Same Love, New Belief

The readings Welcome to the Postmodern World and The Precession of Simulacra describe postmodernism at great length. As I read through the articles, I thought of same sex marriage being a postmodern belief. The song Same Love by Macklemore and Ryan Lewis featuring Mary Lambert shows a great outline of the same sex movement that is prevalent in today’s society.

Walter Truett Anderson describes in a section of his book, “Reality Isn’t What It Used To Be,” that there are three major processes that are speeding up the transition to a postmodern world. The three processes are as follows: forced to be free, the new polarization, and global memes.

The first process, forced to be free, includes the idea to “breakdown old ways of belief.” This music video exemplifies the old ways of belief. It begins with a married man and a woman who are having a child. The idea that only a man and a woman should be engaged in a relationship with one another is an old belief that is currently in the process of being broken. 

The White House after legalizing same sex marriage.

For a long time, the American government had laws against same sex marriage. Recently, the Supreme Court ruled that states must allow same sex marriage. The music video then shows the beginning of breaking down that old belief. It shows the journey of two men in a relationship, who get married and are together until old age. It aims to prove that the love between same sex couples is the same as the love between a man and a woman. 

The second process, the new polarization, is the emergence of “a conflict about the nature of social truth itself.” The artists of the song state “America the brave still fears what we don’t know.” Same sex marriage has truly been a controversial topic in America. Even though there are new laws that allow this kind of marriage, many protest and disagree with them. As the song mentions, many of the protest come from “right wing conservatives [who] think it’s a decision and [one] can be cured with some treatment and religion.” And I believe Anderson would also consider them “enviably sure-minded citizens.” 

The lyrics also state that no law is going to change the belief system, that it has to come from society, but the law is a good place to start. I believe that we are now in this process as we try to transform society to join the old family favorites – hetero sexual relations and homo sexual relations.

The third process is global memes. This same sex marriage is growing globally but is not quite a global culture with a true worldview yet. I believe this is a new movement in the postmodern world and will very soon be on a global scale. Hopefully, the human species will strive to build a new civilization based on a new sense of social reality. 

Same Love displays the new ideas, mainly through lyrics, of a postmodern world. It includes the processes described by Anderson of trying to break down the old beliefs and create a freedom in the political specter while gaining global traction.