Feb 6·edited Feb 6Liked by John Carter, Johann Kurtz
Nice piece.
When Western Civilization was in its infancy, it was converting pagans; people who believed in a God, just the "wrong" one. They had not been exposed to Christianity. Now you are attempting to convince people who have been exposed to and have rejected Christianity to keep a Christian morality without a Christ, a totally different proposition. The position of a world without meaning gave way to meaning without a world. Neither was tenable, so now we have dozens of small worlds with small meanings, and the people who claim to inhabit intersections of these small worlds proclaim themselves They/Them gods. The argument whether Western Civilization can survive without the Christ of Christianity, and only its Golden Rule morality, is yet to be answered. It's not looking good.
I agree this is an important project and that philosophical foundations matter. I think Friston’s free energy minimization theory of the brain gives us what we need. Beliefs are predictions, full stop. It doesn’t matter what you _claim_ to believe. If you won’t place a bet on some future outcome, with real stakes, you don’t believe it. Absolute certainty, then, is not a function of the accumulation of evidence but of the intentional choice not to doubt. If we believe that true ideas are those which correspond with reality, we don’t need to attack our opponents, merely prevent them from stealing from us and they will starve themselves out. Simply legalizing prediction markets (they are in a regulatory mess right now) would go a long way to reward people for calling bullshit, and make it clear who actually believes and who is just talking.
I enjoyed reading this and I gave it a few days to gel before I wrote this response:
I repel against the idea that there is nothing good in postmodernism. We have to understand not what postmodernism is today, but what it was in its hay day around 1945. At that time it was an artistic movement associated with dada, zen, and surrealism. It was John Cage, Kenneth Patchen (who wasn't famous yet), and Salvador Dali. Postmodernism recognizes the primacy of the search for novelty over what was felt to be aesthetic or good in the arts. The work of postmodernism is to decouple art from the cliched emotionalism that ruled the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Emotion became cheap and easy in music and literature, and we discovered that we cannot use the same tired paths to reach the same emotive responses. We wear out our neural pathways and our responsive synapses don't want to fire the same way on repeated listenings to the same piece of music or film. Also, art that mimics what other artists produce wears the audience out. We can't always reproduce these cliched emotions from the same tried and true artistic gestures. The audience needs novelty or it can't sustain a sense of meaning. This search for novelty is why songs get played out. Our ears tire of listening to the same noise. So, the project of postmodernism was to decouple mimetic artistic gestures from their easy emotional responses, and to make the audience work again to find meaning. This includes thwarting the audience's expectations (John Cage) and including ambiguity in art, where it isn't clear exactly what the artist intends. Postmodernism asks its audience to experience the world again as if for the first time. But that was 80 years ago. Artistic movements don't last 80 years. They last 10-15 years. Postmodernism has been co-opted by agents who use it as a blunt Nihilst instrument, to destroy any aesthetic. This is not true postmodernism, but is brutalism. Art from artists that hate their audience is brutalist. Brutalism is rampant in architecture, and there is also plenty of literature, music, and theatre that is meant to display the artists' antipathy for its audience. Let's differentiate between postmodernism, which was great a long time ago, and brutalism, which is a terrible and destructive influence now.
Postmodernism the method was doing okay, until it became ideology-ised during the 1970s to late 1990s.
As a method, it has its advantages since it demands the analyst stepping outside his own preconceived set of truths, be they "hard" or "soft" science or of a socio-cultural nature, or the senses themselves or pure experience for that matter.
As an ideology or perhaps even an epistemology and ontology, it instead becomes a perpetuum mobile of rationalisation, very much akin in nature to economics: everything is reduced via rationalisation and reductionism to the lowest common denominator, then made equal and the same by linguistics and semantics, and then the arguement and position which was not provable or possible to argue for intially is exhumed (or re-animated) from this process. This is why postmodernists and those mired in its method of reason can spout things like "All laws are arbitrary" and think that this a) means no laws are justified, moral or have intrinsical value, as well as b) being able to state it is so, makes it so and removes from the speaker any moral imperative or any burden of proof beyond relativisation.
