Postmodernism
(1) One of the purest forms of philosophical examination that rests upon a substrate comprised of language and thought, which is precisely the problem.
A movement that alleges skepticism of reason, but ignores the fact that both language and thought are deductive processes.
A critique of ideology formulated by astute thinkers adopted by clever ideologues pretending to be critics.
Not an ideology, but is consistently paired with ideologies in order to give the appearance of rigourous thought by using philosophical terminology.
In the academy, it serves as a compelling examination of reality. In the real world, it is most frequently used for intellectual posturing and justifying the illegitimate capture of power.
Beloved by precocious students and intellectuals who have managed to avoid examining it from a different vantage point.
Postmodernism is frequently introduced as potentially referencing many things across spheres. This is done to showcase that the speaker knows how to search things on the internet. Interestingly, this prefacing is exactly the sort of thing that postmodern thinkers would deconstruct, which is very meta.
Postmodernism is immediately compromised by examining the substrate of the mind that perceives and conveys. There are certainly processes occurring that interfere with our capacity to interpret the world in an unfiltered manner, but this does not mean that everything we perceive is inaccurate or undecipherable. It also does not mean that we cannot develop tools and methodologies to assist us in filling in the gaps; patterns will emerge over time. Reality is not irreducibly complex to the point that relativism becomes coherent – there are human universals informed by shared biological histories that are both independently discoverable and unifying. In essence, the near or complete universality of some aspects of life are antithetical to the postmodern critique, despite its validity as a broad stroke.
There is also the matter that the mind that conceives it is human, and as such is sufficiently riddled with irrationalities, fallacies, and pathogens. In one way this supports the legitimacy of relativistic considerations, in another way, it characterizes the considerations themselves as unreliable as they are formulated by the same mind. The latter is conveniently answered by the necessary postmodern precept there is no natural reality, or that it is at least unknowable, which provides itself the licence to philosophize with reckless abandon while impugning any realm concerned with objectivity. Rather than consider this be an obvious indication of the fallibility of the mind that occupies this position, it is considered simply a feature of their approach that they permit themselves to build upon.
The foundation cannot be both a void and a substrate – and this is exactly when arguments about the imprecision of rhetoric will be introduced. While not generally conveying truth, the use of rhetoric that is both deductive and resonant is conveying something accurate enough that we can understand it and how it relates to the world around us. This is where postmodernism splits from serious considerations about how the world works and what comprises it. Grappling or ignoring aspects of it will generate outcomes that we find desirable or punitive in a literal sense irrespective of social context because we know things about humans.
High quality postmodern philosophy is poetic and compelling, but it has no verifying or validating criteria by design, it merely opines.
The fundamental problem is what is produced downstream of a collective that views the world through a postmodern lens. The real world does not conform to postmodern inferences, and no amount of rhetoric will change that. The world predates language.
Curiously, postmodern thinkers seem capable of deconstructing everything except their own philosophy and positions.
(2) The most common intellectual front for sexual deviants and pedophiles. An examination of its most prominent figures would confirm this.
Beyond the maladaptive sexual proclivities of its practitioners, this is perpetually on display in their rhetoric, which is accurately described as nothing more than circular intellectual masturbation. Postmodern thinkers are not to be underestimated, as they are often clever and excellent at leveraging support from naïve students, generally so they can sleep with them.
This is not to say that it is entirely void of content. Michel Foucault was a brilliant thinker and writer, and his critiques of established structures were both warranted and worthy of consideration. Unfortunately, not only do his conclusions fail to retain much coherence beyond the realm of abstract inquiry, but he is, like so many of his counterparts, easy to dismiss as a practical source of knowledge when we discover the nature of their motivations.
It is common that our philosophies flow forth from our interests and our desire to reconcile them with the world. As a result, the incidence of pedophilia and sexual deviance among postmodern thinkers, a group dedicated to the promotion of subjectivism and moral relativism, should surprise no one. Postmodern thinkers seem fundamentally preoccupied with the destruction of categories and norms so they can promote a sexual awakening in children.
Practitioners stumble to deny things they know to be true while feigning intellectual profundity using convoluted and often gnostic rhetoric.
The desire is to have a playground materialize downstream of an abstract construction where all things are permissible, provided they are the ones holding the ball.
See: INTELLECTUALS
Posted: 13 Feb 2023
