I would love to read a second, third and even fourth part.
I've watched countless JP videos, and I was always surprised to hear him talk about "neomarxists" & "posmodernists", considering he's a psychologist he's supposed to have real knowledge about philosophy and psychology because of his degree and this includes postmodernism.
I think this happened because he became a public figure, he made one wrong assertion, and then for the sake of consistency to his followers he had to keep the charade of 'cultural marxism'. It works because it's a very powerful memetic concept that the right wing has been using for decades to blame the left for all the moral and cultural failings of capitalism.
This plays into the fantasy of "We could have a perfect capitalist system with economic freedom and conservative christian values if we could eliminate cultural marxism". But this is not possible and it was already perfectly explained by Ted Kaczynski:
“The conservatives are fools: They whine about the decay of traditional values, yet they enthusiastically support technological progress and economic growth. Apparently it never occurs to them that you can't make rapid, drastic changes in the technology and the economy of a society without causing rapid changes in all other aspects of the society as well, and that such rapid changes inevitably break down traditional values.”
To conserve economic freedom & conservative values at the same time you'd need a powerful State, ideally a dictatorship / monarchism with the perfect leader/king whose values would align exactly with said ideology. Or an Anarcho Capitalist System a la Hoppe with covenant communities:
"covenant communities are made up of residents who have signed an agreement defining the nature of that community. Hoppe writes 'There would be little or no 'tolerance' and 'openmindedness' so dear to left-libertarians. Instead, one would be on the right path toward restoring the freedom of association and exclusion implied in the institution of private property'. Hoppe writes that towns and villages could have warning signs saying 'no beggars, bums, or homeless, but also no homosexuals, drug users, Jews, Muslims, Germans, or Zulus'."
Obviously said scenarios are highly unlikely to occur.
Why not straight-up identify postmodernism with the Silent Generation? These are people whose formative experience was the jarring dislocation of WWII, dissonantly followed by the normality of the post-war period. It gave them a metaphysical suspicion that nothing is as it seems. What conservative postmodernists do is not fundamentally different from their leftwing counterparts, the same way Burke and Rousseau inherited the spirit of their age. A few examples:
1) Allan Bloom (1930-1992) followed Leo Strauss, who, like the French Post-structuralists, was influenced by Nietzsche and taught the difference between deadly truths and life-giving myths. The non-philosopher is always kept in focus in relationship to philosophy; classical philosophy is juxtapositioned against modernist thought to motivate a spirit of finding the questions for answers instead of answers to questions. (The lowbrow version of this is Dave Rubin mumbling about "ideas.")
2) Thomas Sowell (1930- ) makes an anti-utopian contrast between what he calls the visions of the anointed and benighted. He has a Lyotard-like suspicion of explicit knowledge, which Sowell, taking cues from Hayek and Polanyi, sees as tacit, stored, distributed, and fragmented. He feels that any grand politics has totalitarian costs that are not worth paying.
3) Samuel Huntington (1927-2008) resembles those who emphasize how cultural discourses shape reality. He rejects the idea that liberal democracy is the endpoint of human evolution. He is a cultural relativist skeptical of universalism and thinks plurality, conflict, and power are part of life.
4) Maurice Cowling (1926-2005) attacked liberalism since he believed it assumes social prediction is possible. His idea is that we can never get a good grasp on history because not only is the past retrojected from documents, buildings, letters, and memories -- there is also a matter of selection when it comes to choosing a subject matter, and there is always an ineliminable aspect of interpretation. He thinks politics is more often than not about charm, bluffing, cunning, brazenness, and luck, which are elements that aren't even on the radar in the philosophy of Mill and its relatives and descendants.
Now, I'm a liberal atheist Democrat and find much of this to be tactical nihilism, a way to support the status quo and discourage us from pursuing achievable aims. My point, though, is that post-truth postmodernism can be and is used with devastating effectiveness from a conservative outlook. Trump, while a Boomer, is postmodernism incarnate.
