# Post-Modernism



## Secret Asshole (May 2, 2017)

So, you might have heard the term Post-Modernism thrown about on the forums. Mostly in threads about Social Justice or Intersectionality or all those fun time concepts. You may have also heard of the alt-right conspiracy of ‘Social Marxism’ as the origins to this era of political correctness. Both are one in the same. Except there’s no such thing as a cultural Marxist conspiracy, it’s a load of horse shit (I’ll also explain why this is a load of shit). It is all about Post-Modernism. This philosophy is core to everything going on, from transgender bathrooms, to free-speech, to gender studies, to fat studies, to the Science March, to Bill Nye, to videogames and pop-culture. Recently a great article was written about it here: https://areomagazine.com/2017/03/27...-west-postmodernism-and-its-impact-explained/

I’m going to attempt to condense it and make it less academic as right now it reads like a paper. As an aside, this thread is going to be long, so feel free to skip over it. But otherwise, come with me on a journey of incredible faggotry and learn just what this shit is and how it came to pass. If this proves popular, I might do other posts on the Social Sciences and concepts in it, like Tabula Rasa.

*The Definition of Post-Modernism*

We can’t really understand something if we don’t understand the definition. Hunting down this definition involves a lot of philosophy and understanding of philosophical movements. But in general, it’s the rejection and deconstruction of the modern European ideas of the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries: Philosophy, Ethics, Reason, Scientific Revolution, Ideas of the Enlightenment. They continue to reject ideas that the modernists did (Ideas of Empire, the Power of the Church, etc) but now focus on destroying modernist ideas as well.

And it rejects those ideas because those ideas are its main challenge, particularly the rigid structures of philosophy. In truth, Post-Modernists always existed. Socrates knew them as the Sophists: Empty people who promoted fallacious arguments for money, prestige and status.

*What do Post-Modernists Believe?*

Everything going on seems new, but it has its roots in 1960s France. Its roots lie with Nietzsche and Heidegger. This is because post-modernism basically rejects realism. In a nutshell, post-modernists believe that you cannot have any structure to reality and you can NEVER determine anything objectively one way or the other. It’s the Calvinball of philosophy; allowing you to make up your own rules regardless of the reality around you. Forever moving the goalposts.

It rejects the core concepts of the enlightenment and modernist artistic movements. It also threw out philosophy completely that valued any sort of ethics, rational structure, reason and clarity. Anything with any sort of coherent structure came under attack. This includes Marxism. They said that Marxism was too simplistic and rigid.

But the true enemy of the post-modernist isn’t art or philosophy or economic theory. It is science. This is because science definitively establishes an objective reality that all humans follow and live in, independent of a person’s individual perspective. Because it doesn’t matter what a person believes, they are under the same rules of nature as everyone else. They considered it a constructed ideology. Don’t believe progressives when they say they love science. They wish to pollute it with this filth like the humanities. And why did they reject over 2,000 years of human thought, philosophy, progress and art?

It’s a refrain you may have heard before: because they are Western, Middle-Class and Male

*Who are the Three French Cunts?*

I’m going to condense these philosophers into something manageable so this isn’t 500 pages. I’m not going to do them justice, but fuck it, they don’t deserve it.

 Jean-François Lyotard believed that scientists in the 1960s were demoralized and had doubt about the work they were doing, therefore was evidence that science’s objective nature could be called into question. This dumb cunt had no idea what he was talking about. He is the one that started the anecdotal evidence is ‘real’ and personal belief in culture trumps any sort of objective reality. Therefore you can say scientists doubted the scientific method and have it hold true. Or how you can claim to be Anti-Fascist and throw Molotovs at cops.

 Jacques Derrida rejected that words refer to anything simple or straightforward. If you write something with a certain meaning, you can kiss that shit goodbye because anyone reading it has an equally valid meaning. Everyone is an authority. The intent doesn’t matter, only its impact. From here we get ‘words as violence’.

Michel Foucault is where we get our Anitas and culture critics from. He believed that we are all culturally constructed. Which is what it sounds like: culture influences us completely, we have no individual will. Culture replaces God. It’s the tabula rasa or blank slate idea that permeates the humanities to this day.

Reminder: This is ALL philosophy. This is not based on research, psychology or basic human nature. This is all supposition that rejects reality.

*Post-Modernism in Practice*

So now we come to today. This ideology has basically infected all of social science. I’m going to post a couple of examples of modern post-modernist garbage:

Post-Modernists on Basic Reason:



			
				David Detmer on Confronting Post-Modernists said:
			
		

> “When I had occasion to ask her whether or not it was a fact that giraffes are taller than ants, she replied that it was not a fact, but rather an article of religious faith in our culture.”



Post-Modernists on Science:



			
				Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont said:
			
		

> “Who could now seriously deny the ‘grand narrative’ of evolution, except someone in the grip of a far less plausible master narrative such as Creationism? And who would wish to deny the truth of basic physics? The answer was, ‘some postmodernists.’”
> 
> “There is something very odd indeed in the belief that in looking, say, for causal laws or a unified theory, or in asking whether atoms really do obey the laws of quantum mechanics, the activities of scientists are somehow inherently ‘bourgeois’ or ‘Eurocentric’ or ‘masculinist’, or even ‘militarist.'”





			
				Protesters on a Speaker said:
			
		

> “Science has always been used to legitimize racism, sexism, classism, transphobia, ableism, and homophobia, all veiled as rational and fact, and supported by the government and state. In this world today, there is little that is true ‘fact.'”



And our old favorite, Post-Modernists at College:



			
				Doctoral Student at Purdue said:
			
		

> I have seen, with my own two eyes, a 19-year-old white woman—smart, well-meaning, passionate—literally run crying from a classroom because she was so ruthlessly brow-beaten for using the word “disabled.” Not repeatedly. Not with malice. Not because of privilege. She used the word once and was excoriated for it. She never came back. I watched that happen.
> 
> I have seen, with my own two eyes, a 20-year-old black man, a track athlete who tried to fit organizing meetings around classes and his ridiculous practice schedule (for which he received a scholarship worth a quarter of tuition), be told not to return to those meetings because he said he thought there were such a thing as innate gender differences. He wasn’t a homophobe, or transphobic, or a misogynist. It turns out that 20-year-olds from rural South Carolina aren’t born with an innate understanding of the intersectionality playbook. But those were the terms deployed against him, those and worse. So that was it; he was gone.
> 
> I have seen, with my own two eyes, a 33-year-old Hispanic man, an Iraq war veteran who had served three tours and had become an outspoken critic of our presence there, be lectured about patriarchy by an affluent 22-year-old white liberal arts college student, because he had said that other vets have to “man up” and speak out about the war. Because apparently we have to pretend that we don’t know how metaphorical language works or else we’re bad people. I watched his eyes glaze over as this woman with $300 shoes berated him. I saw that. Myself.




*Conclusions and the Ultimate Joke of Post-Modernism*

Hopefully by the end of this you have a better idea of just what post-modernism is, and where it came from. It allows you to say what you want with no evidence and no need of research. It permits you to be a hypocrite. It is a baseless, empty ideology. But it is an ideology that has taken over academia, threatens science and art. And if the west holds to it, it will die. Because contrary to Post-Modernists, there is an objective reality. And it is not kind. Its not all doom and gloom though! 

At post-modernism's heart, at its core, is an ironic joke. The whole philosophy is hypocritical. Jean-François Lyotard went to Sorbonne University, which was at the time an extremely prestigious university in France. Jacques Derrida taught at that prestigious university. Michel Foucault was born into an upper-middle class family.

And thus, we have it: the ideology opposed to Western, Middle-Class Men was developed by Western, Middle-Class Men. That about sums up everything about this philosophy.


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## Mariposa Electrique (May 2, 2017)

SNL did 3 hilarious skits about a character that defines post-modern garbage, here's one.
Great thread.
I really don't want to live in a post-modernist society.
There's a fine line between subjectivity and objectivity, and we need both to function. Post-modernism threatens this delicate balance.


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## talk talk talk (May 2, 2017)

Prior to 1968, the folks working on what is now called post-modernism were doing some interesting stuff.

But post 1968, that branch of philosophy has been agonizing over why "the revolution" didn't happen then. And it has become increasingly retarded.


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## Secret Asshole (May 2, 2017)

Mariposa Electrique said:


> SNL did 3 hilarious skits about a character that defines post-modern garbage, here's one.
> Great thread.
> I really don't want to live in a post-modernist society.
> There's a fine line between subjectivity and objectivity, and we need both to function. Post-modernism threatens this delicate balance.





talk talk talk said:


> Prior to 1968, the folks working on what is now called post-modernism were doing some interesting stuff.
> 
> But post 1968, that branch of philosophy has been agonizing over why "the revolution" didn't happen then. And it has become increasingly exceptional.



Nobody does. Its a world where Cowboys and Indians are real, meaning you can make up whatever rules you want. But like I said, there is an objective reality. It is not nice or kind, nor is it politically correct and it doesn't care what your gender is, what color your skin is, or the principles of intersectionality.  

I think all philosophies run their course and post-modernism will have run its, probably pretty soon actually. You are already seeing it reaching its zenith with nationalism rising and progressives in retreat across the globe. Because you simply cannot deny objective reality without consequences, and your enemies will use it against you. You see the alt-right doing it with conspiracies and manipulating language in response. The problem is its been so ingrained into our institutions is just how much damage its going to do before it goes.


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## Mariposa Electrique (May 2, 2017)

Secret Asshole said:


> I think all philosophies run their course and post-modernism will have run its, probably pretty soon actually. You are already seeing it reaching its zenith with nationalism rising and progressives in retreat across the globe. Because you simply cannot deny objective reality without consequences, and your enemies will use it against you. You see the alt-right doing it with conspiracies and manipulating language in response. The problem is its been so ingrained into our institutions is just how much damage its going to do before it goes.


So, how do you think the end of post-modernism will affect its cult members? I am praying that we will be able to witness the bubble burst some day soon. 
I am just afraid of the finality of the entire thing; you have people who have basically cycled toward mental illness and magical thinking. I hope we don't see mass suicides.


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## Secret Asshole (May 2, 2017)

That's the tough part, wishing the end of this era doesn't come cheap. If you look at historical pattern, trends of thinking tend to be born and die within catastrophes and wars. Post-Modernist thinking expanded so much because of the relative prosperity after World War 2. Its a philosophy that can really only exist in that sort of environment. 

What I didn't mention was the shift of Post-Modernism on Activism. Previously, Activism was on labor movements. From '68 on, it shifted towards social movements, because of relative prosperity. However, the thing is that prosperity has been decreasing. Its kind of hard to blame your problems on Western Bourgeois when the Western Bourgeois is ceasing to exist.  My bet is the bubble that breaks is a major financial crisis, worse than 2008. Its more likely than a World War at this point.  Just imagine, how will hipsters make it without any of their expensive creature comforts? Crushing poverty? Debt that actually crushes them? You're dealing with a bunch of narcissists who really only care about themselves. 

I don't know, honestly. I can picture what would end it. What would happen to the cult? I figure you are going to run into 2 camps: 1) Diehards who will go down with the ship and are relegated to general obscurity and mockery (see the collapse of the religious right) 2) Cynical people who will reject everything and go more conservative or just a complete abandonment of politics altogether.

That also posits during its collapse phase (especially financial) it will be a lot less popular to complain about superfluous shit. As in, regular people will become aware and counter hard. You already see this happening, it will just be amplified in crisis mode. Virtue signaling will no longer buy you good-boy points and the progressive stack doesn't matter in a crisis, because you want it resolved, you don't want to hear what the mentally retarded tranny has to say about it.


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## AnOminous (May 3, 2017)

Secret Asshole said:


> [shit I didn't even read]



Sorry, I didn't even read that, but I probably agree with it.  

I just remember I've had a lot of super left wing academic friends and one of them constantly ranted about how much he hated postmodernism and what utter garbage it was and how it was destroying society, and I thought he was kind of exaggerating and wondered what his issues were.

And now I realize everything he said was true.


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## Oh Long Johnson (May 3, 2017)

That's actually not a bad little summary, @Secret Asshole 

Like someone said, in the early years, they came up with some interesting ideas. There are two big, intertwined problems with the philosophy. You implied in your OP that PoMo was the same as sophistry, and while I am sure you know that isn't strictly true, its base proximity allows the lazy, the dishonest and the ignorant to claim post modern "logic" for works/ideas of absolute sophistry. And that ties into the second problem - dumbasses and con men. We've now got every undergrad and tumblr tard creating a holy book of isms that can be appended to bell hooks interesting yet completely untested/argued idea of intersectionality. Get the fuck out of here with that shit. Give hooks 40 or 50 years to refine her argument while the opposition takes its whacks at it and we'll see if you've got a framework worthy of appending the dire oppression of handednessism onto.

PoMo should really have security clearances. If you want your PoMo theories to be considered, you had fucking best have an advanced degree and have a book or two published by a non-vanity house. If you don't have a degree higher than undergrad, your knowledge of the subject is unlikely to be sufficient to critique or latch your own ideas onto someone else's book/theory. If you are from tumblr, your knowledge of any of these subjects is likely the first two sentences of a wiki page, so do a flip. 

I think if Derrida and Foucault were still kicking around, they'd be having a laugh at this stupidity but personally concerned that it had contaminated psychology and medicine. It's like putting a flaming paper bag of dog shit on someone's front stoop and watching the guy stomp it out trip and break his neck.


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## Positron (May 3, 2017)

Oh Long Johnson said:


> I think if Derrida and Foucault were still kicking around, they'd be having a laugh at this stupidity but personally concerned that it had contaminated psychology and medicine. It's like putting a flaming paper bag of dog shit on someone's front stoop and watching the guy stomp it out trip and break his neck.


I thought a big part of Foucault was to dismantle the notion of mental illness, and by extension psychology and medicine.  We should count our blessing that his idea has so far made no headway into serious, clinical practice; the bastard field of "sociology of medicine" or "public health" is another matter.

Derrida would have laughed at anything nonetheless.


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## Anti Fanta (May 3, 2017)

Very interesting thread, and I agree with lots of what’s been posted.

However I think it's important to bring up the historical background of post-modernism when discussing it. It came about after the most catastrophic event in human history, the Second World War, and of course the Great War before that. People’s concepts of almost everything were blown apart.

How could something so inexplicably destructive, violent and evil happen in a world of science, rationality and relative prosperity? How was post-Enlightenment Europe capable of such barbarism?

Old ideas, social structures and cultural touchstones were totally destroyed or rendered useless and shown up for what they were; systems invented by man, not ordained unto earth by a god or a natural hierarchy.

Science, hitherto seen as a noble pursuit for the glory of knowledge in itself, was now tarnished by the horror of Hiroshima, of Auschwitz and the avalanche of death on the mechanised battlefield. Once synonymous with life and human vitality, it was now shrouded in the shadow of Thanatos.

Experiments in restructuring society on a large scale had failed. Fascist Germany had self-destructed, and the Russian Revolution had long since been hijacked by Stalinism.

The early post-modernists were reacting to all of this and trying to understand the new world that had emerged from the ashes. The slate had effectively been wiped clean and space for new ideas had opened up.


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## Lackadaisy (May 3, 2017)

Bless this thread.


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## Oh Long Johnson (May 3, 2017)

Positron said:


> I thought a big part of Foucault was to dismantle the notion of mental illness, and by extension psychology and medicine.  We should count our blessing that his idea has so far made no headway into serious, clinical practice; the bastard field of "sociology of medicine" or "public health" is another matter.
> 
> Derrida would have laughed at anything nonetheless.


This is where I deconstruct my ignorance of Foucault by drilling down into the idea that all knowledge is really based on a communal agreement and any agreement that doesn't require consent is communal rape. Therefore, the fact that I have never read Foucault and just threw him in there anyway makes my statement about him true because, really, what kind of community supports rape?


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## Elwood P. Dowd (May 3, 2017)

Didn't one of the most prominent PoMo philosophers rail against the whole idea of personal hygiene as something worthwhile? And also walk the walk as well as talk the talk, in the sense that it was almost impossible to be anywhere near the guy in any kind of enclosed space, he apparently stank that bad. Wish I could remember where I read this, or which philosopher it was, it was in  some short memoir by one of his former students. And it was quite amusing.


