The Answer To Your Question is Post Modernism, Now What's The Solution?

Perhaps you're like me and at some point during your childhood you overheard your parents - or maybe your grandparents - say something to the effect of, "This world is going to hell in a hand basket." On the surface, it may seem like nothing more than an innocently delivered cliche, yet upon further inspection we find, embedded within this declarative statement, a veiled implication that there may be some mysterious, unstoppable, invisible force negatively affecting our world as we know it. And, as I near a half century of life on this planet, I find examples of this contentious sentiment and the examples of an invasive, progressive world to be growing in direct correlation to each other. It is extremely interesting to me, both as a study in philosophy and epistemology that, as we watch society degrade into something resembling Sodom and Gomorrah we also see a great human awakening; we see a growing critical mass of people vehemently reluctant to accept a world devoid of morals and ethics and compassion. It has become very evident that our grandparents may have been onto something after all. And it is not long after one answers this question as to whether or not there exists an unknown, unseeable force in the affirmative that the next natural questions soon arrives. What is this mysterious, seemingly unstoppable force? Where does it come from?

"I used to be with 'it', then they changed what 'it' was, and now what I'm with isn't 'it', and what 'it' is, seems weird and scary to me, and it'll happen to you!"

Grandpa Simpson

Several instances over the years I recall my grandmother reiterating Grandpa Simpsons sentiment. Often, while watching a news broadcast or reading a story in the newspaper she could be overheard saying something like, "I don't know what happened to this world, no one seems to have any morals anymore." When I was younger I often wondered why my grandmother would say something like that - I even found it somewhat humorous that such a level of rancor could come from my loving, nurturing grandma. And, despite all of the great times we shared, this remains one of the more lasting memories. So much so that it has strangely guided me; caused me to remain cognizant of my own thoughts, careful to make distinctions between pessimism and realism so as to not fall into such an ill tempered 'world view' as she had. However, in the years since her passing, I have come to some realizations of my own. I realize that if one lives long enough, it is inevitable that we will be faced with contradictions, not only in our own thinking, but we will face the many contradictions found in the world that surrounds us - the latter being the hardest to change because they are somewhat out of our control.

In the years since her passing I have continued my research into this phenomenon. To me, understanding these contradictions is an important aspect to understanding one's life, and as a natural consequence of my research, I am glad to have discovered epistemology, or the theory of knowledge, which asks the ever more important questions: How do we know when something is true? What justifies a belief? In addition to philosophy and epistemology I was also introduced to the invaluable knowledge of the trivium method and the illogical and logical fallacies, and the syllogism. Most importantly, I have learned that the quickest and simplest way to the truth is through the elimination of falsity, error or contradictions; and that by considering all information, even that which is uncomfortable, accepting only that which can be verified through fact, deductive reasoning, primary source material and empirical evidence is the actual technique by which logical thinking arrives at the truth. Sadly, I have also come to realize that the majority of people are ignorant of this technique. Most people actually do the opposite, they accept only the information that makes them 'feel good' or that seems to strengthen their previously held ideological beliefs, and this amounts to nothing more than an illegitimate, invalid, systematic error in thinking. They are putting their logic and rhetoric before their grammar. They are literally, out of order.

Empowered with this new found knowledge I turned a spectatorial gaze upon the world with fresh eyes and an open mind and was somewhat shocked to see contradictions everywhere. I sat in silent awe as I witnessed nearly every cultural authority figure pushing narratives that were built upon either faulty logic; invalid propositions; unproven or unverified assumptions; falsities; or fallacy. No matter where I looked I observed politicians, doctors, television personalities, Hollywood actors, and popular academic opinion leaders all operating in concert to manufacture the opinion of the public, to steer society in certain prearranged directions and to engineer a facade of consensus. Often times, these authority figures seemed to be representing a diverse cross section of society yet would implausibly use the exact same key phrases and descriptors. It was Cass Sunstein's Nudge Theory in action. And, perhaps the most troubling of all was that these false narratives were now being regurgitated unknowingly word-for-word, by the people I cared for most, my friends and family. After a considerable period of time - maybe a year, perhaps more, no matter which way I chose to look at it, there was only one conclusion to be made. What I was witnessing was nothing short of a blatant, overt psychological operation. An embarrassingly obvious coordinated propaganda campaign to disseminate misinformation into the minds of the American viewer and the result was nothing less than a pandemic of mental illness. It was disorientating at first. I felt like John Nada or a real life character in some Orwellian manifestation of 'group-think'. I was surrounded by a society that was happy to live their lives as products within an immense commodified illusion. Was this the 'world of immorality' that my grandmother was talking about?

