At Tribal Training in Canterbury we recently spent some time looking at what's going on in our culture around us - you know, the sort of thing that intellectuals call 'postmodernism.' (Whats the definition of an intellectual? Someone you can leave in a room with a tea-cosy and they won't try it on!)

As well as doing all the grey-beard stuff about the global village, cyberspace, consumerism, metanarratives etc, we also took a look at five popular videos from the late 90's, all conveniently sitting on my shelves at home, that shed quite a bit of light on what's going on around us.

LET'S TAKE A LOOK!

The Full Monty

The Big Breakfast

Star Trek: The Original Series vs The Next Generation

Pepsi Adverts

The Truman Show

But this sort of culture doesn't simply mean we get better and faster playstations! It has impacts on society and relationships around us:

• Relationships matter. In a world of technology, internet cafes and IT, the film talks about a group of guys who find relationships by simply chilling together Technology is great but relationships seems to be where they find meaning, hope etc.

• Communication matters. We have the dubious distinction of being able to communicate more but say less than any civilisation in history. While we have learned how to put a man on the moon and talk to him while he is there, we hardly know how to talk to one another in a meaningful manner when we are in the same room!

• Tesco ergo sum? In a society which says 'find your identity in what you buy' or 'you are what you do', what about if you've lost your job? Particularly for blokes in our culture, this question of identity is really key.

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For the last 500 years or so we've lived in a world dominated by print. Since Gutenberg in 1438 decided to save himself a bit of dosh and time and bootleg a few Bibles we've lived in a world driven by literacy. But in 2001 for print and literacy read (?!) multi-media technology. This will change the ways we think, communicate and learn. Goodbye print, hello STYLE.

So what's going on?

• shift from word to image... if you watch the Big Breakfast or other similar programmes carefully image is everything.... Try the news. 2 second max camera shots, upbeat music, smiley presenter, bright graphics, all the same whatever the news item, be it national disaster, football scores or Posh'n'Becks.

• style not content driven... Watch the Big Breakfast or similar programmes and you probably won't remember much a few hours later. The appeal is in the style, not the content.... Contrast this breakfast offering with, say, Radio 4's Today Programme!

• what about the Church? To be honest much of my experience of church is much more Radio 4 than Big Breakfast. Even so-called cutting edge churches tend to be a mixture of Radio 2 and GMTV, a kind of scary combination of Terry Wogan and Fiona Philips. What can we learn from the image-driven and style-conscious stuff like the Big Breakfast about communicating in our contemporary culture? In particular how might this impact our worship?

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The Original Series reflected the culture of late modernity, ie the 1960s or so. The message was obvious. We must overcome our differences and join forces to complete our mandate, the quest for objective knowledge of the entire universe. They were helped along particularly by Spock, the only non-human member of the crew. He was the ideal modern man, completely rational, and without emotion, or at least very good at holding his emotions in check. The key to solving problems was for Kirk to get the babe and for Spock to be utterly rational and solve the problem.

TNG - 30 years later - was totally different. In particular good old rational Spock is replaced by an android, Data. He is capable of amazing intellectual feats, but all he really wants is to become human, a sense of humour, to have emotions, to dream etc... The other key member of the crew is Deanna Troi, who can perceive the hidden feelings of others.

This sort of change echoes the changes in society over the last decades:

• Things can only get better?... In, say, 1900 there was a feeling that science and technology would change the world. But given world war, atomic bombs, ecological breakdown, Nazism etc we don't trust this any more. In 2000 instead of massive optimism we had the Millennium bug instead, and a great deal of cynicism that much in the world was going to change.

• This is my truth tell me yours... What is truth? Spock was searching for truth and reality, but Data wants to become human. Truth in our culture is becoming "agreement amongst everyone who is in the room at the time....." Gen-Xers are not Spocks but Datas, searching not for some objective truth through the triumph of science but to know what it is to be human, what it is to live, love, feel, experience.

• What is community? The original series was full of strict hierarchy, a bit like the United Nations, where it wasn't cool to make friends with Klingons or hang out with Cardassians. Next Generation, and even more so DS9 and Voyager, there is no such hierarchy, and community is much more one of tolerance, networking and friendships between all types of people and race in a sort of inter-galactic 'Friends'.

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Its staggering to think that the average 10 year old will have watched 80,000 adverts. And in case you were wondering, big businesses wouldn't spend billions of pounds a day on advertising if it didn't work!

We live in a world which is getting smaller..... 'the global village'. I've drunk Pepsi in bars in England, service stations in America and in remote fields in the Himalayas, where Pepsi has arrived in town before reliable electricity, clean running water or basic education. You can eat MacDonalds in Canterbury, London, Paris, New York, Cape Town and Bombay, all with the same packaging, logos, twin arches, style and the obligatory 'would you like fries with that......?'

But alongside the world coming together communities are tearing themselves apart. There have been over 200 wars since 1945 worldwide, and the forces of tribe, race, class, religion, region and nation are leading to strife left right and centre.

So what's it all about?

• Identity? What are the values of the global culture? The gospel according to Pepsi seems to suggest that drinking their drink will make you an instant babe magnet. It didn't work with me when I was single.... Against this gospel comes Jesus who tells us we're not what we wear, drink, smell like, or buy, but we're destined to be children of God.

• Inequality. This isn't the place to get into the global free market, but there is a massive divide between the haves and the have nots, and a rich-poor divide on the scale of the grand canyon.

• Community-breakdown. We may live in a 'global world' but communities are breaking down. MTV culture may draw people together globally but it doesn't help build community where people are, or help them deal with their sense of alienation, or feeling like a lost generation. People want to belong....!

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In loads of ways The Truman Show summed up much of the culture of the late 90s. Living in a consumer society. Pleasure and image is everything. The power of the media. A growing cynicism towards the establishment. But alongside this is a searching for spiritual reality.

Now, don't get too carried away. Yes, there are some Christian links in Truman, particularly with Christof, the God-type creator guy, although to be honest he is more like the man on the moon than the Almighty. But I still think that the film got to the heart of the cry a lot of people are saying - show us reality! Don't let anyone tell you we're living in a secular society..... it may be post-Christendom, but its not post-spiritual. A strategically placed poster in Mulder's office shows a flying saucer and the words "I want to believe." As do many.

But before you get too excited about the renewed interest in religion you'd do well to note that the emerging culture's exploration of spirituality is in many ways a reaction against institutional Christianity as it has always been experienced by many. While the Church might seem to be out of date, God is in the house:

• interest in spirituality…. OK, not everyone you stand next to at a party is going to want to hear your testimony, but it is much more possible to talk of the afterlife, religious experiences, spiritual manifestations and one's own spiritual journey etc without the kind of negativity or embarrassment which has sometimes greeted such discussion

• non-Western faiths…. i.e. interest in Hinduism, New Age beliefs etc. Also native spirituality etc

• pic-n-mix religion…. I love the story that a newspaper picked up a few years ago. In 1998 Sarah Ferguson began hosting a series of daytime TV chat show programmes in the UK. Here is how a commentator of the Times described it: "The Duchess of York confided to us, in her introduction, that her personal recipe for spirituality consisted of taking bits from various religions and mixing them together - a process she compared to that of mixing ingredients to make a cake….." Noting that not all ingredients would necessarily mix well, the writer couldn't resist pursuing the analogy: "viewers with long and excitable memories probably couldn't help but wonder if Sarah Ferguson's cake was maybe half baked."

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