Post-modernism has genuine merit to it, but it's a dangerous meme which is to be kept in containment.
To the degree that the masses are made to digest post-modernist idead, they’ll just take the ‘non-existence of truth’ to either mean that:
A) This is carte blanche to endorse takes which are truly random opinions, often based on little to nothing; best case scenario, this is direct ideological attrition2; worst case scenario, they remain associated with you and they make you look bad by associating you with their dumb takes.
B) They take this to mean that nothing is true except when shitlibs need it to be true or when the most surface-level of ‘fairness’ morality needs it to be true.
The net effect of post-modernism is that it will just act to protect whatever ideas achieve hegemony in society. This is because the ideas in power are few, and their alternatives are many. Post-modernism attacks them all equally, and the dominant ones have more resources with which to survive the passive environmental deconstructions.
In light of this, its best to just resolve to never refer to it as ‘post-modernism’ when you decide upon employing post-modernist arguments or reasoning
But to signal out postmodernism seems arbitrary to me. For example, I’d say race realism is equally as “true-but-dangerous”.
Further, The mass proliferation of “post modernism” to the masses is not some kind of consciously directed goal to pursue truth (nor to spread evil and control). It is a symptom of the fact that God died and everyone lost their minds as a result.
Liken the conversation to drug abuse:
Yes, I agree with you. Drugs are dangerous. And their mass proliferation is bad. But what do you propose? The world is not centrally plannable. Banning them clearly doesnt work. Laws and power follow the masses just as much if not more than the masses follow laws and power. Drugs were made illegal before because the majority agreed. Prohibition and its ilk however have failed miserably because people stopped agreeing.
Whether drugs are good or bad for society is the wrong question. The question is why does everyone have this overwhelming need to be constantly high? If this need exists, no amount of central power and enforcement can stop it retroactively.
The only thing you can do is proactively ask “how can we give people better coping strategies than drugs so they will voluntary discard them?”
To translate back to PM:
The question is not whether PM is true or false or good or bad. The question is: why is everyone a depressed nihilistic hedonist with no meaning and belief in something greater?
This is the CAUSE of the mass proliferation of PM, NOT the result of it. Sure all complex systems feed back on each other, but this one is 80% cause 20% result at most.
To solve the post modern crisis must ask “why did PM develop?” and “why is everyone so susceptible to it?” and “how do we give them something better so they voluntarily discard it?”
I think you hit a vein here. There is something to postmodernism that is worth knowing more intimately. You're right that the right dismisses its ideas lazily and dishonestly. I wonder what a right-wing or centrist (or even a non-Marxist) postmodern critique might look like.
That the SJW left has glomed onto those ideas has made them seem quite icky. Z-man's Zurl Science segment always quotes abstracts citing Deleuze and Guattari, who must be spinning in their graves.
I was looking through Amazon for some books on postmodernism, but it looks like most authors take Marxism as a given and not as just one of many critiques of the modern condition.
Can you recommend any books on postmodern philosophy that take it seriously, but aren't too abstruse?
>I wonder what a right-wing or centrist (or even a non-Marxist) postmodern critique might look like.
The problem is that the right holds "the old thing is good" as a first principle, while the left holds "the old thing is bad" as a first principle. The left, by nature of only seeing "the ways things are is broken", will be wrong 99% of the time—most shit is old and sturdy and has proven itself as antifragile/Lindy. But they will also be right the only time it matters. If one side says "the collapse of the hierarchy is inevitable" (left) and the other side says "the collapse of the hierarchy will only happen because of all these evil leftists who are trying to destroy it" (right), the former will ultimately win in the end, because—while rare—the hierarchy does eventually collapse.
As a result, it is categorically impossible for a "true" right winger to properly critique post modernism. It's like asking "what would a newtonian physicist think of quantum mechanics?" Of course they would say it is hogwash craziness because they don't understand the Einsteinian mechanics that preceeded it. Thus, The only people who can even kind of critique PM half accurately are post-leftist who just see the value and sturdiness of the tried and trued conclusions (eg NRx people). Kind of like the Bohmian mechanics people who are trying to solve the quantum physics problem by returning to Newtonian style concepts.
