A Postmortem on Postmodernism

By Doug “Uncola” Lynn via TheBurningPlatform.com

My first article this year was entitled  “The Abolition of Man Amid the Consequences of Reality” and referenced the book “The Abolition of Man” by C.S. Lewis as a means to critique the devastation of postmodernism.

The next article, “Gnostic Parasitism in the Post-Modern Simulacrum”, reviewed the first installment of the “Mere Simulacrity” video series posted at SovereignNations.com  which summarized the conjuring of the postmodern world.

This post will serve as my third installment on postmodernism and summarizing the sixth (6th) video in the “Mere Simulacrity” series called “Breaking the Spell of the Postmodern World”, by writer and researcher Michael Young.

Although the second (2nd) video in the “Mere Simulacrity” series entitled “Hermeneutics and Perspectivalism” , by Dr. William Roach, provided a more comprehensive look at the chain of philosophers that ultimately fathered postmodernism, I chose to review Michael Young’s video because he emphasized three main philosophers, along with other relevant writers, who explain our current times quite effectively, in my opinion.

That said, however, I do want to mention an analysis by Dr. Roach (from the 2nd video) as a foundation of understanding:  He claimed (and I paraphrase) that Plato’s Metaphysical Idealism led to Immanuel Kant’s Epistemological Idealism which led to Friedrich Schleiermacher’s Hermeneutical Idealism and eventually, to postmodernism and linguistic idealism, which are now transitioning Western Civilization into “The Simulacrum” where reality is subverted to the point of two plus two equaling five. Again, these are my words, not Dr. Roach’s.

Simply put: The progression of bad philosophers, scholars, idealists, and their acolytes, have ultimately succeeded in separating the postmodern world from objective reality.  And, along the way, Marxism came about as a result of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels interpreting Kant.

Once again, this article is being posted as a courtesy for “time-challenged” readers and because I believe the information is important to understand. It is a summary only and paraphrased according to my own perspectives. I will take any blame in advance for any unintentional errors, omissions made in haste or for the sake of brevity, misunderstandings, and/or misrepresentations – and will leave it up to the readers to sort these out… should they choose to view the actual video in full.  And in the event of any errors or misinterpretations, I apologize in advance to Mr. Young.

“Breaking the Spell of the Postmodern World”, by Michael Young

Source:

Michael Young is a writer and researcher in the areas of political philosophy and culture. Considered to be an expert in postmodernism and critical theory, he is a visiting fellow at the Center for Renewing America and a critic of Social Justice.

Interestingly, Young begins his talk by describing effective ways to communicate with others and claims “big ideas” like philosophy, theology, and meaning, are understood by people in four (4) main ways:

Stage 1:  Theoretical – reason, logic, rationality, evidence

Stage 2:  Experience and feeling – drama and the arts – messages in media and music

Stage 3:  How we interpret the world

Stage 4: The practical application of ideas as they apply in the real world

These enter the brain as follows:

Stage 1: Through argumentation and debate

Stage 2:  Through the illustration of stories and analogies

Stage 3:  Through the description of how and why the ideas make sense

Stage 4:  Through the explanation of how the actual ideas operate in reality

Young warns that (Stage 2) stories and analogies can often be told to manipulate feelings but, correctly applied, they are an effective means by which people can connect Stage 1 to Stages 3 and 4.

A Philosophical Understanding of our Current World

Young begins with a 1994 quote from author and playwright Vaclav Havel, who was also a previous president of Czechoslovakia:

Today…. we know immeasurably more about the universe than our ancestors did and yet it increasingly seems they knew something more essential about it than we do – something that escapes us. 

 The same thing is true of nature and of ourselves.

 The more thoroughly all of our organs and their functions and their internal structures and their biochemical reactions that takes place within them are described, the more we seem to fail to grasp the spirit, purpose, and meaning of the systems they create together and that we experience ourselves.

 And, thus, today we find ourselves in a paradoxical situation: We enjoy all the achievements of modern civilization that have made our physical existence on this earth easier in so many important ways, yet we do not know exactly what to do with ourselves or where to turn. The world of our experiences seems chaotic, disconnected, confusing. There appear to be no integrating forces, no unified meaning, no true inner-understanding of phenomena in our experience of the world. Experts can explain anything in the objective world to us… yet we understand our own lives less and less.

 In short, we live in the post-modern world where everything is possible and almost nothing is certain. We have all the advancements of modern technology yet we’ve lost the meaning of life.

Young then told a story from college that humorously describes the modern world:

One of his friends had too much to drink, passed out, and when he woke up he asked:  “Where am I?”

So Young asked his friend:  “Do you know who I am?”

And his friend replied:  “Now we’re in trouble!  I don’t know where I am and you don’t know who you are!”

That story, according to Young, describes the postmodern world.  But the world wasn’t always that way.  On the contrary, the modern world was a realm of enlightenment; it was noble and objective and viewed in terms of reason and logic, good and evil.

What happened?

In order to understand, Young considers three philosophers as “major landmarks and hubs” toward “the city of postmodernism”:

A.) French sociologist, philosopher, and poet, Jean Baudrillard  (1929–2007)

To understand Baudrillard’s view of modernity, Young used an analogy of a regular strawberry that soon inspired strawberry flavoring, strawberry soda, strawberry candy, etc., until someone decided to make a strawberry-flavored slurpee that tasted like a strawberry-flavored Jolly Rancher.  But after the multiple (increasingly phony) generations, the “strawberry” slurpee had nothing in common with the original strawberry.

Baudrillard believed the underlying reality of the world had been obscured and, thus, so has the human perspective on reality.

It’s all fake.  Everything is manufactured, processed, and inauthentic.

B.)  French philosopher Jacques Derrida  (1930-2004)

Derrida developed the Philosophy of Deconstruction and to explain, Young utilized another analogy:

You are visiting a construction site and a worker there grabs a five-gallon bucket, tips it upside down and says to you:  “Here…, have a chair”.

In terms of objective meaning, how can a bucket be a chair? How can these words be used for the same object?

Derrida claimed…  since there was no mystical or metaphysical transformation of the object…. the answer to those questions was simply context and interpretation.