The reason for the above process is the french post-WW2 philosophers, once called "the new philosophers". I'm sure I don't have to name names. Where postmodernism as method simply enable one to pick apart societal phenomena and contrast and compare them (the, or one of the original point(s) of sociology) in order to further understanding of them (not "being understanding of them"), it does not permit someone to rationalise their own actions as always morally good, something which postmodernism the ideology does as it sees morals/ethics, logic and so on as just another semantic costume for the ever-underlying powerplay.
I'll go so far as to admit there's /a/ truth to that, but it is not /the/ truth.
The truth is instead that without absolute and external to the individual source(s) of morality, the individual himself must stand exposed before his own deeds, feelings and urges: how much more soothing then the embrace of frigid and forgiving nihilism.
Which is why postmodernists always come across as relativists and nihilists, at least superficially. Less intellectually honest than dogs, they cannot own up to "My will, my deed" but must instead blame [insert fetish* here], much the same as a child of five might do: "It wasn't me, it was the TV-people that took the cookies!". This is why they often seem so perversely childish and childlike: they take refuge in their own inability and unwillingness to assume responsibility, and (just as a spoiled child) will use this behaviour as leverage: "If [insert current fad here] is accepted and respected and cherished, then I'll hurt myself!"
Look at the trans-somethings and homosexuals for the perfect examples (unsurprising given that ideological postmodernism was conceived by homosexual pedophiles).
Another reason is of course that the use of postmodern method really isn't all that special. A (in my day) common exercise was simply: "Analyse text A according to school of thought B", f.e. a feminist analysis of "Heart of Darkness" or a catholic analysis of "A Clockwork Orange". Hardly exciting and unlikely to yield much influence and power, and certainly not any kind of absolution for urges, wants and deeds.
Feb 7·edited Feb 7Liked by John Carter, Johann Kurtz
I have a great impatience with the so-called intellectuals who vomit up word salad. I don't parse Postmodernism; I'd rather just bayonet the fool braying it. Postmodernism needs no parsing, it needs no deconstruction; it takes no analysis to know it's just a pseudo-intellectual paint job for a special communism designed for perverted, degenerate filth.
It's a waste of time to engage such midwits in argument. Better by far to just shoot them in the guts.
The only good postmodernist (COMMIE) is a dead postmodernist (COMMIE.)
I have coined this era, The Age of Rediscovery. Discovering and applying old ways of understanding towards new knowledge gained. For instance, metabolic science is now understanding WHY the old ways of eating were healthier for the homo sapien compared to modern diets. This is old knowledge understood in a modern way. A blending of the old and new instead of a disregard and dismissal of our past. Homo sapien has lost much knowledge on the road to modernity. It is now being rediscovered. It's a beautiful thing.
You know, this Essay reminds me a little bit of another that John michael greer wrote on Critical theory.
He basically Describes the History of Critical theory, along with where it went wrong, referencing both that very same inventor of Zetecism that is the hero of this Essay, Joseph storm, but another great and late philosopher who fought the myths of Progress, Bruno Latour.
A fantastic piece I'm gonna have to save to ponder longer. The problem of postmodernity (and its roots in modernity) has been on my mind a lot lately. You might have suggested me a solution.
It is sublimely refreshing to read this essay, and know that inquiring, open minds are dissecting the Post-modern Amoeba. The initial findings suggest—as we knew all along—that the Amoeba will not and cannot survive, as it has essentially castrated and neutered itself in so many ways (I use both surgical terms to allow for the current 14,259 genders).
I’m reminded of a book that Jonah Goldberg published in 2012, “The Tyranny of Cliches”, wherein he dissected how Liberals tend to mangle language, to obfuscate their real message. Fascinating analysis, but then poor Jonah talked himself into the Darkside, bless his heart. Alas, now he’s One of Them.
