“He who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side; if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion.” -John Stuart Mills
This essay is actually the very end of a long thread of back-and-forth discussion in a Discord forum. There are plenty of reasons to dislike postmodern philosophy- it practitioners often pretend an intellectual vanity which is ill-deserved, or default to a Motte and Bailey approach to debate which is frustrating, claiming that central tenets of postmodernism simply aren’t what are claimed, even though many who deploy postmodernism in practice couldn’t be more explicit is their stated aims once one looks at the actual literature.
But today, I found myself going for the jugular of postmodernism. I decided to assault the Mottle itself, the claim that postmodernism only critiques grand narratives, whether the critique is motivated by cultural biases or rooted in language. I hope I’ve made a convincing case that postmodern philosophy is a dangerous practice, which makes little effort to fully appreciate the harms its approach can unwittingly release on the world.
Ella-B:
If you are referring to post modernists who happen to be marxists this is a fundamental misunderstanding of post modernism peddled by Hicks & Peterson. Just because some or many post modernists have marxist beliefs of varying interpretations isn’t related to post modernist theory.
No, it’s not that at all. My problem is that in the final analysis postmodernism is systemically prone to solipsism. We’ve all done it. In fact, if we want to look back into the history of philosophy then Descartes made the proposition that only valid thing one could know about the world was ‘I think therefore I am’. Put another way, criticism is easy- it’s the intellectual low hanging fruit. The genius proposes an argument, the mediocre can only dispose of the arguments of others. It’s why frustrated writers become critics.
Ella-B:
The theory is simply a critique of grand narratives which would include marxism.
That’s another problem with postmodernism. Although it’s a fair position to critique grand narratives, demolishing them or critiquing them out of existence can be incredibly harmful. One of these would be the Moral Arc of History. For the past couple of centuries it has been demonstrably true- and we can prove it by looking at the metrics of history, in terms of access to rights, material improvements in living standards, live expectancy, deaths in childbirth and infant mortality.
OK, so maybe it’s not fair to say that postmodernism critiques the Moral Arc of History in areas such as race, and perhaps its more the case that it’s the application of postmodern philosophy which is employed to this end, but the practitioners of postmodernism commit a causal fallacy here. They assume that there must be other factors which account for the Moral Arc. Perhaps its because people are better educated, because we’ve taught kids to be more tolerant and inclusive, because we’ve already dismantled some small part of the machinery of Structural Racism but we need to go faster, and in destroying myths about the Moral Arc of History and the apparatus of Structural Racism, we can achieve greater ‘equity’ faster.
It’s a horrendously flawed argument for one simple reason- especially in areas of culture, the Moral Arc of History only exists and continues to work, because we believed it to be so. Think of it this way- a hundred dollar bill is a social construct. It has no inherent value- other than as a piece of paper which can be written on, or burned as kindling. It only has value because we believe in it collectively.
The same thing is true of racial progress. If you are White you might believe that racial progress is further forward than a Black person might feel looking at the same circumstances from different perspectives, but until quite recently both Black and White were united in the belief that even things weren’t perfect today, weren’t fair, they would be better tomorrow or a decade from now.
The call of Critical Race Theory is to deconstruct the myth of racial progress as a means to highlight current Structural Racism and dismantle the structures of power which perpetuate it, but the emerging evidence shows that once one dismantles the myth of the Moral Arc of History it demolishes the benign effects of believing in this grand narrative- in effect, the hundred dollar bill becomes worthless. And this is made most apparent through the universal ‘lived experience’ of men versus women, which is perhaps the most powerful dividing line of all, when one compares other such arbitrary division like race or sexuality.
Because men give up when they are presented with the perception of a rigged game. They cheat in a misguided and often ill-advised attempt to level the playing field. They become aggressive and act out. And whatever utility to be gained from destroying this myth of racial progress in the cause of raising consciousness or dismantling systems of injustice, it is likely to be far less than the removal of the benign effects of our shared, if discordant, beliefs in this shared narrative.
