[UA] 1930's UA

[RFD]

On Thu, 2005-02-03 at 15:34 -0800, S. Ben Melhuish wrote:
> Sam Gibbons wrote:
> > What is the collective opinion of the group regarding post-modern magick in
> > the 1930's? How would it differ? How would it be similar? Is it feasible?
> > How powerful is the Hermeticism from bygone days? Is it even still
> > lingering? What schools/paths would be around?

> * And finally, speaking of modernism vs. postmodernism (see above), if 
> you're feeling scholarly, dig up a digestable reference and figure out 
> the difference between the two, which might give insight into how magick 
> is different then vs. now.  (I'd talk about it right now, but I'm a 
> physicist/programmer, not a critical theorist, and would probably be 
> Dead Wrong on most counts.)

I'm a physicist/critical theorist :) SO I'll run the definition I cooked
up that seems to satisfy most of my liberal-arts friends as being pretty
good. I am aware this is a little simplistic, but it contains the basic
idea.

Postmodernism cannot be defined without first establishing what
Modernism is. Modernis art was about alienation. Our increasing distance
from ourselves, our environment, from our emotional and spiritual lives.
Take a read through /Howl/ or /Patterson/, give /Metropolis/ and /The
Cabinet of Dr. Caligari/ a good watch and you can see what I mean.

Postmodernism is not so much about rejecting Modernism as it is about
moving beyond it. The postmodernist doesn't struggle to comprehend his
alienation, no struggle and rail against it. For him it is a fact of
life. Postmodernism is about living in Reality as if it were a foreign
land, full of strange customs and contradictions. Postmodern art seems
to be filled with 'weird for weird's sake' because it looks at the
everyday things around us and boggles at them. It is less about
explaining or understanding than about experiencing. It doesn't reject
rationalism, but realises that it is a limited tool, preferring
intuition and, to borrow a word, 'grokking'...

As an example, David Lynch was interviewed about /Lost Highway/ and said
that while it didn't make locical sense, it did make intuitive sense.
Try to keep that idea in mind when comparing the two.

Anyway, that's as good a definition as I personally have found, even
after some looking. As allways, YYMV.