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## Ruin (May 3, 2017)

One of the my biggest issues with post modernist ideologies like social justice is that it's devotees are hypocritical and enforce it selectively. The prime principle of pose modernism is that there are no universal truths yet post modernists spout supposed universal truths all the time such as all whites are racist or gender is a social construct.


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## AnOminous (May 3, 2017)

Part of why I just don't read anything postmodern is that the moment you tell me everything is just a social construct, you've basically told me everything YOU are saying is also absolute and utter bullshit and a complete waste of time to listen to.


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## Pickle Inspector (May 3, 2017)

Ruin said:


> One of the my biggest issues with post modernist ideologies like social justice is that it's devotees are hypocritical and enforce it selectively. The prime principle of pose modernism is that there are no universal truths yet post modernists spout supposed universal truths all the time such as all whites are racist or gender is a social construct.


Tbh I think many post modernist ideologies fill the same niche religion used to fill for some of the more hardcore members in that they get to act as a moral authority and it's a community where they can get together and feel that they are doing good by pushing their ideology, you even get moral panics about video games and outreach programs for school kids.

From what I've seen a lot of the more vocal members such as Moviebob and Brianna Wu grew up in a religious household and it's like they are rebelling whilst not realizing they are acting just like their parents in their preachy ways and are obsessed with being what they see as being a good person with the right (social justice approved) opinions.


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## MMMMMM (May 3, 2017)

Am I the only one reading the article here?  This is an absolute literary abortion.  This is why Jesus isn't coming back.  This makes me think ISIS might have a point after all.  This is a fucking stupid article and I suppose I had better explain why:

*Second paragraph:*
>began in France
Nope
>in the 1960's
Nope

Basic mistakes here, the author is either a moron or she knows her readers are.

*Third paragraph:*
I think the author is confusing questioning with attacking, the notions of absolute truth and objective reality are not sacrosanct, and its ever so slightly arrogant for a blogger to pass judgement on anybody who commits the cardinal sin of skepticism.

*Fourth paragraph:*
I was going to pass this paragraph since its about Modernism, but apparently the author can't get that right either.  Modernism was a movement in the 1800's, yet if we're to believe this article it should be credited for events that occured centuries prior.  She didn't even check a wikipedia article, this is getting depressing.

*Fifth paragraph:*
Again with the accusations of postmodernists coming for our hard-won freedoms, yet no citations or even anecdotal examples.  What, you can't quote a postmodernist work?  Oh wait, that would require reading one.

*Sixth paragraph:*
>The term “postmodern” was coined by Jean-François Lyotard in his 1979 book,
I just felt myself get another grey hair, am I being trolled?  Is that what's happening now?  Well mission fucking accomplished, I'm mad.
She's off by about a hundred years.

At this point I think I've proven that the author isn't qualified to write about this topic, so I'm not gonna fact-check everything else because I just realised how much bullshit there is.  What follows seems to be a bunch of quotes that serve as adequate page filler, now onto some more bizzare rantings:

-We have the claim that acknowledging scientific backing for bigoted and destructive behaviour is the same as 'attacking' science.  It's not.  Admitting that people twisted science to justify discriminatory actions isn't an attack on science as a process.  It's just history.  It happened.  

The author clumsily tries to connect this with the lolworthy #decolonisescience thing in South Africa, because we're meant to believe that a bunch of dumb fucking teenagers were intimately familiar with the heavyweights of postmodernism.  Sure.

Notice how this is the best that the author can come up with?  Some hashtags and some arrogant professors have "ruined the west"?  Artists and philosophers, who are rarely even noticed outside of their bubbles, are now to blame for infiltrating and destroying literally everything else?

This article is taking you all for a ride, it's desperately trying to link identity politics and SJW's to something that sounds intellectual, safely assuming that nobody reading it will figure out how much of it is fiction.

I'm not out here defending postmodernism or anything, I don't care about it.  Tear it all down if you like, but you can't just read a few quotes and tell yourself you know what it's all about.


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## Secret Asshole (May 3, 2017)

AnOminous said:


> Sorry, I didn't even read that, but I probably agree with it.
> 
> I just remember I've had a lot of super left wing academic friends and one of them constantly ranted about how much he hated postmodernism and what utter garbage it was and how it was destroying society, and I thought he was kind of exaggerating and wondered what his issues were.
> 
> And now I realize everything he said was true.



There's a difference between progressives and liberals. Don't let them fool you. Any liberal is horrified by Post-Modernism, because it rejects the foundations and tenets of liberalism for something ephemeral. 



Oh Long Johnson said:


> That's actually not a bad little summary, @Secret Asshole
> 
> Like someone said, in the early years, they came up with some interesting ideas. There are two big, intertwined problems with the philosophy. You implied in your OP that PoMo was the same as sophistry, and while I am sure you know that isn't strictly true, its base proximity allows the lazy, the dishonest and the ignorant to claim post modern "logic" for works/ideas of absolute sophistry. And that ties into the second problem - dumbasses and con men. We've now got every undergrad and tumblr tard creating a holy book of isms that can be appended to bell hooks interesting yet completely untested/argued idea of intersectionality. Get the fuck out of here with that shit. Give hooks 40 or 50 years to refine her argument while the opposition takes its whacks at it and we'll see if you've got a framework worthy of appending the dire oppression of handednessism onto.
> 
> ...



Thanks! I don't really have a problem with Post-Modernism in terms of staying in the realm of philosophy. Exploring weird and unconventional modes of thought and questioning modern strictures are what philosophers are supposed to do. That being said, it has expanded far, far beyond the realm of philosophy into nearly every area of humanities scholarship and outside into discourse. And yes, I don't believe that the original post-modernists themselves are sophists.

That being said, the whole of it has dissolved into sophistry. You have humanities scholars failing students for disagreeing, people using post-modernist philosophies to define absolute truth and rejecting the notion that there is no authority on truth. Most humanities professors and probably all gender studies/cultural studies have dissolved into sophistry. They posit themselves as the true visionaries and being on the 'right side of history', while dismissing every other point of view under the guise of '-isms'. The con is in full force, as colleges use these boutique courses to basically extract money from wealthy people and poor alike, passing it off as 'knowledge' that doesn't apply to the wider world. Of course, they posit the concept of internationalisim as the absolute, god's honest truth. Ask for proof? Sexist, racist. But the truth is, there's no proof for any of what they say. Male gaze, toxic masculinity, intersectionality, privilege, the progressive stack...there is no logic or reason to any of them. But they don't play by the rules, they are absolute truths. And that's the problem with tumblrites and academics; they don't work to correct this. They just reinforce it and colleges are all too happy to take the easy money of fools.

Post-Modernism should. The problem is that there are no standards of scholarship with Post-Modernism. If you look at humanities papers, you'd be shocked to see what they were. Terrible dissertations that are basically Buzzfeed/Vice/Salon/Mary Sue articles that are written in kafkaesque jargon to make them look intelligent. 

They might, but its unavoidable now. Its pretty much a cancer that's growing and sooner or later the other side is going to do the same thing, and we'll truly learn what it is to live in a world where everyone is their own authority on truth. Which is complete hell.



Pickle Inspector said:


> Tbh I think many post modernist ideologies fill the same niche religion used to fill for some of the more hardcore members in that they get to act as a moral authority and it's a community where they can get together and feel that they are doing good by pushing their ideology, you even get moral panics about video games and outreach programs for school kids.
> 
> From what I've seen a lot of the more vocal members such as Moviebob and Brianna Wu grew up in a religious household and it's like they are rebelling whilst not realizing they are acting just like their parents in their preachy ways and are obsessed with being what they see as being a good person with the right (social justice approved) opinions.



Post-Modernism thought is now a religion. Its concepts cannot be questioned. They are the absolute truths of the world and you either accept or bow in submission or you are excommunicated from the faith. You may only restore your position by submitting to an authority or one of the 'chosen'. You are born in sin, and any sins that your father committed stain you for all eternity. You must spend every waking moment of your life atoning for their sins in order to be accepted. They protect their own no matter the crime, be it pedophilia, torture or murder. This is because they are chosen and their ancestors past sacrifices make them worthy. Or they are of the faith and must be protected, for the benefit of the rest. Otherwise it might expose inherent hypocrisies and endanger the faith. Progressives are guilty of all of the above. Nothing is based on logic, reason or any sort of ethics.

It is a theology. It is no longer a philosophy. If you see an atheist following these concepts, they are just following a different type of religion. Modernism rejected the power structures of the church, favoring enlightenment, humanism, liberalism and scientific revolution. Post-Modernists seek to destroy reason and logic, and institute a new church and a new clergy: themselves.


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## Trilby (May 4, 2017)

Mariposa Electrique said:


>


SNL did 3 hilarious skits about a character that defines post-modern garbage, here's one.
Oh, it's a shame to see I'm locked out on seeing this unless I VPN my way to it!  Oh well.



> Great thread.
> I really don't want to live in a post-modernist society.
> There's a fine line between subjectivity and objectivity, and we need both to function. Post-modernism threatens this delicate balance.


It does.  I think a steady diet of "Pre-Postmodernism" keeps on in clear focus!


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## AnOminous (May 4, 2017)

I still admire Foucault to some degree, because even though he was exactly the insane degenerate he's often accused of being, he was a phenomenally good troll.


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## Secret Asshole (May 4, 2017)

MMMMMM said:


> Am I the only one reading the article here?  This is an absolute literary abortion.  This is why Jesus isn't coming back.  This makes me think ISIS might have a point after all.  This is a fucking stupid article and I suppose I had better explain why:
> 
> *Second paragraph:*
> >began in France
> ...



If you really want me to go on, then I can. But whatever Post-Modernism was, it isn't now. The Sokol Affair is well known in scientific circles and still goes on, and that is definitely Post-Modernist. It has nothing to do with imperfections in Science, just infiltration to remove objectivity from it. Social Science still rejects Biology and uses Foucault's theories on being formed by culture only. I'm not saying that teenagers know what the fuck post-modernism is, but its more like academics who used Post-Modernism to 'prove' their ideas. 

Like it or not, Post-Modernism is responsible for this. The philosophers and artists who founded the movement might not have envisioned this, but it is undoubtedly Post-Modernist in nature.


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## Anti Fanta (May 6, 2017)

Foucault actually spent some time teaching at Berkeley. While he was there he spent his free time visiting sado-masochistic bathhouses and taking drugs.

Then he got AIDS and died, proving that nothing good will ever come from going to Berkeley.


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## The Great Chandler (May 12, 2017)

Anti Fanta said:


> Foucault actually spent some time teaching at Berkeley. While he was there he spent his free time visiting sado-masochistic bathhouses and taking drugs.
> 
> Then he got AIDS and died, proving that nothing good will ever come from going to Berkeley.


You can go homo, but don't go full homo.


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## Lensherr (May 12, 2017)

Wonderful post @Secret Asshole ! Seriously, you're becoming one of my favorite posters here.

Do you think you could elaborate more on the Cultural Marxism thing? From what I know, it's a slang term for Critical Theory, which was born of intellectuals of the Frankfurt School and is aimed at deconstructing and attacking Western civilization and the basic precepts that it was founded upon, and it's disproportionate influence in academia. How closely aligned do you see Post-Modernism and Critical Theory, and would the Frankfurt School be considered Post-Modernist?


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## Un Platano (May 13, 2017)

Postmodern literature has produced some good novels like Catch 22 and Slaughterhouse Five necause it emphasizes the effect reliability and narrator has an a narrative. It's an interesting writing philosophy because of that. I can't imagine why someone would extend that to a general life philosophy though. Postmodernism is exceptional if it's not fiction.


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## TowinKarz (May 13, 2017)

Ruin said:


> One of the my biggest issues with post modernist ideologies like social justice is that it's devotees are hypocritical and enforce it selectively. The prime principle of pose modernism is that there are no universal truths yet post modernists spout supposed universal truths all the time such as all whites are racist or gender is a social construct.



In much the same way that "why?' can destroy the edgy student anarchist yelling at you to "QUESTION EVERYTHING!"

But yeah, glad I'm not the only one seeing the naked hypocrisy in "All crime is a social construct, no one is truly evil at heart, except for white straight males with jobs"


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## AnOminous (May 14, 2017)

Un Platano said:


> Postmodern literature has produced some good novels like Catch 22 and Slaughterhouse Five necause it emphasizes the effect reliability and narrator has an a narrative. It's an interesting writing philosophy because of that. I can't imagine why someone would extend that to a general life philosophy though. Postmodernism is exceptional if it's not fiction.



Postmodernism as a literary phenomenon is not the same as in a philosophical context.

Nor, frankly, were even the progenitors of postmodernism as a philosophy in the same class as the cancer they inadvertently (or even deliberately) spawned.

I don't think Kurt Vonnegut ever uttered the word postmodernism.  If so, I can't remember it.  I don't think he identified as it.  He probably identified more as a science fiction writer than that, and he didn't consider himself a science fiction writer either, although he did publish a story in Harlan Ellison's original Dangerous Visions collection ("The Great Space Fuck").

It sounds to me like postmodernists have way more to gain by claiming Vonnegut than he ever did by claiming them.


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## Positron (May 14, 2017)

Lensherr said:


> How closely aligned do you see Post-Modernism and Critical Theory, and would the Frankfurt School be considered Post-Modernist?


The two are almost diametrically opposite (though equally odious): as a byproduct of Marxism, Frankfurt School believed in societal teleology (i.e. society is heading towards a predestined goal for the betterment of mankind, and some form of revolution is needed to achieve such goal).  Hence FS was a quintessentially _Modernist_ school of thought, exactly the thing that Postmodernism serves to defy.  What FS was in common with PoMo was their preoccupation with cultural products, especially popular culture, but even in this aspect their attitudes differ: FS was staunchly against pop culture, denouncing it as Capitalist false consciousness.   They believed only some form of arcane learned art (e.g. 12-tone music) could reflect the social condition of the people, and thus serve as the inspiration of class revolt.  PoMo, on the other hand, believe that pop culture _is_ the social condition of people.  Hence PoMo embrace pop culture, even to the extent they elevate it above learned arts.


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## Jan_Hus (May 15, 2017)

After the Sokal affair, you would think that would be the final nail in the coffin for postmodernism... but no... they keep spewing retarded horseshit


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## Anti Fanta (May 15, 2017)

Positron said:


> The two are almost diametrically opposite (though equally odious): as a byproduct of Marxism, Frankfurt School believed in societal teleology (i.e. society is heading towards a predestined goal for the betterment of mankind, and some form of revolution is needed to achieve such goal).  Hence FS was a quintessentially _Modernist_ school of thought, exactly the thing that Postmodernism serves to defy.  What FS was in common with PoMo was their preoccupation with cultural products, especially popular culture, but even in this aspect their attitudes differ: FS was staunchly against pop culture, denouncing it as Capitalist false consciousness.   They believed only some form of arcane learned art (e.g. 12-tone music) could reflect the social condition of the people, and thus serve as the inspiration of class revolt.  PoMo, on the other hand, believe that pop culture _is_ the social condition of people.  Hence PoMo embrace pop culture, even to the extent they elevate it above learned arts.



Yeah it always amuses me when someone whose knowledge of the subject has clearly come entirely from some misinformed /pol/ infographic says that things like degeneracy and 'Jewish tricks' in popular music are due to the Frankfurt School's influence.

Theodor Adorno spent most of his intellectual career panning pop culture. If anything, he and his colleges wanted to save the West from cultural degeneracy, not encourage or accelerate it.

EDIT: As an aside I seem to recall I read an article about Adorno's hatred of hippies and the cultural movements of the 60s, and that in return a lot of those people hated him back for being a square or whatever.


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## Alec Benson Leary (May 15, 2017)

First of all, thank you @Secret Asshole for this thread.



Lensherr said:


> Do you think you could elaborate more on the Cultural Marxism thing?


Secondly, I too would appreciate a deeper delving into this lovely catchphrase that would quickly kill me if we made it a drinking game.


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## Anti Fanta (May 15, 2017)

Feel like people here would appreciate this: http://www.elsewhere.org/pomo/

Basically randomly generates postmodern academic essays and is surprisingly accurate to the kind of thing you do see in various journals and publications.