In many ways it’s similar to the history of teaching and the erstwhile desire to remove competitive sports from the curriculum. Did competitive sports encourage boys to adopt a more competitive rather than cooperative and collaborative approach in the world? Certainly. Did competitive sports aid the cause of capitalism in the world by providing labour which was better conditioned towards the competition inherent to capitalism? Of course. Historically, did sports begin as a means of preparing male youth for war throughout time? Without a doubt.
But the other purpose served through competitive sports was in helping young males particularly prone to biological aggression find a way to channel that aggression into healthy and constructive pursuits which weren’t harmful to society. It was a source of positive male mentoring and a means of teaching thoroughly benign mechanisms like being a good sportsman, learning how to cope with losing in a constructive manner and also learning not to gloat too persistently or loudly when one wins. In this instance, the removal of the perceived negative effects of competitive sports was harmful, because no one considered the far more beneficial positive effects- namely, keeping young men out of jail by improving their behaviour.
And I will readily admit that postmodernists have a point about grand narratives and the lies we tell ourselves, but what they unerringly tend to do is underestimate the potential costs and pitfalls of removing particular grand narratives from the cultural landscape. It’s tantamount to throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
In many ways its like the argument about socialism pursued to its logical extreme. Yes, there have been some successes with the less extreme and more moderate approach to redistribution, but taken to the extreme, all the numerous experiments to date have shown that a country quickly loses it’s ability to produce sufficient food for its population, as established systems of economic delivery are broken down through the removal of existing property rights. People starve.
And this isn’t a strawman argument. In practical terms I’ve watched and read enough of the likes of 13th, the 1619 project and The New Jim Crow, to know that the argument goes something along the lines that systems of injustice with regard to race constantly reinvent themselves through the prevailing power interests of Whites as a group- rendering the Moral Arc with regard to race a fiction. The problem with the practical application of postmodernism applied to deconstruct the grand narrative of the Moral Arc of History, is that its proponents make the assumption that the Moral Arc is a given which we can always rely upon, like the sunshine in the morning or the rain.
It’s a dangerous assumption to make, and one ignorant of history at every time and every place throughout history, other than for a brief spell in the West and a few other relatively rare and isolated periods in history. All the evidence suggests that the Moral Arc only exists because we collectively believed in the power of its mythos. Remove that mythos and the effect will dissipate as the belief ages out in the population.
You may believe this is untrue, that I’m just plain wrong about this one, but why then are younger people becoming less comfortable with LGBTQ? This article tries to place the blame on other factors like Trump or the rise of hatred on social media, but one actually needs to look at the data which the article actually gives. Why would the effect be strongest in the group most likely to be Left-leaning and anti-Trump- young women? It’s because in the absence of grand narratives which unite people in pursuit of a common perceived public good, people revert to their own power interests.
That’s the real problem with postmodernism- critiquing grand narratives isn’t a problem, it’s the assumption that deconstructing them to the point of robbing them of their power entirely will inevitably lead to a better place. All the evidence would tend to argue to the contrary.
‘It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.’
Aug 31, 2022·edited Aug 31, 2022Liked by Geary Johansen
As for younger people getting less comfortable around member's of LGBTQ+ communities, it's because of the fear of causing offense, no? if we resort to Occam again?
your link there is further evidence for the creeping mediocrity of woke thought. 'journalism' that shows no understanding of polling, or sources, or sociology in general.
“We count on the narrative that young people are more progressive and tolerant,” John Gerzema, CEO of The Harris Poll, told USA TODAY. “These numbers are very alarming and signal a looming social crisis in discrimination.”
No disagreement here. Since Marx and Foucault we've been dished out alternatives to philosophy and religion that have enhanced humanity and culture over centuries and millennia. Fans of both seem to be rendered intolerant, even totalitarian.
I returned to "On Liberty" again a couple months back, and appreciated the citation. Sadly, I doubt current readers could handle the ideas or the very long sentences. Perhaps you could assemble an executive summary or an illustrated short course on same to be shared by cellphone.
Aug 31, 2022·edited Aug 31, 2022Liked by Geary Johansen
You’re right as rain, mate: either Grand Narratives reign, or story-telling apes face an abject ruin—as gazillions of unreined self-serving micro acts beget a macro chaos ☻
This is probably the best article I've read on the Omega Inflection. It's taut and very well argued and there's very little one can add.
