#postmodernism — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #postmodernism, aggregated by home.social.
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Our failure to mediate the mess
The current #AI boom is built on a huge contradiction, you can see this in #mainstreaming terms. That AI companies are not paying the real costs of what they consume. They haven't paid for the copyrighted material they trained on. They haven't paid the environmental costs of the water and electricity they use. They haven't paid for the pressure they place on public infrastructure, or for the social costs of flooding the web with synthetic content. Yet AI services are sold below their true […] -
#Nicenasty the hidden power of soft obstruction
People think in groups, that's normal. The mistake isn't group thinking itself, it's pretending we're all isolated individuals while still acting through tribes, identities, and social blocs. A lot of today's "common sense" comes from the #stupidindividualism group mindset. We are encouraged to see every problem through individual choices rather than collective realities. The real question isn't "how do we stop group thinking?" It's "what do we do with it?" This mess is something we need to […]https://hamishcampbell.com/nicenasty-the-hidden-power-of-soft-obstruction/
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#OMN Grounding (the roots as a story)
#techchurn is the endless cycle of adopting new platforms, tools, and technologies - not because they solve any real problems, but because novelty is mistaken for progress. It burns community trust, institutional memory, and activist energy, while leaving the underlying #nastyfew power structures untouched.https://hamishcampbell.com/?s=techchurn The #OMN uses #stupidindividualism to describe the culturally manufactured habit of prioritising personal gain and self-interest over collective […]https://hamishcampbell.com/omn-grounding-the-roots-as-a-story/
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PICTURE ANN ADHERES TO THE LAW OF WHISPERS AND LOW VOICES
https://eternal-terror.com/?p=72733RELEASE YEAR: 2025BAND URL: https://orcd.co/picture-ann-whispers
The villainous purveyors of all things weirdly dark and strangely melancholy are at it again; their “The Law of Whispers and Low Voices” single was released on September 12 by the consistently brilliant Gymnocal Industries and is available in all the relevant digital music stores out there. In addition to the title track, […]
#ambient #atmospheric #atmosphericBlackMetal #bandcamp #cinematicAmbient #darkAmbient #darkAmbientDrone #darkDroneAmbient #darkRomanticism #drone #droneAmbient #Electronic #floodgateMoodsProductions #folk #folkRock #guitarAmbient #instrumental #loFiPostRock #meditation #minimalism #noise #pictureAnn #postRock #PostMetal #postRockInstrumental #postmodernism #progressiveRock #PsychedelicRock #psychoacoustic #sagntid #Shoegaze #signalfeide #soundscape #spaceMusic #vornoff
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CW: Postmodernism's Hyperreal of Intelligence And The Unrequited Lovemaking Of The English Language. (but really it is about Moldbug)
Notice: This post is not about postmodernism's bad writing, but about Moldbug.
Brother sent me a 90 minutes documentary (read: opinion piece).
It was made entirely of stock footage and named "How Comedy Was Destroyed by an Anti-Reality Doomsday Cult" clearly (read: possibly) inspired by Adam Curtis's documentaries (read: opinion pieces) made entirely of stock footage - "All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace" and especially "HyperNormalisation". Instead of Adam Curtis's matter of a fact BBC English accented narrator voice, we have a stoner Murikan, which I am told is actually a Canadian, quipping along the way.
And he is using the term "hyperreal". It annoys me. The "hyperreal" is a weird neologism the narrator names the normal word "delusion". It is a virtual reality people go into in states of crisis. People who go into "hyperreality" (read: delusions) build their life around it and sometime have others for company, like an unfunny comedian opening a new comedy club just for him and his posse. In the video the narrator keeps talking about a cult leader (read: a famous podcasting comedian) opening a cult compound (read: comedy club) for his cultists (read: the famous comedian's posse and audience), prefering to believe in comfortable lies instead of harsh truths, followers pretending to laugh at jokes made by their dear leader that would leave normal people deadpan just to keep their cult leader's ego well petted and secure their position at the comedy club. As you already know, there is only one reality and many opinions each based on good or bad reasons. When you base your opinions on bad reasons you are deluding yourself, so when the cultists mentioned in the 90 minutes opinion piece go into "hyperreality" why not just call it "delusion" like a normal person?