>Can you recommend any books on postmodern philosophy that take it seriously, but aren't too abstruse?
The problem is that the post modern critique is just an extension of Marxism which is just an extension of leftism which is just an extension of enlightenment rationalism which is just an extension of the protestant reformation. To be able to digest PM stuff directly one must be at least reasonably well versed and leftist/marxist thought and why they are valid. Or, ideally understand how the left and right are complementary tools that work together to make civilization function. As far as I know, no one other than JBP has really made this case to any reasonable degree though. Something I intend to further dev eventually though.
I've read a few books by Baudrillard and Marx but they were mostly unhelpful in getting a "birds eye view". There is no good book I know of that covers PM in general and gives it a fair shake. The main thing that worked for me is just watching a couple dozen hours of smart leftist/marxists on YouTube explain it.
Here's some links (dive deeper into these channels for more). Key names: Baudrillard, Foucault, Derrida, Marx
I think you are misrepresenting JBP here. He is a postmodernist himself, even if he rants against them (or what he thinks they are). This is most evident in the infamous debates with Sam Harris about the definition for truth, were he pointed out that truth has a large subjective component, which is dependant on prior assumptions (I think he even mentioned the Münchhausen Trilemma), and that really the question should not be "is that idea true" but "will that idea help my genes and memes in their quest for reproduction". Like in the famous porcupine throwing their quills example
I would love to read a second, third and even fourth part.
I've watched countless JP videos, and I was always surprised to hear him talk about "neomarxists" & "posmodernists", considering he's a psychologist he's supposed to have real knowledge about philosophy and psychology because of his degree and this includes postmodernism.
I think this happened because he became a public figure, he made one wrong assertion, and then for the sake of consistency to his followers he had to keep the charade of 'cultural marxism'. It works because it's a very powerful memetic concept that the right wing has been using for decades to blame the left for all the moral and cultural failings of capitalism.
This plays into the fantasy of "We could have a perfect capitalist system with economic freedom and conservative christian values if we could eliminate cultural marxism". But this is not possible and it was already perfectly explained by Ted Kaczynski:
“The conservatives are fools: They whine about the decay of traditional values, yet they enthusiastically support technological progress and economic growth. Apparently it never occurs to them that you can't make rapid, drastic changes in the technology and the economy of a society without causing rapid changes in all other aspects of the society as well, and that such rapid changes inevitably break down traditional values.”
To conserve economic freedom & conservative values at the same time you'd need a powerful State, ideally a dictatorship / monarchism with the perfect leader/king whose values would align exactly with said ideology. Or an Anarcho Capitalist System a la Hoppe with covenant communities:
"covenant communities are made up of residents who have signed an agreement defining the nature of that community. Hoppe writes 'There would be little or no 'tolerance' and 'openmindedness' so dear to left-libertarians. Instead, one would be on the right path toward restoring the freedom of association and exclusion implied in the institution of private property'. Hoppe writes that towns and villages could have warning signs saying 'no beggars, bums, or homeless, but also no homosexuals, drug users, Jews, Muslims, Germans, or Zulus'."
Obviously said scenarios are highly unlikely to occur.
Why not straight-up identify postmodernism with the Silent Generation? These are people whose formative experience was the jarring dislocation of WWII, dissonantly followed by the normality of the post-war period. It gave them a metaphysical suspicion that nothing is as it seems. What conservative postmodernists do is not fundamentally different from their leftwing counterparts, the same way Burke and Rousseau inherited the spirit of their age. A few examples:
1) Allan Bloom (1930-1992) followed Leo Strauss, who, like the French Post-structuralists, was influenced by Nietzsche and taught the difference between deadly truths and life-giving myths. The non-philosopher is always kept in focus in relationship to philosophy; classical philosophy is juxtapositioned against modernist thought to motivate a spirit of finding the questions for answers instead of answers to questions. (The lowbrow version of this is Dave Rubin mumbling about "ideas.")
