According to Hassan\u2019s table in Harvey\u2019s article, modernist theory centers around the mind and being as a whole while postmodernism embraces schizophrenia and coexisting realities. That\u2019s why Orr and Dr. Haber can never create the utopia they seem to be trying for and can never set the world right. Why, in the end, when Haber works alone to try and place his vision of a perfect world on the universe, the present becomes schizophrenic because there can never be one, perfect answer for all. Why Orr keeps misunderstanding the phrases told him through hypnosis because, as the Harvey article says, there is more than one meaning and interpretation to every word, just as there is more than one reality to every life. Reality or truth, then, seems to be relative in the postmodern scheme of things. For citizens in Orr\u2019s world, their reality is whatever Orr\u2019s latest dream has conjured up. For Orr, reality consists of multiple realities and effective dreams. The interesting thing is that the backdrop always looks like it stays the same (same geography, president, basic makeup of things) which seems to suggest that while we all live in the same world with the same basic elements, our realities can still be drastically different. <\/p>\n
Within the different truths Le Guin tries to come up with an answer to how we are to survive in a pluralistic world. Because of her apparent Taoist belief (I really know very little about Taoism, I\u2019m just taking it from previous posts) it seems that Le Guin\u2019s answer to the question McHale poses in the Harvey article, \u201cWhich world is this? What is to be done with it?\u201d is to become one with society and accept that we are not alone? That we are all a part of each other, as the aliens, in some way, are a part of Orr, and that to survive in this world we must live plurally\u2026It doesn\u2019t matter what world we exist in, there is no truth for a singular being. We just have to \u201cget by with a little help from our friends.\u201d In fact, Dr. Haber is the only person with no friends, family, or loved ones and in the end feels so lonely that he wants to enter the crowds running from the alien attack.<\/p>\n
I do think, then, that postmodernism is indeed a break from modernist thought and theory. From what I gather from the Harvey article about modernism is that there is one reality, one meaning that encompasses the whole of humanity. One \u201csingular reality\u201d that can speak for all society. The question \u201cWho am I?\u201d is an existential search leading from the singular past to the omnipresent future where subjects question their existence as a singular being in an ambiguous world that does, however, contain a definite past. Postmodernism, on the other hand, refuses to accept a \u201csingular reality\u201d and instead, \u201crealities may coexist, collide, and interpenetrate\u201d changing the \u201cWho am I?\u201d to a different meaning of \u201cWho am I now, today?\u201d It is different from modernism in that there are so many selves and so many realities that one conclusion cannot be reached since in a pluralistic society, there are many truths. <\/p>\n
P.S. Karen is sorry that she cannot share her thoughts with you on this blog. It seems to have a mind of its own and decided to eat Karen\u2019s post.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
According to Hassan\u2019s table in Harvey\u2019s article, modernist theory centers around the mind and being as a whole while postmodernism embraces schizophrenia and coexisting realities. That\u2019s why Orr and Dr. Haber can never create the utopia they seem to be trying for and can never set the world right. Why, in the end, when Haber … Continue reading We live a pluralistic world<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reflections"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}