When the topic of post modernism comes up, I always brace for the onslaught of adherents who sorta miss the point of what PoMo thought is all about. It’s been so long since I’ve dealt with an actual post modern argument, and not just people who want to replace authoritarian definitions with their own authoritarian definitions.
So perhaps we are arguing against a pale imitation of what a post modern argument actually looks like, because at least in this explanation of PoMo theory, it doesn’t sound as beyond the pale.
So, when postmodern folks claim subjectivity it is not that they are saying nothing, it is that they are acknowledging both their own flaws and the need for constant interrogation of the facts laid out before us. The idea that one must come to a conclusion in order to find truth is actually the definition of fascism. If a dictionary must appear in its final form, who says the human race must not also? And how would such a society deal with change—specifically that of cultural migration and economic unease.
So, hopefully, this at least establishes the urgent need to abandon the very concept of objective truth. Objective truth is anti-democratic. There is no such thing as an unbiased statement that has not been shaped by elements of power or hierarchy. There is no such thing as a random statement, and there is no such thing as a true statement. In fact, a random statement and a true statement amount to the same thing, and it is only by connecting them that we can give meaning to either.
I can hear the grumbles now. Saying truth is the same as randomness is actually saying nothing! Really? Then why on earth react to it at all? If this statement really said nothing, wouldn’t a more adequate response be: ‘what do you think?’ or even, just in case ‘can you speak up?’ No, but truth, in how we arrive at its exact conclusions, can only retain any meaning if we acknowledge how arbitrary it is to get to that exact spot of perfection. It is only then that we can begin to unpack the biases that got us to that spot, which of course aren’t random at all, and link throughout history, sociology, geography, physics and biology. It is only after we unmask the assumption that is in authority that we can dethrone it and restore democracy.
Now, there is nothing true about democracy either. Each person operates within their own distance from the truth but at least, to borrow Marx, implies ownership of the production of truth, rather than the blind following of it. Does such a philosophy naturally imply the free market, rather than Marxism? Not necessarily. The distribution of goods, the control over the means of production, those sorts of things are not the same as ideas, let alone people. It could be very possible to have a centralized form of economics that thrived for diverse ideas and people. In fact, such a neutral form of economics—pure in its democracy and lack of discrimination—would imply absolute blindness to differences and a replacement of this hierarchy of difference with universal human rights. That doesn’t mean that each difference wouldn’t get a say, it is to say that each would have a right, no matter their say.
It is fairly obvious that an economy that has no such tools to guarantee human rights would naturally create hierarchies to (re) order distribution and create profits. The idea that one must have an objective idea of truth to reject neoliberalism implies that the neoliberalism was a cultural, not an economic counter-revolution. This seems to apply a backward order of operations. Even though the neoliberal has assaulted the cultural and the personal, it a truly perplexing leap for Marxists to make the claim that as soon as the economic theory of their “objective” choice falls out of favor, we suddenly are not talking about economics anymore, but culture that drives the economy. Just dead wrong.
The goal of the lie of objective truth is to establish power for a certain group of people, so that they can therefore profit from and exploit the people whose truth does not fit the proper definition of normality. That’s why Foucalt saw prisons so clearly. What is a prison? And who decides it?
bleatmop
Mystro
Dead Wild Roses 
15 comments
September 12, 2019 at 8:46 am
tildeb
Do you not see and hear Orwell’s 1984 terminology on full display here?
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September 13, 2019 at 1:33 pm
Jesus
‘The objective truth is that there is no objective truth.’ This idea is not only silly given all the objective truths people work with everyday in math, science and engineering; all the objective truths that describe what you know of the universe; it’s self-contradictory!
If a Christian fundamentalist said something this dumb, you’d post it on your Sunday Religious Disservice.
The truth is, truth is the only path to development of any kind. Especially human development.
With Ptolemy’s model of the universe, you got the development of astrology. You can build a lie on a lie, but you can’t build very many because there’s no depths to plumb.
But put the sun at the center of a solar system and the whole universe opens up to you in a big bang! That is the power of truth!
Of course like Orwell said, some people only see truth as rules to use to manipulate resources. They would say math doesn’t actually exist. It’s just a set of rules to memorize. Tell them that the statement “2 + 2 = 4” is immutable and therefore eternal, and it does not stir the soul. They live in the meat!
Orwell warns these kinds of people can be very dangerous. Some want to kill off any kind of free thinking and force everyone to live in a hysterical world of brute animal instincts run amok. “A boot stamping on a human face forever.”
I like to think Orwell is 10% inspiration and 90% observation.
