Chapter 1
What Happens After Post Modernism Dies: The Rise of the Après Post
In the previous chapter I tried to give an extremely brief synopsis of the historical roots of Modernism and Post Modernism. I intend to also give the same analysis to Après Post. Before I do this, however, it benefits us to first examine both Christian and Pagan creation. One of the foundations of world view is the answer to the questions “Where do we come from?” and “Why is the World as it is?” Both Christianity and paganism have answers for this, and the closer our culture is to identifying with their answers, the closer it is to these world views.
I want to here introduce two terms- Apollonian, and Dionysian. These two words, according to Camille Paglia, define pagan culture[i]. She defines them as follows: The Apollonian is order. She links this with Apollo, the god of healing, protection of society, technology. It is linearity, rationality, objectification, classification. It is the conquering drive with in us. It is architecture, beauty, and logic. The Dionysian, which she also calls chthonian is the opposite. This is linked to the Greek god Dionysus, god of wine, ecstasy, fertility, as well as transvestite. It is primordial ooze. It is chaos, emotion, nature. It is irrational, unclassifiable, uncultured. There are more to these terms than mentioned here, but they are unimportant for our work. The reason I quote them, and will make use of them, is simply because they are handy. Paglia is a pagan, and is also arguing a pagan world view. I am not advocating her conclusions, but, since I want to describe pagan culture, it is convenient to use pagan terms for its general world view.
Now then, what is that world view? It is relatively simple. Paganism around the world believes that the Dionysian, the chthonian existed first. In the beginning there was disorder, chaos, the untamable. The gods then created order out of this. The Apollonian elements of order and sense are secondary. The way the gods do this in various pagan societies varies slightly, but the principle is the same. There is primordial ooze that needs to be conquered. The gods then do this, and this provides a home for humanity. We are always in peril though. The chthonian is always trying to come back, and will. It is unconquerable. Nature is king, and nature can’t be subdued. The Apollonian, in pagan societies, is tenuous at best. It is valued and necessary, but the chthonian will always reemerge. Disorder is the rule and order the exception. This is the essence of creation for pagan cults. They are always worried about returning to nature. Chaos is constantly feared and revered for this reason. Mother Earth cults emerged out of fear of her retribution. The Dionysian gods needed to be appeased or they would wreak havoc on society.
The pagan world view holds a dualist interpretation of history. There is constantly a battle between Apollo and Dionysus. Chaos and order are at odds all the time. We are merely spectators to the game. The Yin Yang demonstrates this beautifully. Both sides are symmetric. The share the same power. They have the same colors, only inverted. They are always encroaching on the other, and being encroached upon. There is balance. And there is not necessarily a value attached to either. Neither is “good” or “bad” in the traditional sense, they just are. That being said, pagan culture has always valued the Apollonian. They see order as “good” for themselves. But there is not overarching judge. When chaos enters, it is not evil, just detrimental to us humans.
Christianity stands in stark contrast to this. It has always been noted how different the Judeo-Christian creation is. There is no disorder at first. Unlike all pagan myth, Scripture stands on the grounds of order. It doesn’t begin with many gods fighting, or having sex. It begins with God, and God alone, who rationally speaks creation into existence. It is a thought, not an after thought. There is plan in his creation, not chance. God says let there be light, and there is light. He then systematically creates the Universe. He creates in a planned way. He creates land before land animals, sky before birds, sea before fish. There is a direction. It is guided. This is anything but pagan. God does all this in anticipation of his Magnus Opus, Man. Man is not an after thought; he is the reason for creation. When we get to the end of Genesis 1, we see that is as all for this “animal” that is to be different from all the rest.
