A Conversation with a Postmodernist

“Indeed nothing makes a man more unpopular in the controversies of the present day than an insistence upon a definition of terms.”

— J. Gresham Machen

As I write this blog, I’m at atop the highest point of an island that had once been the bulwark of Philippine and American forces against a common enemy. This island had endured artillery bombardment and ruthless shelling… One of the bloodiest battles in history. I’m at Corregidor, known in the 1930s as the impregnable island, The Rock.

It was the last stand of the Philippine and American forces against the Japanese. The fall of Corregidor on May 6, 1942 consequently formalized the Fall of the Philippine Commonwealth, 5 years short of the Philippines’ intended independence from the United States. Many were shocked at the utter defeat of the USAFFE and the Philippine constabulary, as was recorded in thousands of diaries of men and women who lived through the ordeal.

As i see the tail end of the island from the viewing deck of the Pacific War Memorial, I am reminded of a conversation I had with a friend two days ago. He proclaimed himself a postmodernist, one who refuses to be bound by the ‘so-called universal’ and ‘absolute’ reality. For him, everything is interpretation. How we perceive things may be right for us but not right for others. The notion of ‘rightness’ is like shifting sand, dictated to us by society, agreed upon by the powerful and/or the majority. He further explained that each of us is in a meaningless void. We are dots in that void. In order to create meaning in that void, each of us create systems that work for us and also work within a larger system that may have been imposed on us but accepted as our own. These systems can be our religion, our faith, our concepts of love, hate, justice, freedom, etc. These systems have become our ‘reality’. He thereby remarked that postmodernism is humble because it believes that it does not know that its system is not a system but is a system. Its only basis is the maybe and the ifs of thoughts and events. I asked him curiously, what is love? He said it is an explosion of hormones which is interpreted by concepts imposed on us by society. What is injustice? He said, what may be injustice for you maybe justice for others. In chaos, he said we may see it as chaos, but there is order in that chaos. But we can also see chaos in order. A square wheel is valid in postmodernism. The sound of one hand clapping (rather than two) is also valid. In short, the definitions for him have become indefinite definitions (oxymoron?). Everything is relative. The point is, there’s no point.

Even in the language we use, he said, we are forever imprisoned in the words that we intend to mean a certain way but would always be interpreted by other hearers in another way. As we were sort of arguing and discussing, he asked me if I was disturbed. And I honestly weren’t. How do we establish common ground when that term ‘common’ may mean differently for each of us?

I remarked how sad a philosophy that is. For in that utter inability to communicate exactly how we mean it, we have become isolated in our own subjectivity. He said, no we’re not. Yes we live in our subjective realities but we can agree on something and that is common ground. Then I said, we are worlds apart in our philosophy. Even in the words ‘sad’ or ‘common’—if I accept his worldview, I can never be too sure if we mean the same thing. I as a Christian stand on a static ‘absolute’ ground. He as a postmodernist stand on a ground that always shifts. The conversation has therefore become cyclical. Absurd. The point is it is pointless.

He went on and on about I living in my reality and he in his reality. We created the system within our accepted realities to bring ourselves happiness. But then again, what does he mean by happiness? Is there an absolute happiness where he is deriving it from? In postmodernism, I can never know because I ‘interpret’ his version of happiness according to my lens, my worldview. Is it possible that he is deriving happiness from a meaningless goo? For a postmodernist, that’s possible.

As I touch with my bare hands the crater marks of the Battery Way at Corregidor, the pictures of thousands of men and women who died on this island, the Bataan Death March, the Filipino comfort women victimized by the Japanese, the bloody liberation of Manila, I am reminded of my postmodernist friend. Something in me refuses to accept that these people in 1942 died believing whiffs of principles in a meaningless void trying to create their own meanings and realities. These soldiers died in real time. One moment they were alive, then afterwards, gone. And yes, those deaths were deliberate. They were aware of what they would face.

In Bataan there were two Filipino soldiers running towards Mt. Samat as the Japanese closed in on them. The ‘Japs’ have already broken through the second defense line. “Retreat!” shouted the American soldier. One of the soldiers said to his friend, “Tara na!” “Sandali lang!” he said, as he scrambled to point the gun at the enemy. Then suddenly an explosion. And then silence.

He is gone.

Will I have a stomach to believe myself when I say that the emotions I feel, the pain of losing a dear friend, was just my constructed ‘reality’? That all that was just my perception? How about that soldier who, hoping to gain time, tried to fix the gun to target the Japanese? Was all that whiffs of subjectivity?

My postmodernist friend remarked that the greatest injustice was that we exist. Because in that, we become aware of the prison of having a system/interpretation be drummed to our throats rather than we choosing whether to choose at all. But I think the greatest injustice is when we make simple things complicated so that we can conveniently be the sole captain of our own soul. An Ozymandias. When we disregard that the principles fought by these people who died in Corregidor were sealed in blood, that it happened in a reality we all share…that the sacrifice, the loss… IT is real…not at all debatable. We can debate about the motivations of these men. Nationalism? Family? Faith? Freedom? But we dare not play around with the very essence, or the reality these people live through and died in.

Perhaps that is the reason why most historians simply dismiss postmodernism as pointless.

Pardon to postmodernists if you were offended by my ‘reality.’ But wait, your being offended may be in another reality, the complete opposite.

PS. The soldier in my story who died at Mt. Samat was the brother of my granmother, Lolo Urbano Rufo.