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## r00 (May 15, 2017)

We are already trying to find our way past postmodernism. In the 60s, it was a mic-dropping, mischievous, apocalyptic kinda philosophy that cheekily highlighted the limitations of structural understanding of human existence. Nowadays its all just a bit "yeah, but where do we go from here?". And it's just so damn vague as a paradigm. It's almost been distilled down to a "feeling". A "feeling" of detached, snarky, smartass self-consciousness, that was very handy in the 60s for exposing conservative hypocrisy, but now its just created a generation of special snowflakes who miss the point and only embrace the most self-centered aspects of it. The whole idea of individual narratives being more important than objective truth is torn straight from Roland Barthes wikipedia page, misinterpreted, and then regurgitated by retarded literature undergrads with tumblr accounts.

David Foster Wallace (the guy who wrote Infinite Jest, which is a really amazing piece of art if you can get past its scale, and reputation as pretentious hipster bullshit) wrote a very interesting essay in the early 90's about what he saw as a pervasive cultural irony that arose out telvision coopting postmodernist literary techniques.
https://jsomers.net/DFW_TV.pdf
He was pretty much bang on. Anyone old enough to remember the 90s has been dosed so full of irony over the years, its purpose has lost all meaning.


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## Secret Asshole (May 17, 2017)

Lensherr said:


> Wonderful post @Secret Asshole ! Seriously, you're becoming one of my favorite posters here.
> 
> Do you think you could elaborate more on the Cultural Marxism thing? From what I know, it's a slang term for Critical Theory, which was born of intellectuals of the Frankfurt School and is aimed at deconstructing and attacking Western civilization and the basic precepts that it was founded upon, and it's disproportionate influence in academia. How closely aligned do you see Post-Modernism and Critical Theory, and would the Frankfurt School be considered Post-Modernist?






Alec Benson Leary said:


> First of all, thank you @Secret Asshole for this thread.
> 
> 
> Secondly, I too would appreciate a deeper delving into this lovely catchphrase that would quickly kill me if we made it a drinking game.




No problem and thanks, only happy to reveal the shittyness that is academic post-modernism. The 'theory' behind Cultural Marxism is that the Soviets realized that Communism failed, so the way to subvert the capatalists wasn't economically, but socially. The problem is that Marxism is BOTH a social AND an economic system. But lets keep going.

Essentially, its basically: infiltrate academic institutions, slip Marxism into culture, Marxism brainwashes students, students hold soft communist revolution. That's the conspiracy theory. And Cultural Marxism does exist....except as @Positron said, its diametrically opposed to everything SJWs do. Pop culture is basically capitalism incarnate. You can't subvert it, because comics, games, movies, music are essentially ALL the spirit of capitalism. Cultural Marxism in general used by alt-right is a conspiracy theory  and its just a post-modernist mode of thought. Not really a way to ferment a communist revolution. SJWs generally don't give a fuck about the working class and you see them get treated with disdain. Kind of goes against Marxist ideals.

Just to be clear, I don't care about post-modernism in art and fiction (as long as people don't treat it like the end all, be-all). Just that it has infected academic circles


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## Alec Benson Leary (May 17, 2017)

Secret Asshole said:


> Pop culture is basically capitalism incarnate. You can't subvert it, because comics, games, movies, music are essentially ALL the spirit of capitalism. Cultural Marxism in general used by alt-right is a conspiracy theory and its just a post-modernist mode of thought. Not really a way to ferment a communist revolution. SJWs generally don't give a fuck about the working class and you see them get treated with disdain. Kind of goes against Marxist ideals.


It would be pretty ballsy for any of the talking heads to firmly adopt marxism, since making money off of youtube videos is entirely inseparable from the capitalist spirit.


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## feedtheoctopus (May 30, 2017)

I swear to god 99% of people who bitch about post-modernism have no idea what it actually is. It's an analysis of modern power relations and the impact of the mass media, it isn't an endorsement of them. That's the mistake people always make. That and people act like they're somehow making an argument for nihilism, which they aren't. 

Like that whole bit about Foucault. That's a massive oversimplification of the guy. So much so it doesn't have much of anything to do with what he actually wrote, to the point I have to wonder if the author's ever read him. Like, he wrote about how political power influences society and the scientific establishment. The idea that it doesn't is just flat out idiotic, considering it obviously does. The internet came from military research for example. In fact a lot of scientific research is funded and directed by the government, to the extent a lot of other possible avenues are left totally unexamined. That's Foucault's "power creates knowledge" schtick in a nutshell. Much of what we understand about the world and the context we find ourselves in is defined by powerful people. 

The most basic definition of post-modernism I ever encountered was "collapse of metanarratives". A metanarrative essentially being an all encompassing analysis of history. Think Marxist dialectics or the social contract. Idea that history and society has this rational, preordained, and easily verifiable course. What post-modernism proposes (broadly) is that we've essentially lost faith in those metanarratives. That they no longer appear to have any relevance to our lives. It doesn't take a genius to realize a kind of hopeless cynicism is the defining feature of the modern world. At the same time there's an environment of information overload. Truth and lies seem to blend together and flip upside down so much that it becomes almost impossible to tell which is which. Take for example the whole Trump-Russia thing. You have the media saying one thing, the president saying another, a million and one internet blogs saying both and adding some conspiracy theory in for good measure, constant allegations of Russian botnets directing internet discourse, etc etc. 

Result? Anybody who says they know what the actual fuck is going on is a liar. 

Postmodernism doesn't say truth doesn't exist, just that our conception of it has been warped beyond all belief.


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## Alec Benson Leary (May 30, 2017)

feedtheoctopus said:


> Postmodernism doesn't say truth doesn't exist, just that our conception of it has been warped beyond all belief.


But the end result is a bunch of snotty cynics throwing their hands up in the air and saying "I don't have to listen to anyone who doesn't support the narrative I've already decided makes me the good guy".


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## feedtheoctopus (May 30, 2017)

Alec Benson Leary said:


> But the end result is a bunch of snotty cynics throwing their hands up in the air and saying "I don't have to listen to anyone who doesn't support the narrative I've already decided makes me the good guy".


Yup, and that's the problem. But blaming postmodernist thinkers is kind of barking up the wrong tree. They're analyzing that attitude, not giving it a thumbs up.


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## r00 (May 30, 2017)

feedtheoctopus said:


> The most basic definition of post-modernism I ever encountered was "collapse of metanarratives"



 That's how I like to boil it down. Like Lyotard said, postmodernism manifests as an "incredulity towards metanarrative", but even he later admitted that "the postmodern condition" was a deeply flawed essay. I see how this incredulity applies to art and literature as set of distinct techniques (such as irony, self consciousness, pastiche, fragmentation etc) that artists can use to creatively undermine mordernist idealism, but I struggle to see how the paradigm can be effectively applied elsewhere, as anything other than a cheeky stopgap philosophy that we only keep until someone clever comes up with something better. It boggles my mind that people took this idea, and turned it into "whatever I say is right", rather than interpreting it as highlighting the flaws in the possibility of an absolute structural understanding of human experience.

The conspiritard in me also thinks that postmodernism has been perpetuated by academics as a way of keeping themselves relevant after more leavisian forms of criticism and canonisation were exposed as being unhelpful elitist bullshit. It's difficult to say anything new and exciting about Shakespeare, but if you can show how the wording of a chinese takeout menu reflects the negative aspects of post-colonialist orientalism, then you'll definitely find a publisher somewhere to pat your ass for you.
Almost all of my favourite art is stylistically postmodern, but as a cultural paradigm, it might be one of the worst things to happen to humanity.
At this point, most talks of postmodernism really do sound like "De man and Foucault in the mouth of a dull child" because "how dare you question the veracity of Muh narrative?". Of course 

Seeing as I'm Drunk and rambling, Ill just leave another of my favourite assessments of postmodernism from Umberto Eco (who was the absolute fucking man):

"I think of the postmodern attitude as that of a man who loves a very cultivated woman and knows that he cannot say to her ‘I love you madly’, because he knows that she knows (and that she knows he knows) that these words have already been written by Barbara Cartland. Still, there is a solution. He can say ‘As Barbara Cartland would put it, I love you madly’. At this point, having avoided false innocence, having said clearly that it is no longer possible to speak innocently, he will nevertheless have said what he wanted to say to the woman: that he loves her in an age of lost innocence."


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## Sperglord Dante (May 30, 2017)

Alec Benson Leary said:


> It would be pretty ballsy for any of the talking heads to firmly adopt marxism, since making money off of youtube videos is entirely inseparable from the capitalist spirit.


Check the second comment here

https://kiwifarms.net/threads/jason-unruhe-maoist-rebel-news.11068/


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## feedtheoctopus (May 30, 2017)

r00 said:


> That's how I like to boil it down. Like Lyotard said, postmodernism manifests as an "incredulity towards metanarrative", but even he later admitted that "the postmodern condition" was a deeply flawed essay. I see how this incredulity applies to art and literature as set of distinct techniques (such as irony, self consciousness, pastiche, fragmentation etc) that artists can use to creatively undermine mordernist idealism, but I struggle to see how the paradigm can be effectively applied elsewhere, as anything other than a cheeky stopgap philosophy that we only keep until someone clever comes up with something better. It boggles my mind that people took this idea, and turned it into "whatever I say is right", rather than interpreting it as highlighting the flaws in the possibility of an absolute structural understanding of human experience.
> 
> The conspiritard in me also thinks that postmodernism has been perpetuated by academics as a way of keeping themselves relevant after more leavisian forms of criticism and canonisation were exposed as being unhelpful elitist bullshit. It's difficult to say anything new and exciting about Shakespeare, but if you can show how the wording of a chinese takeout menu reflects the negative aspects of post-colonialist orientalism, then you'll definitely find a publisher somewhere to pat your ass for you.
> Almost all of my favourite art is stylistically postmodern, but as a cultural paradigm, it might be one of the worst things to happen to humanity.
> ...



Academic dick wagging is nothing new. It's a story as old as universities themselves. Thing is we're more familiar with modern day dick wagging than anything in the past. A lot of these thinkers absolutely do give into their own narcissism and don't know how to filter out bullshit from what's actually interesting in what they're saying. My experience with a lot of academics (Zizek is a great example) is that they just write/publish fucking anything they write down regardless of whether the world needs to hear it or not. 

I love postmodern art. Pynchon, Delaney, all those people. But I do think it is a fair criticism to say that they tainted pop culture with irony at the expense of sincerity. Thing is while a book like Crying Of Lot 49 was an obvious reaction to the absurdities of the 1960's, when you take that same attitude and apply it to today the result is just mindless cynicism. Like, if you watch South Park the number one message you get out of it is "every viewpoint is the same and believing in anything is stupid". That's what counts as "wisdom" to a lot of people. A lot of people's politics come off like a giant George Carlin routine. Just call everything fuckin' stupid and leave it at that. Older I get more I find that shit just totally useless.


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## AnOminous (May 30, 2017)

feedtheoctopus said:


> I swear to god 99% of people who bitch about post-modernism have no idea what it actually is. It's an analysis of modern power relations and the impact of the mass media, it isn't an endorsement of them. That's the mistake people always make. That and people act like they're somehow making an argument for nihilism, which they aren't.



Overuse of "postmodern" as a snarl word is sort of the academic equivalent of right wingers of a conspiratorial bent calling every single thing they dislike "cultural Marxism" whether it has anything to do with Marx or not.  This is especially silly when it is applied to things that actual Marxists detest, like selfish identity politics that alienate oppressed minorities from their shared interests and pit them at each other's throats in the pursuit of often trivial, niche interests which fail to address class struggle in any meaningful way.

Still, blaming Foucault or even Derrida or any of the rest of the original "postmoderns" for the current state of academia is overstating the issue, and is somewhat akin to blaming Nietzsche for the Nazis.  I think I've said that before, possibly on this very thread.  At least in theory, the basis of postmodernism is, as you say, questioning metanarratives, the underlying assumptions that generate successions of prevailing narratives and determine what sort of form they take.

Unfortunately, any academic rigor in this has long since died, and I think while the progenitors of postmodernism aren't directly responsible for this, they can be blamed for having led their followers into what is ultimately a dead end and which, ironically, has itself become a prevailing metanarrative of the very sort it professed to destroy.

Actually interrogating and questioning narratives requires studying them.  Unfortunately, this has quite often descended into nihilistic, self-justifying ignorance, since if nobody ultimately has any privileged viewpoint that should be studied and interrogated, simply acting in disregard of history and tradition for its own sake and not because it contributes to progress, progress itself being one of those metanarrative components the philosophy rejects.

Ironically, many of the people who adopted these memes that filtered out from academia, not because they've actually ever read Foucault but simply because they're part of SJW culture, simultaneously extoll nonsensical self-congratulatory silliness like being "on the right side of history," even though to be consistent, they should realize there's no history to be on the right side of anyway.

Consistency, of course, is also more oppression.



feedtheoctopus said:


> I love postmodern art. Pynchon, Delaney, all those people. But I do think it is a fair criticism to say that they tainted pop culture with irony at the expense of sincerity. Thing is while a book like Crying Of Lot 49 was an obvious reaction to the absurdities of the 1960's, when you take that same attitude and apply it to today the result is just mindless cynicism. Like, if you watch South Park the number one message you get out of it is "every viewpoint is the same and believing in anything is stupid". That's what counts as "wisdom" to a lot of people. A lot of people's politics come off like a giant George Carlin routine. Just call everything fuckin' stupid and leave it at that. Older I get more I find that shit just totally useless.



Ironically, considering it's almost pamphlet-sized, Crying of Lot 49 is the only Pynchon novel I haven't read other than whatever he's written in the last five years or so.

"Postmodern" in terms of art is really a separate thing from the philosophy.  It is sort of like how Freudianism is now only taken seriously in literary criticism, usually related to analyzing symbolism (or character analysis).


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## Positron (May 30, 2017)

feedtheoctopus said:


> I swear to god 99% of people who bitch about post-modernism have no idea what it actually is.


Is there anyone in the world knows what postmodernism actually is?  The very notion of definition is haram in pomo.



feedtheoctopus said:


> It's an analysis of modern power relations and the impact of the mass media, it isn't an endorsement of them. That's the mistake people always make. That and people act like they're somehow making an argument for nihilism, which they aren't.


In a sense pomo indeed does not argue for nihilism: pomo theorists privilege their viewpoint, their subjectivity, above all else, even when it flies in the face of all objective data and experience of all people in the world.  It is more solipsism than nihilism.



feedtheoctopus said:


> Like that whole bit about Foucault. That's a massive oversimplification of the guy. So much so it doesn't have much of anything to do with what he actually wrote, to the point I have to wonder if the author's ever read him. Like, he wrote about how political power influences society and the scientific establishment. The idea that it doesn't is just flat out idiotic, considering it obviously does. The internet came from military research for example. In fact a lot of scientific research is funded and directed by the government, to the extent a lot of other possible avenues are left totally unexamined. That's Foucault's "power creates knowledge" schtick in a nutshell. Much of what we understand about the world and the context we find ourselves in is defined by powerful people.


This notion of "power create knowledge" is trivial; when you have more money you can use it to investigate and create things.  No mystery, no controversy.

What is controversial about Foucault is the notion that power relationship permeates every pore of human existence.  How come mental illnesses and "madness" is defined as such?  POWER!  How come we acknowledge astronomy as legit but not astrology?  POWER!  This is an altogether different notion that needs to be proven.



feedtheoctopus said:


> The most basic definition of post-modernism I ever encountered was "collapse of metanarratives". A metanarrative essentially being an all encompassing analysis of history. Think Marxist dialectics or the social contract. Idea that history and society has this rational, preordained, and easily verifiable course. What post-modernism proposes (broadly) is that we've essentially lost faith in those metanarratives. That they no longer appear to have any relevance to our lives. It doesn't take a genius to realize a kind of hopeless cynicism is the defining feature of the modern world.


Not all "metanarratives" are created equal.  The "metanarrative" of Physics (let's for a moment image there is indeed such a thing) -- everything in the natural world follows certain laws, and that such laws can be discovered through observation and experiment, and can be expressed mathematically -- continues to serve us very well.  The "metanarratives" of gender studies, not so much.  Declaring _every_ knowledge system as untrustworthy just because some knowledge system turned out to be untrustworthy is illogical and smacks of nilhilism.



feedtheoctopus said:


> Postmodernism doesn't say truth doesn't exist, just that our conception of it has been warped beyond all belief.