So far, so good.  But, then, Derrida concluded that everything is context and interpretation and that there is “no objective absolute universal frame of reference for interpreting language at all.”

Therefore, meaning within any type of communication, or media, is a product of interpretation and context.

But, Houston, we have a problem.

If meaning is derived solely from our interpretation according to context, then it means there is nothing objective with which to fix the meaning.

According to Derrida, everything exists within the historical and cultural context of language and all perspectives regarding language and worldviews are relative. There is no objective truth:  Only interpretations and reinterpretations of language and the world.

Or as phrased by Young:  “There can be no stable, fixed, objective, absolute, descriptions of the world because there is no objective frame of reference within which to interpret  the world…”

And… even if there WERE an objective frame of reference, it would be communicated through language which is subject to context and interpretation.

The errant philosophy of Derrida, therefore, proposes an infinite number of personal perceptions which affect context and interpretation.

In the video, Young summarized this as follows:

… in a post-modern view of the world there is no objective interpretation of either language or the world… both the world and any description of the world can be interpreted and understood in a nearly infinite number of ways and there is no objective way to decide which descriptions are objectively correct and which interpretations of those descriptions is the right interpretation.

C.) French philosopher Michel Foucault (1926-1984)

So, Dear Readers, you may be wondering how decisions are made in the Realm of Relativism.

Well, (in near Darwinian and Nietzschean fashion?) Foucault answered that question by claiming “power” decides; or, more specifically, those with the validity, the credibility, and the legitimacy in society decide for the society at large.

Using a baseball analogy, Young framed it thusly:

1.) Old Game Rules: The pitcher throws the ball and the umpire objectively calls it as a ball or a strike

2.) New Game Rules: The pitcher throws the ball and the umpire decides one way or another

In the first scenario, the umpire (expert) observes what is true and the objective is to make the right call.

But in the second (post-modern) scenario, the umpire decides what is true and this allows for self-interest, or bias, or what Young labels as “motivated reasoning”, to occur.

Young cites Foucault as saying this in an interview:

Truth is to be understood as a system of ordered procedures for the production,   regulation, distribution, circulation, and operation of statements.

In the postmodern view, then, truth is not a matter of corresponding to, mapping, or describing the world… it is, instead, a system of organizing and distributing statements.

People in positions of power decide what is true in a way that benefits society at large them.

In postmodern politics, knowledge and power are two features of the same object that reinforce each other.  Therefore, the truth is not to change minds but to change to the political, economic, and institutional regime which produces truth for its own ends.

Science needs tax-dollars to tell you what is true and… because science tells you what is true… it needs more tax-dollars.

Therefore, postmodernism is not about corresponding to reality. It’s about power.  Truth is a social phenomenon and different societies will have different truths and their own arbitrary processes of determining what is true.

For example, in Christian societies, Christians have the power to say the Bible is true. But in Islamic societies, Muslims have the power to say the Koran is true.

It almost seems reasonable, doesn’t it? Hence the treachery.

The strawberry-flavored Jolly Rancher-inspired slurpee is “strawberry”, the five-gallon bucket is a “chair”, and truth is determined by power:

Or, according to Young:

We live in a hyper-real world where we’re inundated with signs and symbols…we are surrounded by the strawberry slurpee version of the real thing. There is no objective frame of reference through which to interpret either language or the world and there is no lynchpin or no immovable pillar which can serve as the fixed point by which anything else can be defined or interpreted. And truth, finally, is not a matter of making statements which correspond to reality, truth is a matter of who has the power to decide which ideas, concepts, and arguments get elevated to the status of truth.

And here is the problem:  The “experts” in power are subject to bias.

To further explain, Young uses a railroad analogy:  If you are in a train that is lined up on parallel tracks next to another train and the other train starts to move, it might look and feel like your train is moving instead.

So, you begin looking around for a fixed point to see if you are moving or if it is the other car or train in motion.

But if all the fixed points, like buildings and street lamps, and the mountains are moving too and everything is moving all at once – that is postmodernism.

According to Young:

Nothing is fixed. Nothing is stable.  There are no immoveable pillars, there’s no absolutes, there’s no eternal truth, there is no absolute meaning in language, and no absolute frame of reference – in postmodernism, everything moves… meaning changes, the truth is ever shifting, perspectives are constantly altering, knowledge is ever-changing, morals are ethereal and subject to whim. Nothing has any objective, universal, absolute fixed meaning; and when you try to catch your bearings, there is no immoveable foundation to lean on. There are no conceptual bearings, there’s no immovable pillars and there is no fixed point to use to catch your bearings…. and this is the philosophical situation in America.   

Academic theories were formulated in universities then filtered into the culture.  Now everyone has their own “truth” and one man’s human’s truth is another man’s person’s lie.

The Cultural Situation

Next, Young quotes Daniel Yankelovich who is the author of a book entitled “New Rules: Searching for Self-fulfillment in a World Turned Upside Down”.  In addressing the cultural shift that has been occurring in America, Yankelovich, referencing other writers, wrote the following:

Tomorrow is not going to look like yesterday.  Tomorrow, to the extent that the data can yield clues about it, is being shaped by cultural revolution that is transforming the rules of American life and moving us into wholly uncharted territory.

 In examining this revolution, we need to be clear what we mean by the word “culture” and the view of the anthropologist Clifford Geertz, provides focus.  Geerts emphasized “shared meanings” as the essence of culture; the common understandings of what we hold about the varied particulars of social life and individual behavior… ‘When you know a society’s shared understanding you can see the character of its culture.’

Sociologist Daniel Bell gives the concept a philosophical dimension: ‘Culture… is to provide a coherent set of answers to the existential situations that confront all human beings in passages of their lives.’  

So, in a practical manner, shared meaning is important in order to provide coherent answers to discuss our lives on the “ground level”, so to speak.

To continue quoting Yankelovich:

… a genuine cultural revolution, then, is one that makes a decisive break with the shared meanings of the past,  particularly those that relate to the deepest questions on the purpose of human life.

