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Thread: The Academic Roots of Post-Truth Society

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    The Academic Roots of Post-Truth Society

    The Academic Roots of Post-Truth Society delves into what postmodernism is, its roots as counter-Enlightenment ideology, and its existence today in identity politics. Remarkably it says nothing about Marxism whose theory of exploitation and oppressions runs through it.

    Post-truth is not simply lying. It’s a very specific phenomenon in which facts just aren’t considered important and truth is based on appeals to emotion....

    The postmodern view of knowledge stands in direct opposition to that which defines Enlightenment liberalism, which enabled our ascent out of medieval society into the advanced technological world we enjoy today. Jonathan Rauch summarised the relevant features of Enlightenment liberalism 25 years ago, arguing in favour of ‘liberal science,’ by which he meant a system in which anyone can evaluate truth claims on their evidence and reasoning, leading to the sound ideas winning out and the bad being marginalised. This principle is now under threat. Under the post-truth playbook of postmodern social theory, if one can replace evidence and argument with ‘As a member of identity group X, I feel that the truth is…’ or if one can disparage evidence and reason or simply ignore the need for it, the whole basis of truth is reset. Postmodernism, thus has been deeply influential in contributing to a cultural norm where this is acceptable. It has gone a long way towards creating a culture in which facts can be relative, expertise is suspicious and where personal truths and narratives satisfying and validating to a cultural group can simply be claimed to be true.

    Most left-wing academics will argue that postmodernism is over. It is not. Rather, it has evolved....

    The new wave of critical theorists took postmodern ideas of gender, race and knowledge as culturally constructed by discourse. However, they argued that social realities did exist, and that society has been built in hierarchical systems which privileged some groups and their systems of knowledge above others and that this must now be remedied. Consequently, science, reason, evidence & expertise have been designated the property of white, western, heterosexual, wealthy men, thereby diminishing the achievements of all the scientists, thinkers and experts who do not fit the description. To continue to support the fruits of the Enlightenment is therefore understood to perpetuate sexism, racism, homophobia and colonialism.

    There was a lot more to postmodernism than this, of course. Postmodernism was a massive, multidisciplinary phenomenon which covered great intellectual terrain. However, when considering its impact on a post-truth society, we need to focus on its general relationship with the truth. This is founded in such ideas as Foucault’s that knowledge is a construct of power. Or Lyotard’s that science is just one language game that cannot legitimate itself. Or Derrida’s that there is no objective reality corresponding to language, “There are only contexts without any center of absolute anchoring”

    The defining quality of postmodernism is a move away from the aim for objective truth both morally and factually. It’s a turn from a shared objectively knowable world to a world in which we’re all situated by our identities and this determines what we can know. Of course, this results in identity politics. It is difficult to overestimate how profound an effect postmodernism has had on the political left or the extent to which leftist identity politics have both motivated and legitimised rightist identity politics. Even so, it would clearly be a mistake to claim that rejection of objective truth and embrace of identity politics originated with postmodernism. These are consistent human failings. History provides ample evidence of humans being tribal and preferring satisfying stories over reality. Religion is a prime example of this. It would also be an error to claim that postmodernism is the sole cause of our post-truth phenomenon.

    ...
    Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire. ― Gustav Mahler

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    Another: The Insidious Appeal of Identity Politics

    Adherents to identity politics have presumably never read (or at least blindly misinterpreted) George Orwell’s 1942 essay “Looking Back on the Spanish War” in which he writes: “Nazi theory specifically denies that such thing as ‘the truth’ exists. There is, for instance, no such thing as ‘science’. There is only ‘German science’, ‘Jewish science’ etc. The implied objective of this line of thought is a world in which the leader, or some ruling clique, control, not only the future, but the past.”