Interesting statement: “…skeptical seeking, which Storm calls ‘Zeteticism’.” That sounds a lot like what was only recently otherwise known as classical “Science” and “Philosophy”: knowing that you do not—and cannot—know everything, but nevertheless still desperately yearning to know more; or at least as much more as your mortal being can grasp.
Anyway, you also state, “We are accepting that a) human knowledge is not the same as infallible access to absolute truth; and that b) the postmodern dogmas are patently false even on their own merits, and do not even carry the appearance of truth.” Might I humbly suggest a sequel to this fine essay of yours: pick up where Poor Jonah left off.
I.e., in the section where you quote Storm’s various examples of post-modern’s absolute assertions, “Essentialism is a kind of violence…”, etc., choose perhaps 4 or 5 of his examples (or as many as you wish!) and give us a Playbook of (brief) Retorts. Give us a playbook we can take to the Streets.
Maybe?
Think of the fun we could have. We could party like it’s 2016.
Your description of the search for lower t truths sounds a lot like William James’ philosophical pragmatism. A response to the totalizing theories of modernism that left room for knowledge and values. The road not taken was always there.
"Essentialism is a kind of violence…”
It’s actually the other way around.
“Knowledge is just an expression of power.”
Just power is an expression of knowledge.
“Power is domination.”
Tell it to the Sun.
“No truth claims can be grounded.”
Including that one?
“There are no facts, only interpretations.”
Is that a fact?
“Every perspective is equally legitimate.”
That’s illegitimate, according to my perspective.
“All knowledge is relative to an individual’s standpoint.”
Absolutely relative, or relatively relative?
“If a term or concept was formulated in a colonial context, it must be false, and deploying it is a kind of violence.”
What is ‘colonialism’ and when did it start?
“Classification is a form of conceptual imperialism.”
Speak a coherent sentence without classifying something.
“All binaries are violent hierarchies…”
Like trans/cis?
“Language determines thought.”
And vice versa.
“Being is always already before language.”
Just so.
“Philosophy is phallocentric or logocentric.”
(1) Mostly (2) You’re projecting
“Logic is merely the codification of heteronormative, white, male thinking.”
You’re welcome?
“There are no more metanarratives.”
Are they illegal now?
“History is over.”
Just wait.
“Knowledge is impossible.”
How do you know?
Nice piece.
When Western Civilization was in its infancy, it was converting pagans; people who believed in a God, just the "wrong" one. They had not been exposed to Christianity. Now you are attempting to convince people who have been exposed to and have rejected Christianity to keep a Christian morality without a Christ, a totally different proposition. The position of a world without meaning gave way to meaning without a world. Neither was tenable, so now we have dozens of small worlds with small meanings, and the people who claim to inhabit intersections of these small worlds proclaim themselves They/Them gods. The argument whether Western Civilization can survive without the Christ of Christianity, and only its Golden Rule morality, is yet to be answered. It's not looking good.
I agree this is an important project and that philosophical foundations matter. I think Friston’s free energy minimization theory of the brain gives us what we need. Beliefs are predictions, full stop. It doesn’t matter what you _claim_ to believe. If you won’t place a bet on some future outcome, with real stakes, you don’t believe it. Absolute certainty, then, is not a function of the accumulation of evidence but of the intentional choice not to doubt. If we believe that true ideas are those which correspond with reality, we don’t need to attack our opponents, merely prevent them from stealing from us and they will starve themselves out. Simply legalizing prediction markets (they are in a regulatory mess right now) would go a long way to reward people for calling bullshit, and make it clear who actually believes and who is just talking.
Great article - thanks for writing!
If I may attempt a pithy summarization, it sounds like our weapons need to be "zetetic memetics."
Let's revive the old saying, "Says Who?"
