I saw the film tonight and it was excellent! So much so, as a movie buff, I am sure the movie will be nominated at the Academy Awards for the best picture, the best screenplay, the best director, best original screenplay, and best cinematography. On top of that, I’m confident that Irish actor, Cillian Murphy, will be nominated for best actor, and will most likely win. Despite that endorsement, I cannot guarantee that you will like it. It is slow-moving (for American special effect-addicted movie goers) and complex. I do suggest that you first watch the documentary, To End All War: Oppenheimer & the Atomic Bomb. My friend Jerry invited me to watch it (it is not on our TV channels) a couple of weeks ago. It will make more sense of the movie for those who don’t remember the story.

My Philosphical Perspective ( I’ve spoken about many times and if you are familiar with my views, feel free to skip to the section Oppenhiemer)

I have a keen interest in the concept of truth and epistemology (the process that we use for getting knowledge and thus truth). To be clear, I’m not talking about a particular truth, in the same way that someone talking about “dinner” isn’t necessarily talking about chicken. I’m simply talking about truth as that which is consistent with reality. Classical truth. I have had this devotion to the topic since a life-changing event in 1990 and my interest has increased as society’s interest in truth has diminished in the last few decades. I am a salmon swimming upstream in other words.

I’ve said many times that if you reverse engineer the way we and the cosmos is designed, you will discover that we find knowledge by collecting evidence via our senses and then using logic (aka reason) with our logical brains to draw mathematical conclusions about that evidence. I personally believe that’s the way God designed us. An atheist would have to conclude that’s the way natural selection has shaped us, making us fit the reality around us.

I have also discussed, ad nauseam, that all cultures go through cycles of thinking in the same way that hair and clothing styles change over time. The fads are so powerful, as all fads are, it is akin to brainwashing. Difficult to escape.

All the experts will agree that the present cycle—postmodernism—is ending and the next cycle has tentatively been labeled, “metamodern.” I will also claim that all philosophical movements (thinking fads) start out on a positive note, correcting the previous cycle which had gone too far, (and all cycles eventually go too far), before going too far itself. Postmodernism is no different. Even religions, Christianity, no exception, while claiming an orthodoxy to their original tenants, are in line with the thinking of these philosophical fads, at times more so than their original tenants. A neo-Platonic Christian of the Middle Ages will read the Bible in on way, the rational person of the Enlightenment another, and postmodern mystic, still another, each claiming their views are “Biblical.”

You define postmodernism as the loss of a universal narrative. There is no one opinion that is correct, no true religion, no right philosophy, and eventually, there can be no aspiration for truth at any level, because there is no truth, or if there are truths, they are unknowable by our finite minds . . . and thus practically nonexistent. While I’ve changed my mind that post-modernism was a disaster from the beginning, (thanks to people here pointing out here that I wasn’t being fair to post-modernism and my research of the evidence), I do think that late postmodernism is-was a disaster for our culture. There has been a wholesale loss of truth in the past decade, Time Magazine declaring 2016 as “The Year Truth Died.”

This loss of truth is attractive in the beginning because a follower can elevate their most fundamental emotional biases into a surrogate for truth even with no evidence of that truth. Magical thinking. On that end of the spectrum, you opinion is truth. We see that especially in the political and religious realms. On a societal level, the loss of truth is also attractive to many because it gives the appearance of peace. If all opinions are the same, all religions the same, all political systems the same, then we have nothing to fight about, do we? I will say again, at least in the teachings of Christ, peace is brought about via respect and love, not agreement. But I digress.

Modernity grew out of the Enlightenment, the Enlightenment growing out of the Renaissance. The Renaissance grew out of the need to find balance after thirteen hundred years of a Christianized neo-platonism (a dualism where this physical world, including the human faculties such as reason, had little value in comparison to the “spiritual” which ushered in the Dark Ages and the decline of culture). The Enlightenment is my favorite philosophical movement, where reason was once again vogue.

Oppenheimer

History is messy and complex. It is like a thousand-car train moving through time. While on one end, it could be warm and sunny (think of going down a tall mountain) on the other end it could still be cold and snowing. While history has many milestones, in the area of thinking, there are not isolated moments where the thinking fads suddenly reverse. Like with clothing styles, it could be changing in one part of the world, but way behind in another. With that said, if you were to expose the raw edge of where modernism went to seed, becoming unsustainable, Oppenheimer captures that moment with incredible intensity.

Modernity was the final working of the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment was my favorite philosophical movement of western culture, when reason was given the respect it deserves. Humanity profoundly advanced during that period (1685-1815), and most of that in a positive way. For example, the life expectancy of humans went from 48 years prior to the Enlightenment to 65 years after. Beyond that, life became much easier than during the Middle Ages, and much happier. Truth clearer.

The success of the Enlightenment, riding on the scientific method, went to seed in scientific positivism and then scientism, the idea that science would save us, finding all truth and solving all our problems. While the creation of the atomic bomb was not the only pivotal movement to challenge that assumption (the atrocities of World War I was the first) it was the final blow to that scientific optimism.

The movie does a wonderful job in capturing the intense moral dilemma associated with the creation of the bomb and unleashing the nuclear arms race. Do we bomb and burn to death hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians to end a vicious war that might kill even more? But notice, while the scientists were driven by a profound curiosity about the universe, it was the politicians who were morally blind to the consequences of the tools the scientist had delivered to them.

By the 1950s, the early edges of post-modernism began to displace modernity, the ugly nuclear age being a driving force. But unfortunately, while the new movement began to deconstruct cultural norms (the Vietnam war being a noble cause, because the American government said it was), it too eventually went to seed as late post-modernism, where the proverbial baby (reason and the pursuit of truth) was thrown out with the bathwater.

It is my hope that meta-modern, whatever that is, will reintroduce the value of absolute truth and reason as the means of discovering that truth. More than that, I wished we all understood better how thinking fads influnence how we see the world. But my simplier point is . . . see the movie, and embrace the story.

Mike