    I’m a heterosexual, white male. Just for this crime, some will stop reading, or denounce me as biased, unjustly privileged, racist, xenophobic, transphobic, homophobic and misogynistic. As Grayson Perry says in his recent book The Descent of Man (in full agreement with the intersectional feminist mob), “Objectivity is male subjectivity.” Simply for existing, I am, as a political writer, already at a disadvantage, and must be judged as suspect. Like many who refute the far right, but can’t abide the insanity of the far left, I find myself in a quandary.

    In Helen Pluckrose’s blistering essay “How French ‘Intellectuals’ Ruined the West: Postmodernism and its Impact, Explained,” postmodernism (as she understands it) states: “Shared humanity and individuality are essentially illusions and people are propagators or victims of discourses depending on their social position; a position which is dependent on identity far more than their individual engagement with society. Morality is culturally relative, as is reality itself. Empirical evidence is suspect… far more important is the lived experience, narrative and beliefs of ‘marginalised’ groups all of which are equally ‘true’ but must now be privileged over Enlightenment values to reverse an oppressive, unjust and entirely arbitrary social construction of reality, morality and knowledge.”

    When victimhood is currency, there’s an incentive to create as much of it as you can....

    We live in a political climate that, unlike other previous generations, is measured in minutes. It’s possible for lackluster minds to draw huge social media followings in short order, and one of these ways is to stick to the established liberal agenda. Identity politics has more in common with radical Islamism than anything else, a cult of personality that absolves you of personal responsibility for your failures, and gives you a clear enemy to oppose. The appeal of identity politics is obvious: If you have failed in life, don’t have the job you want, are poor, unhappy, it’s because of the white cis-hetero-patriarchy, and nothing to do with your own inherent mediocrity.
    Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire. ― Gustav Mahler

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    Postmodernists are right to reject liberal universalism and this is by far the most significant connection I can perceive between Counter-Enlightenment thought and postmodernism. A critique of rationalism and the universalist pretensions of liberalism does not entail a relativist position but an acknowledgement that Western liberalism is indeed Western. It is located in place and time. The focus on science, IMO, obscures the central point and that is that there is not one right way to live.
    Whoever criticizes capitalism, while approving immigration, whose working class is its first victim, had better shut up. Whoever criticizes immigration, while remaining silent about capitalism, should do the same.


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    Postmodernism rejects Enlightenment universalism in rejecting its adherence to objectivity, truth, and reason as a means to link objective fats to truths. But, in complete contradiction, demands subservience to the state, a Marxist state, communism, which is universal.

    The aim of science is to find laws of the universe, the laws of physics, say, or of chemistry, even biology, to describe. But not to prescribe the right way to live. Here, I think, is another contradiction of postmodernism, even as it rejects science it uses science to study the racialized, sexual violence of penguins to so just that, dictate, throught the state, the right way to live.
    Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire. ― Gustav Mahler

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    Quote Originally Posted by Chris View Post
    Postmodernism rejects Enlightenment universalism in rejecting its adherence to objectivity, truth, and reason as a means to link objective fats to truths. But, in complete contradiction, demands subservience to the state, a Marxist state, communism, which is universal.

    The aim of science is to find laws of the universe, the laws of physics, say, or of chemistry, even biology, to describe. But not to prescribe the right way to live. Here, I think, is another contradiction of postmodernism, even as it rejects science it uses science to study the racialized, sexual violence of penguins to so just that, dictate, throught the state, the right way to live.
    I think you are vastly over-generalizing what post-modernism really is and are seemingly taking it out of context as to individual disciplines to synthesis a largely false confusion. It cannot be deconstructed and reduced the way you seem to think it can be with ease, particularly considering the number of competing schools of thought within post-modernism.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Kacper View Post
    I think you are vastly over-generalizing what post-modernism really is and are seemingly taking it out of context as to individual disciplines to synthesis a largely false confusion. It cannot be deconstructed and reduced the way you seem to think it can be with ease, particularly considering the number of competing schools of thought within post-modernism.
    Yes, I'm generalizing. But postmodernism is that collection of schools being described. If one of its tenant is deconstruction then it too can be deconstructed--which is its ultimate self- contradiction.