The creation story then zooms us in. We were given the big picture in Genesis 1, and now the text will focus on us and our creation. Even here, order is the rule. Man was created by will, not accident. God forms him. Ask any artist and they will tell you they know what they want to create before they create it. Their art (although may look it at times) is anything but random. A sculpture sees in his clay what he wants to make before he first touches it. This is the image we have in Man’s creation as well. He formed him from clay. This was an artist producing his masterpiece. He puts this new man, Adam, in a garden He has already prepared. Notice that a garden in not “nature” in the pagan sense. It is controlled and tame. He then gives Adam a job. This is a God with a reason. The garden was given so Adam could have a job, the job so that he could create and be fulfilled. God had thought about his creation. He had loved it before it knew what it was. He knew its needs and desires. God then gave man a wife. And not just any wife, a perfect wife. Adam falls head over heals for her, singing a song the first time he lays eyes on her.
And everything was great. God created order, nature was in submission to man. But something happened. Disorder entered. Satan, for what ever reason, was allowed into the garden, and he tempted Eve. She sinned and Adam did too, and creation was altered. Man had created evil, sin, death. What was there in potential only, was now reality. This, though, is not pagan either. Order was first, disorder second. They are not equal. Disorder will show its face again and again because of sin, but it is not coequal with order. God is only one. There is not the duality seen in paganism. More than this, order will eventually win. We don’t know it at first, but Satan and his chaos are going to loose forever. God has had a plan even for this all along, and it will be revealed throughout Scripture, culminating in Christ and the Cross. Here death and chaos are finally conquered for good.
But we don’t need to look that far to see this God of Order and his plan. Throughout we see God intervening and creating order. He established a Law, gave a Promised Land with boundaries and condition, rescued his people multiple times. The Old Testament is full of an orderly God. He gives prophesy and then makes good on his promise. He has a plan, and it will be carried out. Notice also in Scripture, the main cause of disorder is people or Satan. Both of which are created. Neither is co-eternal with God, or able to fight him when he wants his plan carried out. The chaos produced is not natural, like the pagan world view holds, but something other. It entered into creation, it was not there from the start. Humans are the cause of the disorder. It is not existent apart from us. We are at its roots. This is perhaps the least pagan idea imaginable. Chaos was not conquered and brought to order, order was usurped by us allowing chaos to enter. And remember, chaos will loose eventually.
Regardless of theology, we all agree that there will be an end. Time, at some point will cease. God will reign, and his kingdom will exist. This is one of the promises of Scripture. Chaos is finally put in its place. A new city is created. This is order. This is not pagan. Pagan time is cyclical. There is no beginning and no end. Chaos eventually wins. The Christian and pagan world views then are wholly different.
Paganism looks at natural disasters, animals eating humans, disease and famine and says that this is simply the Dionysian returning. It is primordial power taking back what is rightfully hers. It is chaos triumphing over order. We as Christians look at the same world and see sin and its consequences. Nature at one point didn’t have teeth. The ground rebelled as a curse from God. We were to live in a garden, peaceful and subdued. We changed the rules though, and now the whole thing is messed up. This isn’t the natural order of things though. The pagan would say we cry out against nature out of fear. This is why we think things aren’t the way they should be. Christianity says that we cry out against nature because we sinned. Things aren’t the way they should be, and someday all will be fixed. There is no such promise in paganism.
The pagan world view is sexual. Sex is the culmination of creation. Most of the creation stories involve a god or gods fornicating to begin everything[1]. In sex there is seen the most elemental. Sex is worshipped. Paganism is visual. It places emphasis on looks. There is a reason Palestinian art doesn’t exist. There is also a reason Greek and Roman art conquered the world. Paganism needs objects. Very often in pagan culture the true essence of a thing can be trapped in its image. This is why some less developed culture still thing photography voodoo and won’t allow their image to be captured. This is why God forbids the creation an image of himself. It was a reminder to Israel that he was different. He couldn’t be caught and controlled. He was not like other gods, and they should not be like other people.
Pagan culture is materialistic. It needs objects and things. How many pagan cultures buried what the dead would need in the after life with them? Paganism worships, in Paul’s words, created, rather than Creator. It worships objects. When the Greeks went into their temples, they thought the gods truly lived there. They were in physical form. They needed food to eat. In Hinduism still today food and milk are left at altars for gods to devour.
