"...It is through this apparently endless process of racial conflict and compromise that a society can be changed..".
Postmodernism is the dominant political and media philosophy in the world today. Postmodernism has replaced Marxism and conservatism. It is the platform from which most journalists write and most political analysts in the media analyse. Type "postmodern" into Google and you will get millions of results.
In the rest of this article I will show that postmodernism leads to an ever changing "consensus morality" in which every year the media tells us how much more moral we have become than the people in the past, how postmodernism is used by amoral corporations and the media and how it has become a political movement at the core of socialism called "postmarxism". I argue that to anyone with a fixed moral code postmodernism is evil.
Postmodernism was developed by extreme left-wing philosophers for political purposes and is the theoretical underpinning of modern socialism because it allows the idealist to move an entire society towards their views (see below). It is widely practiced by those who work in the media, often without knowing what they are doing apart from producing work that is popular and saleable. It is taught in schools and has produced an indoctrinated generation of people under thirty who are postmodern in the same unquestioning way that thirteenth century children might have been Catholic.
Although postmodernism is everywhere it's true meaning is misunderstood by most of its practitioners and those who do understand it seldom ever mention its name; 90% of people have never heard of it, and it is particularly difficult to define. In fact postmodernists delight in making it obscure, as an example Aylesworth (2010) writes:
"That postmodernism is indefinable is a truism. However, it can be described as a set of critical, strategic and rhetorical practices employing concepts such as difference, repetition, the trace, the simulacrum, and hyperreality to destabilize other concepts such as presence, identity, historical progress, epistemic certainty, and the univocity of meaning. "
Or, in English, postmodernism is an attack on the ideas of existence, truth and meaning. It allows the author and the journalist to free themselves from extraneous "truths" so that they can focus on the impact and effect of a story.
Postmodernism is the general term for postmodern philosophy and for the use of this philosophy in art; poststructuralism is almost synonymous with postmodernism but is a favoured term when postmodernism is applied to literature and journalism and postmarxism is the political philosophy based on postmodernism. The terminology of postmodernism is very "postmodern" and has created poststructuralists who do not realise that they are postmarxists!
Postmodernism, also known as poststructuralism, is beyond doubt the main political philosophy in the world today. It is not a rational philosophy because it undermines itself from the outset: "...the very concept of truth itself is part of the metaphysical baggage that poststructuralism seeks to abandon." (Jameson 1991). As Jameson points out postmodernism is a philosophy that proclaims from the outset that it contains no truth. Had it stayed as a game used by English students and literary critics in the late twentieth century it would have been harmless but it has spread and now, particularly in the media and sociology, has become the modern morality.
It is extraordinary that a philosophy that rejects the idea of truth is the source of modern morality and hence of modern politics. This may be extraordinary but it is happening and most postmodern journalists consider that our continually changing consensus morality is forever leading us to be better people.
How did this happen? How did morality become a matter of mere ever changing consensus? In the absence of truth or fixed belief the postmodernist must look elsewhere for the roots of morality. Tilley (2000) notes that "We often hear that 'morality is relative to culture' or that 'right and wrong vary with cultural norms'. These are rough formulations of cultural relativism, a theory with multiple charms, appearing rigorously scientific to some, fashionably postmodern to others" and Gellner (1985) says "Stated briefly, cultural relativism is a theory which asserts that there is no absolute truth, be it ethical, moral, or cultural, and that there is no meaningful way to judge different cultures because all judgments are ethnocentric" (ie: racially motivated). This has an immediate paradox because a belief that postmodernism is right is equivalent to a belief that postmodernism is wrong so no reasonable person can believe that the postmodernist analysis of cultural relativism is correct. Yet politicians and sociologists promulgate postmodern ideas of culture and morality every day.
Despite the paradoxical nature of the postmodern analysis that created cultural relativism it is widely accepted. The idea that all beliefs are equivalent means that the madman who believes that God has ordered him to kill prostitutes is equivalent to anyone else. This approval of all beliefs is very dangerous for the individual in a society and if a meaning can be assigned to the word "evil" then postmodernism, the belief that all beliefs are equivalent, is "evil", it cannot discern between the insane mass murderer and the law abiding member of society or between the fashionable but destructive postmarxist and a person who believes in helping others. The postmodern axiom that all beliefs are equivalent is the definition of evil for anyone who has a moral code and according to this definition postmodernism is itself evil.