They don’t make ’em like they used to, do they?
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September 14, 2019 at 7:48 am
The Arbourist
@Tildeb
I do, but understanding something and exploring it, isn’t the the same thing as condoning it.
You’ll know if I go full Foucault, but today is not that day.
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September 14, 2019 at 9:58 am
tildeb
Yes, understanding why this is totalitarian thinking is important. And on that issue, we in the West are failing badly, which is why the foundation of our liberal values is being attacked relentlessly – even if unknowingly and with good intentions – by the Woke in disguise of tolerance and respect. This ideology is neither but attempt to warp reality… starting with language.
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September 14, 2019 at 11:08 am
Jesus
Why don’t you share, with your readers, your understanding of this idea in a short essay? Just to prove to your audience that you have an actual understanding and are not just a fashionable dittohead pretending to.
I promise I won’t sully your essay with any of my foolish thoughts. As the saying goes, “Do not put your pearls before swine, they will only trample them underfoot. Do not give your pearls to dogs, they will only attack you.” I will respect your superior intellect with my silence.
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September 19, 2019 at 11:08 am
The Arbourist
@Jesus
I’m curious Jesus, as you’ve displayed close to zero touch with reality (see the religious inanity) and little argumentative charity why I should do anything at your request?
I note the use of terminology from US right-wing flak sources and puzzle why you would want a coherent definition of anything, given the amount of distortion your particular lens adds to any topic.
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September 21, 2019 at 3:28 pm
tildeb
A fabulous explanation of and critical deconstruction of why Post Modernism is regressive and anti-liberal by Helen Pluckrose here.
These are three very good points she raises :
“The desire to “smash” the status quo, challenge widely held values and institutions and champion the marginalized is absolutely liberal in ethos. Opposing it is resolutely conservative. This is the historical reality, but we are at a unique point in history where the status quo is fairly consistently liberal, with a liberalism that upholds the values of freedom, equal rights and opportunities for everyone regardless of gender, race and sexuality. The result is confusion in which life-long liberals wishing to conserve this kind of liberal status quo find themselves considered conservative and those wishing to avoid conservatism at all costs find themselves defending irrationalism and illiberalism.”
Yup. Been labeled as a alt-Right, Conservative, and anti-liberal many time by readers who should know better. But hey, they have to fit me into their PoMo ideology.
One major takeaway point here:
“We on the Left should be very afraid of what “our side” has produced. Of course, not every problem in society today is the fault of postmodern thinking, and it is not helpful to suggest that it is. The rise of populism and nationalism in the US and across Europe are also due to a strong existing far-Right and the fear of Islamism produced by the refugee crisis. Taking a rigidly “anti-SJW” stance and blaming everything on this element of the Left is itself rife with motivated reasoning and confirmation bias. The Left is not responsible for the far-Right or the religious-Right or secular nationalism, but it is responsible for not engaging with reasonable concerns reasonably and thereby making itself harder for reasonable people to support. It is responsible for its own fragmentation, purity demands and divisiveness which make even the far-Right appear comparatively coherent and cohesive.”
This what Sam Harris and others on the Intellectual Dark Web have been warning us for years. To little avail, of course.
What’s the solution? What’s a true classical liberal supposed to do when they see 1984 TruthSpeak supporters arising from their ranks?
“In order to regain credibility, the Left needs to recover a strong, coherent and reasonable liberalism. To do this, we need to out-discourse the postmodern-Left. We need to meet their oppositions, divisions and hierarchies with universal principles of freedom, equality and justice. There must be a consistency of liberal principles in opposition to all attempts to evaluate or limit people by race, gender or sexuality. We must address concerns about immigration, globalism and authoritarian identity politics currently empowering the far- Right rather than calling people who express them “racist,” “sexist” or “homophobic” and accusing them of wanting to commit verbal violence. We can do this whilst continuing to oppose authoritarian factions of the Right who genuinely are racist, sexist and homophobic, but can now hide behind a façade of reasonable opposition to the postmodern-Left.”
And finally, some much needed clarity:
“Our current crisis is not one of Left versus Right but of consistency, reason, humility and universal liberalism versus inconsistency, irrationalism, zealous certainty and tribal authoritarianism. The future of freedom, equality and justice looks equally bleak whether the postmodern Left or the post-truth Right wins this current war. Those of us who value liberal democracy and the fruits of the Enlightenment and Scientific Revolution and modernity itself must provide a better option.“
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September 21, 2019 at 3:29 pm
tildeb
Oops. Failed to close the link after the term ‘here’. My bad.