The Cultural Revolution of Postmodernism, then, is described as being quite broad in scope and depth:

The changes wrought by the cultural revolution encompass the full sweep of American life: The private space of our inner lives, the semi-public space of lives within family, work, school, church, and in our own neighborhoods and the public space of our lives as citizens.  The new meanings involved discard many of the traditional rules of personal conduct.  They encourage greater tolerance, permit more sexual freedom and put less emphasis on sacrifice for its own sake. In their extreme form, the new meanings simply turn the old ones on their head and, in place of the self-denial ethic that once ruled American life, we now find people who refuse to deny themselves anything out of the strange moral principle that I have a duty to myself. 

Here, Young points out a “self-fulfillment contradiction” and the mismatch between the goals of Americans seeking self-fulfillment and the means they employ to achieve those goals.

Or, stated another way, former duties, self-sacrifice and obligations have been traded for self-expression, creativity, and self-fulfillment and doing whatever one wants.

Referencing Yankelovich, Young cites the psychological flaw in such self-indulgence as being a byproduct of (seemingly endless and) excessive economic affluence – but with the primary defect as follows:  The false premise that “the human self is a hierarchy of inner needs and self-fulfillment is an inner journey to discover them. This premise is rarely examined even though it leads people to defeat their goals and end up isolated and anxious instead of fulfilled”.

People have been deceived into believing they are just a bag of inner needs and desires and their purpose in life, according to Young, is to just “go around and find out what they are;… there’s nothing objective… the only resources for meaning come from the inner self ”.

Or in other words:  To self-fulfillment seekers, meaning is entirely subjective. There is nothing outside one’s self with which to find meaning and, therefore, there are no duties or obligations outside of one ’s self that can provide meaning.

Duties and obligations have been forsaken in the pursuit of vain self-discovery.

Addressing the social conflict and confusion created by such subjectivism, and, especially, as aggravated during times of economic turmoil, Young quotes Yankelovich again:

Hungry to live their lives to the brim and determined to consume every plate on the smorgasbord of human experience, self-fulfillment seekers challenge firmly-held norms stirring a fierce backlash among citizens who fear moral chaos.

 … A society preoccupied with introspection and self-fulfillment is easily caught off guard by an unanticipated shift in economic relationships… an error in which people are eager to enjoy the benefits of 30 years of unparalleled economic growth is a terrible time psychologically to face disagreeable economic truths.

…. Eventually, we will have to face the fact of the rot in our institutions and infrastructure, the ability of our schools to teach slovenliness in the standards of efficiency and precision, the decay of our railroads, bridges, harbors, and roads, the aging of our industrial plants, the litigiousness of an over-lawyered society, the decline of our political parties, the bland arrogance of the news media, the living-in-the-past of labor unions, the irrelevance of our colleges, the short-term myopia of our industrial leaders, and the seeming inability of the government to do anything efficiently and well.

 Those as other symptoms of a troubled society nag at us like a neurotic boss who’s aware of his or her own power and prerogatives but who has forgotten how to do the job. 

 … In our demand for greater fulfillment in a time of economic turbulence, we have set in motion forces that can either lead to a higher stage of civilization or to disaster.

Will we achieve the synthesis between traditional commitments and new forms of fulfillment? Or will we, indeed, end up with the worst of two worlds… a society fragmented and anomic, the family in shambles, the work ethic collapsed, the economy uncompetitive, our morality flabby and self-centered, and our personal freedom even more restricted than under the old order?

 If so, we enter a period of bitter polarizing social conflict that will tear us apart, wreck our society, and crush our spirits.    

All of that was written in April, 1981.

To expand further, Young offers an analogy of a “post-modern building”:   A building may have windows that are non-uniform, whimsical, and nonsensical, a staircase that goes to nowhere, absurd landscaping, strange arches, doors that don’t open, and upside down cabinetry…. but the foundation cannot be whimsical and nonsensical because the foundation is where the building and the world meet.  If the foundation is not secure the entire building will collapse.

The same is true of beliefs.  If one’s beliefs are not on a solid foundation, then their ideological house will crumble where it meets the world.

Trapped in a realm of subjectivism, we end up with hermeneutical tribes where people of the same beliefs congeal into insular societies whereby they can interpret the world according to their respective worldviews.

Liberal, conservative, Woke, MAGA, Libertarian, etc.

Then, when big world events happen like elections, or wars, et al, each tribe views the event according to their respective worldview, values, and frame of reference.

Those who best understand and articulate the moral construct for any given tribe, become internet influencers for that respective tribe.

When a global event occurs, like the Ukraine war, the tribes compete for the best, most viral, moral interpretation of the event.  The same goes for immigration, etc.

This is narrative warfare whereby facts don’t matter because facts are interpreted according to the different worldviews of each tribe.

In the post-modern world all “facts” are subject to context and interpretation.

So where does this lead?

It leads to “Clownworld”, according to Young, which describes the “denialism and absurdity that occurs when we have a post-modern world of self-expression” – and into nihilistic absurdity to the point of pregnant men and defunding the police to reduce violence.

There is no genuine shared meaning anymore.  Western societies can’t even define what a “woman” is, let alone marriage.

According to Young:  “Nothing has the status of being absolutely good, right, correct, legitimate, or valid.

Subjectivism is, essentially, nihilism and our world has become so fake that Joe Biden received his Covid vaccination on a photography set that was mocked to resemble the Oval Office.

In the book “Mere Christianity”, C.S. Lewis compared morality to a convoy of ships:

In order for a voyage to be successful, the ships need to avoid running into each other, they need to be able to keep from sinking, and they need to be able to go where they are going.

 Obliterating and relativizing all of the ideas, concepts, values, morals, and norms of our society… and leaving our society no objective ideas, no objective truth, no objective meaning… is the equivalent of shredding the sails of a ship, destroying its rudder and leaving it adrift and directionless on an open sea with no lighthouse, compass, or anchor with which to determine where it is.

With no ability to pick any particular direction, and no way to navigate the difficulties of an open sea, the ships will simply drift and be unable to reach any particular direction to say nothing of being able to avoid crashing into each other.

And that’s the spot Western Civilization finds itself today.

As a society, we don’t know where we are, who we are, or where we’re going.