If anything were to be added I would suggest more on complexity and ambiguity. Both these factors fall by the wayside in the rather simplistic attempts one sees to replace the Moral Arc. Certainties are no match for reality and for the fact that there is no one single way.
Man, I geeked out reading this. I grew up studying postmodern theory, loving the Simpsons and Beck and other exemplars of the philosophy. Teach it to kids. You know, as a subject, not an ideology. Got my smoke and my coffee and Godspeed! You black emperor playing in the background. Good to go here in the comments!
This is one of my first (the first?) interactions with you stone cold sober. You, Matt McManus, a few others inspired me with your insistence on logic and reason as everyone in the world all went stupid at the same time. Inspired me to focus on reason as a way out of darkness. I want to give you and your writing the respect of a clear mind.
as clear as this mind gets, ahem ...
Been solosober for 2 months now, and it's going freakin' great. this is a tangent, but bear with me here, i get back to postmodernism. I've been thinking about this all damn year since, or at least since getting cancelled in march. for playing a song by a pulitzer prize winner in class, natch.
No need to get into it here, but suffice to say, I was on a downward spiral. straight-up existential crisis for years, following many personal losses. alchohol was my big 'FU' to the world around me. I hit rock bottom in my quest to complete 'project oblivion'. and I came out of it. why?
because, fuck you relativism. fuck this shit. my anger at this faux-woke BS, which for me became personified in the way progressives - likely, postmodernists, whether or not they know it- treated me during my multiple bereavements, that anger woke up something in side of me that was stronger than my desire for the self-annihilation that is isolation and booze.
Given that both my first and second-tier support networks had been wiped out due to tragedy, I sure as fuck needed a reason to get out of bed. and it was believing something as simple as the emperor has no clothes. like, I was in suspended animation for years of despair, a literal unfrozen caveman teacher, woke up and this is the world around me? wtf guys? this shit is happening on your watch and nobody says anything in progressive circles? SOBs who never got their hands dirty are trashing me, whose waded through the detritus of actual progressive work his entire life?
I got a word for that bro. gaslighting.
it's hard work to claim any kind of moral or intellectual authority. I claim both. I'm sure you do too, and you have earned it man, over and over again, publicly in your writing. to me, we are both 'whole-hearted and half-sure'. the truth is out there, we can never know it, so let's at least try the best we can right? these half-assed relativists do no work and claim moral and intellectual authority?
$#^@ that BS, right?
It was a better reason to get out of bed for me, at least, than no reason at all. and that's why i got sober bro. to better call BS.
occam's razor is a neutral tool. it's the wielder who determines good or evil. people wrote me off as a dumbass due to my drinking, and didn't listen when I insisted that my problem was grief. it was easier for people to attribute my 'fall' to my own actions rather than someone broken from multiple traumas. it fits their comfortable moral universe better.
there is no 'there but by the grace of god' in smug, middle class progressives, because there is literally no god other than self-actualization, the ultimate act of relativity.
and here I go, writing about the self, freakin' middle-class white male. I am simply trying to illustrate my arguments anecdotally, and unfortunately, the best examples I have of this in application are personal.
ultimately, postmodernism to me represents freedom, and it has become the most ironic of cages in application. obviously, relativism will consume itself if the logic is tested in ethical realms, and postmodernists were aware of this! you often write of the decline or even demise of so many of those fundamentals of human existence, family, faith, community, career. your argument here for sport in schools.
(Is that under threat, btw, in the UK? news to me here in Toronto, but again, depressed shut-in....)
anyway, as a shut-in with weird philosophical interests, I had nothing but time on my hands to immerse myself in them. take, say, the muddy waters of the QC. this experience talking to people on both sides of the political divide in real time, on say, Jan 6th - to me, it appeared that I was seeing the failure of this academic philosophy - postmodernism- live, real time in the progressive response. which inflames the culture wars that progressives claim to despise, but inflame anyway.
obviously, I quit QC in disgust with the conservative BS justifying their narratives around Jan 6th. they, too, were ironically relativistic when their cards were on the table. I mean, Trump truly is the postmodern president, no?
but I'm more upset with progressives, because those are my beliefs they are abusing.
my story is anecdotal evidence for sure, but at the end of the day, I think it does illustrate these issues very clearly. when multiple individuals report similar experiences, then we start moving from anecdote to data.
my answer to the postmodernist question? challenge em on postmodern grounds. beat em at their own game. and believe me, it's like shooting fish in a barrel with this lot.
what, you disagree? with me? but my lived experience!!!
