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.