And, even though America has no destination…. it is determined to get there just as quickly as possible.

What Can Be Done?

From an ontological and/or existential perspective, Young identified “Logos” as the order and divine organization of the universe; or, as defined by the Encyclopedia Britannica, as “the divine reason implicit in the cosmos, ordering it and giving it form and meaning” according to ancient Greek philosophy and early Christian theology.

The Logos is the foundation of Western Civilization. It is an immovable pillar. The Logos is objective truth that can be discovered and understood by anyone who earnestly seeks it because truth exists in reality.

The Logos is what “makes the universe intelligible” and gives it “objective meaning”.

According to Young:

In [the Bible’s Book of] John Chapter 1, when John says “in the beginning was the Word” the term that we translate as “Word” is actually the Greek word Logos and John was arguing that he, like the Greek philosophers, accepted that there was an eternal, objective Logos, a divine principle… which was the reason and the intelligibility implicit in the cosmos.

Young asserts that we cannot avoid postmodernism. It is already here. Therefore, we must go through the postmodern age and the “first step of getting through it is the return of the Logos to prominence and centrality in Western Civilization”.

Closing Comments

This post completes my (personalized) review of Michael Young’s “Breaking the Spell of the Postmodern World”, the sixth video of several within the “Mere Simulacrity” series posted over at SovereignNations.com . Once again, each page there contains tabs at the bottom that connects to the next video in the series.

I have watched all of the videos and found them to be very enlightening. The speakers are excellent, the presentations are extremely cohesive and I believe the information to be pertinent to current world circumstances.

The ideology of postmodernism must be dismantled and, toward that end, I believe the “Mere Simulacrity” video series is worthwhile for those willing to invest the time.

Click to visit the TBP Store for Great TBP Merchandise

Author: Uncola

I am one who has found the road less traveled while remaining a whiskered, whispering witness to the world. I hope what you just considered was worth the price and time spent. www.TheTollOnline.com

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hardscrabble farmer
hardscrabble farmer

Interesting but like everything that touches upon the ideas associated with post-modernity and progressive ideals I feel like I know less than when I started reading.

I’m impressed that you took the time to go into such depth when the ideas are that shallow, but in the end it’s all just a giant steaming pile of horseshit.

People have to eat and you can’t interpret food into your belly or identify as full, it has to actually happen.

Reality, Nature, and Truth assert themselves every second of every day regardless if anyone heeds them. When people live in complete denial of what is in preference to what never was, they’ll eventually come around.

Sure as hell makes the Amish look like geniuses in retrospect. Sometimes you just have to step back from the fray and let the crazies sort it out on their own.

Uncola

Can’t say I disagree. Horseshit = Clownworld. That said, it is also true that most folks are still quite busy being plugged into the Matrix; and, perhaps, this was for them.

hardscrabble farmer
hardscrabble farmer

I don’t mean to imply that your piece was horseshit, but rather the hokey philosophies about relativism.

Check out one of the quotes you posted above-

In examining this revolution, we need to be clear what we mean by the word “culture” and the view of the anthropologist Clifford Geertz, provides focus.

You spend ten minutes explaining how everything is context and that there are no foundational definitions, then you say we need to be clear what we mean by culture.

It’s absurd. Maybe a 5 gallon bucket is a chair is a culture, it’s all relative.

There exist absolute realities, objective truths that cannot be affected by context.

Uncola

Again, I don’t disagree. But, at the same time there are some “absolute realities” and “objective truths” that are even more important than food, too, ya know? Although some may disagree to point of their own (ultimate) peril.

We are on the verge of an economic downturn and, soon, people will choose. And that’s why I posted this summary: for some and not others.

As Diogenes Dung so eloquently wrote on another post:

There are too many great books and gifted authors that describe humanity’s next passage to miss the fact that our ship has sailed toward a new destination that includes a tempest unlike any before. Nobody gets out of that place without their hair turning white in a fortnight.

When time is stopped (wait for it) and the barriers between the conscious and subconscious are stripped, humanity will mark the day that the dead rose from the grave.

Unfortunately, it’s likely too late for many, but not all. And, for them, detailed clarity may be a good thing. Or not?

As always, though, I value your perspectives greatly. Thank you

hardscrabble farmer
hardscrabble farmer

I’ve learned more about philosophy from your posts than I did in a college setting, so the appreciation is returned.

I think we’re going to come out of this better than we came into it- even if most of us will never see that day.

“A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they shall never sit.” —
-Greek Proverb

Uncola

I truly hope so. And I keep thinking of that couple in Paris who went viral recently. They were enjoying each other’s company while fine dining, as the city burned behind them.

https://www.ladbible.com/community/france-paris-protests-news-827900-20230327

wanderer
wanderer

‘You spend ten minutes explaining how everything is context and that there are no foundational definitions, then you say we need to be clear what we mean by culture.’

postmodernism claims no context or definitions but culture is the opposite. that is the point of the article right? i see no such conflict in this post.

Uncola

In my haste, I read it wrong this morning. I took it as… “why explain shared meaning to those who obscure definitions with subjective interpretations of context?”

But culture cures the nihilism wrought by postmodernism. This is why Marxism attacks history via the ruthless criticism of all that exists.

And, personally, I appreciated the definitions of culture as shared meanings and according to the mutual agreement on answers to existential questions.

hardscrabble farmer
hardscrabble farmer

It wasn’t a critique of the author’s writiing, but of the examples he used.

I suppose the best way to clarify is to say why talk to someone- or about their ideas- when they have already told you that words and their meanings cannot be defined? It is a complete contradiction, but then so to is their writing about it. I find I am at such a loss with so many people today when it comes to communicating the simplest ideas, even those who grok my intent, that I just can’t bring myself to write much more than a comment here and there to remind myself I’m still capable of rational thought.

Alas, that’s the world we have inherited.

flash
flash

Truth and muh feelz are rarely compatible… but, I feel like…..reeeeeeeeee

Uncola

Ah, so I did grok that correctly after all.

In any event, my summary above was targeted to TBP readers and not the mushy-minded, per se. And, call me naive, but I still believe that many of the mushy-minded can respond to reason when their circular logic is pointed out to them. Not all, of course, but some. Maybe.

