I think I've asked some of these questions before, but I'm feeling too lazy to double check. When did name calling become a legitimate substitute for reasoned and polite discourse? When did it become acceptable to label your opponents liars because you disagree with the positions they take? When did it become okay to question another person's integrity because the evidence provided and the conclusions drawn differ from yours? When did rational discussion become defined by ignoring another person's arguments, impugning their motives and, apparently, knowingly attacking straw men? Allow me to continue...
When did we, as a society, decide inconsistency was the height of argumentation? At what point did we decide that wanting something to be true desperately enough makes it true? When did we agree that in practical terms, objective reality has no meaning? Finally, when did we decide that it was impossible for two equally honest people to look at the same data and honestly draw different conclusions?
I ask these questions as the result of several months spent reading and occasionally commenting on another blog, with whose owner I tend to disagree. The truth, of course, is that these aren't simply "when" type questions. They are all more properly viewed as "what is going on here?" questions. While I think I know parts of the answer (the impact of post-modern thought on the use of narrative combined with some normal human defense mechanisms) it seems there must be something else there. I have a suspicion as to what it is, but I don't want to put a label on it, yet. So, if you have any thoughts, I'm all ears.
Right around the publication of Saul Alinsky's little book.
ReplyDeleteAlisnky was certainly no friend of individual freedom. My question, though, is this: At whose feet shall we lay the blame when someone on the Right utilizes many of the same tactics?
DeleteYou have it right when you link this to postmodernism. With that movement came doubt that one human mind can learn anything that another human mind has to acknowledge. That movement taught us that we have to seek the inherent contradictions in everything, instead of finding truth. The one thing that cannot be doubted in the postmodernist mind is postmodernism itself. That's why, no matter how much a mess of things they make, they never stop believing in the righteousness of their cause.
ReplyDeleteLike any other philosophy, it took a while for postmodernism to become as extreme as it is today. Earlier postmodern writers, like Pirsig, didn't deny objective reality. That has been, I believe, a more recent development and one that deserves its own Phaedrus.
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