This evil is always buried under ostensibly reasonable arguments, for instance, the approach of postmodernists to racism appears superficially "holy". As an example, postmodern social analyses take the "moral high ground" and consider most histories and earlier social analyses to be racist. This postmodern use of the word "racist" is not about caucasians, negroids etc., it is about classification into any social grouping. According to postmodern sociology the classification of people into groups is a racist construction. The reader may have spotted an obvious paradox, if postmodern sociologists see themselves as a group then they are applying a classification to themselves and so are racist. Similarly if they declare other people to be racist they are classifying these other people and hence are also racist. So according to a full postmodern analysis it is racist to be anti-racist! Of course, we would expect this paradox because postmodernism contains no truth.
This racist imperative of postmodernism has been spotted by others, as Zizek puts it: "Multiculturalism is a racism which empties its own position of all positive content (the multi-culturalist is not a direct racist, he doesn’t oppose to the Other the particular values of his own culture), but nonetheless retains this position as the privileged empty point of universality from which one is able to appreciate (and depreciate) properly other particular cultures—the multiculturalist respect for the Other’s specificity is the very form of asserting one’s own superiority." Or to put it more simply, postmodern multiculturalists are patronising and condescending and implement their racism as the social apartheid of multiculturalism. Postmodernism is evil and will always bear evil fruit.
Hard though it may be to believe, serious postmodernists actually know that they are racist and are deliberately stirring up racial tensions through multiculturalism (see below), this being the principle tool of postmarxism to produce revolutionary tension. Postmarxists support mass migration in the hope of destroying the social order and creating an homogeneous Marxist state.
Postmodernists are corrupt exploiters of the modern media and academic culture. Their mutual support assures that their powerful gang obtains publications, work and status even though their work is destructive and their ideas are devoid of value. Postmodernism is particularly prevalent in the media because strong beliefs are the last thing a Media Company wants and the postmodernists with their absence of morality are a corporation's perfect servants. Although postmodernism has given rise to postmarxism as a succesor to Marxism postmodernists also thrive in corporations. Postmodernists are the handmaidens of corporate globalisation and postmodernism is its philosophy.
Less educated but "do good" sectors of society such as nurses and teachers are particularly prone to this media norm of postmodernism and have responded by integrating postmodern ideas into their methods and curricula, unaware that they are aiding a movement that is directed at social disintegration (See for instance Nursing education in a multicultural context). As pointed out above postmodern ideology is paradoxical and racist but it sounds convincing to those who have not bothered to think about it.
Given the synergy between postmodernism and the modern media and corporations and the inherently subversive nature of postmodernism it is difficult to see how we can stop these nasty ideas and individuals. Even the simplest analysis of postmodern ideas shows that they are paradoxical and cannot be sustained by reason but the bulk of society does not analyse ideas. Postmodernists are now present in the media in flocks and so any single voice against them will be mercilessly torn to shreds. Although postmodernism is paradoxical and widely acknowledged to be fallacious it is retailed by the media as a social norm and those speaking publicly or making government policy feel that they are out on a limb if they do not conform to ideas such as multiculturalism and cultural relativism. Evil has become the moral high ground in the media. Politicians are too afraid of the media to even mention that the major battle in modern politics is between postmodernism and the rest. It is partly this relationship between the media and postmodernism that has saved it from being extinguished for the intellectual sham that it is.
Postmodernism has also been preserved by a sinister relationship with postmarxism because revolutionary socialists see postmodernism as a way of ripping apart the cohesion of societies. Postmarxists see the continuous inflammation of racial difference rather than the resolution of conflicts as the way to create a Maoist style perpetual revolution:
"With respect to understanding race and social relations this change [to a postmodern approach] gives primacy to ethnic and racial difference and the need to reorganize society according to this theme. In other words, postmodernists strive to open society instead of providing a more efficient means for resolving conflicts. As opposed to even some Marxists, postmodernists want this expansion to be an ongoing process, one that does not stop with the triumph of any group. In Marxist terminology, the dialectic of difference never reaches an end." (Murphy and Choi 1997).