At the very least, the perspectives contained in my last three articles can be used to destroy postmodern ideological positions as necessary. I know because I have done it – most recently with a young acquaintance of mine who currently attends a seminary school.

People are dealing with the “horseshit” at work, in schools, in church, etc., and if one super busy TBP reader can use the information to their advantage, well, cheers to them for throwing rocks at a tidal wave. Might as well try, I say. At least for a while longer. Maybe.

BL
BL

Speaking of horseshit, Trump was indicted for the wrong crime.

Billy the kid
Billy the kid

Agreed, shoulda been for the corona virus emergency and the vaccines that weren’t vaccines.

Aunt Acid
Aunt Acid

A five gallon bucket makes a fine shitter in a pinch…just sayin…

Swrichmond
Swrichmond

“Interesting but like everything that touches upon the ideas associated with post-modernity and progressive ideals I feel like I know less than when I started reading.”

Which is why I tl:dr after about half way. The struggle of life to survive and thrive gives meaning to life and precious value to each day. People who take their survival for granted go down / are subject to being led down weird philosophical paths trying to find “meaning”. Remember Hillary’s “politics of meaning”?

flash
flash

1) Academia is a cancer on the heart of civilized society. All rot begins there.

2)Truth is absolute.

3) Might makes right.

4) Christ is King

5) Tribe up or die.

The five pillars of All You Need To Know To Survive in a Fallen World .

Aunt Acid
Aunt Acid

Flash, dearie; number four is number one for your list.

flash
flash

The order is random, but you’re right. Four pillars mounted on one foundation is how it should’ve read. .

BL
BL

When you iz right, you iz right. And you iz definitely right using real world speak. 🙂

k31
k31

You sent me on an Amish rabbit trail, because I have given passing consideration that maybe the Amish got it right, but was prodded to learn a bit more about them now that I am converted.

I had to read about Anabaptists. It sounds like pretty safe doctrine to me, but I know the Lutheran confession has more details on that sacrament than I am aware. I didn’t realize they are just Christians. Probably very good ones.

I noted this tidbit for interest.

Seekers and joiners
Main article: Seeker (Anabaptism)
Only a few hundred outsiders, so-called seekers, have ever joined the Old Order Amish.[96] Since 1950, only some 75 non-Anabaptist people have joined and remained lifelong members of the Amish.[97] Since 1990, some twenty people of Russian Mennonite background have joined the Amish in Aylmer, Ontario.[98]

Two whole Christian communities have joined the Amish: The church at Smyrna, Maine, one of the five Christian Communities of Elmo Stoll after Stoll’s death[99][100] and the church at Manton, Michigan, which belonged to a community that was founded by Harry Wanner (1935–2012), a minister of Stauffer Old Order Mennonite background.[101] The “Michigan Amish Churches”, with which Smyrna and Manton affiliated, are said to be more open to seekers and converts than other Amish churches. Most of the members of these two para-Amish communities originally came from Plain churches, i.e. Old Order Amish, Old Order Mennonite, or Old German Baptist Brethren.[citation needed]

More people have tested Old Order Amish life for weeks, months, or even years, but in the end decided not to join. Others remain close to the Amish, but never think of joining.[97]

On the other hand, the Beachy Amish, many of whom conduct their services in English and allow for a limited range of modern conveniences, regularly receive seekers into their churches as visitors, and eventually, as members.[102][103]

Stephen Scott, himself a convert to the Old Order River Brethren, distinguishes four types of seekers:

Checklist seekers are looking for a few certain specifications.
Cultural seekers are more enchanted with the lifestyle of the Amish than with their religion.
Spiritual utopian seekers are looking for true New Testament Christianity.
Stability seekers come with emotional issues, often from dysfunctional families.[98]

Anonymous
Anonymous
flash
flash

Once the authority of the Church in state matters was broken, the Satanic power of usury ran amok. Everything within Christ. Nothing outside of Christ. Nothing against Christ. This is the only path forward.

Russ
Russ

Babylon was a pagan religious and a political state system. How did things work 0ut back then? Same as they will in the future for the current anti-typical Babylonian religio-political beast from the sea system that has been and is currently working to set up a worldly kingdom. Beware of the ‘church’ that will have authority over state matters in the future as it is derives its’ power from the ……….

flash
flash

Dickhead don’t know the difference between a temple and a church..smh.

m
m

“[Dr. Roach] claimed (and I paraphrase) that Plato’s Metaphysical Idealism led to Immanuel Kant’s Epistemological Idealism which led to Friedrich Schleiermacher’s Hermeneutical Idealism”

From your paraphrasing, I take it you see Plato and Kant as mainly -if not entirely- wrong in their philosophies. (And I have no idea who Schleiermacher is.)

Could you roughly outline, what are your main critiques of Plato and Kant? Maybe even sketch out who you believe got it more right, in their respective times?
Thanks

Uncola

M,

I’m writing this on my lunch break

Please understand that my last two articles are summaries of the insights, observations, and perspectives of presenters in the “Mere Simulacrity” video series.

Not being a philosophy major or theologian, myself, I, too, was not familiar with Schleiermacher. However, I have recently witnessed his influence on the mushy mind of a young man I know who is enrolled in seminary school.

Plato was, obviously, a genius… but I (and others more educated than me) believe his ultimate influence on western thought was not broadly positive – perhaps because his dualistic constructions of mind and matter and ideals regarding knowledge do not play out in reality. Later in life, Plato himself even lost faith in his “ideal state” and Aristotle argued that Plato’s idealism did not often consider observable reality from a pragmatic perspective.

I disagree with Kant that all knowledge is subjective and that objects conform to the mind. But that doesn’t mean his body of work doesn’t have some merit.

In the 1940 book “The Problem of Pain” by C S Lewis, he partially agreed with Kant on the “right act” of self-surrender but he mostly refuted Kant on the iterations of Man’s desire with respect to self-sufficiency, free will, and morality.

Furthermore, the presentation by Dr. Roach, demonstrated how applied faith in Kant has ultimately manifested into postmodernism.

