SO confused!!

“Modernity, in whatever age it appears, cannot exist without a shattering of belief and without discovery of the ‘lack of reality’ of reality, together with the invention of other realities” (43). Now what the hell does that even mean. I am confused when he says there must be a shattered belief because in the passage earlier it says, “…the rule that there is no reality unless testified by a consensus between partners over a certain knowledge and certain commitments” (42). So does that not contradict his whole idea of the shattering belief?

“What doe this ‘lack of reality’ signify if one tries to free it from a narrowly historicized interpretation?” (43). My reaction to this statement is that there is a reality we are all trying to grasp from past experiences yet we can not define it and still we try to build and create more and more interpretations of the past and call it reality.

Then he talks about how we have no rules which helps us have experiences which helps us define whatever ideas we have so that we can formulate an the concept of postmodernity. But then we do not have “…the capacity to show an example” (43). So this relates to the “idea of the simple (that which cannot be broken down decomposed” (43). But we cannot present these ideas so there goes that tangent. And finally it then goes back to the concept that experience does not relate to reality? I am so confused. I did not understand this reading whatsoever.