FWIW, I wrote this entire reply in, hopefully, a postmodern spirit. please forgive the literary flourishes, but it just fits the subject. I think of Puck, the trickster, as a postmodern icon. he constantly needles and questions, playing pranks that reveal the absurdity of life, but does he ever deny the existence of a truth, something greater? nah. he embraces the spirit of a living in pursuit of an unknowable.
man, I worked on this one all morning. love to hear your thoughts!
(whoops, a last minute request)
I literally hold out hope that you can help me with a question that's plagued me for years. i wrote a phrase in an essay i can no longer find (ah, the days when your writing could just .... vanish), one that I likely shared with you back in the day on Quillette. From my unreliable memory...
On the subject of postmodernism, I wrote that I am "whole-hearted and half-sure". I attributed this paraphrase to Edward Said in my head for years, no idea why, never read the man. you got any familiarity with the idea?
in all likelihood, I am paraphrasing a beloved eccentric prof of mine, Ed O'Sullivan. he was an ecotheorist and educator, not at all a postmodernist, so I assume he was answering a question of mine.
any thoughts on the genesis of this idea, or comparable stuff, greatly appreciated
'a hundred dollar bill is a social construct. It has no inherent value- other than as a piece of paper which can be written on, or burned as kindling. It only has value because we believe in it collectively.'
That's a misconception, and it's important to flesh out because it's very relevant to your overall argument.
A hundred dollar bill has value because on the other end, way up the chain, is a bank and a central reserve that prints money and people with guns who can put you in jail if you don't use that bill in acceptable ways. A hundred dollar bill is a statement of credit controlled by people who use violent systems to regulate behaviour.
If the postmodernists end up in charge of these systems (and they are already in many places) the collapse of Grand Narratives won't mean that we stop believing in money. People who live in reality will always care about money in its different forms as they care for their own needs. Rather, 'paper' money will be used more directly as the tool of violent control that it is.
After all, the deconstructionists believe that the oppressor fundamentally owes them - that they are entitled to *credit* in the broadest sense.
The weaponisation of state-issued credit is a logical step in the pursuit of redressing wrongs. We are already seeing this principle being applied digitally in China, in Canada, in the war between Russia in the West, and just this week by Paypal and Venmo.
You mention that extreme socialism destroys a country's ability to produce food. The suffering peoples in these countries still believe in money, it's just that credit is weaponised against them.
The only way to meaningfully respond to the postmodernists, without perpetuating their games, is to ground your life and your speech in tangible, real things that cannot be endlessly manipulated as 'social constructs' and cannot be taken away through credit inflation or digital censorship.
hope you are fine, here in the Mediterranean sea we are having a nice summer, swimming is good though the sea has been very hot this year and there are a lot of jellyfish.
I would enter in discussing the comment from Ella B i have read some her comments in quillete and, she does not have the foot on the ground, yes theories, yes books, yes any kind of philosophical STUFF. But if you would ask her to define a world, a country or a region and it has to do produce and according to her theories how many people can live there, her facade will fall, she will try to turn the question around.
Communism is the best model theoretically, you can see communist working in a film, please watch "the Gods must be crazy", so the family living in the Kalahari are communist, they live very nicely because they are a small group (very first condition), they have plenty enough to be happy (second necessary condition), the managers of the society, the elders of the group have the well-being of each member of the community at their hearts would die to protect the other members (third essential condition). The film is really funny and i recommend it to anybody willing to enjoy a great time with a comedy completely different to the Hollywood ones.
Then when they get the flying object the second condition is removed, so they start quarreling between them.
