rabbit trail #1 i don't like to edit :^) and i'm not sure that it's authentic to edit. afterall, isn't editing only subscribing to the hedgemony of intellectualism perpetraited by modernism for the last 200 years? why not be romantic and free; natural; writing what comes up? <-- that statement, i think, would be a fairly postmodern one.... :^) Hegel philosophized that the bringing together of a thesis (the dominant principle) and its antithesis (when the antithesis gains equal popularity) would form a synthesis containing parts of the thesis and parts of the antithesis but essentially being a "refinement" or "improvement" of what came before. eventually, i think hegel was hoping for history to reach a better place for everyone. maybe he wasn't saying this. anyway, postmodernism isn't totally a reactive philosophy. it isn't an invention of anything, really (after all, there's nothing new under the sun--said Solomon around 900BC!), but more an emphasis on certain aspects of humanity/culture/whatever versus other aspects. Some of those aspects, like the desire for technological efficiency, seem to have actually gotten more pronounced in the last few years. Look at the outcry in favor of human cloning, for instance. Other aspects, such as the desire for emotion over reason, the admiration of passion over logic, etc., are throwbacks to Romanticism but are antithetical to modernism's insistance on optimistic progressivism based on more and more refined rational thought. Therefore, postmodernism, like any other societal structure, is a Frankenstein's monster of old and 'new' ideas brought together into what Douglas Adams (Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy) called the wholegeneralsortofmishmash that influences and, at times, "governs" decisions, political structures, the economy, etc. Rabbit Trail #2: are we in a modern church that de-emphasizes postmodern questions of community, inclusion, and narrative in favor of performance, productivity, and structure?