The postmodern crisis and the loss of stable identity

Abstract

The paper proves the assumption that being a worldview of the information society postmodernism simultaneously reverberates its problems, among which is blurring personal identity. The most vulnerable part of the postmodern ideology is the implicit inability to construct steady architecture of identification. This is hampered by specific ideas related to the fundamental principle of postmodernism, i.e. pluralism leading to relativism and the loss of sustainable landmarks. Applying the pluralism principle to the full may result in unlimited choice production, which should not be considered the achievement of the information society and postmodern culture, but its main problem. The social political consequences of tolerance issues and the equivalence of opinions, attitudes and values are discussed. Lack of preferred self-identification vectors reduces the motivation for the individual to develop a stable personal identity. If no paradigm in terms of the truth can claim a given status disputes over claims of significance turn into controversies over power, thereby generating social Darwinism. The principle of pluralism actually legitimizes radical ideologies, whose extreme form is terrorism put in the mosaic and multicultural postmodern world occurs to be one of many sociocultural paradigms. Exactly the identity crisis in the conditions of mass distribution of both military and information technologies is considered the main cause of radicalism as the result of finding pathological forms of cognitive personal identity. Social cultural and worldview crises of the information society are becoming the main cause for producing endurable and irregular forms of personal identity architecture.

Keywords

• identity
• information society
• postmodern culture
• postmodern worldview
• pluralism
• radicalism
• identity development