If truth exists, it would just be another "metanarrative" and will be taken down pronto.
And how are we able to identify truth when we find it?  Or is pomo merely paying lip-service to the notion of truth by relegating it to some Platonic la-la land?


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## feedtheoctopus (May 31, 2017)

Positron said:


> Is there anyone in the world knows what postmodernism actually is?  The very notion of definition is haram in pomo.


One reason I actually kind of dislike most criticisms of postmodernism I've read is that it treats it as a singular entity. Granted, I did the same thing up above to an extent out of convenience, but it's a generalization all the same. We're talking about a diverse body of theory here. It shares similar themes, but it's broad enough that people can and do argue about the definition all the time.


Positron said:


> This notion of "power create knowledge" is trivial; when you have more money you can use it to investigate and create things.  No mystery, no controversy.
> What is controversial about Foucault is the notion that power relationship permeates every pore of human existence.  How come mental illnesses and "madness" is defined as such?  POWER!  How come we acknowledge astronomy as legit but not astrology?  POWER!  This is an altogether different notion that needs to be proven. .


Personally anyway, I think the idea that political/economic/religious/whatever power permeates most of our existence is sort of self evident. No matter how much we try we can't really separate our conception of morality or personal identity from the machinations of power. You experience it every time you go to work or vote.


Positron said:


> Not all "metanarratives" are created equal.  The "metanarrative" of Physics (let's for a moment image there is indeed such a thing) -- everything in the natural world follows certain laws, and that such laws can be discovered through observation and experiment, and can be expressed mathematically -- continues to serve us very well.  The "metanarratives" of gender studies, not so much.  Declaring _every_ knowledge system as untrustworthy just because some knowledge system turned out to be untrustworthy is illogical and smacks of nilhilism.


I've read a lot of bullshit, but I've never read anybody who seriously said that, for example, the sky isn't blue. What most of these philosophers concern themselves with is culture and society, not physical laws. And human culture and the reasons we act like we do are far more abstract.


Positron said:


> If truth exists, it would just be another "metanarrative" and will be taken down pronto.
> And how are we able to identify truth when we find it?  Or is pomo merely paying lip-service to the notion of truth by relegating it to some Platonic la-la land?


Generally anyway? It's saying truth and lies are put on the same level by society to the extent that our ability to discern one from the other has sort of collapsed. What postmodernism is after is the "why"


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## RichardMongler (Jul 28, 2017)

Speaking of Cultural Marxism and Postmodernism, this rather curious vlogger released a video essay on exactly why she feels Paleoconservatives and right-wing cranks misapprehend both concepts. Here's how she feels they should be interpretted.







Spoiler: Bibliography and transcript courtesy of the video description.



"Cultural Marxism", as the far-right portrays it, doesn't exist.

The critical theory of the Frankfurt School ought to be understood as a continuation of the long tradition of Jewish antinomianism, as it emphasizes a break from the ideology and norms of the existing modern order for the sake of redemption. The members of the Frankfurt School drew inspiration from the western canonical tradition, with its blend of Jewish and Pagan precepts, rather than seeking to destroy it. Their animosity towards western industrial-capitalist society and the progress myth grew out of the historical disdainful attitudes of the Gentiles towards European Jewry, culminating in a genocide characterized by hierarchical obedience and technical efficacy.

If Jew-hating conspiracy theorists really knew anything about Jewish history and the Frankfurt School, they'd bring up Walter Benjamin - may HaShem avenge his blood - and his admitted interest in the Gnostic Sabbatian-Frankist heresies - something he picked up from his good friend and theologian Gershom Scholem - which consisted of amoral transcendence of Jewish law and ethics (such as consumption of unkosher foods, ritual sodomy, feasts and orgies on Purim, et cetera), egalitarianism, and female liberationist doctrines, all in the name of tikkun and Messianic redemption. The Dönmeh (the loyal followers of Shabbatai Tzvi) publicly converted to Islam in the manner of the forced conversion of their Moshiach, all the while secretly practicing their clandestine heretical Jewish faith, replete with wife-swapping, homosexuality, and other Abrahamic no-nos. The Dönmeh, situated in Turkey, later "infiltrated" Sufi and Alevi orders, as well as the Turkish communist party, feminist and anarchist organizations, intent on subverting traditional Islamic morality and epistemology.

Critical theory follows in this wave of thought by throwing off the rigid chains and iron fists of the narratives which emerged from modernity and capitalism. Mythologies of “progress” and the gradual move towards a new Golden Age through the forces of technological development, so-called capitalist “freedoms”, and un-malleable “logic” which had engulfed the western mode of thought were, in essence, flipped in the sense that they would be interpreted as elements of social control and an ongoing historical catastrophe, leading humanity straight to a torturous fascist death. Oral Torah and kabbalistic texts are littered with references to the existing world being under the domain of evil side of God, that is, the side of God which incorporates hatred, punishment, and unholiness. God fell into duality by the act of Creation, and must be re-unified through the tikkun of the people below, whose actions will thus bring about the re-unification of God above and the return to primordial harmony. ….

In all of this, it can be stated that the intellectuals of the Frankfurt School were in no way trying to destroy culture, but were rather looking to retrieve the elements of western culture which gave off a sense of utopianism within the commodified capitalist sludge. This can be seen in the ways Benjamin utilized translation as a means of finding the lost holy sparks of God within language and literature, and also in within his motif of collecting and contrasting the artifacts of culture he encountered whilst walking into the sphere of the profane. It is also what lead Adorno to praise old school reactionary thinkers on the basis that such thought longed for a culture that was more “authentic”, and Marcuse to champion bourgeois literature as superior to the hippie aesthetics which he denounced as having little to no artistic value. They all recognized that mainstream culture had been transformed into a decaying carcass as modernity and capitalism loomed over western civilization.

Xexizy’s video:  




The Dialectical Imagination (Martin Jay):  http://www.antropologias.org/files/downloads/2012/03/The-Dialetical-Immagination-Martin-Jay.pdf

“Dialectic of Counter-Enlightenment: The Frankfurt School as a Scapegoat of the Lunatic Fringe” (Martin Jay): https://web.archive.org/web/2011112.../martin-jay-frankfurt-school-as-scapegoat.cfm

Jewish Cryptotheologies of Late Modernity: Philosophical Marranos (Agata Bielik-Robson): https://www.amazon.com/Jewish-Cryptotheologies-Late-Modernity-Philosophical/dp/1138774499

Fire Alarm: Reading Walter Benjamin’s ‘On The Concept of History’ (Michael Löwy): https://www.versobooks.com/books/2279-fire-alarm
Sabbatai Zevi (שבתי צבי, Sabetay Sevi): http://www.donmeh-west.com/sabbatai.shtml

Sabbatianism: https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/sabbateanism


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## Positron (Jul 28, 2017)

Tinfoil hat.

There is some common ground between Frankfurt School and the more Foucault-influenced postmodernists (especially Deleuze), in that they are both deeply critical about Capitalism and skeptical about democracy.  But the appearance is only skin-deep:  Frankfurt school might be pessimistic about the direction the human race is heading, but they still believe that genuine social progress is at least theoretically possible.  Pomo denies any notion of social progress altogether, and they're apt to be as critical to Marxism as they are to Capitalism.


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## Lackadaisy (Jul 31, 2017)

I got a C in my "Post Modern Feminist Literature" class in college because I, and I quote the professor here, "didn't properly engage with the reading material" and "actively sought to destabilize classroom discussions by disagreeing with core concepts of the course." 

Thank God I didn't pay for that experience.


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## AnOminous (Jul 31, 2017)

Lackadaisy said:


> I got a C in my "Post Modern Feminist Literature" class in college because I, and I quote the professor here, "didn't properly engage with the reading material" and "actively sought to destabilize classroom discussions by disagreeing with core concepts of the course."
> 
> Thank God I didn't pay for that experience.



All you have to do to get an A in those classes is make sure anything you say or turn in for a grade is completely incomprehensible and full of pomo gibberish.  One of my roommates in college long ago had one of the proto-versions of this kind of class and we'd just sit around doing bong hits and thinking of ridiculous shit to put in his term paper which got an A despite him being a FUCKING WHITE MALE.


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## Lackadaisy (Jul 31, 2017)

AnOminous said:


> All you have to do to get an A in those classes is make sure anything you say or turn in for a grade is completely incomprehensible and full of pomo gibberish.  One of my roommates in college long ago had one of the proto-versions of this kind of class and we'd just sit around doing bong hits and thinking of ridiculous shit to put in his term paper which got an A despite him being a FUCKING WHITE MALE.



I guess my stuff just wasn't incomprehensible enough. I've always been the sort of person who finishes a paper and then has to tack on extraneous shit to meet the page count.


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## AnOminous (Jul 31, 2017)

Lackadaisy said:


> I guess my stuff just wasn't incomprehensible enough. I've always been the sort of person who finishes a paper and then has to tack on extraneous shit to meet the page count.



For this kind of paper, though, it has to be ALL extraneous shit.  You probably fucked up by putting in something that made sense.


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## Trilby (Jul 31, 2017)

AnOminous said:


> For this kind of paper, though, it has to be ALL extraneous shit.  You probably fucked up by putting in something that made sense.


I wonder if this is where drugs come in to help?


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## Positron (Jul 31, 2017)

Lackadaisy said:


> I got a C in my "Post Modern Feminist Literature" class in college because I, and I quote the professor here, "didn't properly engage with the reading material" and "actively sought to destabilize classroom discussions by disagreeing with core concepts of the course."
> 
> Thank God I didn't pay for that experience.



There can't be such thing as "core concepts of the course", because the notion of a "core concept" smacks of a metanarrative whose sole purpose is to legitimize the discourses privileged by the course.  Likewise there can't be such notion as "properly engage the reading material" because it presupposes said reading material has a finished, self-contained meaning, like a locked box which the student is supposed to open with a key.   In actuality, any text is unstable and in a state of flux and fracture.  Like Heraclitus's river, how you engage it depends on the state you happen to find it.  Privileging a supposedly "proper engagement" marginalizes and silences other modes of engagement.  By the same token, all classroom discussions, being texts, are unstable by nature, and you can't really "destabilize" the already unstable.

Give your prof an F.



Trilby said:


> I wonder if this is where drugs come in to help?


Pomo's rise in America coincided with drug culture.  Make of that what you will.


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## Lackadaisy (Jul 31, 2017)

Positron said:


> There can't be such thing as "core concepts of the course", because the notion of a "core concept" smacks of a metanarrative whose sole purpose is to legitimize the propositions covered in the course.  Likewise there can't be such notion as "properly engage the reading material" because it presupposes said reading material has a finished, self-contained meaning, like a locked box which the student is supposed to open with a key.   In actuality, any text is unstable and in a state of flux and fracture.  Like Democritus's river, how you engage it depends on the state you happen to find it.  Privileging a "proper engagement" marginalizes and silences other modes of engagement.
> 
> Give your prof an F.



I was very tempted to send him an email like his, but I thought the better of it.


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## r00 (Aug 1, 2017)

AnOminous said:


> For this kind of paper, though, it has to be ALL extraneous shit.  You probably fucked up by putting in something that made sense.



Probably this. If you don't make the professor realise that Understanding your viewpoint and cultural frames of reference is a futile impossibility then you've failed.


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## Lensherr (Aug 4, 2017)




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## Mysterious Capitalist (Aug 8, 2017)

This thread makes me kinda regret that I never bothered to study philosophy during my formative years. Is there something light I can read about this topic?

BTW, very nice thread @Secret Asshole , I hope to see more stuff like this from you


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## Positron (Aug 8, 2017)

Mysterious Capitalist said:


> This thread makes me kinda regret that I never bothered to study philosophy during my formative years. Is there something light I can read about this topic?



_Understand Postmodernism_ by Glenn Ward is probably the best start.  It is a short book, written largely in human language, has an emphasis on the arts, and most importantly Ward provides salient criticisms to most of the ideas he introduces.  The short side is that there is not enough coverage on such funky issues as queer studies, social justice, and feminism.


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## Secret Asshole (Aug 17, 2018)

Modern humanities graduate education doesn't deal in evaluation. All you do in the humanities is vomit back the opinion of the professor whose in turn is in the opinion of dying or dead academics from the early 1950s to late 1970s. Every single concept, notion, or theory they have is actually 50 years old, and constantly twisted to make it look not 50 years old. All of their knowledge is outdated and useless for any sort of evaluation because it was never proven in the first place. You are basically vomiting back dead, useless theories and forcefully trying to put them in a modern space. These theories still rely on the foundation of tabula rasa, in that every human is born a blank slate with no behaviors encoded onto us, which was the presiding theory before genes, genetics and behavioral genetics were discovered. They don't use any form of genetic or methods based psychology, psychiatry or neurology, at all. 

The humanities has not moved out of the 1970s. All of it is a regurgitation of old principles that were always accepted as truth. Its like trying to pin a personal philosophy to a reality that has long since abandoned it.


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## AnOminous (Aug 17, 2018)

Secret Asshole said:


> Modern humanities graduate education doesn't deal in evaluation. All you do in the humanities is vomit back the opinion of the professor whose in turn is in the opinion of dying or dead academics from the early 1950s to late 1970s. Every single concept, notion, or theory they have is actually 50 years old, and constantly twisted to make it look not 50 years old. All of their knowledge is outdated and useless for any sort of evaluation because it was never proven in the first place. You are basically vomiting back dead, useless theories and forcefully trying to put them in a modern space. These theories still rely on the foundation of tabula rasa, in that every human is born a blank slate with no behaviors encoded onto us, which was the presiding theory before genes, genetics and behavioral genetics were discovered. They don't use any form of genetic or methods based psychology, psychiatry or neurology, at all.
> 
> The humanities has not moved out of the 1970s. All of it is a regurgitation of old principles that were always accepted as truth. Its like trying to pin a personal philosophy to a reality that has long since abandoned it.



Meanwhile, while having this secularism that is as fact-based as Lysenkoism, they simultaneously preach that everything is a social construct, there is no objective truth or even reality, and therefore, every opinion is as worthless as every other.  Nevertheless, you must slavishly adhere to their specific brand of nihilism because reasons, or else.


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## Secret Asshole (Aug 17, 2018)

AnOminous said:


> Meanwhile, while having this secularism that is as fact-based as Lysenkoism, they simultaneously preach that everything is a social construct, there is no objective truth or even reality, and therefore, every opinion is as worthless as every other.  Nevertheless, you must slavishly adhere to their specific brand of nihilism because reasons, or else.



The way Post-Modernism was supposed to work was actually as a destruction of the academic establishment. The problem is it did the reverse. Not only did it not destroy the academic establishment, it allowed for a cementing of an academic establishment, it also allowed a methodology for expunging any criticism of it. Lending to this stagnation and death of the humanities we are now seeing. Make no mistake, this post-modernist shit was not supposed to leave the halls of academia for a very good reason. Because it'd be roundly mocked. Its long since tried to spread to fields beyond itself, but has always failed.

Its hip as shit now in liberal circles, but this is not an ideology designed to exist in the real world where real people can look and analyze. Their 'proofs' are series of unclaimed excuses that go in endless circles. Gender as a social construct was originated by a pedophile and a fraud, whose 'groundbreaking study' failed and directly lead to the suicides of both participants in it. The troons and proponents of gender as a social construct like to forget this fact that Dr. John Money was a fraud and should live as a fraud, and should only be taught in scientific ethics courses as an example. It also always makes me laugh that people who study gender never have to take a single reproductive biology course. If you don't touch reproductive biology or biology of gender in general, your entire field is fucking worthless. But we all know why this is. Because they're too fucking stupid to do so. These people are the mongoloids too stupid for any other major. They exist only to prop up a massive student loan and provide the college with a massive amount of money. The humanities have become the easy majors in society.

Don't think for a moment anyone in STEM respects these people. The CEOs are doing public relations dances. In STEM, the humanites are roundly mocked and rejected. You know why they can't get a foothold in STEM? Because in STEM, you require results, critical thinking, logic. These people can't do anything but interpret a 60 year old theory in gibberish. Anita Sarkesian's videos to me didn't need to be deconstructed because they were pseduoacademic trash. They were fucking hysterical. They provided no evidence for these outrageous claims and used jargon and meaningless academic filler to make themselves look intelligent. I could do a video and make the same people who swallowed this shit drink water from a pothole by making it sound academically complex.