2) Thomas Sowell (1930- ) makes an anti-utopian contrast between what he calls the visions of the anointed and benighted. He has a Lyotard-like suspicion of explicit knowledge, which Sowell, taking cues from Hayek and Polanyi, sees as tacit, stored, distributed, and fragmented. He feels that any grand politics has totalitarian costs that are not worth paying.
3) Samuel Huntington (1927-2008) resembles those who emphasize how cultural discourses shape reality. He rejects the idea that liberal democracy is the endpoint of human evolution. He is a cultural relativist skeptical of universalism and thinks plurality, conflict, and power are part of life.
4) Maurice Cowling (1926-2005) attacked liberalism since he believed it assumes social prediction is possible. His idea is that we can never get a good grasp on history because not only is the past retrojected from documents, buildings, letters, and memories -- there is also a matter of selection when it comes to choosing a subject matter, and there is always an ineliminable aspect of interpretation. He thinks politics is more often than not about charm, bluffing, cunning, brazenness, and luck, which are elements that aren't even on the radar in the philosophy of Mill and its relatives and descendants.
Now, I'm a liberal atheist Democrat and find much of this to be tactical nihilism, a way to support the status quo and discourage us from pursuing achievable aims. My point, though, is that post-truth postmodernism can be and is used with devastating effectiveness from a conservative outlook. Trump, while a Boomer, is postmodernism incarnate.
Post-modernism has genuine merit to it, but it's a dangerous meme which is to be kept in containment.
To the degree that the masses are made to digest post-modernist idead, they’ll just take the ‘non-existence of truth’ to either mean that:
A) This is carte blanche to endorse takes which are truly random opinions, often based on little to nothing; best case scenario, this is direct ideological attrition2; worst case scenario, they remain associated with you and they make you look bad by associating you with their dumb takes.
B) They take this to mean that nothing is true except when shitlibs need it to be true or when the most surface-level of ‘fairness’ morality needs it to be true.
The net effect of post-modernism is that it will just act to protect whatever ideas achieve hegemony in society. This is because the ideas in power are few, and their alternatives are many. Post-modernism attacks them all equally, and the dominant ones have more resources with which to survive the passive environmental deconstructions.
In light of this, its best to just resolve to never refer to it as ‘post-modernism’ when you decide upon employing post-modernist arguments or reasoning
https://werkat.substack.com/p/dangerous-memes
I mostly agree.
But to signal out postmodernism seems arbitrary to me. For example, I’d say race realism is equally as “true-but-dangerous”.
Further, The mass proliferation of “post modernism” to the masses is not some kind of consciously directed goal to pursue truth (nor to spread evil and control). It is a symptom of the fact that God died and everyone lost their minds as a result.
Liken the conversation to drug abuse:
Yes, I agree with you. Drugs are dangerous. And their mass proliferation is bad. But what do you propose? The world is not centrally plannable. Banning them clearly doesnt work. Laws and power follow the masses just as much if not more than the masses follow laws and power. Drugs were made illegal before because the majority agreed. Prohibition and its ilk however have failed miserably because people stopped agreeing.
Whether drugs are good or bad for society is the wrong question. The question is why does everyone have this overwhelming need to be constantly high? If this need exists, no amount of central power and enforcement can stop it retroactively.
The only thing you can do is proactively ask “how can we give people better coping strategies than drugs so they will voluntary discard them?”
To translate back to PM:
The question is not whether PM is true or false or good or bad. The question is: why is everyone a depressed nihilistic hedonist with no meaning and belief in something greater?
This is the CAUSE of the mass proliferation of PM, NOT the result of it. Sure all complex systems feed back on each other, but this one is 80% cause 20% result at most.
To solve the post modern crisis must ask “why did PM develop?” and “why is everyone so susceptible to it?” and “how do we give them something better so they voluntarily discard it?”
