will, however irrationally, authenticate their existence and provide some sort of meaning. That is the approach of existentialism. Alternatively, they can try to drown their anxiety in a sea of distraction, surrounding themselves with the noise of amusements, sports, sexual experiences, or drugs. That is the approach of hedonism. Or they can celebrate the chaos, embracing either the cult of power or the culture of death. That is the approach of nihilism. In every form, postmodernism is despair.

The main lesson from postmodernity is not that modernism was wrong (important as that lesson is). The main lesson is that there is no way forward. All roads out of modernism lead into anxiety and despair. Postmodernism simply offers a choice of poisons.

The only escape is to return to the fork in the intellectual and spiritual road, the point at which modernism established its own trajectory. If we wish to escape from despair, then we must reaffirm the premodern metaphysical dream. We must reestablish the moral imagination.

This is not to suggest that we can abandon the modern era, or even that we should wish to. Modern times brought significant benefits through industry, technology, medicine, commerce, transportation, and communications. I would not want to abandon my computer for a quill and ink bottle, nor would I favor a return to the good old days of typhoid and cholera. The modern age introduced benefits that are perpetuated in the postmodern period, and even people with a premodern metaphysical dream can and should take advantage of them.

With each modern advance, however, came a shocking increase in the potential for evil. The invention of powered flight allowed for exponentially faster transportation, but it also facilitated the delivery of nuclear warheads. The development of capital investments and free markets increased wealth, but it also increased exploitation. The development of newer technologies for communication has shrunk the globe into a village, but it has also transformed the West (at least) into a brothel. Every technology that is invented for good can be turned—and sooner or later actually is turned—to profound evil.

The trouble is not in the modern age per se. The trouble is that we possess neither the vision of reality nor the strength of will to keep the playthings of modernity in their places. Unless we know who we are, what we are for, and where we are going, our machines will dominate us. The knowledge that we need, however, cannot be supplied by any modern construct of the world, much less by a postmodern one. This is the sense in which a return to the premodern metaphysical dream is urgent. We need the moral imagination.

Bread of the World
Reginald Heber (1783-1826)

Bread of the world, in mercy broken,
Wine of the soul, in mercy shed,
by whom the words of life were spoken,
and in whose death our sins are dead:
look on the heart by sorrow broken,
look on the tears by sinners shed;
and be thy feast to us the token
that by thy grace our souls are fed.

This essay is by Dr. Kevin T. Bauder, president of Central Baptist Theological Seminary (Plymouth, MN). Not every professor, student, or alumnus of Central Seminary necessarily agrees with every opinion that it expresses.