I enjoyed reading this and I gave it a few days to gel before I wrote this response:
I repel against the idea that there is nothing good in postmodernism. We have to understand not what postmodernism is today, but what it was in its hay day around 1945. At that time it was an artistic movement associated with dada, zen, and surrealism. It was John Cage, Kenneth Patchen (who wasn't famous yet), and Salvador Dali. Postmodernism recognizes the primacy of the search for novelty over what was felt to be aesthetic or good in the arts. The work of postmodernism is to decouple art from the cliched emotionalism that ruled the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Emotion became cheap and easy in music and literature, and we discovered that we cannot use the same tired paths to reach the same emotive responses. We wear out our neural pathways and our responsive synapses don't want to fire the same way on repeated listenings to the same piece of music or film. Also, art that mimics what other artists produce wears the audience out. We can't always reproduce these cliched emotions from the same tried and true artistic gestures. The audience needs novelty or it can't sustain a sense of meaning. This search for novelty is why songs get played out. Our ears tire of listening to the same noise. So, the project of postmodernism was to decouple mimetic artistic gestures from their easy emotional responses, and to make the audience work again to find meaning. This includes thwarting the audience's expectations (John Cage) and including ambiguity in art, where it isn't clear exactly what the artist intends. Postmodernism asks its audience to experience the world again as if for the first time. But that was 80 years ago. Artistic movements don't last 80 years. They last 10-15 years. Postmodernism has been co-opted by agents who use it as a blunt Nihilst instrument, to destroy any aesthetic. This is not true postmodernism, but is brutalism. Art from artists that hate their audience is brutalist. Brutalism is rampant in architecture, and there is also plenty of literature, music, and theatre that is meant to display the artists' antipathy for its audience. Let's differentiate between postmodernism, which was great a long time ago, and brutalism, which is a terrible and destructive influence now.
Postmodernism the method was doing okay, until it became ideology-ised during the 1970s to late 1990s.
As a method, it has its advantages since it demands the analyst stepping outside his own preconceived set of truths, be they "hard" or "soft" science or of a socio-cultural nature, or the senses themselves or pure experience for that matter.
As an ideology or perhaps even an epistemology and ontology, it instead becomes a perpetuum mobile of rationalisation, very much akin in nature to economics: everything is reduced via rationalisation and reductionism to the lowest common denominator, then made equal and the same by linguistics and semantics, and then the arguement and position which was not provable or possible to argue for intially is exhumed (or re-animated) from this process. This is why postmodernists and those mired in its method of reason can spout things like "All laws are arbitrary" and think that this a) means no laws are justified, moral or have intrinsical value, as well as b) being able to state it is so, makes it so and removes from the speaker any moral imperative or any burden of proof beyond relativisation.
The reason for the above process is the french post-WW2 philosophers, once called "the new philosophers". I'm sure I don't have to name names. Where postmodernism as method simply enable one to pick apart societal phenomena and contrast and compare them (the, or one of the original point(s) of sociology) in order to further understanding of them (not "being understanding of them"), it does not permit someone to rationalise their own actions as always morally good, something which postmodernism the ideology does as it sees morals/ethics, logic and so on as just another semantic costume for the ever-underlying powerplay.
I'll go so far as to admit there's /a/ truth to that, but it is not /the/ truth.
The truth is instead that without absolute and external to the individual source(s) of morality, the individual himself must stand exposed before his own deeds, feelings and urges: how much more soothing then the embrace of frigid and forgiving nihilism.
Which is why postmodernists always come across as relativists and nihilists, at least superficially. Less intellectually honest than dogs, they cannot own up to "My will, my deed" but must instead blame [insert fetish* here], much the same as a child of five might do: "It wasn't me, it was the TV-people that took the cookies!". This is why they often seem so perversely childish and childlike: they take refuge in their own inability and unwillingness to assume responsibility, and (just as a spoiled child) will use this behaviour as leverage: "If [insert current fad here] is accepted and respected and cherished, then I'll hurt myself!"
