Post-Modernism - Or How 3 French Cunts Fucked Up the West

[Secret Asshole]

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:

“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:

“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.'”

“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:

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.

 

[Mariposa Electrique]

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]

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.

 

[Secret Asshole]

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.

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.

 

[Mariposa Electrique]

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.

 

[Secret Asshole]

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.

 

[AnOminous]

[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.

 

[Oh Long Johnson]

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.

 

[Positron]

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.

 

[Anti Fanta]

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.

 

[Lackadaisy]

Bless this thread.

 

[Oh Long Johnson]

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?

 

[Elwood P. Dowd]

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.

 

[Ruin]

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.

 

[AnOminous]

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.

 

[Pickle Inspector]

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.

 

[MMMMMM]

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.

 

[Secret Asshole]

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.

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.

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.

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.

 

[Trilby]

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!

 

[AnOminous]

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.