Functional and Structural
The structuralist functionalist view of society is one forwarded by Talcott Parsons. It is theoretical construct that views society as a self-regulation system akin to a living organism in which all the various anatomical processes working together function to keep the entire entity alive and well:
“One can decide that the principal role of knowledge is as an indispensable element in the functioning of society, and act in accordance with that decision, only if one has already decided that society is a giant machine.”
Language Games
Central to Lyotard’s conception of the postmodern condition is Wittgenstein’s philosophical framework of language games. Metaphor reveals these are not games in the athletic sense, but more like something along the lines of hunger games:
“Such behavior is terrorist…By terror I mean the efficiency gained by eliminating, or threatening to eliminate, a player from the language game one shares with him.”
Multiple Applications
One particularly robust simile is applied precisely to the topic at hand but is deserving of being extricated from that context because its application is so fluid and flexible. Truly, there are very few instances where the following metaphorical imagery is not appropriate:
“Consensus is a horizon that is never reached.”
The Age of Pastiche
We live in the age of pastiche. Very few aspects of modern life are devoted fully to one culture nor exist within a single historical dimension. Every minute of daily living has become an exercise in globalism and the expansion of taste and aesthetics:
“Eclecticism is the degree zero of contemporary general culture : one listens to reggae, watches a western , eats McDonald's food for lunch and local cuisine for dinner, wears Paris perfume in Tokyo and "retro" clothes in Hong Kong ; knowledge is a matter for TV games.”
Lost Paradise
Lyotard identifies the cohesion of the past as a kind of paradise that has been lost. Disintegration of the conventional social bonds of the past have served to create for postmodern society an existence this is more complex, but as a result of this complexity also more subject to alienation:
“A self does not amount to much , but no self is an island; each exists in a fabric of relations that is now more complex and mobile than ever before.”