The term "hyperreality" comes from a certain brand of pseudoscience called "Postmodernism". One of its well known problems is inventing words for words for which we already have words. The word "delusion" is one of those words which the new unecessary word "hyperreatily" was invented. The new words are often fancy long ones thrown into the mix as chaff, to confuse the reader into believing that a superior intellect had written it.
In closing, Postmodernism is trying too hard and needs to take some writing classes. It may benefit in reading this bit by George Orwell:
p.s. forget about postmodernism and all that crap! That's yesterday's news because Moldbug won! In the end of the video the stoner guy says J.D. Vance is one of Moldbug's avid readers and Moldbug's crap was hugely influential on the current Murikan politics. And even though Moldbug's crap was partially a sort of a reaction to postmodernism, postmodernism doesn't matter anymore, because Moldbug won! If you do not know who Moldbug is, it means we are doomed. So in closing closing, have a nice weekend.
p.s.s. Moldbug's Neoreactionary writing is at least on par with postmodernism's writing in terms of bad writing. They are dark mirrors of each other. The bad writers that killed liberal democracy. I like that. So in closing closing closing, have a nice evening.
#comedy #delusion #elephantgraveyard #english #georgeorwell #hyperreal #hyperreality #joerogan #moldbug #postmodernism #standup #standupcomedy #wordsalad
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Most Online Chaos Magick Is Naming Mnemonic Variables
No matter how intricate your sigil is, it’s still just a semiotic identifier—a signifier. You could call it x, and it would carry the same ontological weight. Sigils point to concepts, entities, or they act as a signature. At the end of the day, you’ve just created a decorative label. Sigils are glyphs, not alphabets or languages like Theban, Celestial, Enochian, or the Alphabet of Daggers.
Sigils made using Austin Spare’s method aren’t languages—they’re stylized abstractions. You’re not writing a sentence in some hidden tongue; you’re making a visual variable. A graphic tag with no linguistic scaffolding. There’s nothing to “read” in it—no syntax, no grammar, no pronunciation. Just an intentional scribble pointing toward a thought.
Compare that to Theban, Celestial, Enochian, or the Alphabet of Daggers. Those are actual alphabets. Magical languages. They follow consistent letter-for-letter substitutions. They can obscure meaning—because there’s real meaning to obscure. You can encode texts, chants, names. They operate like ciphers, because that’s exactly what they are.
Spare-style sigils don’t encrypt—they erase. When you compress a phrase into a symbol, you’re not hiding language, you’re letting it go. You’re collapsing intention into a single mark that doesn’t depend on literacy, just mental association.
Magical languages at least do something. They obscure. They encode. Run a sentence through Theban or Celestial, and you get something arcane-looking and unreadable—because it is, unless you know the key. That’s the point: symbolic misdirection. Encryption with intent.
Sigils, especially the Spare-style ones, don’t do that. You’re not concealing a message; you’re flattening it into a shape. It’s not code—it’s a label. A name tag. You take a phrase, compress it into a glyph, and suddenly it’s a “magickal symbol.” But it’s really just a symbolic pointer—a variable, like in programming. And just like with variables, the more convoluted the name, the more annoying it is to use. If your sigil looks like a spiky eldritch mandala, congrats: you’ve made a beautiful, unreadable label.
Honestly, watching people crank these out like they’re reinventing the arcane wheel—when they’re just decorating the same psychological placeholder—it’s almost a relief. The more time someone spends designing a stylized faux ceremonial symbol symbol for “money now please,” the less likely they are to be doing anything dangerously effective. A lot of what gets called “chaos magick” online is really just overdesigned variable naming by people who think the aesthetic is the spell.
Sure, sigils, metaphors, and myths all operate symbolically—but they don’t hit the same. A sigil is a symbol boiled down to a label. A shortcut. It points to something. A mythology doesn’t just point—it breathes. It moves through story, layers, archetypes. That’s why mythic metaphors and ritual drama land harder: they’re not just signs, they’re immersive systems of meaning.
A myth doesn’t just say “this is like that.” It binds symbols into patterns. It creates tension, resonance, transformation. Allegory can carry cosmology. Sigils don’t do that. They’re more like programming variables—arbitrary labels you assign meaning to. Useful? Sure. But flat. A box with a name. Writing “dragon” on the lid doesn’t conjure the force of a real dragon narrative.
That’s why stories, dreams, and rituals move people—and sigils usually don’t, unless you’ve already decided they will. Metaphor speaks to the deep mind. It speaks with symbols, not just about them. Sigils? They’re like filing tabs. Metaphors are the stories inside the folders.