It appears you did not view Dr. Roach’s video (# 2 in the “Mere Simulacrity” series). May I ask why? No right or wrong answer, of course, just curious.

m
m

Doug –
No, I haven’t watched any of Dr. Roach videos; I’m not a video guy, for complex questions.
What I heard so far doesn’t entice me much to look at Dr. Roach’s work.

And I don’t think you will ever take a look at my favorite (catholic) philosopher Augusto Del Noce (“The Crisis of Modernity”), either. But it’s from him that I admire the painstaking detail -not just about the argument itself but where he got it from-, and at the same time humbleness.
I’ve never seen a snippet of such from Foucault or Derrida, and a long list of other 20th century “philosopher” dumbasses.
And the only philosopher alive I know of, who seems worth that title, is Giorgio Agamben (with my current knowledge, I only discovered him recently, run this through your favorite translator.)
About a year ago I spent two evenings researching Alexander Dugin, and came out quite appalled on his 4PT. He is good as what I’d call ‘firebrand preacher’, but not a philosopher.

Uncola

M,

Don’t give up on me yet. Del Noce’s “Crisis” is on my radar and I know it is a masterpiece.

From a young age, I have mostly overlooked cultural insanity and…. similar to Hardscrabble’ s views above…. simply overcame the “horseshit” with horse sense.

Although I appreciated Rand as a young guy, I thought my philosophy courses in college were much ado about nothing.

Last fall, on another thread, I read your comments on “Crisis in Modernity” (about dominant classes “unmasking values” to protect themselves). I know you have referenced it before here and so I searched the book and it was pretty expensive. Therefore, with me being a thrifty guy, I put my regional library to the task of finding it for me to no avail.

But, upon your reminder, I called them again today.

I often approach things like “if it’s meant to be, it’s meant to be” and it seems there are always other priorities, ya know?

Now, fast forward to last December, I had a conversation with a young man in seminary school and I was shocked at how far we seemed to have fallen. I wondered: “How the heck did we get to the point that even churches are now this far gone?”

Yuri Bezmenov’s “demoralization of the West” came to mind as did C.S. Lewis and “Men Without Chests” – and I even commented as such in the thread of Admin’s “Not a Lie if You Believe it” article here as follows:

My mind, too, races from Huxley to Orwell, to Tolkien, to Rand and “Atlas Shrugged”, to C.S. Lewis and “Men Without Chests”, to Yuri Bezmenov on the planned demoralization of the West, to the various observations and quotes from Solzhenitsyn, Carlin, Zappa, and others.

All amid the paradox of my own beautiful life before the sheer terror of what ongoing global circumstances absolutely guarantee.

And, thus, eventually, this line of thought led to my January 2023 article which randomly drifted me toward James Lindsay’s “Negation of the Real” video (my Feb 2020 post) and now this one.

I appreciate the hat tip(s) and reminder. I realize Del Noce came to similar conclusions as C.S. Lewis regarding future oppression by megalomaniac technocrats and, now, here we are.

Once I acquire and read the book, maybe I will post on it and, if so, I will look forward to your critique.

m
m

I bought it as e-book (epub) for $20.04 in March of 2019… today $31, now that’s some freaking inflation.
(Paperback I faintly remember was around $26 back then, now $33.)

Uncola

Ok. That’s more in line. What I saw was $100+ on Amazon, stopped looking, and called my library. I thought it was tad costly even though I don’t patronize Amazon.

Will try Flash’s new links below next

flash
flash
Uncola

Looks like a PDF download, Flash? I tried to download from the “Torr Mirror” but got a dead link? It could be a pop-up blocker tho and will keep working at it. thanks, man

flash
flash

There are several server sources, which most likely link to different formats, but this one is Epub. http://library.lol/main/29961763AB8B9D3993B078E822B9CE96

Also ” this mirror” always works for me.

HU is you aren’t already using it. I use Calibre book format converter, so it rarely matters the format I download and it’s free.

here: https://calibre-ebook.com/

Uncola

Got it. Had to use Torr browser to snag the book and use e-reader. Thanks for the links

m
m

EPUB is the preferred non-DRM format for e-readers (E ink).

My favorite light-weight PC-based E-book reader program is “Sumatra PDF”, but you need to get version 3.1.2 as they broke something in the newer versions. https://www.sumatrapdfreader.org/download-prev

Calibre works too.

MJ
MJ

Thank you for the coherence. And thank you for presenting us with this resource. Excellent, well researched and on point which is the hallmark of your presentations. You have established a nice little body of work. Thanks again.

messianicdruid
messianicdruid

I also appreciate your efforts. The line that shocked me: “All of that was written in April, 1981.”

“Remove not the ancient landmark, which thy fathers have set.”

Old Geezer
Old Geezer

Great essay. I did read the entire synopsis. My background is from the machine shop, jet engines, airframes and such. + or – 1 from time to time.

That’s why I refuse to read the musings of philosophers. They obviously are so intelligent they can talk themselves into … anything. ( I did read Plato’s Republic, utter nonsense )

Here’s my simpleton’s observation –

A culture too stupid to survive won’t.

I’ve suggested organizing a truckers strike to call in sick to the DC metro area for two weeks, especially fuel and food. I’ve made the suggestion on many web sites.

Simultaneously suggesting one of you great internet aficionados to start a web site where people can suggest ideas. The guys running the site and others in the “ back ground “ could separate the wheat from the chaff, organize and publicize the best ideas for effect. Purely voluntary on the individual level, non violent and massively powerful.

I guess it’s too much bother, still waiting for that imminent fourth turn.

Rose Ann what’s her name said it best … Never Mind

Guest
Guest

Agree. I think anything must not have an organization however. They are either started by plants or are too easy to take over.

Old geezer
Old geezer

I’ve got one good idea – literally starve the beast, don’t deliver food or fuel to dc. Completely non violent. An individual can decide to “ do something “. When advertised well and organized “ through the grapevine “, massively powerful.

There are millions of people out there, theres got to be many more gems of ideas.

No plant to start. A dispersed operational group can’t be taken over. Just a clearinghouse for ideas that people could act on as individuals as they choose to. Non violent.