Look at the trans-somethings and homosexuals for the perfect examples (unsurprising given that ideological postmodernism was conceived by homosexual pedophiles).
Another reason is of course that the use of postmodern method really isn't all that special. A (in my day) common exercise was simply: "Analyse text A according to school of thought B", f.e. a feminist analysis of "Heart of Darkness" or a catholic analysis of "A Clockwork Orange". Hardly exciting and unlikely to yield much influence and power, and certainly not any kind of absolution for urges, wants and deeds.
I have a great impatience with the so-called intellectuals who vomit up word salad. I don't parse Postmodernism; I'd rather just bayonet the fool braying it. Postmodernism needs no parsing, it needs no deconstruction; it takes no analysis to know it's just a pseudo-intellectual paint job for a special communism designed for perverted, degenerate filth.
It's a waste of time to engage such midwits in argument. Better by far to just shoot them in the guts.
The only good postmodernist (COMMIE) is a dead postmodernist (COMMIE.)
“Knowledge is impossible.”
Hm. How do they know that?
I have coined this era, The Age of Rediscovery. Discovering and applying old ways of understanding towards new knowledge gained. For instance, metabolic science is now understanding WHY the old ways of eating were healthier for the homo sapien compared to modern diets. This is old knowledge understood in a modern way. A blending of the old and new instead of a disregard and dismissal of our past. Homo sapien has lost much knowledge on the road to modernity. It is now being rediscovered. It's a beautiful thing.
You know, this Essay reminds me a little bit of another that John michael greer wrote on Critical theory.
He basically Describes the History of Critical theory, along with where it went wrong, referencing both that very same inventor of Zetecism that is the hero of this Essay, Joseph storm, but another great and late philosopher who fought the myths of Progress, Bruno Latour.
here is a link to all who are curious.
https://www.ecosophia.net/the-myth-of-modernity/
A fantastic piece I'm gonna have to save to ponder longer. The problem of postmodernity (and its roots in modernity) has been on my mind a lot lately. You might have suggested me a solution.
It is sublimely refreshing to read this essay, and know that inquiring, open minds are dissecting the Post-modern Amoeba. The initial findings suggest—as we knew all along—that the Amoeba will not and cannot survive, as it has essentially castrated and neutered itself in so many ways (I use both surgical terms to allow for the current 14,259 genders).
I’m reminded of a book that Jonah Goldberg published in 2012, “The Tyranny of Cliches”, wherein he dissected how Liberals tend to mangle language, to obfuscate their real message. Fascinating analysis, but then poor Jonah talked himself into the Darkside, bless his heart. Alas, now he’s One of Them.
Interesting statement: “…skeptical seeking, which Storm calls ‘Zeteticism’.” That sounds a lot like what was only recently otherwise known as classical “Science” and “Philosophy”: knowing that you do not—and cannot—know everything, but nevertheless still desperately yearning to know more; or at least as much more as your mortal being can grasp.
Anyway, you also state, “We are accepting that a) human knowledge is not the same as infallible access to absolute truth; and that b) the postmodern dogmas are patently false even on their own merits, and do not even carry the appearance of truth.” Might I humbly suggest a sequel to this fine essay of yours: pick up where Poor Jonah left off.
I.e., in the section where you quote Storm’s various examples of post-modern’s absolute assertions, “Essentialism is a kind of violence…”, etc., choose perhaps 4 or 5 of his examples (or as many as you wish!) and give us a Playbook of (brief) Retorts. Give us a playbook we can take to the Streets.
Maybe?
Think of the fun we could have. We could party like it’s 2016.
Your description of the search for lower t truths sounds a lot like William James’ philosophical pragmatism. A response to the totalizing theories of modernism that left room for knowledge and values. The road not taken was always there.
I’m thinking that Steve Patterson and yourself would find a lot to talk about.
I also joined for the art !