For those of you Darlings who follow my blog, I have told many times of my repulsion of Postmodern Philosophy.
But what is Postmodernism? And how has it effected our culture? And is there a way to fight it?
(I say yes we can but we all have to come together and individually call out the naked emperor in the room if we wish to make a good start.)
So what is Postmodernism? But it's that question that is the main problem. Postmodernism is, in itself, undefinable by its own nature but yet has premises that are definable. (Irrational, isn't it?) And yet Postmodernism is a very irrational philosophy by it's nature that it's all cryptic and masquerading on its true intentions.
But basically, Postmodernism is pretty much, in a nutshell, a philosophy of nihilism. Of Zero. There is nothing to gain and nothing to lose but individual will. And how bad has it effected the culture? Well, just looking outside, very badly and is in need to be cured. So let's get into explaining some of the tenants of Postmodernism.
Postmodernism is verily characterized by the destruction of language to make it devoid of meaning and create supposedly intellectual ideas by only using a large vocabulary, willingness to irrational emotionalism over rationalism, the fact that Truth isn't Objective, and that everything is political rather than moral. It sound pretty distinctive right? But the fact that it was able to be evasive for around 75+ years makes it more dreadful.
It maneuvered itself to adapt to all sorts of philosophically bad and irrational ideals in order to pursue a political agenda rather than examine how the world is and what is the way of life we should follow. Postmodernism has many children including but not limited to Cultural Marxism with the very controversial and poisoning Frankfurt School of Thought, Feminism, especially 3rd wave, Reverse Racism and Racism, Affirmative Action and Cultural Appropriation, Guilt mongering (not really an ideology but they he sure pisses everyone the fuck off with making people feel guilty for no reason of their own fault), and Deconstruction (deconstruction of everything whether be family, society, religion, language, science (yes even science), philosophy, art, etc. without actually critiquing it and wanting to improve on ideas that are good). It's a lot I know but the first step in stopping your enemies is naming them down and they are all guilty of trying to make us feel like we are the villains.
But our main focus will be on the tenants as they are the principles (or rather the lack hereof) that motivate the Postmodernists.
1) The Destruction of Language: You see all those Social Justice Warriors constantly say all this trigger word censoring which is a primary and basic example of how they want to destroy language. We can't say this for we'll upset someone or it's not polite to say even if it's true or if it's wrong. It doesn't matter. If they think you can't say it, it's moral to censor it. But how does that fit into the whole postmodern thing? Thank Jean Baudrillard and Jacques Derrida. Although these two fit more into deconstruction, their main works of philosophic inquiry is extremely had and punishing to even go through because of the language of choice to make it hard to fully understand anything. Here's an example from Baudrillard's Simulacra and Simulation in which he describes Disneyland as a simulation. Try to follow. If you can't, I totally understand.
"Whence the possibility of an Ideological Analysis of Disneyland: Digest of the American way of Life, Pangyric of American Values, Idealized Transportation Of A Contradictory Reality, Certainly."
Did you get it? Kind of? I had to discuss the full quote about the whole reality thing.
But notice how Baudrillard uses confusing and elaborate language that really doesn't get to the full point unless we think about it rather than explaining in a very specific and non-confusing way. The point is to confuse the reader rather than make a focus on, in this case, about how Disneyland is a variation of reality and how, in Baudrillard's opinion, Disneyland adds on to how reality is faked with hyperactivity. If it's confusing but oddly makes sense, you might've seen The Matrix trilogy with all the situations of reality and what is reality and the whole Allegory of the Cave metaphor. (In fact, Simulacra and Simulation makes appearances in The Matrix Revolutions.) But we wouldn't know this until someone else translates it for us even though Baudrillard is saying all forms of reality are fake no matter what we perceive as real when we differentiate Disneyland from actual Reality. Baudrillard makes it clear that reality itself isn't to be trusted even if it's just a vague notion of what can be understandable of his words.
2) Emotion vs. Reason: No doubt I support reason but that we should allow emotion to convey our most powerful of reactions to the world and the events of our lives (Kinda like Opera does), but Postmodernism allows reaction without reason to guide it along the way. As we see with groups like SJW's, Antifa, ISIS, Neo-Nazis, and other similar styled groups, they all are founded on raging and violent emotions, often of a ressintement type to enforce dominance over others. It doesn't care to argue, illuminate, even THINK but would rather allow justification for violence for violence's sake. And it's this emotion that allows them to fight against the grain and sometimes get the upper hand in the bad and criminal aspects of the world. Their envy and jealousy gets to them to destroy anything if it doesn't benefit them in the long run.