And of course, because they've idiotically cemented their own ideology as the 'right' one. Yet they have no comeback to rebuffs of their ideology besides increasing calls to violence, because their token words no longer work. Anita is smart enough to realize that she could never win a debate because she has no evidence for her claims. The stupid ones who debate always lose and come back frustrated, hence why hitting the opposition is so popular. These are children who haven't graduated high school. All you have to do to defeat them is say No. They have no other recourse than appealing to authority.

They're revolutionaries calling on the government and corporations to revolt for them. Fucking pathetic.


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## AnOminous (Aug 18, 2018)

Secret Asshole said:


> And of course, because they've idiotically cemented their own ideology as the 'right' one.



Once you've "deconstructed" everything and established there's no objective truth, though, you really have no framework to claim to be right, because there is no right.  Racism, sexism, all the deplorable shit you hate, even outright Nazism, is just as valid as whatever woke bullshit is flavor of the month.  You don't get to say there's no objective truth and then claim to have it.


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## Steamboat_Bill (Aug 18, 2018)

Secret Asshole said:


> Don't think for a moment anyone in STEM respects these people. The CEOs are doing public relations dances. In STEM, the humanites are roundly mocked and rejected. You know why they can't get a foothold in STEM? Because in STEM, you require results, critical thinking, logic. These people can't do anything but interpret a 60 year old theory in gibberish. Anita Sarkesian's videos to me didn't need to be deconstructed because they were pseduoacademic trash. They were fucking hysterical. They provided no evidence for these outrageous claims and used jargon and meaningless academic filler to make themselves look intelligent. I could do a video and make the same people who swallowed this shit drink water from a pothole by making it sound academically complex.



The humanities also include history, literature, geography, languages... if people in STEM mock those, no wonder we're in the problems we're in.

(I recently read an article making the case that we overfocus on STEM to the detriment of the humanities, and this is why we have so many of the problems we do today - people are weak in history, civics, ethics, philosophy and the like and it's been having effects on our society.)


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## AnOminous (Aug 18, 2018)

Steamboat_Bill said:


> (I recently read an article making the case that we overfocus on STEM to the detriment of the humanities, and this is why we have so many of the problems we do today - people are weak in history, civics, ethics, philosophy and the like and it's been having effects on our society.)



This isn't true, though.  We don't even pay STEM teachers in primary school a penny more than basketweavers.


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## lol you sukc (Aug 18, 2018)

Steamboat_Bill said:


> The humanities also include history, literature, geography, languages... if people in STEM mock those, no wonder we're in the problems we're in.
> 
> (I recently read an article making the case that we overfocus on STEM to the detriment of the humanities, and this is why we have so many of the problems we do today - people are weak in history, civics, ethics, philosophy and the like and it's been having effects on our society.)



Imho, the reason why humanities are often ridiculed has less to do with the subjects themselves and more with the types of people that often tend to be associated with them. Because they're "soft" sciences, it's easy to pollute them with pseudo philosophies and zeitgeist agendas which draws in the crazies like moths to a flame.


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## Secret Asshole (Aug 18, 2018)

Steamboat_Bill said:


> The humanities also include history, literature, geography, languages... if people in STEM mock those, no wonder we're in the problems we're in.
> 
> (I recently read an article making the case that we overfocus on STEM to the detriment of the humanities, and this is why we have so many of the problems we do today - people are weak in history, civics, ethics, philosophy and the like and it's been having effects on our society.)



You do realize that 90% of these fields have been taken over by the ideology I talked about? Did you know that the official organization for Anthropology removed science from its mission statement? That it would now focus on 'public understanding'? It eliminated science because there was a war going on inside the discipline, because evidence based Anthropology lead to some very uncomfortable conclusions, that the 'noble savage' did not exist and that primitive societies unexposed to colonialism were just as, if not more violent than white imperialists and practiced the same techniques? That science based anthropologists have been forced into hiding, not able to do their research and ostracized by major universities, publications and professional orgs?

Did you also know that any attempt to include science into the humanities is vehemently rejected? Social scientists who try have been ostracized and their careers effectively destroyed for trying because of the abject terror that evidence based study would basically force them to prove what they say. And that literature studies and philosophy are moving away from the 'evil white men' and not teaching Shakespeare and traditional philosophy? And that even geography is infected, with studies about feminist glaciers.

The humanities lacks any evidence based learning or independent thought. Social Psychology studies have a 25% rate of reproducable results? 

There's a reason why STEM mocks the humanities. It's that they are terrified of science and evidence based learning, moving towards unprovable opinions and meaningless jargon. It also acts as protection for them infiltrating our fields with their garbage principles, terrified of trying to prove the shit they spout. There's also revisionist history and no critical thinking based learning in the humanities. It's all sophistry and regurgitation. 

STEM isn't overfocused because people think science is magic and have no fucking idea about even basic principles of science.


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## Tanti-Fanti (Sep 3, 2018)

I really grateful for this thread. It's an interesting concept, it's really sad to see where it's going with incomprehensible nonsense being spouted as some sort of logic. I can't say I know a lot to get into the technical side of things like other people have in this thread, but I can talk more about the artistic side of it.

I think the issue I notice with a lot of PM art is that it's just so over-saturated in the art world. Every new kind of art can't maintain any technical skill because it's not "abstract enough" as I heard in the past. And it seems to cultivate this clique in the art world (which always existed to be fair, but still shitty) in which any art that doesn't hold that hipster type meaning of deep is worthless, which is simply not true. I've seen instances in my own art college in with great technical skill, while praised is considered worse than a spot of paint on canvas because it holds no "meaning" to it.

Now, that isn't to say that you CAN'T find it with the spot of paint on the canvas, but what happens when everyone starts to want to have meaning? In my opinion, there becomes none. Because everyone is trying to achieve the same goal through the same deluded process of forgoing some sort of artistic skill, the art you see rather becomes samey. I don't think it's bad to say when everyone tries to do PM art, no one becomes special at it unless they really stand out of the crowd. But it's pushed so much to forgo any technical skill at all that any rando who doesn't know what they're doing can draw a shitty line, say some shallow saying and call it art. While art is subjective, a part of me wants some standard, even though I know it kind of ruins the idea of being subjective to begin with.

What if this new kind of art doesn't have a meaning? Or simply the artist wanted to show off some technical skills? Having art that is subversive isn't a bad thing. But even the early pioneers of PM art had some sort of technical skill. Thus they can understand how to subvert your expectations. However, because people aren't being pressured as much to maintain some sort of technical skill, it just makes the art look lazy.

Once again, I can't comment on the entire psychological field of this mentality. It's not my forte. But I'm more interested in the results of it than anything else really.


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## Positron (Sep 3, 2018)

One trend you have to know about once-respected areas of humanities, such as History and Philosophy, is that they have since become exercises in exegesis.  They pour over texts, referring texts to other texts, pitting texts against one another, never once touch base with reality.  Humanity knowledge has become simulacra in Baudrillard's sense.

This trend is getting worse with pomo because since then even trivial, disposible texts became center to their discussion.   Once History classes argue about the writings of Livy and Churchill, now they talk about _People_ magazine.



Tanti-Fanti said:


> I think the issue I notice with a lot of PM art is that it's just so over-saturated in the art world.  And it seems to cultivate this clique in the art world (which always existed to be fair, but still shitty) in which any art that doesn't hold that hipster type meaning of deep is worthless,


It is a marketing thing.  Pomo gives "artists" licence to indulge in pop culture, and pop culture sells.  And there is no "depth" (hipster type or otherwise) in their works; all they brandish is "irony".   As in "everyone knows I'm a man of wealth and taste and no one would seriously think I have a thing for balloon animals.  That's why I bought this 'sculpture' of balloon puppy.  It is an ironic protest against the shallowness and rampant commodification of our culture.  Honest!"


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## AnOminous (Sep 3, 2018)

Positron said:


> This trend is getting worse with pomo because since then even trivial, disposible texts became center to their discussion. Once History classes argue about the writings of Livy and Churchill, now they talk about _People_ magazine.



If anything, the denigration of the canon and the resulting degeneracy have shown the Western canon actually is important and objectively better than random garbage.


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## Wallace (Sep 3, 2018)

Positron said:


> It is a marketing thing.  Pomo gives "artists" licence to indulge in pop culture, and pop culture sells.  And there is no "depth" (hipster type or otherwise) in their works; all they brandish is "irony".   As in "everyone knows I'm a man of wealth and taste and no one would seriously think I have a thing for balloon animals.  That's why I bought this 'sculpture' of balloon puppy.  It is an ironic protest against the shallowness and rampant commodification of our culture.  Honest!"



Of course, this assumes that your analysis reaches the "correct" conclusion that the cool kids have decided upon already.


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## JustStopDude (Sep 3, 2018)

Secret Asshole said:


> Did you know that the official organization for Anthropology removed science from its mission statement?


 
There is no universal "official organization for Anthropology". This is akin to me claiming that the official language of engineers worldwide is Belorussian because that is the language of the Minsk National Technical University.

As per your disregard for Humanities...you are exposed to companies and are manipulated every day to do things they want due to the training in humanities, such as sociology, psychology, etc. 

Advertising, good advertising, is completely based on the humanities.


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## Your Weird Fetish (Sep 4, 2018)

Steamboat_Bill said:


> The humanities also include history, literature, geography, languages... if people in STEM mock those, no wonder we're in the problems we're in.
> 
> (I recently read an article making the case that we overfocus on STEM to the detriment of the humanities, and this is why we have so many of the problems we do today - people are weak in history, civics, ethics, philosophy and the like and it's been having effects on our society.)


We don't mock linguists. They use a lot of the same concepts we use in biotech now. They're a real science. Literature though? Absolutely. History and geography can be useful, depends a ton on how it's taught. Philosophy? Yeah, laughable.

To be fair though STEM majors laugh at each other too. There's a hierarchy where physicists make fun of engineers make fun of chemists make fun of biologists. Then the weird thing where everyone else makes fun of mathematicians but mathematicians make fun of everyone else.


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## Flying_with_the_Penguins (Sep 4, 2018)

Postmodernism as I've come to understand it is basically rationalism with a marxist makeover.   In other words its basically worthless as a founding ideology unless you want your society to be anything more than glorified slaves.


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## Secret Asshole (Sep 4, 2018)

JustStopDude said:


> There is no universal "official organization for Anthropology". This is akin to me claiming that the official language of engineers worldwide is Belorussian because that is the language of the Minsk National Technical University.
> 
> As per your disregard for Humanities...you are exposed to companies and are manipulated every day to do things they want due to the training in humanities, such as sociology, psychology, etc.
> 
> Advertising, good advertising, is completely based on the humanities.



I'm sorry, the oldest professional organization with the largest amount of members, career opportunities, connections to universities, runs the most major and high impact anthropological journals and being over two hundred years old, being the force of the discipline itself, managing the meeting of every sub-discipline of the field, it abandoning scientific and evidence based inquiry can be just dismissed off hand and is meaningless for the direction of the field itself. My bad.

Any advertising is based more on luck than anything else. Its being in the right place at the right time. Advertising is dominated by bad ideas and very few actually penetrate. Also lol. Social Psych has a 25% replication rate. Yeah, fucking pure amazing. Tell me how subliminal messaging works. Oh wait, it doesn't. All the manipulation in the world and an advertising campaign is based more on chance, capturing a zeitgeist and being incredibly fucking lucky.

Oh, and all that manipulation you speak about isn't done by current humanities, but by cognitive psych, which employs evidence based thinking and doesn't espouse tabula rasa as an ideology. Sociology? Seriously? Yeah, ok. The discipline is completely beyond saving except for criminology and forensics, which other social scientists hate because it employs stats. The discipline that averages $35k a year and pushes everyone who takes it into poverty and I'm suppose to fucking value that or give a fuck what its done to itself? Sociology gleefully sucked on a two-barreled shotgun and took the rest of the humanities with it as collateral damage.

I disregard the modern day humanities, which has no respect for the classics, refuses to update itself to modern day, and is fraught with boutique, useless study that serve only to further a pointless academic treadmill and spit out meaningless studies fraught with jargon.



Your Weird Fetish said:


> We don't mock linguists. They use a lot of the same concepts we use in biotech now. They're a real science. Literature though? Absolutely. History and geography can be useful, depends a ton on how it's taught. Philosophy? Yeah, laughable.
> 
> To be fair though STEM majors laugh at each other too. There's a hierarchy where physicists make fun of engineers make fun of chemists make fun of biologists. Then the weird thing where everyone else makes fun of mathematicians but mathematicians make fun of everyone else.



STEM majors laugh at each other, but no other STEM major considers each other useless unless you're a crazy elitist and everyone makes fun of those.


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## JustStopDude (Sep 5, 2018)

Secret Asshole said:


> disregard the modern day humanities, which has no respect for the classics, refuses to update itself to modern day, and is fraught with boutique, useless study that serve only to further a pointless academic treadmill and spit out meaningless studies fraught with jargon



This reads like edgy "I am very smart" cliche.

As per stem majors not considering other stem majors being useless, I suggest you meet a couple of engineers. We are the biggest collection of spergs that thing expertise in one single area of work makes us universally experts in all things.


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## not william stenchever (Sep 5, 2018)

JustStopDude said:


> This reads like edgy "I am very smart" cliche.



Says the guy who tried to use overly formal language to appear more knowledgeable, after trying and roundly failing to defend the canceraids ridden humanities as a whole while lightly shitting on STEM. Show me on the doll where the Liberal Arts degree touched you


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## Your Weird Fetish (Sep 5, 2018)

JustStopDude said:


> We are the biggest collection of spergs that thing expertise in one single area of work makes us universally experts in all things.


All academics are like that.


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## JustStopDude (Sep 5, 2018)

Your Weird Fetish said:


> All academics are like that.


I agree with that. It is a very real problem not just in academia. My point is that it's not unique to the humanities. Personal bias is a very real problem in sciences and engineering as well. 



not william stenchever said:


> Says the guy who tried to use overly formal language to appear more knowledgeable, after trying and roundly failing to defend the canceraids ridden humanities as a whole while lightly shitting on STEM. Show me on the doll where the Liberal Arts degree touched you




English is not my first language. It is not my intent to sound like any specific type of speech.

I am very confused by your second sentence. Why if I was harmed by a liberal arts professor, I would feel the need to defend liberal arts professors? I think I am missing something.


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## Slap47 (Sep 5, 2018)

I always have a hard time with this topic because people always seem to define modernism and post-modernism differently.

It all refers to so many things that you kinda have to pick and choose from both pools.



lol you sukc said:


> Imho, the reason why humanities are often ridiculed has less to do with the subjects themselves and more with the types of people that often tend to be associated with them. Because they're "soft" sciences, it's easy to pollute them with pseudo philosophies and zeitgeist agendas which draws in the crazies like moths to a flame.



Which is dumb because hard sciences also get flooded with dumb bullshit. US science funding is going into shit like solar roadways and a bunch of STEMs are probably working to dox that "pedoguy" Elon Musk had a spat with as we speak. Oh, lets not forget the neo-lysenkoism and troon invasion of the sciences thanks to diversity/sex quotas or that whole thing where plagiarism and making shit up is rampant. 

Plenty of good history and (god help me) sociology gets published. Even if they come to a retarded conclusion, the evidence is usually based on fact.  



Lackadaisy said:


> I got a C in my "Post Modern Feminist Literature" class in college because I, and I quote the professor here, "didn't properly engage with the reading material" and "actively sought to destabilize classroom discussions by disagreeing with core concepts of the course."
> 
> Thank God I didn't pay for that experience.



I had a similar experience but got an A. I explained the ideas described in the class to make it clear that I understood them before making my case. Crazy class, asked us for our pronouns and _she'd remember the pronouns and use them _even if they were clearly bullshitting. 

Having a full understanding of something before criticizing is a good way to live but I don't know what you did. I know people in that class that disagreed but just sperged at her in their essays.


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## Positron (Sep 5, 2018)

Apoth42 said:


> I always have a hard time with this topic because people always seem to define modernism and post-modernism differently.


It is a feature, not a bug.  Definitions privilege a certain form of discourse while silencing others.


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## Secret Asshole (Sep 6, 2018)

JustStopDude said:


> This reads like edgy "I am very smart" cliche.



I've presented evidence for all of these claims. But I'll try and briefly go over them again.