So in a group of a certain size you will always find competition within the group for limited resources, a limited resource could be the very attractive partners for mating and there you will have a problem, that competition is not catered for in a communist society. Because EllaB is very attractive does noy face that problem but me i will have the develop other skills to win the matting partners from her , and these skills and additional resources i cannot share them because otherwise i loose competitive advantage. Then because the son of the manager is not that pretty and not that skillful ... the manager would leave him/her to its devices because the managers love us all the same. Then because i am skillful but i cannot compete with Ellab and i have to share the outcome of my skills then i get demotivated and i produce like the less skillful in town, either that or a try to get up the leader of the party where i would produce less and work less because my skills are for something else. Final results everybody will try being the leader of the party or working the less possible because the resources being produced will be stolen by the lazy ones. This kind of social theories do not stand 5 minutes thinking in front of a coffee, and can only be developed either by a person with little knowledge of the real world and a lot of free time (Marx, and his friend). or by somebody with a very devious mind to try and misdirect the society and enslave them (which i think i have read this is what happened).
Take in account that the final evolution stage of fascism, communism, capitalism and socialism are the same and elite of privileged and the lump, even if the starting of these 4 systems and their purpose was different.
The lump would like to become part of the elite and the elite would like to remain where they are, "make me the ruler of the communism for the next five years and after that we can keep communism, if i start on the lump then i want revolution"
Take care and enjoy the remaining of summer, i can tell yu i really enjoy late swimming in the sea, and then having a piece of bread with a glass of wine by the sea while the sun sets
A bit late to the party here I am afraid-but I’ve followed your prose in the comments sections of Quillette for many years now, must say that you and Ray Andrews are always a breath of fresh air.
As for Ella-B, I find that her steadfast adherence to her ideology, much to the exclusion of all else, is truly tiresome to wade through in the comments section-though I will say that you seem to be the only one who can consistently best her arguments, though she is loathe to admit as much.
You may have hit the nail ontghe head, but not pounded it quitew far enough.
Jeremy makes what is probably a good comment, that on the Simpsons, and perhaps some other recent cultural artifacts, we can see post-modernism instantiated. But I kinda wished for a capsule definition. Post-Modernism is, on the one hand, the rejection of the Grand Narrative of the past, the belief structure which has brought us to "Modernity." Of those traditions, either Bart or Homer might say something like, "meh!"
But on the other hand, for going on the past two centuries, there has been a different Grand Narrative, The Hegelian Dialectic, which says that the Arc of Justice moves forward , though sometimes my way of a waltz, two steps forward and one step back. Fighting the Arc is as futile as chasing the end of the rainbow. On that point, Ella-B is correct, and you and I also agree. And you say,
"The problem with the practical application of postmodernism applied to deconstruct the grand narrative of the Moral Arc of History, is that its proponents make the assumption that the Moral Arc is a given which we can always rely upon, like the sunshine in the morning or the rain."
Yep, post-modernism, which pretends to reject any Grand Narrative, replaces the grand narrative with the Stupidly Miniscule Narrative, that it is all sound and fury signifying nothing. And yet, and here is the paradox, and I believe it is at the core of what you and Ella-B wrestle, that the Critical Justice movement, and all the anti-racist platform, depend on the assumption that there is external definition of Justice, and that that external definition implies the call to destroy all other competing narratives. It is, as you say, Solipsistic. But I would have liked a little more definition of the terms of Post-Modernism, so that we could then explore, a little farther, how critical justice theory is a paradoxical emboodiment.
As for younger people getting less comfortable around member's of LGBTQ+ communities, it's because of the fear of causing offense, no? if we resort to Occam again?
your link there is further evidence for the creeping mediocrity of woke thought. 'journalism' that shows no understanding of polling, or sources, or sociology in general.
“We count on the narrative that young people are more progressive and tolerant,” John Gerzema, CEO of The Harris Poll, told USA TODAY. “These numbers are very alarming and signal a looming social crisis in discrimination.”
can't get more faux woke that this right here
No disagreement here. Since Marx and Foucault we've been dished out alternatives to philosophy and religion that have enhanced humanity and culture over centuries and millennia. Fans of both seem to be rendered intolerant, even totalitarian.