Pagan culture has its own set of values. A pagan morality. Honor and valor are among its supreme virtues. The weak are a burden on society, and as such should be weeded out. Vengeance is justice. The survival of the clan is all important. Charity and love are seen as vices, weakness, and must be purged. Look at ancient Greece. In Sparta infants with any supposed defect were left on a hill to die, or buried before they could cry and bring doom upon the city. A war was fought over proper etiquette (the Trojan War, fought over hospitality, not a woman as everyone thinks today). 300 Spartans (and unlike the new movie portrays, a few thousand other Greek men) stayed knowing they were going to die fight over 50,000 Persians. This battle too has its roots in honor, a Persian city being burned a generation before, being the catalyst of the Persian invasion of Greece. Forgiveness is not something to be found or tolerated.
Having its creation stories rooted in sex and violence gave a common identity to pagan culture of sex and violence. Power reigns supreme. As Athens answers Melos in The Peloponnesian War, “Might makes right.”[ii] Dominance and subjugation are supreme pagan yearnings.
As I write this, I realize that some people will disagree with mine and Paglia’s assertion about paganism. Drew Campbell, a former pagan priest turned Christian, disagrees with Paglia whole heartedly. He would say the essence of paganism is the sacrificial system. The pagan system of sacrifice functions as follows: we sacrifice to our gods so that we will get from them in return. I buy this as well. This doesn’t negate the other assertions, though. I will incorporate all these thoughts into my description of pagan culture.
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We should also look at how this differs from the Christian sacrificial system. In Judeo-Christianity, unlike paganism, God can not be “bought off”. In Christian sacrifice, the sacrifice is just a symbol of what has already happened. When Christians give sacrificially they do it because they have already been given. The greatest difference is that God himself was the sacrifice. We do not offer things to God to gain good standing with him, he offered up Himself so that we could become renewed through His Spirit. God gives through Grace, he does not demand through wrath. So I agree with Dr. Campbell that paganism also at its root has a distinctly un-Christian sacrificial system.
What about culture today though? Modern Man, as I said had Judeo-Christian morality. Some of the greatest freedom movements in history have their roots during this time. Beginning with the Declaration of Independence we see Man given political autonomy and rights. Life, liberty, and property were not under the authority of a king or lord, but given to the individual. The roots of these freedoms are found in the idea of a benevolent Creator God. Soon abolitionism will sweep the West, having its roots in Christian ideologies. Woman’s suffrage and civil liberties too have their roots in Modernity and its acceptance of Judeo-Christian values and ethics.
These values differ greatly from some of the ones I attribute to paganism. They are in fact, for the most part polar opposites. Submission is regarded as valuable. Love and forgiveness held as the highest goods. Charity is not seen as weakness. Christians routinely saved and adopted the children left by pagans on mountains to die of exposure. They saved the weak. They forgave their enemies. In Nietzsche's opinion they imposed their “slave morality”.[iii] This was a morality of weakness. It is not pagan in nature. It is un-pagan. It values human life, no matter how “weak”. It loves God’s creation. People are something to be valued, not something to be dominated for ones own purposes.
We will explore this more later.
I said that this chapter was going to describe the Après Post and its rise, and now we will finally look at it. Historically, it can be seen as the non-Christian answer to Post-Modernism. Post Modernism is defined in the lack of absolutes. There is no truth outside ourselves. Reality is how we perceive it. Morality is subjective, as is everything else. This philosophy can not hold itself up though. Paganism and Judeo-Christianity can last because they have truths. There are things to be passed down. They offer answers to life’s problems. Post Modernity has none of this. When we are falling asleep and think, “Why is the World so bad?” Christianity answers because we are fallen, but we can be redeemed. Paganism answer too with, “This is an eternal struggle between forces”. Post Modernity can only offer, “Just because you think it is bad, doesn’t mean it is, who are you to judge? “ And humans, being created in the image of God, recognize this is not the truth. It can’t satisfy our inner being.[2]
Post Modern thought can’t sustain itself. Even in the most Post Modern of people I meet there is still the notion of right and wrong. For quite some time we will go back and forth about this being universal, or relative, but none of them are willing to say Hitler had a right to do what he wanted to do, or rape of a 9 year old is acceptable. The limits of their philosophy are blatantly obvious. Post Modernism is merely a reaction to Modernity. It is not a movement in its own right. It has its origins in the same place that Modernity does, though it tries to cast of its roots. Nothing can live long away from its life source. As Post Modernism succeeded in killing Modernity, it will also succeed in killing itself. Even its philosophical origins, firmly grounded in science, are Modern by nature. It was Modern man that found Quantum Mechanics. This is a contradiction that Post Modernity can’t long live with. And I say it is already dying.
