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Through the graciousness of the Thomas Nelson Book Review Blogging Program, I was privileged to read 5 Cities that Ruled the World by Douglas Wilson.
Image courtesy of Thomas Nelson Publishers
In it, Wilson masterfully summarizes the social, cultural, political, religious, and economic histories of the five most monumental cities the world has ever known: Jerusalem, Athens, Rome, London, and New York.
Deftly intertwining strands of wit, wisdom, humor, and scholarship, Wilson creates an atmosphere in which the reader encounters and experiences a brief history of the world in a lively and creative fashion.
Covering the spirituality of Jerusalem, the philosophy of Athens, the politics of Rome, the literature of London, and the commerce of New York, Wilson shows how intricate the flow of history is and how intimately a role each city has played in that flow.
In 5 Cities, Wilson presents history as it is supposed to exist: not a series of dates and events, but an interwoven web of events influencing one-another in ever-increasing fashion.
Additionally, the astute reader will express eager appreciation for Wilson’s comments both in the Introduction and Epilogue dismantling the relativistic claims of postmodernity. Wilson acknowledges he is but a mere historian, and therein claims not exhaustive knowledge, but accurate, honest, and fair-minded knowledge none-the-less.
Historically accurate, philosophically poignant, and socially relevant, 5 Cities that Ruled the World is a must read for students of history, theology, and sociology.
Despite the advent of the Internet and all that comes with telepresence, there are still advantages to be had through good old fashioned bodily presence.
It is helpful to reference Maurice Merleau-Ponty regarding our ability to take hold of and make sense of the our experiences in the world: he refers to grasping something in a way that we may get the best grip.
He notes that our perception is motivated by the vagueness – the grayness and blurriness – of experience; we are driven to sharpen our perception skills such that we may make sense of the world around us.
Were we through telepresence to miss the constant sense of uncertainty and instability of our existence, we would not be constantly moving to overcome it, thereby having no stability or foundation at all.
It is perhaps fascinating to note that one sees the stability of experience through a constant re-orientation of perception. It would seem that a constant re-orientation process serves to reduce stability, not increase it. But perhaps that is not the point (an issue for further exploration at a later time).
Nevertheless, our point is that each of us as an active body is always wrestling with the world, ready to cope with experience. This embodied readiness – or Urdoxa as Merleau-Ponty calls it – is dependent upon our context.
However, telepresence is strikingly devoid of any context; an individual is only telepresent in any situation, not bodily present, thereby preventing an adequate grasp (inability to grab something in a way to get the best grip). Telepresence robs the individual of a contextual grasp, whereas bodily presence allows our sense of direct presence to things.
And yet again we are confronted with the hallmark signs of the postmodern age: robbing the individual of any context such that experience is nothing more of a communal and cultural construct.
Granted there are advantages to telepresence and the opportunities it affords, but these must be taken all the while bearing in mind the risk inherent therein.
The Internet is a fascinating beast: through it we are admitted entrance to and information on nearly everything imaginable.
And yet, inherent within this great resource come great risks. On the Internet by Hubert Dreyfus contains a helpful analysis of both the advantages and the perils of the Internet.
Dreyfus touches on a hallmark of the postmodern age: the plurality and relativity of information and authority.
He notes, “There are no hierarchies; everything is linked to everything else on a single level.” In this pluralistic setting, there is no authority, no foundational point of reference. And in return, individuals today are, “not interested in collecting what is significant but in connecting to as wide a web of information as possible.”
Dreyfus delineates between Data Retrieval and Information Retrieval, specific and general relevance axioms, and information retrieval based on recall versus precision; all this is to simply re-emphasize the postmodern nature of the Internet as it affords opportunity in information access while carrying an inherent risk of rendering all information relative
Such relativity is treated with disdain by Soren Kierkegaard, who reveals the dangers inherent within the Internet.
Using Kierkegaard’s criticism of “The Crowd” and, “The Public”, one can see the perils presented by abstract reasoning apart from any actual involvement or commitment. The Internet represents the same sort of aberration Kierkegaard argued against when he criticized the press and coffeehouses for becoming hotbeds of discussion that led to nothing little else than more discussion.
The Internet has the potential to act in the same way the coffeehouses did 300 years ago: it provides a space for people to offer unmediated (and sometimes uneducated) opinions without any involvement or sense of consequences. The Internet encourages a lack of commitment in the same space as a presence of opinion. As a result, there is a leveling due to endless reflection.
Individuals in this context seek ultimate truth by pursuing every possible avenue, but do so indefinitely to an infinite regress. There is never an answer, but always room for more speculation.
Such are hallmark characteristics of postmodernity: infinite speculation of every possible avenue without commitment to one single course of action.
Implicit herein, says Kierkegaard, is nihilism. The leveling means there is nowhere to go: relevance and significance have disappeared in favor of relativity and pluralism.
My wife is a full-time high school science teacher, and I work as a substitute teacher in addition to being a seminary student and a youth pastor.
Needless to say, my wife and I have constant interaction with youth.
So let me say this: our youth and our school systems need as much prayer as you can muster.
The casual observer says there is no reason to worry; every generation of parents looks to their child’s social group with horror and disdain.