I returned to "On Liberty" again a couple months back, and appreciated the citation. Sadly, I doubt current readers could handle the ideas or the very long sentences. Perhaps you could assemble an executive summary or an illustrated short course on same to be shared by cellphone.
You’re right as rain, mate: either Grand Narratives reign, or story-telling apes face an abject ruin—as gazillions of unreined self-serving micro acts beget a macro chaos ☻
This is probably the best article I've read on the Omega Inflection. It's taut and very well argued and there's very little one can add.
If anything were to be added I would suggest more on complexity and ambiguity. Both these factors fall by the wayside in the rather simplistic attempts one sees to replace the Moral Arc. Certainties are no match for reality and for the fact that there is no one single way.
Man, I geeked out reading this. I grew up studying postmodern theory, loving the Simpsons and Beck and other exemplars of the philosophy. Teach it to kids. You know, as a subject, not an ideology. Got my smoke and my coffee and Godspeed! You black emperor playing in the background. Good to go here in the comments!
This is one of my first (the first?) interactions with you stone cold sober. You, Matt McManus, a few others inspired me with your insistence on logic and reason as everyone in the world all went stupid at the same time. Inspired me to focus on reason as a way out of darkness. I want to give you and your writing the respect of a clear mind.
as clear as this mind gets, ahem ...
Been solosober for 2 months now, and it's going freakin' great. this is a tangent, but bear with me here, i get back to postmodernism. I've been thinking about this all damn year since, or at least since getting cancelled in march. for playing a song by a pulitzer prize winner in class, natch.
No need to get into it here, but suffice to say, I was on a downward spiral. straight-up existential crisis for years, following many personal losses. alchohol was my big 'FU' to the world around me. I hit rock bottom in my quest to complete 'project oblivion'. and I came out of it. why?
because, fuck you relativism. fuck this shit. my anger at this faux-woke BS, which for me became personified in the way progressives - likely, postmodernists, whether or not they know it- treated me during my multiple bereavements, that anger woke up something in side of me that was stronger than my desire for the self-annihilation that is isolation and booze.
Given that both my first and second-tier support networks had been wiped out due to tragedy, I sure as fuck needed a reason to get out of bed. and it was believing something as simple as the emperor has no clothes. like, I was in suspended animation for years of despair, a literal unfrozen caveman teacher, woke up and this is the world around me? wtf guys? this shit is happening on your watch and nobody says anything in progressive circles? SOBs who never got their hands dirty are trashing me, whose waded through the detritus of actual progressive work his entire life?
I got a word for that bro. gaslighting.
it's hard work to claim any kind of moral or intellectual authority. I claim both. I'm sure you do too, and you have earned it man, over and over again, publicly in your writing. to me, we are both 'whole-hearted and half-sure'. the truth is out there, we can never know it, so let's at least try the best we can right? these half-assed relativists do no work and claim moral and intellectual authority?
$#^@ that BS, right?
It was a better reason to get out of bed for me, at least, than no reason at all. and that's why i got sober bro. to better call BS.
occam's razor is a neutral tool. it's the wielder who determines good or evil. people wrote me off as a dumbass due to my drinking, and didn't listen when I insisted that my problem was grief. it was easier for people to attribute my 'fall' to my own actions rather than someone broken from multiple traumas. it fits their comfortable moral universe better.
there is no 'there but by the grace of god' in smug, middle class progressives, because there is literally no god other than self-actualization, the ultimate act of relativity.
and here I go, writing about the self, freakin' middle-class white male. I am simply trying to illustrate my arguments anecdotally, and unfortunately, the best examples I have of this in application are personal.
ultimately, postmodernism to me represents freedom, and it has become the most ironic of cages in application. obviously, relativism will consume itself if the logic is tested in ethical realms, and postmodernists were aware of this! you often write of the decline or even demise of so many of those fundamentals of human existence, family, faith, community, career. your argument here for sport in schools.
