Modernity, connected as it was with the scientific method and non-ironic and sincere notions of progress, was a system of practice and thought which accepted reality, but thought that it should be changed. The hungry should be fed, the hurting comforted, the powerless empowered. Rationality and science were the means to this end.
Modernity differed from the varying Pre-Modernities found around the world, not least in the Catholic Church, in that its predecessors by and large thought reality was what it was, and not to be fixed or tampered with. This would apply to all cultures of which I am aware, from Native Americans, to Australian Aboriginals, to the Chinese and Japanese, Africans, etc. It is not that change did not happen, but that it was gradual, and usually imposed by some new circumstance–sometimes the ideas of an individual–rather than as a matter of continual intention. There was no need for patent offices in most of the world, for most of human history.
[If you think about it, it is a bit ironic that Einstein worked in a Patent office while leading up to his Annum Mirabilis: he sort of patented new models of reality, didn’t he?]
Post-modernism is a habit of accepting none of the responsibilities of changing the world in any concrete way at all. It is a self indulgence which finds the task of HONEST work daunting and personally disempowering, so it substitutes instead new LANGUAGE about how we speak about the world, in lieu of concrete ideas about either how the world is, or what we should do about it.
Postmodernism rejects the need to look out the window, and as someone who himself felt zero need to look out his own window, shares much in common with the profoundly lazy and self indulgent Karl Marx, whose work output was more about his need to talk–and specifically to whine and complain–than any human desire to help any human creature, his own family very certainly included.
So I think it is reasonable to directly equate postmodernism with Decadence itself. It is a house that is falling down, and papered over entirely with the habit of delusions willingly and even eagerly shared among all participants in this ugly ritual abandonment of all human responsibilities.
I might even say it is a Community created in the rejection of Community. It is a Gesellschaft of like minded fuck ups, who feel no responsibility even for each other, other than in strictly enforcing habits of speech.
And so, in a world without values transmitted father to son, mother to daughter, why would people NOT reject all demands on their time and attention that do not directly amuse them?
I don’t know how to fix this. My plan is to continue fixing myself, then see how and if the view changes.