So yeah—they’re both symbols. But one is a placeholder. The other is a living structure.
Exactly—whether you sketch a swirling, ornate sigil or just scrawl an x, you’re still tagging the same conceptual box. The content doesn’t change just because the outside is fancier. That’s the point: the sigil isn’t the thing. It’s the pointer. It’s the tag that says, “this is where I stored that intention,” or “this represents that entity.” It doesn’t gain power because it looks more esoteric.
People get caught up in the design and forget the purpose. A sigil doesn’t summon anything by itself—it’s a reference. It’s not the payload. You’re not conjuring a spirit with the shape; you’re doing it with the meaning you’ve assigned. The symbol just helps you focus—like putting a label on a folder.
This is why making the sigil “look magickal” is mostly cosmetic. Dress up the label all you want—it still opens the same box. The real work isn’t in the glyph; it’s in what the glyph means and how your mind interacts with that meaning. So yes, swap the sigil for an x—the box still holds the demon. All you’ve changed is the font.
Fediverse Reactions
#Archetypes #ceremonialMagic #ceremonialMagick #chaosMagick #Crowley #demons #Discordians #egregore #egregores #exemplification #fascist #grimoire #grimoires #HermeticOrderOfTheGoldenDawn #hermeticism #hyperSigils #invocation #JungianArchetypes #magicalLanguages #magick #mythologies #mythology #myths #occult #occultism #occulture #Ontology #ostension #pagan #paganism #paranormal #paranormalCommunities #postmodernism #poststructuralism #Semiotics #sigil #sigilMagic #sigilMagick #sigils #sorcery #urbanMyth
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The challenges from the World
Overview
Whether we like it or not we are all influenced by the thinking of the world around us. The way we were brought up by our parents, our education and the media around us, all affect the way we decide what is true. It’s important to remember that man’s ways of thinking always challenge what God has said. Paul tells us that:
“the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot.”Romans 8 v 7
The challenges have been different in different ages. Over the past fifty or so years there has been a radical change in the way the world thinks. This has had a profound effect on our community and on our preaching and this change explains many of the problems we see.
Detail of the postmodern Abteiberg Museum in Germany. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)The older ones among us were educated in a period when “Modernism” was the world view. Younger ones have been brought in the “Postmodern” era which has a very different view. The change has been gradual, but we see the effects all around us both in the world and in our community.
Both world views bring their different challenges to what God has said. Realising this should help us all to be aware of what “modernism” and “postmodernism” are and the challenges they bring.
Some of the information in this article comes from the book “The Death of Truth” by Dennis McCallum. For those who want to know more about postmodernism this book is an interesting and enlightening read.
Modernism
The work is the “signature piece” of Intentism. It depicts some of the most influential figures of Postmodernism immersed in a life drawing class. Their efforts of objectivity are thwarted by their individual postmodern theories. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)The “modernist era” began in the sixteenth century. The ideas of humanism and evolution developed in this period. It was thought that we could prove everything by logic and reason. But people realised that some things that the church claimed to be true had been proved untrue by science. For example, the church claimed that the earth was at the centre of the universe. So the church was discredited and people rejected religion completely including the Bible. Academics and universities took over as the source of authority and what is known as “humanism” developed. If there was no God you could do what you liked as long as it didn’t hurt anyone else. “Truth” was something we could discover by our own investigation and reasoning. Hence there were many debates in religious circles about what was true.
It can be said that modernists:
- view the world, including themselves, as an enormous machine
- believe they can do as they please and should use their reasoning powers to choose their own direction in life. However society should be structured to preserve freedom.
- are confident that they understand their world and believe that knowledge can only be gained through their senses. Belief in the supernatural has no place in modernism.
- believe humanity is progressing towards a bright future through technology and democracy
Postmodernism
Academics, the thought-shapers who teach in our colleges and universities – whose opinions sooner or later influence the rest of society – are discarding modernism and embracing postmodernism in growing numbers.
The idea now is that “truth” is created, not discovered. It is asserted that there are no absolutes when it comes to “truth” so the only thing they can trust are their own feelings. They each construct their perception of our world according to their culture. If they feel an idea or principle is good, that is their “truth”. They would say that we all have different feelings and cultural biases, so we can all have different “truths”. So the quest for “truth” is pointless because we are all imprisoned by our own culture and upbringing. No-one can say that they are “right” and others are “wrong”. All “truths” are equal and valid.