I read thousands of essays by brilliant writers. I see no good ideas for concrete action. All good men.

Rise Up
Rise Up

Who do you think you are going to starve in D.C.? It’s 85% populated by blacks, and the K Street lobbyists will take a vacation and Congresscritters will just fly home. Most of the remaining government employees and contractors live in the suburbs.

Old geezer
Old geezer

Understood, make it the dc metropolitan area. It’s time to fight back, non violently. Doubtful any one would starve. A voluntary action by individuals would not likely get anywhere near 100%. The intention is to show where power exists, to make them … inconvenienced.

Fwiw, if the s really htf, it will happen organically to cities across the nation.

Machinist
Machinist

Old Geezer, A&P or IA ?
Emily Litella,(Gilda Radner).

Old geezer
Old geezer

Nope. AA machine tool technology, De Anza JC. Machine Shop training NASA Ames. Manufacturing Engineering, Cal Ploy Pomona class of ‘86.

Emily ? I didn’t know that. She was a sweet heart.

Guest
Guest

This is interesting and I will probably listen to the series. The elephant in the room is that it was also directed. By that I mean planned and carried out over decades. Mainstream politicians, movers and shakers have been writing what was going to happen for a long time. Right down to death by vaccination (see Salk and the French dr. In the 90’s to start).
An open conspiracy as they say. Part is true because the extreme manipulation fits in with existing human psychology etc.
Why do the theoreticians not go there? Perhaps because they are brain washed and extremely conformist in their own way. After all most of them fell for the plandemic didn’t they?

Alsothis phenomenon is mostly just with 5% or less of the people, but is propagandized so much it seems it’s everywhere. Many just give it lip service then go about their business. The really interesting part is all of us just looking at this stuff in amazement, however I think this is starting to change and people are starting to reject it now.
It’s a thing, but it’s a fake thing. I go with Jacques Ellul’s interpretation much more.

Anonymous
Anonymous

To Kill a Fly: On the perils of postmodern moral reasoning
By Theodore Dalrymple
https://www.city-journal.org/html/kill-fly-10757.html

Rationalizing Ugliness:
The modern intellectual screens reality through fashionable opinion.
By Theodore Dalrymple
https://www.city-journal.org/rationalizing-ugliness

MORE:
https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/67950.Theodore_Dalrymple

“American society is the only one which has passed directly from barbarism into decadence without once knowing civilisation.” — Albert Jay Nock
MORE: https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/228606.Albert_Jay_Nock

Robert Gore

I’ve just barely started your article, but a heartfelt salute of admiration and respect for tackling a subject like this on an internet blog. Congratulations!

I got in an argument with a guy once and he exclaimed, “There are no absolutes!”
I asked, “Other than the one you just uttered?”

Aunt Acid
Aunt Acid

Sure there are Absoluts; plain, lemon, watermelon juice, rasberry, vanilla, peach….

Skoal, Y’all.

WilliamtheResolute
WilliamtheResolute

Seems like a lot of words to describe navel gazing…reality is just under the surface, man’s true nature will emerge as soon as Christian values fail. The Ten Commandments weren’t meant to be a guide to sin any more than the book 1984 was meant to be a guide to governance…prophecy is agnostic, it’s just prophecy.

Aunt Acid
Aunt Acid

We shall wake up from this post-modern psychotic nightmare when the fire is in our bedroom. The fire is already in the hall just outside the door.

Auntie is calling out to everyone : FIRE!

anon a moos
anon a moos

SSHHHUUSSHHHH Pls, trying to sleep here. damn

Svarga Loka
Svarga Loka

Unrelated: Ray, I got your book in the mail today (Tales of a sea gypsy). Can’t wait to read it. Already chuckled at the description of you on the back “Since 1985 he has sailed his beautiful sloop, Aventura, over 20000 miles -most of them single handed – a sure sign that he must have taken a few bowling ball shots to the head”. No significant other to share the journey with???

Svarga Loka
Svarga Loka

This morning, we are camped out at the library. For 21 days, they had some eggs in the incubator and today is hatch day. Only 2 year old toddlers there to observe it because all the other school aged kids are locked in the day prison, which is literally the building next door. We just changed our plan and have “God’s creation, birth, death, male/female, food” as our homeschool plan today .

It’s taken soooooo long. 3 hours and still no chick. We went home for lunch and will go back later and will hopefully witness a miracle. In the meantime, we learned about wing sexing chicks at 4 days old. I had no idea! You never stop learning.

These are the kind of real world experiences that matter when you grow up and teach the most, without any effort on the parent’s part:

You cannot haste life, or you might induce illness or death.

Patience is a virtue.

Some eggs may not have a live chicken in it. Acceptance is a virtue. It is in God’s hands.

No matter how many hens you own, and how loud they might be or how much they might identify as a rooster, in the real world, you need both male and female to create a chick.

All this is true in premodernism, modernism, postmodernism and forever.

Aunt Acid
Aunt Acid

“… wing sexing chicks…”
Svarga Loka

That certainly sounds interesting.

Marky
Marky

It’s all fake. Everything is manufactured, processed, and inauthentic.

Seems I’ve heard that before somewhere. HMMMMMM

flash
flash

Fake and gay, bruh.

Anonymous
Anonymous

Yawn.

Anonymous
Anonymous

That’s a postmodern response.

Ray Jason

Hi Uncola,

Thanks for all of the effort and for sharing it with TBP.

Just took a break from finishing the second part of my SEA GYPSY TRIBE ENCYCLOPEDIA essay and now realize that I will need to add that this life choice is a true antidote to the absurd relativism of Postmodernism. At Sea, the tempest does not abate due to CONTEXT.

Maybe I will file that under F as in Fuck Foucault. I assume that you are aware of his “back or should that be rear story.” Sometimes it seems to me that much of their philosophy is nothing more than justification for their perversions.

Notice how much of this disease stems from France. Has anyone examined whether they started putting additives in the drinking water or the wine over there in the 20th century?