I think you hit a vein here. There is something to postmodernism that is worth knowing more intimately. You're right that the right dismisses its ideas lazily and dishonestly. I wonder what a right-wing or centrist (or even a non-Marxist) postmodern critique might look like.
That the SJW left has glomed onto those ideas has made them seem quite icky. Z-man's Zurl Science segment always quotes abstracts citing Deleuze and Guattari, who must be spinning in their graves.
I was looking through Amazon for some books on postmodernism, but it looks like most authors take Marxism as a given and not as just one of many critiques of the modern condition.
Can you recommend any books on postmodern philosophy that take it seriously, but aren't too abstruse?
>I wonder what a right-wing or centrist (or even a non-Marxist) postmodern critique might look like.
The problem is that the right holds "the old thing is good" as a first principle, while the left holds "the old thing is bad" as a first principle. The left, by nature of only seeing "the ways things are is broken", will be wrong 99% of the time—most shit is old and sturdy and has proven itself as antifragile/Lindy. But they will also be right the only time it matters. If one side says "the collapse of the hierarchy is inevitable" (left) and the other side says "the collapse of the hierarchy will only happen because of all these evil leftists who are trying to destroy it" (right), the former will ultimately win in the end, because—while rare—the hierarchy does eventually collapse.
As a result, it is categorically impossible for a "true" right winger to properly critique post modernism. It's like asking "what would a newtonian physicist think of quantum mechanics?" Of course they would say it is hogwash craziness because they don't understand the Einsteinian mechanics that preceeded it. Thus, The only people who can even kind of critique PM half accurately are post-leftist who just see the value and sturdiness of the tried and trued conclusions (eg NRx people). Kind of like the Bohmian mechanics people who are trying to solve the quantum physics problem by returning to Newtonian style concepts.
>Can you recommend any books on postmodern philosophy that take it seriously, but aren't too abstruse?
The problem is that the post modern critique is just an extension of Marxism which is just an extension of leftism which is just an extension of enlightenment rationalism which is just an extension of the protestant reformation. To be able to digest PM stuff directly one must be at least reasonably well versed and leftist/marxist thought and why they are valid. Or, ideally understand how the left and right are complementary tools that work together to make civilization function. As far as I know, no one other than JBP has really made this case to any reasonable degree though. Something I intend to further dev eventually though.
I've read a few books by Baudrillard and Marx but they were mostly unhelpful in getting a "birds eye view". There is no good book I know of that covers PM in general and gives it a fair shake. The main thing that worked for me is just watching a couple dozen hours of smart leftist/marxists on YouTube explain it.
Here's some links (dive deeper into these channels for more). Key names: Baudrillard, Foucault, Derrida, Marx
https://youtu.be/zmYegIGhwtc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHtvTGaPzF4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26fIBA7O5Ag&t=837s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Yxg2_6_YLs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkhaBDY3nz4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bf9J35yzM3E&t
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cU1LhcEh8Ms&t
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_i8_WuyqAY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LvAwoUvXNzU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSvUqhZcbVg
https://youtu.be/31qtNqhiBXY
https://youtu.be/URr_Hd7ouZs
https://youtu.be/CWF_0lkBhjY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RY_rGJUpwsM
Made some edits/clarifications. Read the live comment not the comment in your inbox.
Great stuff. Thanks for posting it.
I think you are misrepresenting JBP here. He is a postmodernist himself, even if he rants against them (or what he thinks they are). This is most evident in the infamous debates with Sam Harris about the definition for truth, were he pointed out that truth has a large subjective component, which is dependant on prior assumptions (I think he even mentioned the Münchhausen Trilemma), and that really the question should not be "is that idea true" but "will that idea help my genes and memes in their quest for reproduction". Like in the famous porcupine throwing their quills example
I even used that exact example of the sam harris debate wherever I wrote it 😂
I agree JBP is a post modernists and just isnt aware of it and i believe I have even made the arg in a post somewhere.