(Is that under threat, btw, in the UK? news to me here in Toronto, but again, depressed shut-in....)
anyway, as a shut-in with weird philosophical interests, I had nothing but time on my hands to immerse myself in them. take, say, the muddy waters of the QC. this experience talking to people on both sides of the political divide in real time, on say, Jan 6th - to me, it appeared that I was seeing the failure of this academic philosophy - postmodernism- live, real time in the progressive response. which inflames the culture wars that progressives claim to despise, but inflame anyway.
obviously, I quit QC in disgust with the conservative BS justifying their narratives around Jan 6th. they, too, were ironically relativistic when their cards were on the table. I mean, Trump truly is the postmodern president, no?
but I'm more upset with progressives, because those are my beliefs they are abusing.
my story is anecdotal evidence for sure, but at the end of the day, I think it does illustrate these issues very clearly. when multiple individuals report similar experiences, then we start moving from anecdote to data.
my answer to the postmodernist question? challenge em on postmodern grounds. beat em at their own game. and believe me, it's like shooting fish in a barrel with this lot.
what, you disagree? with me? but my lived experience!!!
FWIW, I wrote this entire reply in, hopefully, a postmodern spirit. please forgive the literary flourishes, but it just fits the subject. I think of Puck, the trickster, as a postmodern icon. he constantly needles and questions, playing pranks that reveal the absurdity of life, but does he ever deny the existence of a truth, something greater? nah. he embraces the spirit of a living in pursuit of an unknowable.
man, I worked on this one all morning. love to hear your thoughts!
(whoops, a last minute request)
I literally hold out hope that you can help me with a question that's plagued me for years. i wrote a phrase in an essay i can no longer find (ah, the days when your writing could just .... vanish), one that I likely shared with you back in the day on Quillette. From my unreliable memory...
On the subject of postmodernism, I wrote that I am "whole-hearted and half-sure". I attributed this paraphrase to Edward Said in my head for years, no idea why, never read the man. you got any familiarity with the idea?
in all likelihood, I am paraphrasing a beloved eccentric prof of mine, Ed O'Sullivan. he was an ecotheorist and educator, not at all a postmodernist, so I assume he was answering a question of mine.
any thoughts on the genesis of this idea, or comparable stuff, greatly appreciated
Hey, another home run!
'a hundred dollar bill is a social construct. It has no inherent value- other than as a piece of paper which can be written on, or burned as kindling. It only has value because we believe in it collectively.'
That's a misconception, and it's important to flesh out because it's very relevant to your overall argument.
A hundred dollar bill has value because on the other end, way up the chain, is a bank and a central reserve that prints money and people with guns who can put you in jail if you don't use that bill in acceptable ways. A hundred dollar bill is a statement of credit controlled by people who use violent systems to regulate behaviour.
If the postmodernists end up in charge of these systems (and they are already in many places) the collapse of Grand Narratives won't mean that we stop believing in money. People who live in reality will always care about money in its different forms as they care for their own needs. Rather, 'paper' money will be used more directly as the tool of violent control that it is.
After all, the deconstructionists believe that the oppressor fundamentally owes them - that they are entitled to *credit* in the broadest sense.
The weaponisation of state-issued credit is a logical step in the pursuit of redressing wrongs. We are already seeing this principle being applied digitally in China, in Canada, in the war between Russia in the West, and just this week by Paypal and Venmo.
You mention that extreme socialism destroys a country's ability to produce food. The suffering peoples in these countries still believe in money, it's just that credit is weaponised against them.
The only way to meaningfully respond to the postmodernists, without perpetuating their games, is to ground your life and your speech in tangible, real things that cannot be endlessly manipulated as 'social constructs' and cannot be taken away through credit inflation or digital censorship.
Hello Geary,
hope you are fine, here in the Mediterranean sea we are having a nice summer, swimming is good though the sea has been very hot this year and there are a lot of jellyfish.
I would enter in discussing the comment from Ella B i have read some her comments in quillete and, she does not have the foot on the ground, yes theories, yes books, yes any kind of philosophical STUFF. But if you would ask her to define a world, a country or a region and it has to do produce and according to her theories how many people can live there, her facade will fall, she will try to turn the question around.