1) See all the disciplines in the humanities, notably English and Philosophy, straying from Socrates, Shakespeare and other 'white men' along with patriarchy. See also revisionist history, tearing down monuments and re-telling a biased view from the 'oppressed' perspective.

2) Many disciplines aren't even updated to the modern day because they refuse to take into account genetics and ascribe to 'Tabula Rasa', a discredited hypothesis that we're all blank slates and society only impacts us, we have no inborn behaviors, beliefs and the like, which as I've outlined before, is pure bullshit.

3) Beyonce Studies, Fat Studies, Gender Studies without Biology, Pop-Culture Studies and on and on and on.

4) The academic treadmill is real in the humanities. Very rarely do you get a decent paying job with a humanities degree. I broke down the difference between the cost of a STEM degree to a school and the cost of a humanities degree to a school. A STEM degree program requires you offer incentives that industry can't, requires you to maintain expensive equipment and labs to remain competitive, attract decent students to up the rep of your school, pay stipends to your graduate students. A humanities degree requires an adjunct professor you can pay 5k a class with, charge 40k per student and make a killing off of materials. It requires no expensive equipment, talent or knowledge to do. Some even get all their materials off the internet and just make them write papers that align with their views. There are no stipends for humanities graduate students, which means if they want to get more than 35k per year, they have to pay it themselves or utilize student loans. Humanities degrees for universities are INCREDIBLY lucrative, with next to no overhead and charging out the ass per student. That's why universities are safe spaces for them. Wouldn't want to upset the consumer, now would we?

5) How many studies do I need to pull up? Feminist Glacers? Fucking awful studies with terrible sample sizes and populations? The fake 1 in 5 rape statistic study that shot off the modern nightmare of  Title IX? The prominent feminist who wrote about decrying the physics of liquid because of menstruation? (This is real. I wish it wasn't).

You don't need to be super smart to know any of this. This is critical thinking here. You step back and look at the evidence, presented by universities and the modern humanities themselves.



Positron said:


> It is a feature, not a bug.  Definitions privilege a certain form of discourse while silencing others.



Exactly. The whole thing is predicated on marginalizing opposition. That's why the progressive stack exists. Post-Modernism also allows you to twist 'oppressed' people being against you to them being brainwashed, so you can outright dismiss them. There is the changing of definitions and language when it is convenient for them, twisting it back and forth so 'its only for me, not for thee'.

Modernism was an examination of societal structures using critical thinking, different techniques as a method of obtaining truth. It played with traditional structures of art, story-telling, social structures, economics, everything. However, it did not deny that there WAS truth. It posited itself that society was changing, so a re-examination of that society was needed to cut the old from the new. Basically, it was examining a more efficient way to do things by thinking outside of the box.

Post-Modernism denies any structures whatsoever. There is no truth, there is only your truth. It doesn't seek to make structure more efficient or better, but it seeks to destroy those structures entirely.

The confusion comes in that Modernism and Post-Modernism sought/seek to disrupt the rigid structure of society. That's true. However, Modernism is a way of doing things differently/more efficiently/more creatively to improve societal structures. Meaning, there's a better way of doing things. Post-Modernism rejects this entirely, positing there is no right way to do things, that societal structures don't exist, and there is no truth.

That's the key difference between Modernism and Post-Modernism. Modernism sought a better way to improve societal notions that were different from the old order and way of things. Post-Modernism rejects that there is any way to do things, societal structures/biological divisions/gender are made-up concepts that exist to be torn apart, there is no objective truth, the only truth is what you make it. Which is why Post-Modern thought can twist definitions and have idiotic concepts like 'internalized misogyny' to boot out wrong think and still be 'internally consistent'. Well, to itself at least. To everyone else it just makes you a massive fucking hypocrite and obviously making shit up to prove your point.


----------



## Ruin (Sep 6, 2018)

> The prominent feminist who wrote about decrying the physics of liquid because of menstruation? (This is real. I wish it wasn't).



Assuming it isn't paywalled can I get a link to this? It sounds hilarious.


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## talk talk talk (Sep 6, 2018)

Ruin said:


> Assuming it isn't paywalled can I get a link to this? It sounds hilarious.


I don't know if this Google Books link will work: https://books.google.co.uk/books?redir_esc=y&id=DOOjzN-u-zUC&q=fluid#v=snippet&q=fluid&f=false

It is in Luce Irigaray, "The Sex That Is Not One", pp. 106-109


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## Your Weird Fetish (Sep 8, 2018)

JustStopDude said:


> English is not my first language. It is not my intent to sound like any specific type of speech.


I wonder how intimate you are with American academia. From what I understand liberal arts in continental Europe for instance is a lot more robust and doesn't try to override other disciplines.


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## JustStopDude (Sep 8, 2018)

Your Weird Fetish said:


> I wonder how intimate you are with American academia. From what I understand liberal arts in continental Europe for instance is a lot more robust and doesn't try to override other disciplines.



I have a BS and MS from US universities.

The quality of higher education, across the board in the US, is superior than in Europe. You must go to a school in the top five of a country to get decent education.

The strange thing is US schools take anyone. That is weird. 

Per politics at universities, like the US, it ebbs and flows between conservative and liberal ( I am using American version of these terms) depending on location.


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## Your Weird Fetish (Sep 8, 2018)

JustStopDude said:


> The quality of higher education, across the board in the US, is superior than in Europe. You must go to a school in the top five of a country to get decent education.


So basically you're saying the top five American schools are better than the top five European schools.


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## AnOminous (Sep 8, 2018)

Your Weird Fetish said:


> So basically you're saying the top five American schools are better than the top five European schools.



More than that.  The top 100 universities are overwhelmingly in the United States, and of the top ten, all but Oxbridge are in the U.S.  This has been consistent for decades.


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## JustStopDude (Sep 8, 2018)

No. If you look at any form of international ranking, US public institutions dominate. Like France has maybe 12 in the top 500. 

Undergrad reseach is common in the US. This is not so in Europe. 

There is a reason why despite paying massive premium, companies will import American engineers still.

If the quality of education was the same, companies would use cheaper labor.


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## byuu (Sep 8, 2018)

It's not quite fair to compare universities by research output.
In Germany, most of it happens outside universities in research institutes like the Max Planck Society or Frauenhofer Society.


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## Your Weird Fetish (Sep 8, 2018)

I'm truly horrified at the quality of European schools if American universities are better.


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## Slap47 (Oct 5, 2018)

Your Weird Fetish said:


> So basically you're saying the top five American schools are better than the top five European schools.



Cambridge and Oxford are memes at this point and thats the best they've got.

The Slavs probably have great universities.

The thing about European universities is that they have less of them and higher standards. The Germans have a tiered education system 1,2, 3 that denies most students access to university. They basically ration university while the USA has a fuckton of schools and everybody going into debt to get into them.

Of course, lets not forget the hate speech laws and communism that permeates the whole system in Europe. In North America you'll find yourself with libertarian profs quite regularly.


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## AnOminous (Oct 5, 2018)

Apoth42 said:


> The Slavs probably have great universities.


>Slavs having great anything
LOL


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## Khayyam (Oct 6, 2018)

AnOminous said:


> Once you've "deconstructed" everything and established there's no objective truth, though, you really have no framework to claim to be right, because there is no right.  Racism, sexism, all the deplorable shit you hate, even outright Nazism, is just as valid as whatever woke bullshit is flavor of the month.  You don't get to say there's no objective truth and then claim to have it.



The truth is that there is no objective truth, and that is ironically the truth regarding the situation.

We do just make shit up and whatever is useful sticks around. Murder gets viewed as bad by society because societies cannot exist where there is a random chance of being murdered by your next door neighbour.

The Postructuralists and post modernists have their problems, but that isn't really one of them. Might makes right, and history paints the loser in the bad light, we've all known that for a long time.

Those three can just as easily be used to justify far right views as far left ones, merely the far left tends to jump to them first because unlike the right Theocracy and Traditional Metaphysics isn't typically an option for them in the Western Tradition.

It's not so much a problem with their assessment, is that their assessment is that people can make up whatever shit they want to value or despise. They can, and they do.


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## dopy (Oct 6, 2018)

as is said before postmodernism means different things in different areas of study. western art music is a good example of this. postmodernism in this case just means a "radical simplification of means" compared to the search for new methods at the dawn of the 20th century,  e.g. schoenberg/webern vs phillip glass/terry riley



JustStopDude said:


> If you look at any form of international ranking, US public institutions dominate.


not for long. go to Purdue, UMich, or UIUC and see how many foreign exchange students there are. US universities are subsidizing the rise of universities outside the US, while china/s.korea/wealthy arab nations are lining these institutions' pockets hand over fist. what's more is that these people aren't necessarily staying after they graduate, they're taking the degrees back home much of the time. and with the trump admin tightening restrictions for (skilled) labor (reminder that he OK'd 200k H2B - low skill - visas this summer) that means it'll be harder to keep those degrees here. the problem is only exacerbated by the fact that the degree market here is already saturated, and much of it with meme degrees anyway. and the american way is to always shit on the group of people who were here before you on top of that, so it would be anti-traditional to actually do anything about it.
but i'm sure i'm wrong, which is why i'm not employed by one of these lovely institutions.


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## Positron (Oct 7, 2018)

dopy said:


> as is said before postmodernism means different things in different areas of study. western art music is a good example of this. postmodernism in this case just means a "radical simplification of means" compared to the search for new methods at the dawn of the 20th century,  e.g. schoenberg/webern vs phillip glass/terry riley


The notion is even washier than this.  Just open Kenneth Golag's _Postmodernism in Music_.  Some of the case studies are composers that I regard as high-modernist (e.g. Gubaidulina) rather than postmodernist.  Her elaborately constructed scores, constructed and connected like engineering plats, hardly involve "radical simplification of means"!  I am left with the impression that a composer is branded "postmodern" whenever they find inspiration from the past, and as a yardstick this is next to useless: J. S. Bach and Brahms would be very postmodern in this regard.

And Khayyam you're talking about moral relativism here, which is related to but not identical with postmodernism, which is more concerned about epistemic relativism (i.e. different systems of knowledge, different ways of explaining the world, should be accorded equal status given there is no absolute, transcendental truth)


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## Khayyam (Oct 7, 2018)

Positron said:


> And Khayyam you're talking about moral relativism here, which is related to but not identical with postmodernism, which is more concerned about epistemic relativism (i.e. different systems of knowledge, different ways of explaining the world, should be accorded equal status given there is no absolute, transcendental truth)



I know, I was addressing this part more than the whole issue of this thread



AnOminous said:


> Racism, sexism, all the deplorable shit you hate, even outright Nazism, is just as valid as whatever woke bullshit is flavor of the month


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## Wallace (Oct 7, 2018)

Khayyam said:


> The truth is that there is no objective truth, and that is ironically the truth regarding the situation.
> 
> We do just make shit up and whatever is useful sticks around. Murder gets viewed as bad by society because societies cannot exist where there is a random chance of being murdered by your next door neighbour.
> 
> ...



The catch is that only the popular opinions catch on, and are lauded as good scholarship. Unpopular opinions get rejected at peer review. The metric for quality is how well the expressed opinions like up with the reviewers' own beliefs.


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## Khayyam (Oct 7, 2018)

Wallace said:


> The catch is that only the popular opinions catch on, and are lauded as good scholarship. Unpopular opinions get rejected at peer review. The metric for quality is how well the expressed opinions like up with the reviewers' own beliefs.



To an extent this is true, but there are limits to it.

Despite supression from the top, good ideas do tend to seep through and become popularized. Take women's sufferage for instance which was strongly suppressed by the upper classes and the "intellectual elite". It tended to be middle class and working women who made progress on that.

Ditto for things like modern Biblical studies, very strong resistance from top on things like "which book of the NT was written first" which slowly weakened under pressure and evidence stacking up that they were talking out of their arse.

Change is rarely revolutionary and instant, but when enough studies and papers end up with the same conclusion it does tend to buckle. There is also, as in most careers, a need to wait for the old guard to die off before a new generation can move in and make adjustments.


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## Wallace (Jul 15, 2019)

The War On Science, Anti-Intellectualism, And ‘Alternative Ways Of Knowing’ In 21st-Century America



> At the start of the twenty-first century, over 40 percent of Americans did not know that the Earth orbits the sun in a year-long cycle (Otto 2016, 224). Another 52 percent did not know that dinosaurs died before the appearance of humans, and 45 percent were unaware that the world is older than 10,000 years. It is unnecessary to mention the equally alarming numbers of people who believe in ghosts, space aliens, paranormal monsters, devil possession, angels, demons, miracles, and so forth (Smith 2010, 22–23).
> 
> This mostly scientifically illiterate public seems to lack the necessary skills to distinguish between contending claims to knowledge or differentiate between fact and opinion. We now live in a scary and confusing “post-truth” era of disinformation, “fake news,” “counterknowledge,” “weaponized lies,” conspiracy theories, magical thinking, and irrationalism (see Andersen 2017; Levitin 2016).
> 
> ...



"The postmodern assault on science and its relativism has left us vulnerable to the absurdities of the defenders of supernaturalism, the deception of quacks, and the fanaticism of religious fascists and would-be dictators. History teaches that whenever and wherever irrationalism and relativism have acquired political force, human suffering, violence, oppression, and loss of life have inevitably followed. The example of Nazi Germany will suffice here. Welcome to the postmodern world(?)."


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## Y2K Baby (Jul 15, 2019)

Wallace said:


> The War On Science, Anti-Intellectualism, And ‘Alternative Ways Of Knowing’ In 21st-Century America
> 
> 
> 
> "The postmodern assault on science and its relativism has left us vulnerable to the absurdities of the defenders of supernaturalism, the deception of quacks, and the fanaticism of religious fascists and would-be dictators. History teaches that whenever and wherever irrationalism and relativism have acquired political force, human suffering, violence, oppression, and loss of life have inevitably followed. The example of Nazi Germany will suffice here. Welcome to the postmodern world(?)."


Boy, I sure do love dipshit fear-mongering.


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## Webby's Boyfriend (Jul 16, 2019)

I doubt that people who don't know that the Earth orbits the Sun, even know the word "post-modernism".


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## Secret Asshole (Jul 16, 2019)

Webby's Boyfriend said:


> I doubt that people who don't know that the Earth orbits the Sun, even know the word "post-modernism".



People don't even know the basic tenants of science or the scientific method. By the way, every STEM experiment is basically looking to disprove itself. When an experiment is successful, we state that the null hypothesis (opposite to what we're looking for) was disproved. We DON'T say we found what we were looking for, because we can never know that for certain. We can only know what is false, and that is the null hypothesis. I mean, this goes intensely to the rationale and philosophy of science. Science is not absolute truth, it is human truth. It is always evolving and changing. We know what is false. We cannot 100% know what is true.

What's misunderstood about this is that science has a very, very rigorous way to test for this. Its not something where you sit on your ass and think about it. You have to go out and show you disproved the opposition to your argument. This requires data, evidence, rigorous statistics and experimentation. Scientific truth is designed to be malleable, to an extent. Basically, its true until you disprove it. But you BETTER have data, evidence and statistics. 

Post-Modernism rejects any sort of truth, even scientific truth. The problem is that science is fundamentally opposed to this. You can't just 'reject' scientific truths offhand. Blood, sweat and tears has gone into it. For example, the biological differences between men and women is rejected completely out of hand by many intersectionalists, which is post-modern by its definition. This has become ingrained and is no longer politically correct to say, even though it is a hard fact of truth that hasn't been disproved in the least. Even when people go looking to disprove men and women are different neurologically, they find this notion disproved by their own work. Post-modernism cannot work in a scientific context, though the notion it can has been forced on the general public through culture. Mainly through shit-bag journalists, ivory tower academics who wouldn't know research if it fucked them in the ass and overpaid children known as actors and actresses, many of whom barely graduated college. And if they did, they never took anything but drama or acting courses. 

Science is hard, difficult to understand, sometimes contradictory and requires a lot of critical thinking to interpret correctly. Critical thinking has been labeled by ivory tower academics and journalists as white supremacy (not joking, there've been multiple articles on this). So even if people don't know what post-modernism is or even care about science, inter-sectionalism has hijacked scientific evidence and discarded it. In terms of culture, not in the field itself. Otherwise we'd be fucked as a society. The sciences have generally been resistant to intersectionalism because its fucking hard, requires work and evidence. And most people who support post-modernisim and intersectionality are really, really fucking objectively stupid.