Murphy and Choi have missed one important aspect of this exaggeration of difference: every conflict is followed by a compromise. It is through this apparently endless process of racial conflict and compromise that a society can be changed. Those who pose as "belief free" arbitrators of the compromise can then move society towards their goal. Indeed, in a postmodern world any group that sticks resolutely to its own ideology but poses as "belief free" can slowly move the consensus morality to its own beliefs, provided they are not in competition with other subversives.
The postmarxists use discriminatory recruitment to populate the media and humanities faculties at universities with their own brethren and then use this power over social policy to argue in the media and educate children in the idea that all beliefs are equivalent and hence social progress always entails compromise. Of course, if you espouse compromise publicly but then have an absolute, no-compromise belief in your own ideals you can steadily move the consensus towards your own point of view. If this game is only played by Marxists the process should end up with Marxism. That jihadis have understood the process is unfortunate for the Marxists.
Postmodernism is paradoxical and false, it does not have a place in academic or philosophical analysis. It subverts academia whose role was precisely to stop irrational ideas like postmodernism. Universities are the place to begin the purge of postmodernism. University courses are not supposed to proselytise, they are supposed to teach students and further knowledge through research. Despite this role of universities postmodernism is currently being taught in many second rate universities as the only method of literary criticism and the only method of social analysis. Impressing an entire, paradoxical and demonstrably absurd philosophy onto the minds of children is not the role of universities. This destructive proselytising can be stopped: university appointments committees should regard any CV that contains a significant amount of postmodernist writing as a negative factor. Postmodernists are entirely self interested, have no moral code, sense of honour or real beliefs so even the rumour that such an embargo was being implemented would stop this nonsense. Remember, postmodernists do not have real lives, they have "narratives" that can be changed with the flick of a recruitment agent's pen. Academia must defend itself and the world against the irrational and insane.
A worked example in postmodern analysis
The key concepts are to obtain a plausible "moral high ground" and to divide a population into victims and oppressors according to this apparently moral position. Postmodernism never analyses a problem and seeks conciliation, it always attaches a moral significance and exaggerates difference. Now you are ready to tackle any issue. Most importantly, never quote the facts, an argument must be complete in its own story without seeking confirmation from the truth - what is truth and whose truth is it anyway? Suppose a hospital is closing, if it is a working class district the moral high ground is "diversion of funds from the needy to the rich", point out how there is a hospital somewhere where rich people live that has plenty of money. The "difference" is rich against poor, faceless bureaucracy against the sick etc. Best of all is if the hospital is closing where there is a minority, the narrative is then racism - moral high ground and difference in a single word, genius. Of course, postmodernists have no concept of truth or right and wrong and just use these "moral" analyses to gain power whether that power be a position on a race relations body, advancing a career in journalism, obtaining a managerial position in a government social service department or the furthering of postmarxist socialism. Real morality always involves self-sacrifice, conciliation, contrition and forgiveness, the "morality" of postmodernism is just a vicious spike in the heart of society. Remember, postmodernists are evil and always use a plausible "moral high ground" to cause difference and damage.
The BBC is the major evangelist of postmodernism in the world.
Link to this article with: http://tinyurl.com/b2n8rx4
POLITICAL THOUGHTS click here to see the whole POLITICAL THOUGHTS magazine!
See also:
Do you have good intentions? - is morality possible without structure?
The Truth
Multiculturalism
The London Riots and the Mediocracy
The BBC Guide to postmodern journalism
Nations are the unit of diversity
Aylesworth, Gary, "Postmodernism", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2010 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL =.
Gellner, E., 1985, Relativism and Social Sciences. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Jameson, F. (1991). Postmodernism, or, The cultural logic of late capitalism. (Verso, London 1993)
Murphy, J.W. and Choi, J.M., (1997). Postmodernism, unraveling racism, and democratic institutions. Greenwood Publishing Group.
Tilley, J.J. (2000). Cultural Relativism. 22 Hum. Rts. Q. 501 (2000)
Žižek, S. Multiculturalism, Or, the Cultural Logic of Multinational Capitalism
First published March 23 2012
 |
| Postmodern dream: moral highground found again |
In the rest of this article I will show that postmodernism leads to an ever changing "consensus morality" in which every year the media tells us how much more moral we have become than the people in the past, how postmodernism is used by amoral corporations and the media and how it has become a political movement at the core of socialism called "postmarxism". I argue that to anyone with a fixed moral code postmodernism is evil.
