Premodernism and postmodernism

I have confessed that I have a fixation on the concept of irony. To me irony is a cheap and easy way, a fix, to exercise the part of my brain that seems to demand philosophical thought. My thoughts on irony extend to its nature as a form of argument, an antagonism, an object of confusion, an element of humor, a threat to objectivity, a method of subjectivism and more. Beyond these thoughts, I have sort of developed an idea that approaches grand (or master or meta) narrative. This idea situates me in a meaningful history when the historical context of my birth and the events that have unfolded in my life are all explained. At the end you will find this kind of idea ironic as it is contrary to an ironic worldview. Perplexing?

The narrative of world and personal history goes like this: In the premodern period, it is said in the mythos of my heritage, that our monks saved the ancient works of early Western civilization at the fall of Rome preceding the Dark Ages. These works include those of Plato. My personal mythos is that these monks identified the nature of the irony present in Plato's work from the method of Socrates to the allegory of the cave, and the similarity of the words Eiron and Irony to the name, dominant ethos or characteristic of their own nation. As such the works survived rather than being destroyed. The preservation of these works eventually led to the Renaissance and Enlightenment and so on. The Enlightenment is strongly connected to the works of Rene Descartes who was associated with the House of Orange which became connected to both science as well as Protestantism (Calvinism). The latter of these two elements, according to Weber, was involved in the rationalization of society during the Modern period. They also featured in the history of the nation with the mythos of preserving the foundations of irony. This history is marked by a kind of unconventional irony of doing the opposite of what you would expect. Example: Your nation is cut off from supplies and reinforcements, a larger and more powerful nation with immense support from continental Europe is demanding you submit to them, yet you the definitive underdog, ironically, attack first.

What can be said about this Modern period where rationalizations can be considered anti-ironic? They are composed of rationality, ethics, discipline, objectivity and a form of scientific truth, which to act or believe the opposite is ironic given the realist, positivist nature of the expectations. Rationalization has at times been imposed at a blistering pace as in industrialization, but at other times proceeded with a snail's pace such as with medical/ health rationality. Now that medical rationality has become more pervasive something like smoking cigarettes, which was at one time expected, has become a sort of ironic action given that the circumstances such as monetary cost and the importance of health set certain expectations. Rationalizations, such as this, led to a movement in philosophy called post-modernism which is distinctly ironic. There are various proofs of this contention, but the simplest is that the various pomo works each attempt to derail different elements of the project of modernity that so much expectation has been applied on people to develop. This is at the level of social institutions.

So that is a very condensed summary for the purposes of quick communication of premodernism to postmodernism and the personal master-meta-grandnarrative I have ironically created to substantiate my own thoughts and actions, and to understand history as it has unfolded in the last millennia or so.