Also, scientists have very easily infiltrated cultural studies and proved how fucking stupid they really are, while their entry into the sciences haven't been touched.




Wallace said:


> The War On Science, Anti-Intellectualism, And ‘Alternative Ways Of Knowing’ In 21st-Century America
> 
> 
> 
> "The postmodern assault on science and its relativism has left us vulnerable to the absurdities of the defenders of supernaturalism, the deception of quacks, and the fanaticism of religious fascists and would-be dictators. History teaches that whenever and wherever irrationalism and relativism have acquired political force, human suffering, violence, oppression, and loss of life have inevitably followed. The example of Nazi Germany will suffice here. Welcome to the postmodern world(?)."





Y2KKK Baby said:


> Boy, I sure do love dipshit fear-mongering.



The article is fear-mogering, but its conclusions are really hyperbolic. Post-modern infiltration into science will undoubtedly cause suffering and societal dysfunction, at least for a time. For example, the feminist paradox is that in the most feminist countries, women fall back into gender roles and reject the massive amounts of money being poured at them to go into STEM fields. Why? Post-Modernisim and culture will not allow us to ask this question, as ideology and feelings trump empirical evidence. 

Transexual children has gone up 1,000% in the UK. Most US Teens identify as Trans. In 2016, 0.3-0.6% of the US identified as Trans. Less than a percent. So why? These numbers don't match. What's with the rise? We can't ask these questions scientifically, because truth is now subjective. Emotion has overcome any and all search for the truth, no matter how uncomfortable. We on the farms know the answer, because we can logically deduce it. Its because being trans allows you to be untouchable. Its trendy. You get massive amounts of attention. The problem is that this truth clashes with the intersectional and post-modernist 'truth' that trans people are oppressed. Who would want to be trans? Apparently a lot of people, way more than those in the past. But they'll take extremely trivial things (public restrooms, which are basically liked by no one) and make it a massive issue to 'prove' oppression. They also will not look into trans suicides after SRS, which means this issue will not be solved. Ever. If emotion trumps objective truth, it is impossible to do anything without offense. 

Answers that make people uncomfortable have become unacceptable. So hard questions cannot be asked, which means societal problems cannot be solved, which leads to suffering and societal dysfunction. Its a logical progression and we see it every day. You're not allowed to think about certain things or ask certain questions or think about them objectively. You're suppose to 'think' with your feelings. Basically, surrender to emotion and remove your thinking skills. Ignore what's been happening at the border has been there for years. Don't think about it. Don't look into it. Go with the mob. Give in to your delusion. That's really what's happening. Post-Modernisim is ok when its in an ivory tower. But when it hits the real world, there are some objective truths. You need to think critically. That's why we find ourselves living in this clown world where people try to rectify this way of thinking, but can't because there's massive cognitive dissonance that clashes with what is truth. 

Emotions without thinking critically leads to delusion and fantasy. And then that fantasy becomes someone's reality. That's when they start throwing molotovs at ICE facilities and get gunned down, thinking they're a revolutionary. Reality does not go well with delusion. Just think. Hordes of so-called communists are defending multi-billion dollar corporations who are controlling them and submit to them because they think they're on their side because they hold the same ideals. Its pure delusion. Its a fantasy land enabled by this garbage ideology. In reality, Google should be investigated for treason the fucking instant it was developing a censorship engine for China. The national guard should have been sent in and arrested the entire fucking executive board. But we can't well do that, because Google is a nice progressive company. Even though we know that to be bullshit. The so-called defenders of the working class buy Apple phones where workers jump off roofs to kill themselves. 

What we've got right now is a world ruled by insanity, because of the cognitive dissonance created by emotional 'truth' rather than empirical truth. I'm not saying society should be a technocracy. But right now its just pure insanity. Ignoring hard reality for the sake of someone's feelings. In a sense, this only empowers the wealthiest and most powerful. Because the failure and lack of thinking critically means you are blinded to who is really controlling you.


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## Y2K Baby (Jul 16, 2019)

Secret Asshole said:


> The article is fear-mogering, but its conclusions are really hyperbolic


Yeah. Agreed.


----------



## TerribleIdeas™ (Jul 16, 2019)

Positron said:


> I thought a big part of Foucault was to dismantle the notion of mental illness, and by extension psychology and medicine.  We should count our blessing that his idea has so far made no headway into serious, clinical practice; the bastard field of "sociology of medicine" or "public health" is another matter.
> 
> Derrida would have laughed at anything nonetheless.



Derrida was convinced that any and all binary phenomenon were illegitimate, had to be deconstructed, and then reconstructed as a non-binary phenomenon. Don't ask me to explain phenomenology, because I don't think anyone fucking understands it.


----------



## Secret Asshole (Jul 16, 2019)

TerribleIdeas™ said:


> Derrida was convinced that any and all binary phenomenon were illegitimate, had to be deconstructed, and then reconstructed as a non-binary phenomenon. Don't ask me to explain phenomenology, because I don't think anyone fucking understands it.



Whenever I read about what he thought and his philosophy, my eyes just glaze over and I just come to the conclusion he had his head up his own ass and was a French fucking troll.


----------



## Positron (Jul 16, 2019)

The War On Science said:
			
		

> Irrationalist philosophers in the United States, such as Thomas Kuhn and Paul Feyerabend, also contributed to the postmodern antiscience program. In his highly acclaimed book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1970), Kuhn asserted that scientific truths depend upon agreement among scientists operating under a guiding intellectual umbrella, or paradigm, built around a core of ideas based on irrational cultural and sociopolitical factors. A paradigm persists for a while until mounting anomalies it cannot address result in a “scientific revolution” and the establishment of a new paradigm built upon new conventions linked to a different set of sociopolitical factors. According to Kuhn, the solution to questions are relative to a paradigm rather than empirical evidence. For this reason, paradigms are incommensurable, and there is no real growth of scientific knowledge.



I don't think this is a fair representation of Kuhn, who after all is merely describing  how Science _actually_ works (as opposed to Popper, who stipulates how Science _should_ work).  Science is a human activity; egos get in the way, and compromises happen.  And Science exists in a wider social sphere -- the Funding and Ethical committees, for example, are not made up entirely of scientists -- hence it is completely unrealistic that every single step is guided by pure rationality.   The only faith we have -- and this is only a faith -- is that Science has a self-correcting mechanism that prevents it from straying too far.

I also don't understand where did the author get the idea that Kuhn said "there is no real growth of scientific knowledge", because the accumulation of empirical findings _is_ growth.  Likewise, the new paradigms, set out to explain a wider range of empirical phenomena, are the very fruits of growth.  Indeed, _incommensurability_ between old and new paradigms is the very sign that growth has occurred: just like a 6-year-old child can't stuff his body into clothes he wore at the age of 4 so he needs new clothes.

What Kuhn said is that the development of Science is not teleological; there is no pre-set goals other than accumulation and accommodation of more data.  In other words, Sciences doesn't promise to "make the world a better place".  It doesn't even promise we can understand "the world as it is" in the metaphysical sense.


----------



## Trilby (Jul 17, 2019)

Secret Asshole said:


> People don't even know the basic tenants of science or the scientific method. By the way, every STEM experiment is basically looking to disprove itself. When an experiment is successful, we state that the null hypothesis (opposite to what we're looking for) was disproved. We DON'T say we found what we were looking for, because we can never know that for certain. We can only know what is false, and that is the null hypothesis. I mean, this goes intensely to the rationale and philosophy of science. Science is not absolute truth, it is human truth. It is always evolving and changing. We know what is false. We cannot 100% know what is true.
> 
> What's misunderstood about this is that science has a very, very rigorous way to test for this. Its not something where you sit on your ass and think about it. You have to go out and show you disproved the opposition to your argument. This requires data, evidence, rigorous statistics and experimentation. Scientific truth is designed to be malleable, to an extent. Basically, its true until you disprove it. But you BETTER have data, evidence and statistics.
> 
> ...


And this is the world I fear.


----------



## The best and greatest (Jul 17, 2019)

Ladies and gents, might I introduce to the conversation (if not brought up already) The magic of Meta-modernism!

So imagine Modernism was Coke Classic and Post-Modernism was New-coke. Meta-modernism is like Old-New-Coke that aims to reconcile the good intentions and optimism of Modernism with the absurdities and ironic cynicism of Post-Modernism. How successful might this be is anyone's guess but its worth a read I think.


----------



## Lemmingwise (Jul 17, 2019)

Secret Asshole said:


> Whenever I read about what he thought and his philosophy, my eyes just glaze over and I just come to the conclusion he had his head up his own ass and was a French fucking troll.



I don't think of Derrida as French.

Not genetically:






Nor religiously:














						Sovereign or Beast?
					

Born Jackie Derrida in a Jewish suburb of Algiers, the philosopher was a survivor of anti-Semitism and was devoted to Yiddishkeit. Benjamin Ivry writes that even readers who do not see Derrida as a sovereign of thought will be fascinated by a new biography that responds to some of his harshest...




					www.forward.com
				



http://archive.md/dF8gk


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## Secret Asshole (Jul 17, 2019)

What a shocker that is. He still has his head up his own fucking ass he may as well be French.



Positron said:


> I don't think this is a fair representation of Kuhn, who after all is merely describing  how Science _actually_ works (as opposed to Popper, who stipulates how Science _should_ work).  Science is a human activity; egos get in the way, and compromises happen.  And Science exists in a wider social sphere -- the Funding and Ethical committees, for example, are not made up entirely of scientists -- hence it is completely unrealistic that every single step is guided by pure rationality.   The only faith we have -- and this is only a faith -- is that Science has a self-correcting mechanism that prevents it from straying too far.
> 
> I also don't understand where did the author get the idea that Kuhn said "there is no real growth of scientific knowledge", because the accumulation of empirical findings _is_ growth.  Likewise, the new paradigms, set out to explain a wider range of empirical phenomena, are the very fruits of growth.  Indeed, _incommensurability_ between old and new paradigms is the very sign that growth has occurred: just like a 6-year-old child can't stuff his body into clothes he wore at the age of 4 so he needs new clothes.
> 
> What Kuhn said is that the development of Science is not teleological; there is no pre-set goals other than accumulation and accommodation of more data.  In other words, Sciences doesn't promise to "make the world a better place".  It doesn't even promise we can understand "the world as it is" in the metaphysical sense.



Science only promises a _human_ understanding of the world. Which means an inherently flawed view. Science cannot promise to understand everything, and in many cases it cannot. For example, some things can only be measured indirectly. There are extremely damaging atoms called free radicals. The thing is that they react so quickly they're nearly impossible to detect. We have to determine indirect ways to measure for these and just by that nature it is going to be imperfect.

Science has two branches: Basic and Applied. Basic science is what you hear all the time people complaining about: Why are we researching how a shrimp runs on a little treadmill? WASTE OF MONEY. Then you have applied science, which then looks at the biomechanics of that shrimp running on that treadmill and uses it to make artificial limbs. Basic science isn't sexy, but its the foundation for all applied science. So in essence, Science collects data that may or may not be useful. Things found out now might be useful in 10, 20, 50 or even 100 years. We simply have no way of knowing. 

That's why science marches forward. And its basically untrue that there's no real growth of scientific knowledge, it grows every day. We look into things simply to look. Its human curiosity to understand that drives it forward. All science is built on the backs of giants. Databases, neural networks and the like allow us to process the huge amount of basic science that's done to filter it for applied methods. But you're right. The only real goal of science is just data that we may or may not be able to apply



Trilby said:


> And this is the world I fear.



We're already there. Now we get to see what damage it does.



The best and greatest said:


> Ladies and gents, might I introduce to the conversation (if not brought up already) The magic of Meta-modernism!
> 
> So imagine Modernism was Coke Classic and Post-Modernism was New-coke. Meta-modernism is like Old-New-Coke that aims to reconcile the good intentions and optimism of Modernism with the absurdities and ironic cynicism of Post-Modernism. How successful might this be is anyone's guess but its worth a read I think.



The problem is that post-modernism is almost in academia's subconcious at this point. They're addicted to the heroin that there's no absolute truth and they can say or do whatever they want based on their emotions or simply their view of the world. Its too attractive. The only thing in my opinon that breaks the spell is the collapse of the academic pyramid, de-funding anything not STEM related, harsh economic realities, corporatists shifting their politics to be more in line with the general populace.

The thing is, like I explained before, we have this subset of the population that is hit so hard with cognitive dissonance that it drives them into delusion. They cry everything is racist, from dogs to science to math to air conditioning and expect people to believe it when they say the President is. There's a fundamental lack of thought here, that in the quest for their 'progressivisim' they've put themselves into these isolated bubbles, where they self-reinforce. You see this all the time, especially with the media, college students and 'progressive' companies. They force this narrative so strongly and that's all they're exposed to. They reject friends, family, lovers that disagree, because its simpler for them. The problem is when they're confronted by realities that don't budge. Massive debt, most people disagreeing with you (which they can't fathom because that's not what they see everyday), minorities disagreeing which then leads them to the very racist comments they so disparage. They begin to get more and more emotional, because they're under a delusion and reject the reality that they're presented with. Ironically, the stronger the reality, the stronger the delusion is reinforced, which leads to intense anger, hate and malice. This inevitably leads to violence, like that ANTIFA that was gunned down. 

His delusion that he was a revolutionary was so strong, it made it impossible for him to look at who his fellow revolutionaries were, understand that they're basically content with beating elderly Republicans and people who attend free speech rallies, that most of the working class would be AGAINST him. He still thought he was some sort of guerrilla fighter fighting for the proletariat. The thing is, for people who have lived in the delusion for so long, its actually more comfortable to get gunned down by a Fed than actually face the cold hard reality around you. And that's what most of these people do. They reinforce this cognitive dissonant view, where nothing snaps them from it. Since most of these people are insulated from economic ruination and the consequences of reality, they live in a fantasy. Which gets more and more violent as the reality conflicts with it, creating this emotional firestorm.

I don't think it will end in civil war, but I do think it will end with a lot more death and a lot more increased and hateful rhetoric. Until the media itself and pop culture is broke because capitalism dictates that basically no one wants what they're selling, the storm has to be ridden out. Because they reject any sort of argument or debate that will conflict with their delusional fantasies, they cannot be reasoned with or treated like a normal person. Which is why people are saying civil war because they refuse to confront the abject reality of their situation in favor of their own truth, which conflicts with everything presented before them.


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## UQ 770 (Jul 17, 2019)

I was under the impression acknowledging that the world is inherently filtered through human perception and thus we could be mistaken about anything no matter how much evidence we gather for was already like, elementary existentialism, potentially crossing into nihilism. The overwhelming majority of people I've mentioned this idea to over the years barely understood such a simple sentence. 

Post-Modernism is not destroying society you dipshits. In addition to it being a bunch of crap shilled by hucksters, the average person can't process enough of it to even repeat it or form much of a judgment on it in the first place. There is indeed a larger trend of people freaking out about racism, sexism, discrimination, LGBT rights, etc. But guess what, the origins of those trends are not an obscure and highly conjectural philosophical interpretation of human perception. The origins of that are simple, emotional impulses and the fear of making life harder for other people. Depression and anxiety are your problems. Not some overpaid dementia-addled college professor who nobody can fucking understand anyway. 

Those kids you see nodding their heads along and saying "Wow, so insightful!" are just lying. They don't understand any of this, they cannot repeat it, and it slides straight out of their head the minute they go home and start slugging back tumblers full of cheap hipster wine. They'll pick up a few buzzwords and stock phrases here and there, and they'll repeat a few dumb metaphors, but they are not being assimilated by this philosophy. They're identical to Jordan Peterson fans. Guess what, I *am* familar with Post-Modernist theory, and all you need to do is spend less than two minutes talking with any of these people for them to immediately admit "I guess you know more about it than I do bro." and withdraw from the arguement. If they keep it up and just keep repeating themselves or calling you a bigot, they are psychotic. They have much bigger problems than believeing in a crackpot philosophical theory. Do not engage with them. If they're a family member you can't cut loose, get them medicated.

