Postmodernism as the Great Global Zero

Postmodernism is often described as an era of freedom, irony, and liberation from the rigid frameworks of the past. In this description there is a grain of truth, but it hides a deeper, almost ontological side of what is happening. Postmodernism became not simply a phase of critique of modernity. It became a state of global zeroing, a point at which the familiar coordinates of meaning ceased to work, and the new ones had not yet arisen.

This was not the destruction of specific structures, but the loss of the very foundations on which structures stood. History did not disappear, but lost its necessity. Truth was not refuted, but lost its weight. Values were not formally abolished, but lost the capacity to bind. Everything became possible — and precisely because of that nothing more was necessary.

This zero was not a catastrophe. On the contrary, it proved surprisingly comfortable. Liberation from grand narratives removed the tension characteristic of modernity. There was no need to believe, to fight, to sacrifice, or to move towards a goal. It was enough to exist, to consume, to choose identities, and ironically distance oneself from any assertion. The world without an ending turned out to be more convenient than a world with direction.

The globality of postmodernism manifested in the fact that this state ceased to be a local intellectual gesture and became the infrastructure of everydayness. Economy, culture, media, technology, and even politics began to function in the logic of zero. Any meaning could be disassembled, reassembled, and immediately devalued. Any position could be occupied, but not held. Any difference could be recognized, but not hierarchized.

That is why postmodernism did not create an alternative world. It did not offer a new foundation. It acted as a universal solvent, equally effectively eroding both modernist ideals, traditional forms, and attempts to return to metaphysics. Everything turned into an object of play, interpretation, quotation.

This zero was often perceived as victory. It seemed that humanity had finally gone beyond the violence of meaning, freed itself from dogmas, and acquired genuine freedom. But gradually it became clear that freedom without ontological supports turns into emptiness. When there is nothing that transcends choice, choice itself loses meaning.

The postmodernist zero turned out not to be a finale, but a limit point of exhaustion. A singularity. It showed that deconstruction cannot be eternal. It either stops, or begins to destroy the very possibility of differentiation. At some point it becomes impossible to distinguish critique from cynicism, play from indifference, freedom from loss of meaning. Not just impossible to distinguish — the differences between them, the boundaries blur.

It is important that this zero was not a mistake of history. It performed its function. It completed the grand modernity, bringing its internal contradictions to a logical conclusion. Universalism was disassembled, progress deprived of sacrality, rationality — of privilege. Everything that could be deconstructed was deconstructed.

But precisely because of this postmodernism could not become a sustainable epoch. Zero does not hold form. It can be a pause, a transition, a moment of zeroing, but not the foundation of a long historical process. On a global scale this expressed itself in a growing sense of emptiness, fatigue, absence of future and meaning that cannot be compensated either by technologies or by growth of comfort.

Today it becomes clear that the world is leaving the state of the Great Global Nothing, Zero. Not because postmodernism "lost" or was refuted, but because it exhausted its function. It cleared the space, but could not fill it. It removed old forms, but did not create new foundations.

This is its historical role. Postmodernism became a necessary zeroing, after which history cannot simply continue along its previous trajectory. Return to modernity is impossible, but staying in zero is no longer bearable. At this limit and begins a new phase — not as ideology and not as a project, but as a change of the state of the world, in which again becomes possible the difference between emptiness and meaning, between form and simulation, between being and game.

The Great Global Zero was not the end. It was the transition point. The passage through singularity. When, after reaching the bottom, repulsion from it, the importance of meanings returns, synthesis starts: both postmodernism and modernity and everything that was before matters. From here begins the theory of Exmodernity — what the new world will live by, what the human will live by in the coming era. What will be after passing through the postmodern singularity. What the spirit of this new era is and what the spirit of the departing one prevents us from seeing.