It can be said that postmodernists:
- see people as cogs in a social
- reject the modernist idea that we can ever find the truth about anything. We can’t take self or culture out of reason, so reason can’t be trusted more than intuition or feelings.
- believe people do what they do because their culture has made them who they are.
- assert that “truth” in the past has been used by the powerful in society to supress the weak.
- claim that authors of literature (including the Bible) are no longer authorities over their texts. The authority now lies with the postmodern reader to put his own meaning into the text.
- say that postmodern readers should “deconstruct” texts and unveil their cultural biases. Readers are then empowered and liberated from the cultural constraints of the powerful, and freed to give texts their own meanings.
- put the individual at the centre of things in religion. Worship becomes self-worship and self-empowerment. Self also becomes the arbiter for truth. There is no place for statements of faith.
It is interesting to note that in 2 Timothy 3 v1 the first thing that is mentioned about “perilous times” is “lovers of self” – a perfect description of postmodernism!
The challenges to our community
Both modernism and postmodernism challenge what God has said in the Bible.
The older ones among us who were educated in the “modernist” era may suffer from doing a little too much “reasoning” and attaching the same authority to our “reasonings” as we should give to the Bible text. We need to be very clear about the difference in authority between what the Bible text says and our opinions based on our “reasonings”.
Papers to stimulate reasoning – Front cover of the British modernist weekly ‘The New Age’ . First edition of its relaunch. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)The younger ones among us have the problem that their generation as a whole has little respect for authority. So they might not naturally have as much respect for their elders as happened in previous generations. They also have the problem that they have been educated in a system that tells them to be self-centred and question everything.
It’s little wonder then that older and younger brethren and sisters sometimes have problems understanding each other! If we appreciate what the problems are, it may help us to understand each other better. We must strive to be one in looking at the Bible text to decide the actions we take, the things we believe and how we live our lives. The scriptures are the only place to discover the truth on these things and it is with this attitude that we need to unite.
The challenges for our preaching
In the “modernist” era, people were willing to debate issues, so we could show people Biblical truth.
The real challenge we all face now is preaching to an increasingly postmodern world that accepts no outside authority and believes that we can each have our own ideas.
Postmodernism leaves our world with no real meaning in life and no real hope for the future. This is an area where we can try and fill the vacuum left by postmodernism.
We must try and show:
- that we may eventually have problems trusting our own “beliefs” and “feelings”
- that there are some aspects of life where we can’t all have different views
- that there is a source of information that has a good track record of being right, so maybe we ought to at least consider it
- the Bible has much evidence to show that it can be trusted to be true
- the Bible message gives meaning to life and a real hope for the future
Some ecclesias are already reacting to this problem and our current preaching material addresses some of these issues. Whatever we do must give opportunity for God’s message to be shared.
If we all appreciate the problems, we may be able to help each other rather than resenting the differences.
We hope that this brief outline of what is happening in our world will help us all in our efforts to encourage each other on our walk to the kingdom and to encourage others to join us.
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Preceding
Looking on what is going on and not being of it
Germinating small seeds, pebble-stones, small and mega churches and faith
Engaging the culture without losing the gospel
Looking for a biblically sound church
When not seeing or not finding a biblically sound church
The Big conversation Why it matters
Having a small church mentality
As a small church needing encouragement
Reasons why you may not miss the opportunity to go to a Small Church
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Further reading
- Awe inspiring Nature and Awe Inspiring Modernism – the USA
- What is Pop Culture and Postmodernism?
- The History of Social Justice
- Modernist fundamentalism
- Metamodernism and ‘La La Land’
- Hunger and Isolation: Hamsun’s Treatise on Human Suffering
- A Call to Arms
- 4 Reasons Why Truth Is Important to Christians
- “We Could Not Call it True…”
- Reality’s Unsaintly Ethics
- Postmodernism is Nothing
- Revenge of Post-Modernism
- Building Bridges to the Current Culture
- Church S/Hopping in 2017
- ‘Meaning in an increasingly meaningless world; Post-Structuralism and the departure to (Post) Modernity’
- Encountering Truth in a Post-Truth Society
- It’s Not Post-Truth, It’s the Zenith of the Post-Modern Condition
- The Supremacy of Christ by Voddie Baucham
- From the ashes of Postmodernism, a New Sincerity?
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