More often than not, you'll find that people just mindlessly repeat things they hear or read about without putting any thought into it. I have had many disappointing conversations where I get excited and think someone is willing to talk philosophy only for them to drop the act the minute they determine I actually know more about the subject than they do. Buying into their attempts to look smart and big-brained is just going to make you as psychotic as they are when you start believeing that these huge philosophical conditions are somehow monolithic when they are beyond most people's mental capacity and for the rest of the smart people are too busy doing useful things to bicker about human perception constantly. 

Its scary to see an otherwise influential person talk about this stuff, but influential people say dumb shit all the time. I will eat my fucking hat if civilization is brought to its knees by three French assholes smoking a little too much weed and drinking a little too much absinthe. How fragile do you think society is, seriously? And people give me shit for being a doomer, god.


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## 2 litre soda (Jul 18, 2019)

TerribleIdeas™ said:


> Derrida was convinced that any and all binary phenomenon were illegitimate, had to be deconstructed, and then reconstructed as a non-binary phenomenon. Don't ask me to explain phenomenology, because I don't think anyone fucking understands it.



Not quite.

Any binary phenomenon inherently privileges one of the sides over the other: men over women, light over dark, white over black, etc. The problem is, that a lot of these dichotomies don't hold if you actually look at them with any sort of rigor, and the idea that there's only one perspective that is True and Correct is really kind of narrow-minded and silly.

What Derrida proposes to do is flip the binary and consider what would happen if it were the other way around, to look at the situation rigorously from all angles, and see if such a relationship is really necessary: should we really retain an apartheid state in South Africa because whites are superior to blacks? Should we really keep women at home as housewives permanently given that they often prove just as capable as men at working and learning? Sometimes, the situation is such that the thing which is "on top" contains a number of weird aspects that, when looked at from certain points of view, point to it actually not being very superior at all, and vice versa with that which is below.

Take, for example, _Lord of the Rings_, in which a rich guy and his manservant band together with a bunch of noblemen to destroy a rapidly industrializing nation made up of minorities. Take the story, flip it on its head, and consider it from another angle. What if the Orcs were the protagonists of _LotR_? What if they were evil in the same way that, say, the citizens of North Korea were in George W. Bush's eyes? You can probably see why deconstruction has such an appeal to people who study literature, because of the kinds of papers and talks you can create using the technique.

Extra importantly, just because you've looked at this relationship doesn't mean that there isn't a reason why the power imbalance is in place and should remain so: teachers should retain power over their students, parents should retain power over their children, etc.

Any attempt to fussy deconstruction up and make it more significant or complicated than that is just jacking off. It's like Othello: simple game with simple rules, complex outcomes and strategies, but not as difficult as, like, Chess or Go or something.

Derrida, also importantly, doesn't deny the validity of science (he makes this very explicit in the afterword of _Limited, Inc)_, he just doesn't see it as the only way to interpret the world: what is the scientific method for being a good friend? a good parent? Can one construct a scientific method of ending racism? Every attempt so far has been laughably autistic and impractical.


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## TerribleIdeas™ (Jul 18, 2019)

2 litre soda said:


> Not quite.
> 
> Any binary phenomenon inherently privileges one of the sides over the other: men over women, light over dark, white over black, etc. The problem is, that a lot of these dichotomies don't hold if you actually look at them with any sort of rigor, and the idea that there's only one perspective that is True and Correct is really kind of narrow-minded and silly.
> 
> ...



You're more of a faggot than OP.


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## 2 litre soda (Jul 18, 2019)

TerribleIdeas™ said:


> You're more of a faggot than OP.


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## TerribleIdeas™ (Jul 18, 2019)

2 litre soda said:


> View attachment 847463



Please stop posting proof that the left can't meme.


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## Terrorist (Jul 18, 2019)

Stub my toe? Postmodernism. Lasagna burnt? Postmodernism. Failure to self actualize the ennui of one's human animal in an uncaring substrate? It's post fucking modernism. 

fwah fwah fwah i vant le room to be dirtie, hon hon hon do not be like le lobstere, drink le soy instead mon ami!


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## 2 litre soda (Jul 18, 2019)

TerribleIdeas™ said:


> Please stop posting proof that the left can't meme.



Please stop pretending understanding simple ideas is hard.


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## TerribleIdeas™ (Jul 18, 2019)

2 litre soda said:


> Please stop pretending understanding simple ideas is hard.



Please look at your preceding post.


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## Positron (Jul 21, 2019)

TerribleIdeas™ said:


> Derrida was convinced that any and all binary phenomenon were illegitimate, had to be deconstructed, and then reconstructed as a non-binary phenomenon. Don't ask me to explain phenomenology, because I don't think anyone fucking understands it.


Derrida is not a phenomenologist, who studies subjective experiences.   The closest description of Derrida is a hermeneutician, who pores over texts looking for things.



Locomotive Derangement said:


> I was under the impression acknowledging that the world is inherently filtered through human perception and thus we could be mistaken about anything no matter how much evidence we gather.


Yes, this is a standard charge against science, that it is ultimately based on human senses (even though our senses have been greatly augmented by technology, so that we can nowadays "see" x-rays and microwave radiation, and can track the flightpaths of subatomic particles that, for all intent and purposes, are dimensionless points, whatever empirical information has to pass through the gate of human sensorium before it can be registered as a piece of data) and because human senses 1) cannot be guaranteed to obtain all possible information about the world and 2) are often faulty, it follows that Science is both incomplete and unreliable, and thus has no right to have the final say about Truth.  But may I ask, can Philosophy, especially Postmodern Philosophy, do better?  Can it lay claim to the Truth when Science fails?  The answer is an emphatic _No_.

To see why, let's compare how Science and Philosophy deal with the world.  As I said, Science engages the world through the human sensorium.  Philosophy engages world through _text_.  Among the chief instigators of Pomo, Foucault was a historian.  Derrida was, as I said, a hermeneutician.  Lyotard was a mixture of various types of humanities; Barthes.... I don't even know _what_ he was, except he got a "scientific" grant studying fashion magazines.  Is engaging with the world through text better than through sensorium?  Obviously not: to grapple with a text, a human must make use of his sense in the first place, hence all the problems with sensory experience, all the problems Science is saddled with, applies too with text-mode engagement with the world.  If Science is at one remove from reality, Humanities (Philosophy, History, Cultural Studies) are at least at two removes from it.



Secret Asshole said:


> The thing is, like I explained before, we have this subset of the population that is hit so hard with cognitive dissonance that it drives them into delusion. They cry everything is racist, from dogs to science to math to air conditioning and expect people to believe it when they say the President is.


The dog park thing is a hoax, but the ruckus about air conditioning etc illustrates a big problem with the postmodern mode of interpreting the world: treating every single phenomenon as a "text" in need of exegesis.  Academics, like TV Tropers, fail to see that the World operates differently from fiction.   In a novel, there is an author responsible for everything that happens, so it is reasonable to speculate the author's intent, bias, psychological hangups, etc.  In real life we don't have an author; we don't usually see a single person, or even a small group of people, having complete control over everything.  The thermostat setting of an office might be determined by, for example, the make and model of the AC units (which the firm that hired the premise usually has no control over), or the need of temperature-sensitive equipment like servers.  If someone has no control over certain things, then he cannot be held morally responsible for it, and laying charges such as "sexism" (to whom really?) because the thermostat cannot be adjusted upwards is damn ridiculous.


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## UQ 770 (Jul 21, 2019)

Positron said:


> The thermostat setting of an office might be determined by, for example, the make and model of the AC units (which the firm that hired the premise usually has no control over), or the need of temperature-sensitive equipment like servers. If someone has no control over certain things, then he cannot be held morally responsible for it, and laying charges such as "sexism" (to whom really?) because the thermostat cannot be adjusted upwards is damn ridiculous.



I'm getting really tired of this being brought up since its total horseshit. This is a confirmed hoax article as well. It gets repeated every few years and last I checked it dates back to like 2009. On top of that, I have never in my life set foot in an office building where the thermostat actually functions properly. Either its utterly frigid, or, more likely, its burning hot and the air is thick with fiberglass dust from the shitty drop ceilings that were installed 40 years ago when the building was new. Generally if you've ever had the misfortune to work an office job, you'll find plenty of smaller dudes (usually fresh graduates or interns) complaining that the office is too cold as well. I could tell the shill who invented that article must have been a supervisor.


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## The best and greatest (Jul 21, 2019)

TerribleIdeas™ said:


> Please stop posting proof that the left can't meme.


People say this as if most memes weren't terrible and shit to begin with.


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## TerribleIdeas™ (Jul 21, 2019)

The best and greatest said:


> People say this as if most memes weren't terrible and shit to begin with.



You must know shitty memesmiths, then. My condolences.


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## The best and greatest (Jul 21, 2019)

TerribleIdeas™ said:


> You must know shitty memesmiths, then. My condolences.


Well I do know you.


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## TerribleIdeas™ (Jul 21, 2019)

The best and greatest said:


> Well I do know you.



That's mighty forward of you to assume, and betrays how easy you are, you slut.


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## The best and greatest (Jul 21, 2019)

TerribleIdeas™ said:


> That's mighty forward of you to assume, and betrays how easy you are, you slut.


Baby please you can't resist The Best and Greatest. Nobody resists The Best and Greatest...


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## TerribleIdeas™ (Jul 21, 2019)

The best and greatest said:


> Baby please you can't resist The Best and Greatest. Nobody resists The Best and Greatest...



Your optimism is charming, but I'm already unrequited.


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## elucid (Jul 29, 2019)

to get this back on the rails, take my position to be that of Lindsay & Boghossian .  A current description, of post-modernisim, it's origins, and it's risk.









						Peter Boghossian & James Lindsay | The Glenn Beck Podcast | Ep 41
					

06.15.19 | Glenn sits down with both James A. Lindsay, an author, and mathematician as well as Peter Boghossian, an assistant professor of Philosophy at Port...




					www.youtube.com


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## ICametoLurk (Jul 29, 2019)

All intersectionality does is ask the State to incorporate the oppressed and marginalized into the function of its structures, whereas the old solidarity implies a cross-identity coalition to abolish the system which necessitates oppression and marginalization in the first place.

The glaring contradiction, of course, is that this managed diversity robs multiculturalism of its potential to be a progressive force and creates a new form of conservatism, along with a monoculture. Each identity or cluster of identities is given their space and allowed to do whatever it takes to preserve it, and the private sector profits handsomely as massive corporations offer their commodities to these spaces in support of this task. Thus, the tools used by the myriad of identities all come from the same monopolies, making any individuality a mere narcissism of small differences, usually dependent upon who has the most money to continuously update their identities ability to present itself as unique among the ocean of the marginalized. In this scenario, multiculturalism functions as little more than an ad campaign which reassures the oppressed and the marginalized that reform of the system, and certainly not revolutionary work aimed at overthrowing the system, is necessary because Amazon Prime will sell to you no matter your creed, color, gender identity, or sexual orientation.

Intersectionality and all of these other recent developments in western "leftism" are actually quite conservative. They're  a good example of the whole Lacanian conception of a pervert as someone who may initially appear to be revolutionary but  over time exposes themselves as one of the least revolutionary people imaginable because their "subversive" actions aren't oriented toward changing social structures they just get off on being subversive, so when the market gives them a cultural space and provides them the tools to do so to their hearts content they end up actually perpetuating the current social arrangement in an even more efficient manner than in an overt police state.


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## talk talk talk (Jul 29, 2019)

ICametoLurk said:


> All intersectionality does is ask the State to incorporate the oppressed and marginalized into the function of its structures, whereas the old solidarity implies a cross-identity coalition to abolish the system which necessitates oppression and marginalization in the first place.
> 
> The glaring contradiction, of course, is that this managed diversity robs multiculturalism of its potential to be a progressive force and creates a new form of conservatism, along with a monoculture. Each identity or cluster of identities is given their space and allowed to do whatever it takes to preserve it, and the private sector profits handsomely as massive corporations offer their commodities to these spaces in support of this task. Thus, the tools used by the myriad of identities all come from the same monopolies, making any individuality a mere narcissism of small differences, usually dependent upon who has the most money to continuously update their identities ability to present itself as unique among the ocean of the marginalized. In this scenario, multiculturalism functions as little more than an ad campaign which reassures the oppressed and the marginalized that reform of the system, and certainly not revolutionary work aimed at overthrowing the system, is necessary because Amazon Prime will sell to you no matter your creed, color, gender identity, or sexual orientation.
> 
> Intersectionality and all of these other recent developments in western "leftism" are actually quite conservative. They're  a good example of the whole Lacanian conception of a pervert as someone who may initially appear to be revolutionary but  over time exposes themselves as one of the least revolutionary people imaginable because their "subversive" actions aren't oriented toward changing social structures they just get off on being subversive, so when the market gives them a cultural space and provides them the tools to do so to their hearts content they end up actually perpetuating the current social arrangement in an even more efficient manner than in an overt police state.


And so on and soon.

*sniff*


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## Wallace (Jul 29, 2019)

ICametoLurk said:


> All intersectionality does is ask the State to incorporate the oppressed and marginalized into the function of its structures, whereas the old solidarity implies a cross-identity coalition to abolish the system which necessitates oppression and marginalization in the first place.
> 
> The glaring contradiction, of course, is that this managed diversity robs multiculturalism of its potential to be a progressive force and creates a new form of conservatism, along with a monoculture. Each identity or cluster of identities is given their space and allowed to do whatever it takes to preserve it, and the private sector profits handsomely as massive corporations offer their commodities to these spaces in support of this task. Thus, the tools used by the myriad of identities all come from the same monopolies, making any individuality a mere narcissism of small differences, usually dependent upon who has the most money to continuously update their identities ability to present itself as unique among the ocean of the marginalized. In this scenario, multiculturalism functions as little more than an ad campaign which reassures the oppressed and the marginalized that reform of the system, and certainly not revolutionary work aimed at overthrowing the system, is necessary because Amazon Prime will sell to you no matter your creed, color, gender identity, or sexual orientation.
> 
> Intersectionality and all of these other recent developments in western "leftism" are actually quite conservative. They're  a good example of the whole Lacanian conception of a pervert as someone who may initially appear to be revolutionary but  over time exposes themselves as one of the least revolutionary people imaginable because their "subversive" actions aren't oriented toward changing social structures they just get off on being subversive, so when the market gives them a cultural space and provides them the tools to do so to their hearts content they end up actually perpetuating the current social arrangement in an even more efficient manner than in an overt police state.



It's conservative in that it's fundamentally selfish. The various tribes are balkanized due to the deconstruction of terms like "woman" and more interested in their own self-esteem than any attempt to join in coalition for a common cause. Indeed, not only can't they join forces, they _shouldn't_, because that would dilute their own personal cultural identity. What's left is a zero-sum politics that embraces despair, pessimism and selfishness. By seizing as much as possible for one's self and group, it exposes its complete disregard for the whole from which it has separated - for the rest of the society. Identity politics thus rejects the search for a just and comprehensive solution to social problems.

And how dare you make me speak academese on my day off!


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## Ughubughughughughughghlug (Jul 30, 2019)

What do you mean about Cultural Marxism being made up?

Cultural Marxism is basically a Right-wing term for the Frankfurt School and its intellectual descendants, and it includes figures like Theodore Adorno, Max Horkheimer, and Herbert Marcuse. Of course, many of these figures are Jews, but that's a ((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((coincidence))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))).

The way I've always been taught it (and it seems pretty obvious, considering what the Left openly does and advocates for) is that the Cultural Marxists believed that culture was getting in the way of communist revolution by creating false consciousness. They were distracting the proletariat with race, sex, and other non-economic differences. So, they would prepare the culture for communism by dismantling other systematic inequalities before directly attacking economic inequality.

It's more of an ideology than it is a "conspiracy theory," but Leftists call anything they don't want the public to look at a conspiracy theory.


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## Ughubughughughughughghlug (Jul 30, 2019)

Side note: I had this one class where the professor was telling a Seminole creation story about how the three races (White, Black, Red) were made. I mentioned to him a scientific theory from a 13th Century Islamic philosopher which had some similarities. In the process, I used the phrase "and the Blacks were overcooked by the southern heat, making them less intelligent," or something like that. In context, it was obvious I was referring to the perspective of the philosopher. But, I heard this one red-haired bitch in the back whisper to another girl, "Does he know what he's saying?"

Yes, cunt, I know what I'm saying, and unlike you I don't give a shit.

Later on I heard her praise one of our assigned books for its "intersectionality."

Ever since then I've wanted to see her obituary in the news.


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