The postmodern condition

For three years my lecturers tried to explain postmodernism to a bunch of stupid undergraduates. But I didn't really understand it until this morning, when I waddled through the snow on my way to the bus stop.

It suddenly occurred to me that snow is a very postmodern "object". Just as the example my lecturers loved about a table being a table only because we chose to define it as a table, with the qualities you'd normally expect from a table, snow is not necessarily snow.

Yesterday evening I went out to play in the snow. I made a snowman, snow-angels and got as wet and cold as if I was five again, and just as a five-year old kid I didn't want to go back inside. Snow as an object of leisure, fun and recreation.

This morning however, snow was far from fun as I ploughed my way towards a bus that never showed up, and ended up late for work, wet and cold. When you're stuck in front of a desk for the rest of the day, wet and cold is not at all fun, it is the exact opposite of fun. Yesterday's fun became today's tragedy. Snow as an object of pain, annoyance and anger.

And there you have it: Snow is the very definition of the postmodern. In itself it is ever changing, a mass of molecules that are wet, dry, powdery or sticky. And the way we see it is dependent on a number of different factors.

Conclusion: Snow is living proof that postmodernists sometimes are worth listening to (except the French ones, they are just plain annoying and impossible to understand).