Culture won’t allow a vacuum though, so as one movement dies, another must find life. And this is what is happening with Après Post culture. As we look at the culture around, we will see some things that conform to Post Modern thought, and some that blatantly contradict it. This is a coherent world view though, and it is pagan. The reason for the sometimes agreement and sometimes disagreement with Post Modernism is that this new paganism is not of a “brand” like we would think of. We can’t identify it as Norse or Greek or Roman paganism. It is its own thing. It is greater than the sum of all of these. What it loses in its specificity, it makes up for in its grand appeal. First let us explore the similarities it has to Post Modern Culture, and why they could be confused.
Remember that culture seeps. It is fluid. Some of what we see is due to the new paganism arising, and some is residual Post Modernism. I am not sure if even I fully see the differences, though I am trying. One of the greatest “achievements” of Post Modernity is the idea of tolerance or acceptance. One of the places this works itself out in society is the realm of religion and spirituality. It is a cultural belief that all religion teaches pretty much the same thing. That being “good” is enough. That spiritual truths are relative. “If it works for you great, but it is not my thing”, is the philosophy of most of older America.
This thought still pervades American culture, but I see the justification for it changing. Under Post Modern thought, this was true because there was no spiritual truth. All roads lead to the same place because they all ended in irrational darkness. This is not the case in an Après Post world. All roads lead to the same place because all gods are the same. You call yours Zeus, and I’ll call mine Jupiter, and another will call theirs Orion, and a forth Odin, but they are all the same. They all tell us some truth about the world. There are absolutes, they are just bigger than any structure we put on them, and as such, all structures are valuable. This is pagan, not Post Modern. Rome could let their conquered countries worship the local gods because they shared the same world view. This didn’t work in Israel, or with the Christians, and as such they were threats to the Empire and had to be crushed, and this is what Rome tried to do.
In Post Modern America, people don’t want to hear about your spirituality. What works for you should stay in your house. The spiritual is frowned upon because it is inherently false. Especially Christianity, which claims exclusive rights on God. The very fact that it is so exclusive proves to the Post Modern that it is false. These are not true for Après Post. People are extremely open to and interested in your spirituality. It is seen as inherent in a well rounded individual. It is the atheist and nihilist who are on the run, as shown by the recent flood of books turned propaganda and agenda of the new wave of atheist, like Richard Dawkins. The culture that is about to be usurped is always the most vocal. It gets louder as a last resort to be heard. The winning culture can just exist, secure in its trophy.
Atheism is the height of Post Modern (and Modern) scientific thought. It is the absence of all spiritual and moral truth. I very rarely have had conversations with true atheists today, and all of them have been over 35. I work mainly with college students, and find most of them are spiritual. They believe something is out there, but don’t believe any religion has exclusive claims on it. They do however, think most religions the same, and that all of them have some value. The new generation has a belief in god(s). They are pagan by nature. Atheism and its Post Modern spirituality is being cast aside for pagan spirituality. People want to hear what you believe and why, because you may have truth they don’t. They want to have spiritual conversations to find out what is really there.
They believe all religion leads to enlightenment because they think the name of god unimportant. Odin or Zeus, the principle is the same. Here they split slightly with previous pagan culture that would have attached a high value to knowing a gods name. If one knew its real name, one could have power over it. This “superstition” is thrown out by the modern pagan who still retains his Modern, rationalistic origins.