3) Truth is Subjective: The truth is an enemy of our goals is what the postmodern philosophers cry out. So false leads, lying, and other consequential actions are justified when truth can't be verified and scrutinized under the microscope or anyone who, dare I say it, judged someone. (That's another perk of being an atheist in my opinion. I can judge and unlike all other religions which decry judging, I can still judge against those who say I can't do that.) Very similar to the Existentialist philosophers like Soren Kierkegaard, Jean-Paul Sarte (another of the postmodernists), Fyodor Dostoevsky, and Friedrich Nietzsche, (the last two I do want to research more of though I have little of their works), truth is subjective but unlike the Existentialists who wish to find meaning in the world whether be religious like Kierkegaard and Dostoevsky or atheist like Sartre and Nietzsche, and make it meaningful to people's lives to address either a need to turn back to religion or to find value in a godless age (despite also believing truth is subjective), the Postmodernist doesn't want to find truth in values. It is the absolute destruction of Objective Truth is Liberation to them and regression to the "others."
4) Deconstruction of everything: This isn't more focused on any philosopher other than French Postmodernist Jacques Derrida. Famous for his philosophy of deconstruction of all things even language, Derrida focuses on that there is no way to possibly understand the objective truth by trying to any well to use a quote from the YouTube Channel Wisecrack "Is a Cat "A Cat?"" He'd say no. Anything goes with what to call it without any standard and even goes to say all standards are frivolous to any meaning given to such a thing as language. And it goes further, art is given standard for "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder." Philosophy isn't great because of "Cis-gendered white guys got to make the call" instead of pointing out the merits and flaws of specific philosophies. Politics isn't noble and thus can't do anything til a democratic mob goes into it. The list goes on and on.
Thus Postmodernism doesn't really stand for anything other than a political purpose of power and control. It's a cause of anxiety and distress in an age of where not only anything goes, but it's all a quagmire of confusion and depression. But is there a way to fight it?
Yes there is. If we know it to be bad, Don't be afraid to judge it. Silence only adds on to evil deeds and as the quote goes, "The only necessity for evil to win, is for good men to do nothing." And the thresholds of such postmodern demagoguery is falling little by little. Colleges with ties to SJW's and Antifa are losing funding, Hollywood is losing creativity and fans with constant moralizing, The political left is trying hard but failing in being strong but being the beginning of a former shadow of itself, and there is a beginning revival in Enlightenment philosophy and Western Values of Merit, Individualism, Reason, and Freedom. But let's not forget that we ourselves must go into retrospect and examine the values we want to replace with the postmodern standard. Let's not go down a path of dogmatism lest we all get destroyed again.
Thanks for reading.
If you want to read a more detailed version with noting more on the disintegration of American Culture and What to do to reclaim it read Lying as A Way of Life by Alexandria York. She's a colleague of mine who writes Novels, Poetry, Songs, and has acted before she became a novelist. She also writes non-fiction dedicated to those who want to write for a better culture and lifestyle especially on making good art though I don't think she has a positive feeling about my personal favorite medium, video games. Here's the link to the Book below but it's in Kindle form. But don't worry about it being long as it's 62 pages long and a fast read. And it only costs one dollar. Not a bad investment right?
Here's a link to her Amazon page for the book.
https://www.amazon.com/LYING-WAY-LIFE-Corruption-Collectivism-ebook/dp/B01F27QF0O/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8
If you want to see what sources I used to reference, here's the Works Cited.
The Madness of Postmodern Philosophy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTUq5qxwwOs&feature=share
Truth to Power: The Postmodern Nightmare: https://charlieroberts223.wixsite.com/radicalpromthean/single-post/2017/08/20/My-new-office
The Transformation, Destruction of American Culture: http://www.newsmax.com/AlexandraYork/individualism-america-united-states-culture/2017/09/26/id/815832/
Objectivists Discuss: Postmodernism W/ Dr. Stephen Hicks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ZxU-9KZo2E&list=PLEZByVyr3iAJw3PbBrrIsd5ND6YRr8Oha
Is A Cat A Cat? (Derrida+Double Dragon) 8-Bit Philosophy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Zw04hraCVo
The Matrix Revolutions: What Went Wrong? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27rhHfBugnc
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