Communism is the best model theoretically, you can see communist working in a film, please watch "the Gods must be crazy", so the family living in the Kalahari are communist, they live very nicely because they are a small group (very first condition), they have plenty enough to be happy (second necessary condition), the managers of the society, the elders of the group have the well-being of each member of the community at their hearts would die to protect the other members (third essential condition). The film is really funny and i recommend it to anybody willing to enjoy a great time with a comedy completely different to the Hollywood ones.
Then when they get the flying object the second condition is removed, so they start quarreling between them.
So in a group of a certain size you will always find competition within the group for limited resources, a limited resource could be the very attractive partners for mating and there you will have a problem, that competition is not catered for in a communist society. Because EllaB is very attractive does noy face that problem but me i will have the develop other skills to win the matting partners from her , and these skills and additional resources i cannot share them because otherwise i loose competitive advantage. Then because the son of the manager is not that pretty and not that skillful ... the manager would leave him/her to its devices because the managers love us all the same. Then because i am skillful but i cannot compete with Ellab and i have to share the outcome of my skills then i get demotivated and i produce like the less skillful in town, either that or a try to get up the leader of the party where i would produce less and work less because my skills are for something else. Final results everybody will try being the leader of the party or working the less possible because the resources being produced will be stolen by the lazy ones. This kind of social theories do not stand 5 minutes thinking in front of a coffee, and can only be developed either by a person with little knowledge of the real world and a lot of free time (Marx, and his friend). or by somebody with a very devious mind to try and misdirect the society and enslave them (which i think i have read this is what happened).
Take in account that the final evolution stage of fascism, communism, capitalism and socialism are the same and elite of privileged and the lump, even if the starting of these 4 systems and their purpose was different.
The lump would like to become part of the elite and the elite would like to remain where they are, "make me the ruler of the communism for the next five years and after that we can keep communism, if i start on the lump then i want revolution"
Take care and enjoy the remaining of summer, i can tell yu i really enjoy late swimming in the sea, and then having a piece of bread with a glass of wine by the sea while the sun sets
best regards from the Mediterranean
A bit late to the party here I am afraid-but I’ve followed your prose in the comments sections of Quillette for many years now, must say that you and Ray Andrews are always a breath of fresh air.
As for Ella-B, I find that her steadfast adherence to her ideology, much to the exclusion of all else, is truly tiresome to wade through in the comments section-though I will say that you seem to be the only one who can consistently best her arguments, though she is loathe to admit as much.
Keep up the good work!
Geary you’re a wonderful writer!
You may have hit the nail ontghe head, but not pounded it quitew far enough.
Jeremy makes what is probably a good comment, that on the Simpsons, and perhaps some other recent cultural artifacts, we can see post-modernism instantiated. But I kinda wished for a capsule definition. Post-Modernism is, on the one hand, the rejection of the Grand Narrative of the past, the belief structure which has brought us to "Modernity." Of those traditions, either Bart or Homer might say something like, "meh!"
But on the other hand, for going on the past two centuries, there has been a different Grand Narrative, The Hegelian Dialectic, which says that the Arc of Justice moves forward , though sometimes my way of a waltz, two steps forward and one step back. Fighting the Arc is as futile as chasing the end of the rainbow. On that point, Ella-B is correct, and you and I also agree. And you say,
"The problem with the practical application of postmodernism applied to deconstruct the grand narrative of the Moral Arc of History, is that its proponents make the assumption that the Moral Arc is a given which we can always rely upon, like the sunshine in the morning or the rain."
Yep, post-modernism, which pretends to reject any Grand Narrative, replaces the grand narrative with the Stupidly Miniscule Narrative, that it is all sound and fury signifying nothing. And yet, and here is the paradox, and I believe it is at the core of what you and Ella-B wrestle, that the Critical Justice movement, and all the anti-racist platform, depend on the assumption that there is external definition of Justice, and that that external definition implies the call to destroy all other competing narratives. It is, as you say, Solipsistic. But I would have liked a little more definition of the terms of Post-Modernism, so that we could then explore, a little farther, how critical justice theory is a paradoxical emboodiment.
Grand narratives? Nobody reads anymore or can even listen attentively for very long.
Can you turn that into an elevator pitch, meme or tweet instead?