How Did We Get Here?

 

So, How Did We Get Here?

In the 1960’s a revolution seemed to explode onto the scene and became a disquieting reality. Some called it the “Hippy Generation”. Peace, love and rock & roll was the gentle outcry of this retreat from society, morality & truth. This regress was marked by a rejection of cultural norms and Judeo-Christian standards. Sex was said to be free, and whatever else that means, it was a rejection of a worldview rooted in truth and pursuing truth. Drugs were seen as a rebellious and necessary means of disconnecting, something that has been part of primitive animistic cultures in pursuit of spiritual enlightenment for centuries.

To many this generational movement seemed to be just a fad, and an expression of teens and young people’s need to push away from parents and authority. In reality this is much too simple an explanation. To some this may have appeared an innocent eruption that accidently came on the scene and would easily disappear in time. In reality it was a step in a devolving need of standards rooted in truth.

The reason this was not just a fad that faded away, was the success of this mindset to penetrate every discipline of life in a very concentrated period. Had this remained a philosophical rebellion that culminated in a “Woodstock” event marking the historical calendar, it may have well passed with little long term affect. But that is not the case. Till this decade civilizations, for the most part, were “constructionists” in nature. That is, civilizations, cultures and societies built themselves up, evolving over time. Wheels were built, laws were written, and men were put on the moon. Humanity was constructed fact upon fact, precept upon precept and truth upon truth. We learned, we grew, we evolved in both knowledge and application. This was true in religion, philosophy, language and science.

Post-modern relativism challenged all that. Relativism is simply the questioning of the fixed nature of, or knowableness, of any given truth. Can we really say: “Illegal drugs – bad”, “marriage – good”, or “laws or morals – immutable”? Do these kinds of binaries really exist, and if so are they necessary? OR ought we not liberate ourselves from these kinds of limitations as more mature and evolved beings? If these binaries do actually exist, then truth exists and must be dealt with. Both binary realities, and binary choices demand that truth exist. Something either is, or it is not. It is either 80 degrees Fahrenheit, or it is not. That is a binary reality. There was a time when every culture in every time in history agreed that whether one was male or female fell into a category of truth. Today there is a whole political, philosophical, legal and scientific worldview that has been convinced that one’s sex is a choice, and that this choice is in no way binary. In order to conflate sex with sexual orientation in this way, philosophy, psychology, religion, language and science have all gone through some measure of deconstruction, and the very meaning of binary realities are being challenged.

The Deconstructionists

Thus far relativists have attempted (rather successfully) to blur the lines between clear binary realities. In America freedom meant that one was free to live within certain legal boundaries, for the protection of all; and within certain moral constraints for the good of all. Today freedom is evolving into something else. Whatever it is and wherever it ends up boundaries and constraints have become very broad gray areas dictated more by individual feelings than a legal or moral code. This is the post-constructionist reversal of reality. There was a time when liberty and safety were found in boundaries and constraints. These foundations provided security and opportunity for most of the free world, but for some, these boundaries seemed like limitations. The deconstructionists do not just challenge the constructionist ordered world, they are dismembering those constructions at the cellular level.

Richard Rorty is a philosophical deconstructionist. Rorty taught at Stanford and according to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, developed a distinctive and controversial brand of pragmatism that expressed itself along two main axes. One is negative—a critical diagnosis of what Rorty takes to be defining projects of modern philosophy. The other is positive—an attempt to show what intellectual culture might look like, once we free ourselves from the governing metaphors of mind and knowledge in which the traditional problems of epistemology and metaphysics (and indeed, in Rorty's view, the self-conception of modern philosophy) are rooted. Note what this says: “what intellectual culture might look like, once we free ourselves from the governing metaphors of mind and knowledge…”. Freeing one self from “mind” and “knowledge” is the “deconstruction” of accumulated societal knowledge and the individual mind. This seems little more (or less) than the Buddhist hum that tries to think of nothing while emptying the mind. Atheist Sam Harris calls this “incoherent” but acknowledges that Mr. Rorty’s students find him mesmerizing and brilliant. Understanding these things is difficult. With knowledge and mind set aside, and rational thought believed impossible (or at least non-productive), one can see where Rorty’s pragmatism is baseless…, but Rorty might say that is the point. To which another philosopher might ask: “what point”?

Jacque Dirrida challenged everything that was binary in terms of language and definitions that are essential to giving meaning to anything. Thus defining what is true and what is false becomes an illusion. Dirrida is considered the father of literary deconstructionists. He ultimately reached the logical deconstructionist conclusion.  We must question the legitimacy of language, the definition of every word… then when the second word in a sentence is examined we must return to the first in order to re-evaluate it “in light of” the second word. Apparently Derrida’s idea is that no words actually have definitive meaning, but somehow develop meaning within a sentence, based on other words chosen, which also have no real meaning till “interpreted” together. With no standards of interpretation, it is difficult to exaggerate the subjective nature of any given series of words, no matter how skillfully they are employed. The deconstruction of language is perhaps the most basic and destructive element in the post-constructionist worldview. Without language, science, poetry and love letters are left without objective or aesthetic meaning, and the beauty and wonder of living every day becomes little more than meaningless transactional activity.

With the contributions of Rorty and Derrida, is it any wonder that Michael Fuco concluded that there is no such thing as “absolute truth”? To which one should ask: “Is that an absolutely true statement, or just a relatively true statement”? If it is absolutely true that absolute truth does not exist, then at least one absolute truth does exist, and that is that absolute truth does not exist, which makes the statement self defeating at best. If it is only relatively true that absolute truth does not exist, then absolute truth must exist, because it is only “relatively” true that it does not. Either way Fuco’s conclusion is not concluded and must be thought through further and restated if it is to be understandable and rational. But that is really the conclusion of truth bias; nothing can be understood or made rational in a deconstructionist world.

Thomas Kuhn  is both a scientific deconstructionist and a somewhat unaware critic of scientific deconstructionism. Given the nature of deconstructionism, I suppose this makes perfect sense. Kuhn is supposed to have shown that science does not give us an account of an independently existing reality, rather he states that “scientist are an irrational bunch who run from one paradigm (accepted narrative) to another for reasons that have no real connection with finding objective truths.” Kuhn is describing scientific “well accepted Narratives” that establish the base lines of scientific inquiry, whether or not those baselines can be established as true. If what Kuhn is describing is accurate, then instead of science building a knowledge base, fact upon fact and truth upon truth, it is instead building a narrative, hypothesis upon hypothesis, with little or no basis in truth, and with no real intention of establishing a data base of objective knowledge. Given, this is not what science was, but according to Kuhn, this is what science has become in a deconstructionist world.

Oddly enough in a world of intellectual elites this kind of unthinking, unreasoned esoteric knowledge is highly admired and held up as an example of academic brilliance, worthy of grant money, publishing and promotion. The emperor’s clothes, not withstanding, questions need to be asked, but in an environment where questions are discouraged and considered a sign of intellectual inferiority, this is less and less likely to happen.

More disturbing and perhaps dangerous than the deconstructionist acceptance in academia, is how this mindless mindset has been embraced by most cultures in the areas of policy, politics and public discourse. Exactly how this infection escaped the academic laboratory is debatable, but it is no doubt connected to the perfect storm of the rebellious 1960’s, the acceptance of the Darwinian paradigm, and massive technological advancements which made living so easy as to no longer need either God or thinking skills. Google replaced the former and is quickly substituting for the latter.