As far as parents were concerned, the roaring 20′s were wrought with rebellious teens dancing and drinking, the 60′s were full of hippies strung out on LSD, the 70′s were consumed by disco and bell-bottoms, the 80′s saw the birth of MTV, and the 90′s were defined by the grunge and post-grunge movement.
And each generation of parents simply looked at their kids and shook their heads.
Yet each time, the youth came out seemingly unscathed and well-equipped to lead the country into the future.
And so the casual observer would look at the apparent horrors of today’s youth and assume the same will happen: the qualified will mature, grow out of their adolescence, and become adept business professionals, capable of assimilating into the business world, starting a family, and providing the backbone of the country.
I, however, am not so optimistic.
There is one thing that separates today’s youth from generations in times past, and that is postmodernity.
Throughout the early and middle years of this century, modernity was still in full-swing, meaning that objective truth existed somewhere and was capable of being attained. Putting aside the notion of our Judeo-Christian worldview for a second, at the very least everybody agreed that truth existed.
There was a common underpinning of society to which everybody could agree and relate.
There was a single common denominator which leveled the playing field and everybody strove for.
However, the 80′s and 90′s began to feel the very first effects of postmodernity – relativism, plurality, extreme tolerance – and those youth grew into today’s leaders.
And so that segment of the population are now becoming parents, and while they may only mildly influence their children with the faintest hints of postmodernity, their children are seeped in it.
At school and through the media, pluralism and relativism are the war-cries of the culture today.
The baby boomers were influenced by their parents – the so-called Greatest Generation – and worked harder for the American Dream than any who had come before them. They were influenced by their parents and strove to enjoy the freedom their parents had earned. However, that influence has deteriorated over the years.
And today’s youth, rather than being influenced by the Greatest Generation, are influenced by the Tolerant Generation.
Our culture as a whole encourages and teaches the plurality of truth and the acceptance of all; not realizing that in accepting all it affirms none, cutting its own feet out from under it.
The education system, cultural trends, societal norms, moral systems…these are all institutions once desperate for truth that are now held hostage by the culturally dependent nature of truth and the fall of the mighty mettanarrative in favor of the context-driven micronarrative.
And so while there was always a failsafe to fall back on for generations preceding ours – the assumed existence of ultimate truth to guide and direct our efforts – today that does not exist.
So now what are we left with?
The words of the great Puritan Thomas Watson ring in my heart:
Truth is ancient; it’s gray hairs make it venerable; it comes form Him who is the ancient of days.
God is truth, and all truth is His.
Society is turning away from truth as further evidence of its turning its back on God.
As Oswald Chambers would say, society has itself on the throne of its heart and not God.
We need not be surprised and we need not be discouraged:
Let us not lose heart in doing good, for in due time we will reap if we do not grow weary.
– Galatians 6:9
God is good and God is faithful, and God will provide through this season.
Affirm God and glorify His name, and truth will abound.
Seek truth honestly and humbly, and God will reveal Himself to you.
And now, O Lord God, you are God, and your words are true
– 2 Samuel 7:28
God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth
– John 4:24
Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.”
– John 14:6
You will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart.
– Jeremiah 29:13
The philosophical and cultural movement known as modernity was typified by humanity’s employment of rationale and logic to pursue ultimate truth. After quite some time, the attempt was given up in favor of the declaration, “there is no truth!” (thank your favorite postmodern thinker for that). This trend was evidenced as early as Freidrich Nietzsche, who reduced truth to a “will to power”.
Now we find ourselves steeped in the trappings of postmodernity, advocated by those who place it on a pedestal and claim it to be an epistemological panacea in light of the apparent failure of modernity.
How did modernity fail? It depends on who you ask.
Some would say that ultimate, objective truth doesn’t exist, so there is no point in employing human reasoning to find it. They claim that truth is merely a social construct and relative to your circumstance. It doesn’t exist except as your community declares it so. In this sense postmodernity is modernity carried to its nihilistic ends.
Others, however, would differ.
They would argue the issue isn’t whether or not truth exists, but whether or not human reasoning ability is capable of discovering it.
Philosophical terms such as adequation and accommodation all shed light on the predicament whereby humans apprehend truth without comprehending it.
Modernity didn’t fail because ultimate truth doesn’t exist, but because humans attempt to utilize human reasoning apart from God and autonomous from His sovereign rule.
Humans live in rebellion to God, and ultimately seek truth apart from Him (an impossibility, in case you were wondering. All truth is God’s truth).
We can know God in truth, and we can know truth exists ultimately. However, we can never know God fully and we will never know truth fully. To claim a system that fully explains our understanding of an incomprehensible issue is idolatry.
Reason itself is not necessarily evil or fallen. However as fickle, fallible, and fallen, man’s employment of it is (in the same way, a brick is not ascribed a particular moral value; what changes is my use of it: do I build a patio with it, do I build a house through habitat for humanity with it, or do I throw it through the window of a car?).
Postmodernity has rejected the authority of the overarching metanarrative afforded by a Biblical worldview, and turned instead to construct an infinite number of micronarratives capable of manipulation by human wants and desires.
Humans readily embrace postmodernity because they are sinfully in awe of its offers that one can dictate one’s own life and not have to submit to objective, ultimate truth and authority – God.