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September 22, 2019 at 7:40 am
The Arbourist
@ tildeb
Fixed the tag. Thanks for the link, its good reading.
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September 22, 2019 at 7:40 am
The Arbourist
@ tildeb
Fixed the tag. Thanks for the link, its good reading.
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September 22, 2019 at 9:15 am
The Arbourist
More reading, perhaps a counterpoint to the Sam Harris piece. https://arcdigital.media/sam-harris-has-a-problem-ad5debba9d62
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September 22, 2019 at 10:39 am
tildeb
Perhaps? No. Is not. This is a hack piece because it does not represent accurately either Harris’ position or that of his justifications. This is a very biased, motivated hack piece.
Harris is a classical liberal in values. His public criticisms against any and all things contrary to these values are well expressed by him and badly misrepresented by such authors as the one who wrote this. One need look no further than the two very different renditions of the Harris/Affleck event. Like this twisted rendition, the author makes a basic error: Rash presumes the progressive Left Affleck champions is the default position for the Left, the only ‘correct’ one (that to criticize Islamism as a threat to Western secular liberal values is to be bigoted against Muslims) and so the same Left Harris is championing should align with Rash’s ideology. But neither Harris nor reality aligns and so the Rash ‘blames’ Harris for this discrepancy and justifies this by claiming a lack of scholarship on his part. In fact, these progressive and liberal positions are antithetical by values and so when Harris champions Murray’s right to speak scholarship about race for whichh he is fully qualified but is vilified as a racist for doing so and verbally and physically attacked by Progressives as a bigot, Harris is well within his own considerable expertise to know that there is no scholarship in intelligence studies contrary to this fact.
But Rash doesn’t bother with such facts because he already knows better, knows that such scholarship is contrary to the values of his own progressive ideology that he wishes to promote. Rash confuses equality in rights that Harris supports (second to none) to be equality in biology… the same ideological purity test that confuses equity with equality that drives the same contra-factual presumption for, say, equity (and therefore interchangeability) between the sexes. You know where this idiocy leads. Rash holds Harris in contempt for standing by his liberal value of respecting reality’s arbitration of beliefs we hold about it. Rash redefines this steadfastness as a ‘lack’ of scholarship on Harris’ part. So this link is hack job, a series of intentional misrepresentation of Harris, his opinions, (along with the mandatory drive-by smear of New Atheism, of course). It is unmitigated bullshit that intentionally maligns Harris and Murray and anyone else who dares to defend the classical liberal of respecting reality that Harris clearly and consistently supports.
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September 22, 2019 at 11:50 am
The Arbourist
That piece was featured on pharyngula and as that was a hub of the New atheism and then atheism plus I thought it was an article of interest.
I used to frequent Pharyngula, but always with a bit of reservation as much of the commentariate seems to subscribe to a point of view that does not tolerate dissent or other opinions.
Over there, they now hold positions that, are not rooted in anything resembling the reality we inhabit. Yet they have several erudite commenters that seem to uncritically parrot much of what the regressive left is guilty of.
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September 22, 2019 at 3:01 pm
tildeb
Yes, I too used to visit Pharyngula and over time came to the same conclusion you did. I also became alarmed at the swelling tide of wokeness it promoted (sending forth ‘The Horde’) without encountering much understanding of its well-informed critics… but much targeted and approved hostility. A favourite target was and remains Sam Harris and I find there is widespread faith-based belief that he says and means things he does not say or mean. And this became obvious to me when he wrote about morality and proposed the increased use of science to examine moral claims using the metric of human well-being. His thesis has been twisted beyond all recognition and I read erudite people espousing this incorrect assumption all the time and then going along with a vilification of him because they believe him to be deserving.
It just seems obvious to me that if one is going to criticize faith-based beliefs, as Pharyngula used to regularly contribute, then one should try harder – even if one is the Host – to recognize if the same problem is present for one’s own faith-based beliefs and, if truly honest, learn and then adjust accordingly. That’s what I call intellectual integrity and is what I think has been entirely lost at Pharyngula.
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September 22, 2019 at 3:09 pm
tildeb
The warning from Harris et al is about finding recognition and support for well known threats only from extreme right positions and that this will have a tremendous cost to all of us when the center (where classical liberal values have produced massive improvements and progress over a relatively short span of time in all the areas currently espoused by the Progressives as belonging only to them) is deemed ‘radical’ and ‘intolerant’ and ‘racist’ and ‘bigoted’ and ‘privileged’ and the majority go along with this new definition as if true. And if an election of a populist like Trump (and now others in the world) doesn’t demonstrate this very real danger the Left has helped to create, then I don’t what might.
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