To be clear, my pursuit of the truth has certainly taken me down some fairly unorthodox paths but I assure the reader that I have been very careful to only assimilate the information that can be confirmed; and needless to say, after considering all of the information gathered, these paths have led me to an even more unlikely of conclusion. While my research does remain incomplete - as I imagine it will be even in my dying days; I have reached a point where I can no longer deny the need to voice my opinion on the matter. I have reached a milestone along the path in which I believe to be on strong footing and find it necessary to purge this knowledge so as to continue on in good health and good spirit. So, it is here that I humbly offer something resembling a conclusion to this phenomenon of contradictions. To the initiated, I claim nothing new, I am far from the first to come to these conclusions and to you this whole diatribe may seem like bloated rhetoric, and if so, so be it, but to the uninitiated or incredulous among the crowd, may I preface by saying, that I aim to dissuade your skepticism or disbelief in the abhorrently limited space available with a reasonable and logical argument of proofs that verify beyond a shadow of doubt that the vast majority of these contradictions I speak of, and that most of us are at least subconsciously aware of, can be boiled down to one thing. Post modernism or even more accurately, cultural Marxism.

"By the end of the 1960's.... even the french intellectuals like Jean Paul Sartre, the famous philosopher had to admit...that the Stalin, communist, Maoist experiment and all of its variants...was an absolute catastrophic failure. And then what happened was that the post modernist came onto the scene and they were all Marxists, but they weren't Marxists anymore because you couldn't be a Marxist and claim that you were a human being by the end of the 1960's, so they started to play a sleight-of-hand, and instead of pitting the proletariat (the working class) against the bourgeoisie they started to pit the oppressed against the oppressor. And that opened up the avenue to identifying any number of groups as oppressed and oppressor and to continue the same narrative under a different name (post modernism), it was no longer specifically about economics, it was about power."

Jordan Peterson, The Epoch Times interview.

Broadly speaking, post modernism is an insidious 20th century ideological movement that aimed at the deconstruction of advances made during the modern period by manipulating the political, intellectual, economic, religious and social aspects of western culture. More specifically, post modernism was a counter enlightenment movement that used the rhetorical tools of critical theory, relativism, subjectivity and skepticism to denounce or discredit the main tenets of the enlightenment period, those being: reason, liberty of the individual, self determination, objectivity, empirical evidence, and immutable truth. It was a movement that influenced not only the political, economic and intellectual realms of western society but also made considerable impact within the realms of architecture, art, literature and music. Artists like Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein were well known post-modernist artists while Charles Bukowski, William S. Burroughs and J.D. Salinger contributed to the movement through their literature. Well known personalities within post modernist music would include Brian Eno and John Cage or more recently, Frank Zappa and the Talking Heads.

The beginning of the post-modern movement is most often attributed to the french philosophers, Martin Heidegger and Jacques Derrida along with other notable intellectuals of the 1950's like Jean-Francois Lyotard, Michel Foucault and American Richard Rorty. A second wave of post modernists emerged out of the 60's counterculture movement originating from the Frankfurt School. They successfully immersed themselves into western academia and pop culture. Max Horkheimer studied at the University of Frankfurt before working in the United States alongside another post modernist, Theodor Adorno at Columbia and Princeton Universities; Herbert Marcuse received his Ph.D. at the University of Berlin before teaching political theory at Columbia and Harvard, finally retiring while at the University of California San Diego; and Erich Fromm who studied at Frankfurt, received his Ph.D while at Heidelberg and then taught psychology at Columbia, New York and Michigan State Universities. These post-modernist thinkers were an extension of a movement that began in the late 18th and early 19th century by intellectuals like Georg Wilhem Friedrich Hegel, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Johann Herder, Immanuel Kant and Friedrich Nietzsche.

"The more the concept of reason becomes emasculated, the more easily it lends itself to ideological manipulation and to propagation of even the most blatant lies....Subjective reason conforms to anything."

Max Horkheimer, The Eclipse of Reason, pg 24,25

To properly understand post modernism within the constraints of a blog is in itself a laughable endeavor and with every word further written it is becoming more apparent to the author that he may have bitten off a little more than he can chew; yet he does vow to the reader a continuation of this subject in an ongoing series that certainly requires further clarification and detail. For the time being, I will limit this particular article to under a fifteen minutes while doing my best to give the reader an accurate, relatively simplistic abstract overview. Firstly, to place post modernism within its proper context, it is imperative to first understand that it was a counter-movement to its predecessor, the modern period.

