Postmodernity: Modernity’s Hiccup

“I have spoken of the emergence of the global cliché culture as the birthmark of Our Time. Until modernity was ushered into our world, cultures were always local. They were, by definition, sets of meanings and morals, beliefs and habits that arose in specific contexts of history and religion, a people’s social organization and place in the world. Thus we have traditionally spoken of Indian culture as being discernibly different from European culture, or African from Hispanic. But today, modernization is producing comparable ways of thinking, wanting, and being in countries that are very different in terms of their histories, religion, and organization. Today, what is modern can be found, and found in about the same way, in both Tokyo and Canberra, New Delhi and New England, Paris and Cape Town. To stretch this far, to span the globe in this way, modernity must necessarily be culturally thin.” [David Wells, God in the Wasteland (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1994), p. 9.]