Postmodernism was developed by extreme left-wing philosophers for political purposes and is the theoretical underpinning of modern socialism because it allows the idealist to move an entire society towards their views (see below). It is widely practiced by those who work in the media, often without knowing what they are doing apart from producing work that is popular and saleable. It is taught in schools and has produced an indoctrinated generation of people under thirty who are postmodern in the same unquestioning way that thirteenth century children might have been Catholic.
Although postmodernism is everywhere it's true meaning is misunderstood by most of its practitioners and those who do understand it seldom ever mention its name; 90% of people have never heard of it, and it is particularly difficult to define. In fact postmodernists delight in making it obscure, as an example Aylesworth (2010) writes:
"That postmodernism is indefinable is a truism. However, it can be described as a set of critical, strategic and rhetorical practices employing concepts such as difference, repetition, the trace, the simulacrum, and hyperreality to destabilize other concepts such as presence, identity, historical progress, epistemic certainty, and the univocity of meaning. "
Or, in English, postmodernism is an attack on the ideas of existence, truth and meaning. It allows the author and the journalist to free themselves from extraneous "truths" so that they can focus on the impact and effect of a story.
Postmodernism is the general term for postmodern philosophy and for the use of this philosophy in art; poststructuralism is almost synonymous with postmodernism but is a favoured term when postmodernism is applied to literature and journalism and postmarxism is the political philosophy based on postmodernism. The terminology of postmodernism is very "postmodern" and has created poststructuralists who do not realise that they are postmarxists!
Postmodernism, also known as poststructuralism, is beyond doubt the main political philosophy in the world today. It is not a rational philosophy because it undermines itself from the outset: "...the very concept of truth itself is part of the metaphysical baggage that poststructuralism seeks to abandon." (Jameson 1991). As Jameson points out postmodernism is a philosophy that proclaims from the outset that it contains no truth. Had it stayed as a game used by English students and literary critics in the late twentieth century it would have been harmless but it has spread and now, particularly in the media and sociology, has become the modern morality.
It is extraordinary that a philosophy that rejects the idea of truth is the source of modern morality and hence of modern politics. This may be extraordinary but it is happening and most postmodern journalists consider that our continually changing consensus morality is forever leading us to be better people.
How did this happen? How did morality become a matter of mere ever changing consensus? In the absence of truth or fixed belief the postmodernist must look elsewhere for the roots of morality. Tilley (2000) notes that "We often hear that 'morality is relative to culture' or that 'right and wrong vary with cultural norms'. These are rough formulations of cultural relativism, a theory with multiple charms, appearing rigorously scientific to some, fashionably postmodern to others" and Gellner (1985) says "Stated briefly, cultural relativism is a theory which asserts that there is no absolute truth, be it ethical, moral, or cultural, and that there is no meaningful way to judge different cultures because all judgments are ethnocentric" (ie: racially motivated). This has an immediate paradox because a belief that postmodernism is right is equivalent to a belief that postmodernism is wrong so no reasonable person can believe that the postmodernist analysis of cultural relativism is correct. Yet politicians and sociologists promulgate postmodern ideas of culture and morality every day.
Despite the paradoxical nature of the postmodern analysis that created cultural relativism it is widely accepted. The idea that all beliefs are equivalent means that the madman who believes that God has ordered him to kill prostitutes is equivalent to anyone else. This approval of all beliefs is very dangerous for the individual in a society and if a meaning can be assigned to the word "evil" then postmodernism, the belief that all beliefs are equivalent, is "evil", it cannot discern between the insane mass murderer and the law abiding member of society or between the fashionable but destructive postmarxist and a person who believes in helping others. The postmodern axiom that all beliefs are equivalent is the definition of evil for anyone who has a moral code and according to this definition postmodernism is itself evil.
