When reading the Pali Canon and the old stories of the Buddha, his life, and the early Buddhist Sangha, as well as the general spiritual community of the time around them, as well as stories about places such as Nalanda, I get the sense that what we are doing here is not only nothing new, it is basically what they did back in the day in many ways.
People debated actively what they best practices were, what lead to what, what was useful and not useful, what worked and what didn't. They were open about attainments. They shop-talked actively about techniques, tricks, trials, tribulations, successes, failures, phenomenology, and the like, as that was what they were into.
It is hard to imagine the Abhidhamma, the commentaries, and even much of the Pali Canon arising in a situation that had an attitude that was anything other than that. This also applies to the massive cross-pollenation and convergence of various traditions that lead to the innovations that arose in Indian Buddhism in the Nalanda period and later spread to regions such as and including Tibet and formed the basis of much of Tibetan Buddhism.
Further, this sort of practicality just seems normal to me in any endeavor where there are goals, various schools of thought, various teachers, various texts, various techniques, all of which are now available and which logically must be compared, contrasted, texted, exprimented with, explored, synthesized, and refined, as well as rediscovered.
Seriously, what are the obvious alternatives and why would anyone prefer those to this if people actually cared about progress in spiritual development and growth? Does anyone really think that monolithic adherance to one tradition in a secretive and proprietary fashion without discussion or questioning is really going to produce the best results for the most people?
I don't think of our take on this as modern or post-modern, but just straightforwardly like most pragmatic tasks are approached and have been for millennia.