This then is the root of their tolerance. It is the tolerance that Assyria and Babylon and Rome had for its conquered people. When Rome besieged a city, they would very often build a temple to that cities god and then worship it. They would fold the new paganism into theirs. After they seized the city and controlled the people, they would let them return to worship of their old deity. They could do this because the cities deity was now also part of Rome’s paganism. Remember, they didn’t tolerate Christianity for quite some time, and even looked upon Jews with suspicion. They knew they were outside the pagan system. They could tolerate all brands of paganism, because at the root they are all the same.
This mirrors very closely the tolerance of today. Spirituality people are interested in. Christianity, very often they are not. Their ideal of tolerance fails them at Christianity. This has to be the case with a pagan culture. Christianity is the only true threat to it. In fact, it has been the only culture that had managed to make pagan cultures fall. It is Christianity that is credited with the fall of Rome, especially by Romans. Its values are just too different. It is everything paganism seeks to destroy. If the tolerance experienced in America today was truly Post Modern tolerance, then there would have to be a more blanket hate or openness to all spiritualities. Either they all have truths, or none. Being an ex-alcoholic, I deal with a very many spiritual people. AA is full if them. Most will tell you though that they are not interested in my Christian God. At one meeting in particular, a woman was talking about how her god had not been answering her prayers and she was having a crisis of faith. She asked about other people’s higher powers, but specifically asked that the Christian God not be brought up. She was asking for pagan advice from pagans. She could tolerate their gods because they fit in her world view. She knew Jesus didn’t, and as such can’t tolerate him.
This is found throughout AA and other spiritual meetings. All people’s view of god are equally valid, except when the higher power is God, or there isn’t one. I have yet to meet an AAer who would allow an atheist to speak, let alone be one. They have been healed spiritually. They know there is a spiritual world. And it doesn’t matter who you pray to. No Jesus here. He claims to be the Truth, the Way, and the Life. That is not true to the group. We must check him at the door.
So Après Post culture is tolerant of spirituality, but hostile to Christianity. At this moment it appears as though it may just be tolerant, even of Jesus, but after many long conversations, I tell you it is not. The tolerance of Jesus is skin deep. The tolerance of spirituality is to the core. As Après Post gains power, we can most likely see a growing hostility to Jesus. Look at Europe. Often they are ahead of us. We follow them. Evangelism, a Judeo-Christian value, is outlawed in most places. The church is viewed with contempt. I have rarely met a European who is not venomous when speaking of Christianity. This will be us soon enough. We can see it beginning to seep in with extreme and continued blame for the worlds atrocities blamed on Christianity. People remember the Inquisition, but forget Abolition. They remember (and judge) the crusades, but forget civil rights. The list goes on. Christianity is becoming increasingly demonized, and a pagan culture must do this.
The irony of this increased hate from the culture is that it may in fact help Christianity spread. The church has most often grown under persecution. The seeds of faith are son in the blood of the martyrs. This may be the best thing to happen to Christianity for Western culture yet.
So Après Post is tolerant, like Post Modernism, but for very different reasons. Après Post is also materialistic, like Post Modernity. But this too has different root causes. Post Modern Man must be materialistic because there is not truth outside of it. There is no inherent goodness. What is good is what feels good, tastes good, sounds good. If this is our driving philosophy, why not indulge materialistically. We should get as much as we can at any means, because there is no meaning to anything else. If there is no meaning to life, at least we can have fun. This is the Post Modern world view. I don’t think this is why most of us are materialistic anymore though. People don’t want things because there is no meaning to life, but because there is meaning. They want to get the best job to make a name for themselves, have the most pay to provide for their family, have the youngest skin to be desired the most, have the prettiest wife to be honored among their friends. There is meaning to life, it is just pagan. Honor and desire, sexual prowess and fertility (as shown by looks for the female, and stature for the male) are high pagan ideals.