This evil is always buried under ostensibly reasonable arguments, for instance, the approach of postmodernists to racism appears superficially "holy". As an example, postmodern social analyses take the "moral high ground" and consider most histories and earlier social analyses to be racist. This postmodern use of the word "racist" is not about caucasians, negroids etc., it is about classification into any social grouping. According to postmodern sociology the classification of people into groups is a racist construction. The reader may have spotted an obvious paradox, if postmodern sociologists see themselves as a group then they are applying a classification to themselves and so are racist. Similarly if they declare other people to be racist they are classifying these other people and hence are also racist. So according to a full postmodern analysis it is racist to be anti-racist! Of course, we would expect this paradox because postmodernism contains no truth.
This racist imperative of postmodernism has been spotted by others, as Zizek puts it: "Multiculturalism is a racism which empties its own position of all positive content (the multi-culturalist is not a direct racist, he doesn’t oppose to the Other the particular values of his own culture), but nonetheless retains this position as the privileged empty point of universality from which one is able to appreciate (and depreciate) properly other particular cultures—the multiculturalist respect for the Other’s specificity is the very form of asserting one’s own superiority." Or to put it more simply, postmodern multiculturalists are patronising and condescending and implement their racism as the social apartheid of multiculturalism. Postmodernism is evil and will always bear evil fruit.
Hard though it may be to believe, serious postmodernists actually know that they are racist and are deliberately stirring up racial tensions through multiculturalism (see below), this being the principle tool of postmarxism to produce revolutionary tension. Postmarxists support mass migration in the hope of destroying the social order and creating an homogeneous Marxist state.
Postmodernists are corrupt exploiters of the modern media and academic culture. Their mutual support assures that their powerful gang obtains publications, work and status even though their work is destructive and their ideas are devoid of value. Postmodernism is particularly prevalent in the media because strong beliefs are the last thing a Media Company wants and the postmodernists with their absence of morality are a corporation's perfect servants. Although postmodernism has given rise to postmarxism as a succesor to Marxism postmodernists also thrive in corporations. Postmodernists are the handmaidens of corporate globalisation and postmodernism is its philosophy.
Less educated but "do good" sectors of society such as nurses and teachers are particularly prone to this media norm of postmodernism and have responded by integrating postmodern ideas into their methods and curricula, unaware that they are aiding a movement that is directed at social disintegration (See for instance Nursing education in a multicultural context). As pointed out above postmodern ideology is paradoxical and racist but it sounds convincing to those who have not bothered to think about it.
Given the synergy between postmodernism and the modern media and corporations and the inherently subversive nature of postmodernism it is difficult to see how we can stop these nasty ideas and individuals. Even the simplest analysis of postmodern ideas shows that they are paradoxical and cannot be sustained by reason but the bulk of society does not analyse ideas. Postmodernists are now present in the media in flocks and so any single voice against them will be mercilessly torn to shreds. Although postmodernism is paradoxical and widely acknowledged to be fallacious it is retailed by the media as a social norm and those speaking publicly or making government policy feel that they are out on a limb if they do not conform to ideas such as multiculturalism and cultural relativism. Evil has become the moral high ground in the media. Politicians are too afraid of the media to even mention that the major battle in modern politics is between postmodernism and the rest. It is partly this relationship between the media and postmodernism that has saved it from being extinguished for the intellectual sham that it is.
 |
| Postmarxism on the political spectrum |
"With respect to understanding race and social relations this change [to a postmodern approach] gives primacy to ethnic and racial difference and the need to reorganize society according to this theme. In other words, postmodernists strive to open society instead of providing a more efficient means for resolving conflicts. As opposed to even some Marxists, postmodernists want this expansion to be an ongoing process, one that does not stop with the triumph of any group. In Marxist terminology, the dialectic of difference never reaches an end." (Murphy and Choi 1997).
Murphy and Choi have missed one important aspect of this exaggeration of difference: every conflict is followed by a compromise. It is through this apparently endless process of racial conflict and compromise that a society can be changed. Those who pose as "belief free" arbitrators of the compromise can then move society towards their goal. Indeed, in a postmodern world any group that sticks resolutely to its own ideology but poses as "belief free" can slowly move the consensus morality to its own beliefs, provided they are not in competition with other subversives.
The postmarxists use discriminatory recruitment to populate the media and humanities faculties at universities with their own brethren and then use this power over social policy to argue in the media and educate children in the idea that all beliefs are equivalent and hence social progress always entails compromise. Of course, if you espouse compromise publicly but then have an absolute, no-compromise belief in your own ideals you can steadily move the consensus towards your own point of view. If this game is only played by Marxists the process should end up with Marxism. That jihadis have understood the process is unfortunate for the Marxists.