The modern period of course was highlighted by the renaissance which was made up of several significant historical developments, the previously mentioned enlightenment period (1700 -1800), the scientific revolution (1540 - 1690), and the protestant reformation (1517- 1648). The enlightenment period brought a rise of reason and the free market economic system; the scientific revolution brought about innovations in mathematics, chemistry, astrology and biology; while the protestant reformation was successful in removing the pope as an intermediary between man and God. All of these societal transformations were characterized by the rise of individual sovereignty, a loosening of the shackles of mental and physical slavery and a certain freedom from the previous constraints of servitude, all naturally resulting in a diminished monarchical and papal authority. Previously held theoophical beliefs of the cosmos were now being undermined by more logical, scientific explanations for the universe and emerging from the enlightenment was a sentiment that man should be free to reason for himself, to make logical, scientific determinations of his own accord - that man should be free to chart his own course and to take charge of his own life. These revelations in the power of reason and self-determination would deliver England, France and eventually the United States from second tier world powers into first world powers while Germany remained distrustful of these advancements, particularly in regards to religion, feeling that traditional theistic religious values were being subordinated by a new doctrine of deism.

"The era from 1780 - 1815 is one of the defining periods of the modern era, during those thirty-five years, Anglo American culture and German culture split decisively from each other, one following a broad enlightenment program, the other a counter-enlightenment one."

Explaining Postmodernism, Steven Hicks

It is also pertinent to mention here that all of the leading post modernists shared close affiliations with, or were bonified, card-carrying members of the communist party or were at the very least, very far-left leaning in their political views. In fact, the beginnings of post modernism was borne as a result of abject failures suffered by Marxist-communism in Maoist China, Stalinist Russia, as well as Cambodia and Vietnam during the first half of the 20th century. While Marxists supported an economic system controlled by an active, authoritative government, the western capitalists envisioned a liberal economic system governed by the free market itself. By the middle of the 20th century the free market countries were flourishing while communist countries had all suffered horrific failures that amounted to nearly one hundred million deaths. And, when the failures of communism became an undeniable reality, the post modernists decided that if they couldn't defeat capitalism, they would instead devise a campaign to obscure reality itself. They promoted subjectivity as an answer to objectivity; they applied the concept of relativism to immutable truth and constructed social systems that eradicated the sovereignty of the individual. And as Steven Hicks further elucidates:

"Post Modernism is the end result of the counter-enlightenment attack on reason."

Explaining Postmodernism, Steven Hicks

To those who remain unconvinced I suggest you wait for all of the information to be disseminated prior to making any judgment and in the intermediate I offer for your consideration the following queries: Does any of this really come as any surprise? Is it really so unbelievable that the very rights, liberties and freedoms of which the United States and the western world were founded have been nearly usurped by a nefarious Marxist-socialist agenda? When one considers the ten planks of the Communist Manifesto and then overlays those on a map of the western world today, we see a near match. Government controlled education and agriculture; a heavy or graduated system of tax; a centralized banking system; a centralized communications industry; the concentrating of populations within cities; eminent domain, etc. After this realization, any reasonable, critical thinking individual would then be left to ponder just how this all happened. How did we get so far left? This question can be simply answered by knowing that it is through the left wing door that communism arrives. It is through our willingness to allow authority to go unchecked that authority, as John Dalberg-Acton stated, becomes absolutely corrupted. Communism is here because liberalism invited it through the door long ago. Like a vampire gaining your trust with an easy face and a friendly smile, post modernism came hidden under the guise of reasonable sounding titles like political correctness, multiculturalism, inclusivity, social justice, affirmative action, sustainable development and so on and so forth.

No doubt, I imagine these statements to be incendiary, however before attacking the messenger with predictable ad hominem and appeals to ridicule, I encourage the reader to research these matters for themselves. I have included all of the names of those individuals involved here, not for entertainment, but for reference, and everything I have claimed herein begs for confirmation. It is, in fact, essential that it is, because our very western way of life, that life that we all take for granted, that life gifted to us by the enlightenment thinkers, that life that has been under relentless attack for a century, begs for confirmation - and the only way to confirm what I'm saying is to find the truth through the practice of reason, logic, critical thinking, and the elimination of contradictions. Not so ironically, these are the very tools that the post-modernists are attempting to remove and would rather you never acquaint yourself with. And it is this innocuous sounding but malevolent movement that is the reason for my grandmothers incredulity. It is the driving force behind our rapidly degrading society. It is the reason for our lack of morality and ethics; it is steering us on a journey to depravity and if we fail to rationally address this infection of social liberalism the death of western culture will be on our hands. So, after all these years, I finally have an answer to my grandmother question: Post modernism is what happened to this world and an awake and active populace is the answer.

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