They are also materialist as a way to worship. We will look at this in detail later in the book. I will argue one of our gods is celebrity. You can’t worship celebrity without being materialist. We own DVD’s, whole TV shows, extended directors cuts, because these are our new myths, and the actors and characters our new gods. This requires we own the best TV, sound system, DVD rack, to worship them properly. Remember pagan sacrifice. It was done to gain something in this world. That is inherently materialistic. Only this world matters right now. We need to succeed here, and we will do what we have to, to make sure we attain our ends. This is not Post Modern materialism by default. It is actually an ideal. He who dies with the most toys wins, in an inherently pagan statement, testified to by tombs of every pagan king ever to rule.
You may have picked up on another quality of Après Post as you have read. It has intrinsic truth. It is a rejection of the Post Modern thought that there are no truths. It has a value system it sees as universal. This has not had the proper gestational period to be birthed out right, but as we will see, it is there awaiting the proper moment to loose itself upon the world. Après Post has a universal ethic and morality, though, and we can see it if we look. I direct the reader to the Chapter on Batman the Dark Night as the first signs that this pagan truth is about to burst forth. Paganism has always had truths and morals. They are just different that that of the Church. As already said, the values of paganism are honor above all else. Christianity holds love as supreme. But the violation of honor presupposes a right and wrong. Synonyms for honor offences show us this in crystal clear terms, we have wronged someone, done them wrong, etc. You can’t wrong someone unless there is a right, and there can’t be a right if we are relativists. Après Post has truth.
The truth that Après Post holds to is that of a dualism of sorts. It is this Apollonian and Dionysian struggle I have talked about. There is good and evil. They are constantly in battle. There is order and chaos, and one becomes the other. There is virtue and vice. What good and evil are, we will see is un-Christian, but they are external truths nonetheless. Many of Après Post’s virtues, we would call vices, but they are there. Post Modernism couldn’t last because it lacked external truth. This is why it has only been 40 years since it won in pop culture, and is now already in decline. What it allowed though, was a transition from old truths to new. The old Judeo-Christian ethos will be fully thrown off in Après Post Culture, and paganism completely put on, and this was only possible as quickly and smoothly as it has happened because there was a vacuum in between.
Après Post is honor-centric, and this goes hand in hand with another quality. Whenever there are strong honor cultures we find strong tribal tendencies as well. One is defined by the group. The hyper individualism of Post Modern Man left the field ripe for group identity to be sown. Not only can honor only be hurt if there are external truths, it can only be hurt within a group context. It is the shame of the group to the one dishonored that demands honor be upheld. This is pagan. The Christian knows he is not honorable, and more than this, is commanded to forget honor. When Jesus tells people to go the second mile, it is a commentary on honor. The Roman soldier could force anyone he wanted to carry his armor 1 mile. Israel felt dishonored by this (as did everyone else, I imagine). It is a reminder that they were conquered. It was an insult to honor. Jesus tells his followers to carry it two though. Assume greater dishonor. Throughout the Gospels we are told the last shall be first and first last, the greatest least, and least greatest. This is the opposite of honor culture. It is Christian.
We will see in my chapter on violence, among other places, that the idea of going two mile is repugnant to this culture. We are far more apt to throw the armor down and take the beating, or give it, if our armor is not carried, than any other reaction. And this reaction is strongest in groups. Violent videos on the internet almost always show groups aiding in the violence, egging it on, or condoning it. We see people forming alliances based on music preference, sports team, political preference. And more than this we will form boundaries around these groups to define ourselves and the others. Boundaries are inherently pagan. Christianity destroys them when it arrives. It did so in master slave relations, male female relations, parent child relations.
Paganism needs boundaries to be. Après Post also uses boundaries to classify and quantify. This is not Post Modern. Post Modernity, as a reaction to Modernity, will reject classifications and “boxes”. Even trying to define Post Modern in near impossible. It rejects boundaries and definitions. Après Post embraces them. Looking at hardcore subculture, and hip hop subculture, we will see clear delineation and honor codes. We will further see this is political rhetoric (mostly talking heads) and gang violence, both of which are based on honor and the group.