Postmodernism is paradoxical and false, it does not have a place in academic or philosophical analysis. It subverts academia whose role was precisely to stop irrational ideas like postmodernism. Universities are the place to begin the purge of postmodernism. University courses are not supposed to proselytise, they are supposed to teach students and further knowledge through research. Despite this role of universities postmodernism is currently being taught in many second rate universities as the only method of literary criticism and the only method of social analysis. Impressing an entire, paradoxical and demonstrably absurd philosophy onto the minds of children is not the role of universities. This destructive proselytising can be stopped: university appointments committees should regard any CV that contains a significant amount of postmodernist writing as a negative factor. Postmodernists are entirely self interested, have no moral code, sense of honour or real beliefs so even the rumour that such an embargo was being implemented would stop this nonsense. Remember, postmodernists do not have real lives, they have "narratives" that can be changed with the flick of a recruitment agent's pen. Academia must defend itself and the world against the irrational and insane.
A worked example in postmodern analysis
The key concepts are to obtain a plausible "moral high ground" and to divide a population into victims and oppressors according to this apparently moral position. Postmodernism never analyses a problem and seeks conciliation, it always attaches a moral significance and exaggerates difference. Now you are ready to tackle any issue. Most importantly, never quote the facts, an argument must be complete in its own story without seeking confirmation from the truth - what is truth and whose truth is it anyway? Suppose a hospital is closing, if it is a working class district the moral high ground is "diversion of funds from the needy to the rich", point out how there is a hospital somewhere where rich people live that has plenty of money. The "difference" is rich against poor, faceless bureaucracy against the sick etc. Best of all is if the hospital is closing where there is a minority, the narrative is then racism - moral high ground and difference in a single word, genius. Of course, postmodernists have no concept of truth or right and wrong and just use these "moral" analyses to gain power whether that power be a position on a race relations body, advancing a career in journalism, obtaining a managerial position in a government social service department or the furthering of postmarxist socialism. Real morality always involves self-sacrifice, conciliation, contrition and forgiveness, the "morality" of postmodernism is just a vicious spike in the heart of society. Remember, postmodernists are evil and always use a plausible "moral high ground" to cause difference and damage.
The BBC is the major evangelist of postmodernism in the world.
Link to this article with: http://tinyurl.com/b2n8rx4
POLITICAL THOUGHTS click here to see the whole POLITICAL THOUGHTS magazine!
See also:
Do you have good intentions? - is morality possible without structure?
The Truth
Multiculturalism
The London Riots and the Mediocracy
The BBC Guide to postmodern journalism
Nations are the unit of diversity
Aylesworth, Gary, "Postmodernism", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2010 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL =
Žižek, S. Multiculturalism, Or, the Cultural Logic of Multinational Capitalism
First published March 23 2012
Comments
Post Structuralism is essentially the idea that culture is distinct from reality. It is about awareness of one's own subjective interpretation of the world as a result of class/gender/race/job/etc ad infinitum. They rejected the notion of a 'pure' or totally objective analytical framework.
Post Marxism doesn't mean anything on it's own, it's an umbrella term for philosophies based on or informed by those of Karl Marx.
Postmodernism is an umbrella term, which encompasses a school of thought whereby there is understood to be no absolute truth - judgement may only be accorded in response to the aims and/or context of a particular work or process.
"postmodernism is an attack on the ideas of existence, truth and meaning. "
and you say of postmodernism that:"there is understood to be no absolute truth ..."
I then move on to describe poststructuralism as the application of these ideas to literature and literary criticism, as you say "They rejected the notion of a 'pure' or totally objective analytical framework." and I quoted Jameson as saying:"...the very concept of truth itself is part of the metaphysical baggage that poststructuralism seeks to abandon."
Although we seem to be in total harmony on postmodernism and poststructuralism we differ about postmarxism, I gave a referenced quote by Murphy and Choi on how postmodern ideas are an essential part of postmarxism whereas you equate postmarxism with Marxism, as if there were no difference.
It is perhaps rather postmodern to rehash the content of an article as your own understanding then describe it as "complete rubbish".