    But tell me, since I'm new to it, and you're old, what am I missing?
    Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire. ― Gustav Mahler

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    Quote Originally Posted by Chris View Post
    But tell me, since I'm new to it, and you're old, what am I missing?
    Objectivity. The left bemoans postmodernism as an attack on science and the right bemoans it as an attack on religion/values. It is just one of those terms people want to use to frame their opposition as some great movement that must be defeated so they sound smart. From my perspective, dissent is invaluable, as are competing arguments, and the only people who want to silence opposition are authoritarian buttholes pissy that everybody else doesn't agree with them.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Kacper View Post
    Objectivity. The left bemoans postmodernism as an attack on science and the right bemoans it as an attack on religion/values. It is just one of those terms people want to use to frame their opposition as some great movement that must be defeated so they sound smart. From my perspective, dissent is invaluable, as are competing arguments, and the only people who want to silence opposition are authoritarian buttholes pissy that everybody else doesn't agree with them.
    Objectivity is the first element of modern thought rejected. Specifically, it was Kant and Hume who rejected it. Kant in an attempt t restore the place of faith. Hume to undermine its authority--science was initially authoritarian, scientists like Newton introduced induction from objective fats to indisputable truths, Hume pointed out that you cannot know all facts, cannot know that in the futue you will not find counterfactuals, his example was the then hel belief that all swans were white being undone by the discovery of black swans in Autstralia.

    Postmodernism is an ideaology of the left. The left loves science that authoritatively tells us about, for example, climate change, and hates skeptics pointing out that science is by nature (the Induction Problem) uncertain, incomplete and probabilistic. So, the left doesn't defend science.

    Postmodernism was originally, even with Hegel, as defense of religion, an attempt to respore faith over reason. But then the Marxists took it over and removed religion as one of those social institutions of the past that deprives people of their freedom.

    I'll leave it at that...

    I was hoping to hear about the individual disciplines that comprise postmodernism.
    Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire. ― Gustav Mahler

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    Post-modernism refers primarily to a fact not a philosophy or a group of intellectuals. The grand narrative of modernity (e.g. progress, the end of history) has collapsed. It also has temporal dimension in so far as it is used to refer to the period of time we live in.
    Whoever criticizes capitalism, while approving immigration, whose working class is its first victim, had better shut up. Whoever criticizes immigration, while remaining silent about capitalism, should do the same.


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    Quote Originally Posted by Chris View Post
    Objectivity is the first element of modern thought rejected. Specifically, it was Kant and Hume who rejected it. Kant in an attempt t restore the place of faith. Hume to undermine its authority--science was initially authoritarian, scientists like Newton introduced induction from objective fats to indisputable truths, Hume pointed out that you cannot know all facts, cannot know that in the futue you will not find counterfactuals, his example was the then hel belief that all swans were white being undone by the discovery of black swans in Autstralia.

    Postmodernism is an ideaology of the left. The left loves science that authoritatively tells us about, for example, climate change, and hates skeptics pointing out that science is by nature (the Induction Problem) uncertain, incomplete and probabilistic. So, the left doesn't defend science.

    Postmodernism was originally, even with Hegel, as defense of religion, an attempt to respore faith over reason. But then the Marxists took it over and removed religion as one of those social institutions of the past that deprives people of their freedom.

    I'll leave it at that...

    I was hoping to hear about the individual disciplines that comprise postmodernism.
    Cooking has Postmodern Molecular Gastronomy. Art has, or had, Jasper Johns (still alive but not sure he is still producing). Music I am not even going to touch because some people throw people in the postmodern category when their music really is rather conventional.

    Anyway, you can "leave it at that" because you still are not showing objectivity as next you will be discussing Chomsky as an evil post-modernist mastermind even though he rejects postmodernism because Rush labels everything an evil left wing plot. You see no utility in hearing others' voices. That is noted.

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