Uncola

At Sea, the tempest does not abate due to CONTEXT.

lol

Loved that, Ray. You interface with waves of reality in ways that make “do-overs” both rare and fortunate.

comment image

Anthony Aaron
Anthony Aaron

Somehow, I feel like ex-PFC Wintergreen … and just can’t resist saying, ‘Too prolix’ … but that’s due to my brain becoming over saturated with stuff lately … and maybe I just need to shut off the iMac more often than I’m used to doing.

No disrespect meant, Uncola … I like your writing … 

Euddie
Euddie

Uncola?
A great article!
Kudos and thanks.

Too many great points to single any out!
[Read it thrice]

Anonymous
Anonymous

And here we are dealing with the nonsense of Foolosiphers.

Just because someone calls a bucket a chair doesn’t make it a chair. A chair is something to sit on. A bucket can be made to be something to sit on. This is just a similarity.

If I say someone swimming in a pool is a fish, it doesn’t make them a fish. It just makes them similar to a fish in that they both swim in water.

Philosophers like to complicate the simple so as to make themselves self-important and give reason to their valueless existence.

hardscrabble farmer
hardscrabble farmer

I have a new rule, I don’t get into deep discussions with anyone who doesn’t know a trade.

People who work with their hands, fixing or making things, out in the open world without a safety net have something the ivory tower crowd does not possess- experience. I like to listen to the stories people tell about their adventures because they are unique to the narrator. When I find myself having a conversation with people who work for an organization, a college, politics or sales, all they want to talk about are other people or current events, and always without context.

If I need a fix of philosophy, I come here or one of the other two or three sites still worth visiting where people are at least eager to engage in a discourse rather than prosyletize.

flash
flash

Dude, I’ve got a PhD in Gender Studies and a major in African Intersectionalism in LGTBQ+ and – Philosophy and am an ANTIFA/Climate Change activist. RESPECT MUH AUTHORITY and grow me a vegan salad… reeeee

Uncola

I don’t get into deep discussions with anyone who doesn’t know a trade.

I like it. Reality makes for a fine foundation and frame of reference

Will save time too

BL
BL

Does driving a school bus and dump truck count? It’s rare to see billionaires doing either.

Uncola

Those are just my two skills you know about 😉

Guest
Guest

Especially when it comes to health & safety.
Except for really serious stuff (like broken bones or illness that won’t go away etc) all the guys I know (they’re pretty old now tho : ) slap duct tape or super glue on something and get right back to work after short times with broken stuff.

As far as philosophical, political etc stuff is concerned I partially agree. Keeping it simple is a good strategy but over looks the extreme and real psych war going on. We are not in the 90’s anymore. We were being programmed then, just didn’t know it as much.
It’s important to examine your beliefs -especially those leading to action- and where you got them. Everything is propaganda.

As far as the article and my comment up there ^ how useful is the term postmodern if most has been directed? The term, and study of it, itself is a weapon obviously. The tech age did bring in new
Culture, etc. but for one thing normal human life wouldn’t have had such extreme reactions without ‘help’.
Instead of studying postmodernism one should become a conspiracy theorist.

Euddolen ap Afallach
Euddolen ap Afallach

We used to know this one girl who did a lot of work with her hands.

A real artist.

Lol

BL
BL

Was her name Debbie and did she practice her “trade” in Dallas?

Rise Up
Rise Up

The world of our experiences seems chaotic, disconnected, confusing. There appear to be no integrating forces, no unified meaning, no true inner-understanding of phenomena in our experience of the world. Experts can explain anything in the objective world to us… yet we understand our own lives less and less.

This is because we are spiritual beings trapped in a physical body. It is not our natural state of condition, yet we know of no other as our mind only creates the reality it sees. This is a concept not realized in our day-to-day activities due to the distractions of the material world.

It’s no wonder mankind is lost and rudderless because we have forgotten who we are (spiritual beings) and whence we came. The earthly existence is but a short stop-over in our soul’s journey.

turlock
turlock

Mr.. Uncola, nice overview of postmodernism. I am old and have pondered these things for a long time. I am fascinated by the power struggle for the right to describe the structure of life,,meaning, and purpose. I am willing to accept the structure provided by our God, who is exogenous to our material reality. All the other voices are merely other men with opinions.

Uncola

I’ve said it here before, Turlock, and I’ll say it again: All debates are rooted in theology, one way, or another.

Chud Bentley
Chud Bentley

You are 100% correct on this. I also came to this conclusion when I got into philosophy, theology and apologetics about 10 years ago. Probably why I enjoy your articles. Cheers.

Chud Bentley
Chud Bentley

“All truth is relative.” This is a truth claim. Yet it claims there is no truth. Therefore it is a self-defeating, nonsensical statement. This is the foundation of postmodernism. It’s a house built on sand.

How egghead professors spend careers writing about this tripe baffles me.

gadsden flag
gadsden flag

Good article with alot to unwrap – the critical theorist Derrida et al from the Frankfurt School to Columbia Univ in New York.

Horkheimer (Frankfurt School) quote

“The Revolution won’t happen with guns, rather it will happen incrementally, year by year, generation by generation. We will gradually infiltrate their educational institutions and their political offices, transforming them slowly into Marxist entities as we move towards universal egalitarianism.”
― Max Horkheimer

they came from babylon

dismantling post modernism art – https://theunclejohnsband.blogspot.com/

yet, what is their purpose?

Aunt Acid
Aunt Acid

Communist domination.

The original f'kin cynic
The original f'kin cynic

To place postmodernism where it belongs – in the garbage bin – it MIGHT help to start thinking in terms of the “use cases” of the objects under consideration

To wit:
The PRIMARY “use case” of a 5- gallon bucket is to hold some material. A secondary “use case” might be something to sit on, it its turned upside-down

The PRIMARY “use case” of a chair is for sitting.

The fact that a secondary “use case” of the bucket can be made to approximate the primary use-case of the chair, no more makes the bucket a chair, than using a chair – in the absence of a step-ladder – to change a light bulb makes that chair a step-ladder.

OK?

Max Entropy
Max Entropy

Turn the power off for 48 hours and I think there would be more clarity as to what is real and what is not, and not too much debate about it.

No mention of the 2 greatest 'philosophers' ?
No mention of the 2 greatest 'philosophers' ?

albert e. & stephen h.

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