taking a walk or making a bird nest

 

1   Zion and Babylon

     How does a post-modernist go about painting a landscape painting?

A prominent feature of post-modern thought is the idea that everything is constructed out of existing texts or ideas, including our own identity. A postmodernist would say: “Our culture tends to determine what foods we like, how we dress, what constitutes polite behavior…All too often we are like puppets on a string, as our culture determines what is cool”

Elder Stone says we should pay attention to the zeitgeist (zeitgeist=time spirit or spirit of the times) of the culture of the people of the Lord, to the culture of Zion.

 

What are some characteristics of the culture of Zion? 

 

Modernism embraces the idea that there are universal ideas about what makes a good art, universal principles of design

What is wrong with that? What is wrong with the idea of teaching the elements and principles of design, for example?

For one,  It was based on a certain culture’s idea, and was in reality a relative cultural truth that was promoted as being universal, in the present day context, a white, European, male truth that ignored or disdained, or did not consider other kinds of truth about art or beauty) , that at universal truth exists.

Postmodernism, like Logan pointed out in the blue sweater segment, says, everything comes from somewhere…

We could ask, where does the culture of Zion come from? 

It is a recurring challenge for the church to figure out the culture of Zion. At one time the church was more adamant about promoting Great Basin American ideas of culture…does that mean when someone joins the church in Africa or Ecuador or Uruguay that they need to erase their own culture?  Is it always only two cultures, Zion and Babylon? Does the culture of Zion evolve or is it handed down to us?  Do we contribute to or help construct the culture of Zion?

Logan also pointed out the modern and postmodern ideas continue to thrive and influence each other. (modernism: science can save the world, truth is absolute:  postmodernism: knowledge is mediated by culture)

 

As Elder Stone points out, as well  as postmodernist theorists,

we are engulfed by the culture around us, like puppets on a string.

But postmodernism can also reflect a Zion culture in its focus on social and social justice issues, social critique, and seeing things from other’s perspective, even if it makes us uncomfortable and not “move within a cocoon of self-satisfied self-deception, fully convinced that the way we see things is the way things really are” (Abigail) Good example of post-modernist attitude is Fake news.