Après Post is also a sensual and hierarchical culture. Group dynamics can only work in hierarchy. So too, honor can only operate in hierarchy. There is a pecking order. Because of this, it also has respect for authority missing in Post Modernism. The authority respected isn’t traditional authority though. That was thrown off by Post Modernity, and like most things Après Post, will be left there for the new system. There are new systems emerging, and within subcultures, the authority chain is already well defined. If you don’t believe me go to a hardcore rock show. There are leaders and followers, and everyone knows there place. There are people within the circle that have the ability to tell others what to do, and negotiate compromises between two parties when fights break out.
Because of all of this, Après Post culture is violent. The way to enforce honor and hierarchy and group is always with violence. Violence within the group happens when people step out of line, when boundaries have been crossed, when someone’s honor has been questioned. Violence outside the group happens on the same levels, but also on one more. It bound the group together. You know you are in by what side you fight on. This will be seen again, in the study of hardcore and gangs. But violence is pagan. It is not Christian. Christianity sees violence as sin, paganism as a means to an end. It is not judged as evil all the time. It is simply the Dionysian that Paglia identifies, asserting itself. It is one side of the yin yang. Violence is sometimes needed for peace.
Après Post, as I have already said, is pagan. It is everything Christianity is not, but also most of what Post Modernity is not as well. It has its highest ideals in sensuality, image, and honor, all of which are really just different sides of the same thing. It also holds a wholly different view of sex than Christianity. Après Post views sex as necessary. Post Modernism liberated sex and sexuality. It freed sex from taboo and threw of the Judeo-Christian morals that curbed types of sex that were at odds with God’s design. The Post Modern reasoning was that Scripture was wrong. There was no truth in sexuality. We could choose our sensuality as we wished. Again, this is not the Après Post reason for sexual freedom. It is much more deviant than this. The Christian who wishes to remain a virgin until her wedding is not misguided and missing out, as the Post Modern would think, but selfish, subversive, and lacking. It is our duty to sleep around and become the best lover we can be. Our partners deserve no less. Sex is a god, and as such we must worship. Women who slept around used to be called names. I don’t see that anymore. Women who don’t sleep around are now called things. Sex is an assumption, not a choice. Après Post worships sex.
And this is not just men. Women have been taught, contrary to almost all other cultures, to desire promiscuous sex. Woman have been sold visualization. Men have always been sexually attracted primarily by sight. This is traditionally not seen as a woman’s first need. Today, though, woman are told it should be their first thought. Men should be well dressed, extremely fit, and extraordinarily good looking. Personality doesn’t matter. Looks are what count. This is only true if sex is the end. As long as we don’t have to talk or see someone again, we can focus on looks. Families take more. Looks wane. Sex as god demands visual attraction and no more. “Cougars”, older woman who have had a ton of work to look 20 (kind of) and date young men are the epitome of this in our culture right now. They know more than most of us.
As we move through the book, more characteristics of Après Post will come to light, but I think these are the major themes. Other qualities will be shown to sprout from one of these limbs. And of course there will be things in culture that I don’t write about, don’t see, or aren’t Après Post, and so won’t make it into this book. Après Post is a new paganism, a union of some Modern, Post Modern, and Ancient beliefs, most of which are actually ancient. It is a scientific, rational understanding of a pagan dialectic, with a belief in pagan narrative. Over most of the book we will be examining parts of culture to come to a greater understanding of the Après Post. We will look at art (and pornography, arts basest substitute), popular methods of entertainment (video taking over books as the most accurate cultural temperature and driver), sub cultures (which are growing at alarming rates and diversifying in ways never seen in non pagan cultures), and yes, even science. Après Post, like culture before, has a science to back up its findings. Ironically, it is the very large, the same science that helped to begin and define the Modern Age. This again can be interpreted as a casting off of Post Modernity. Après Post, as we shall see, will reinterpret what was there before Post Modernity, but in its own terms.
[1] Pagan creation stories here
[2] I am not here implying Paganism can fully satisfy; only God can do that. Paganism can give answers to why we are unsatisfied though, and for some, that is all they need. If we are told we can’t be satisfied, we can continue to live in that system. It is here that Christianity has its greatest tool against pagan culture. We will explore this in the last chapter.
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