Posted on 06/14/2017 9:02:54 PM PDT by aynrandfreak
Postmodernists, on the other hand, eschew any notion of objectivity, perceiving knowledge as a construct of power differentials rather than anything that could possibly be mutually agreed upon. Informed by such thinkers as Foucault and Derrida, science therefore becomes an instrument of Western oppression; indeed, all discourse is a power struggle between oppressors and oppressed. In this scheme, there is no Western civilization to preserve—as the more powerful force in the world, it automatically takes on the role of oppressor and therefore any form of equity must consequently then involve the overthrow of Western “hegemony.” These folks form the current Far Left, including those who would be described as communists, socialists, anarchists, Antifa, as well as social justice warriors (SJWs). These are all very different groups, but they all share a postmodernist ethos.
(Excerpt) Read more at quillette.com ...
Seems like a no-win game. If the new group du jour succeeds, then guess what? Now THEY are the oppressors.
Which is a kind of crazy nihilism... that there is no honorable way to win.
Understand you are an Ayn Rand freak, and Ms. Rand outlined some follies that attack Western society, but she never really gave a fair hearing to the phenomenon we know as Christian faith. But without such a worldview being common (and it has to be voluntary by evangelism, no state can force it) there isn’t any anchor for a set of dogmas to call Objectivism. One poignant observation to me is that Rand deemed the dollar superior to the whip, and yet there are people who will let on in an honest moment that they prefer the whip. Without a central mercy figure like Christ at the core of one’s worldview, that ugly undercurrent will exist unabated and may even prevail.
“In other words, taking a stand against the students would require administrators and professors to re-evaluate the meaning and value of the entire raison d’etre of their adult professional careers. Holding on to madness is a way of forestalling dealing with the grief that comes with the realization that one’s higher purpose has been a fraud.”
Fraud and criminal. That is higher education after the loss of the Lord as the center of all disciplines.
I suggest postmodernists find some postmodern place to be, which isn’t America, because America intends to stay ‘westernized’ since we invented it and all.
God invented the ideas we call Westernized.
This is how we devolve back into caves and mud huts.
How true, and yet the only way the Lord can get there is through sincere evangelism.
I hear from folks regularly on FR who want to set up some kind of rigid ‘cracy “based on Christianity” not realizing they want to erect an oxymoron.
The evangelist is our friend here long before the politician is.
Yes.
Freedom and objectivity are both based on a Christian worldview.
Remove the Christian worldveiw, and the world devolves the prior dog eat dog state of nature.
Modern examples: Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, Communist China, Cambodia, Cuba, Venezuela... on slower terms, France, Germany, Sweden, England.
Without that kind of salvational Hope, we can only act to shortsighted motives.
Germany used to be up to its ears in it. Cf. WWI and WWII. Germany fooled us because it looked so Western, yet its heart was on the pagan altars. I conquer, therefore I am. Rather than, my conquests look like thus and such because I believe in God who is love.
Well said Red.
One of its products is an intellectual fashion currently gripping the academies that might be termed the Criticals: Critical Thinking, Critical Law, Critical Race Theory, Critical Feminist Theory, etc, etc. One might replace "Critical" with "Marxian" except that would be to give old Karl far too much credit, and in fact, too much blame as well. These have the grotesque stipulation that moral rectitude is always a function of lack of power and concomitant lack of ability to oppress, and if you don't believe them, they'll oppress the hell out of you. This cannot be hypocrisy in the absence of any universal ethical standards, but it certainly is ironic. It is, essentially, the worship of power if it is anything at all other than pure nihilism. It is also the function of loose and sloppy thinking.
Nothing is more revealing than its susceptibility to texts (that very font of postmodernity) filled with complicated, meaningless jargon that pass for legitimate publication within the sundry fields. That sort of mockery would be deadly to any legitimate intellectual endeavor; it just rolls off the back of the postmodern academics like rain off a duck. It's like watching a fervent believer in astrology or alchemy validating the belief of another - don't get caught in between, because they'll kill you for it. The rest of us can only shake our heads in disbelief and watch the silliness.
The Postmodernists killed God-—and with it “Objective Truth” and Natural Law (science/biology, etc) which is the bases of the Age of Reason and the US Constitution and Modern Science.
They want to destroy everything that Christianity built-—the worldview of our Constitution and Justice System — Laws of Nature and Nature’s God for a nihilist worldview-—tearing down free will and individualism and all traditions and identity (male and female) for radical egalitarianism which has to be totalitarian so that the elite sodomites have complete control over every single person from cradle to grave..
How they have been able to destroy reason and logic is through the culture (arts, MSM) which little children embed and emulate. They made vice into virtue, flipping 2000 years of ethics back to satanism. Vice creates slaves for the State.
The skools did the most damage, though, as parents allowed strangers to shape the minds of their children, based on the Prussian system of Fichte/Wundt/Pavlov of mass indoctrination.
By 1930, John Dewey, the communist, was able to make skool mandatory for everyone and lower the age to five to get children out of the Natural family (which is the only way to embed individualism and common sense and virtues) and force them into a system of group (non)-think—forcing of a collective/socialist worldview which embeds dependency and emasculates boys and destroys agency in children (the integration of the brain).
It was planned by the elites on Jekyll Island in 1908 or so-—how to get total control over all of America starting with the Federal Reserve, the Income tax and WWI, as they created foundations so they could launder their money and gain complete control over publishing agencies, textbooks, literature, churches, newspapers, judges, legal system, univeristies, schools, banks, etc.
They have complete control over the minds of children now with Common Core which will destroy agency and virtue formation in children which will make them into ignorant snowflakes and dependents (socialists) for life.
Well put. You explained why Germany has been a dark corner of the Western nations. Germany will convince me they have a death wish if they reelect Merkle next September.
Rand clearly identified the enemies of civilization—the witch doctors (fraudsters) and the violent folks who use force when fraud doesn’t work.
Leftist dominated institutions like the major media, the universities, leftist churches, etc. go the fraud route.
Leftist governments (if they can get themselves elected by using fraud) stop the pretense and go for force.
I know many folks here think our present day issues are unique—they are not—human history is fractal, you just need to look at it from a bit of distance.
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