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Postmodernism turns structures into soup. Some corrupted structures need to be deconstructed into soup, and skepticism, cynicism, and criticism are good tools f

Postmodernism turns structures into soup. Some corrupted structures need to be deconstructed into soup, and skepticism, cynicism, and criticism are good tools for the job. However, you can't build with soup. And postmodernists are typically horrible builders. And overzealous postmodernists have an underdeveloped sense of when to stop deconstructing. And they seem to be unaware that most structures that come from the soup are unimaginably worse than the one that they just tore down. If a cynical skeptic shows up to fix society with a scalpel, that's a healthy dose of postmodernism; an adult. If a skeptic shows up with an atom bomb, you're dealing with a child. There is no better phrase with which to characterize the current wave of postmodernism than perpetually "throwing the baby out with the bathwater."

vixen99 6y ago
“A writer who says that there are no truths, or that all truth is ‘merely relative,’ is asking you not to believe him. So don’t.” Roger Scruton:
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
ducharmdev 6y ago
I think this is why I enjoyed Deleuze & Guattari a lot; IMO they seemed to be more aware of the futility of the "burn everything to the ground" approach and overall, their conclusions feel more additive than subtractive.
tsimionescu 6y ago
Chomsky had a saying about postmodernism in general: most of their ideas are either absurd or trivial. For example, take moral relativism: it's either a trivial observation - that different cultures have different notions of exactly what is moral or not; or it is an absurd idea, that morality means nothing and you are as justified to pick a flower as you are to rip another human's arms.
- xyzzy_plugh 6y ago
  Chomsky has a saying, unless he's dead, which he is not, or has for some reason denounced some saying. Your comment gave me doubt, I had to double check.
  - tsimionescu 6y ago
    Ooops, sorry to introduce that doubt. I had seen this as something he had said a long time ago, but you're right that I should have used another tense.
- kar5pt 6y ago
  Chomsky has demonstrated little understanding of "postmodernism" (whatever that vague term entails). I would take any criticism he has of French poststructuralist thinkers with a grain of salt. For example I don't think any of the philosophers usually called "postmodernists" have actually argued for the type of moral relativism you're describing. Foucault didn't, Lacan didn't, Delueze didn't. I don't know if Derrida did, but I'm pretty sure Chomsky doesn't either.
  - TeeMassive 6y ago
    > For example I don't think any of the philosophers usually called "postmodernists" have actually argued for the type of moral relativism you're describing They openly reject the notion of aiming towards objective truth and replace it with building ideas that are better at changing power structures. There's a good reason why people are even considering 2+2=5 as an actual hypothesis. Even if they didn't espouse those radical views themselves, it's not hard to see that they laid the framework for it.
- coldtea 6y ago
  >Chomsky had a saying about postmodernism in general: most of their ideas are either absurd or trivial. Chomsky is an American linguist academic with limited understanding or knowledge of continental philosophy. His comment amounts to some rube saying Asian food is not "proper food" like meatballs, apple pies, and pizza. >For example, take moral relativism: it's either a trivial observation - that different cultures have different notions of exactly what is moral or not; or it is an absurd idea, that morality means nothing and you are as justified to pick a flower as you are to rip another human's arms. Both statements are true, and neither is trivial or absurd. The first, supposedly trivial, has seen the opposite idea taken for granted time and again. And as for the second claim, under the right circumstances those saying that "morality means something" would still be ripping people's arms and feeling good while doing it, if that was the prevailling morality. In the US South, for example, people didn't feel "bad" for owning slaves and/or treating them like cattle. They felt like honorable members of society. The Inquisition who burned people alive didn't felt much differently either. So, yeah, morality means nothing as a general guiding principle that would prevent "ripping people's arms off" being moral.
analog31 6y ago
An old saying: "It takes a carpenter to build a shed, but a jackass can knock it down."
TeeMassive 6y ago
I'm rather surprised by the number of critical theory related articles on HN recently. Maybe it is because hackers are literally people who like to disassemble things to better understand them? Although I'm more cynical and I think it's more likely a bunch of people in political forums coordinating to implant those articles (this is what happened to Reddit after all). On YouTube there was this video about how Music Theory is White Supremacy. Yes you read that right, Critical Music Theory. Of course the points made do not really stand to simple scrutiny and doesn't even direct proof of what they claim outside of "it's not the best system and those who are propagating it tend to be White". There's even reference to math not being universal, and I got into a debate where I had to make the point that 2+2 is not equal to 5, which kinda tells you the intellectual honesty of those espousing this kind of thinking. CR is great at deconstruction, but the problem as you pointed out they entirely fail at making anything that makes sense or is useful. They openly state that it is better to make points that "have the right political impact" rather than being correct (actually a quote from Vaush) under the pretext that since there are no objective truth and that only "those in power" make the point, it's just better to pick models that destroys structures of power.
- bitdizzy 6y ago
  I dont know which video you watched but it's basically true that what most people call Music Theory focuses much of its attention on a narrow period of music on a narrow continent within narrow analytical frameworks (Schenkerian, for example) and comes associated with a lot of normative baggage about what is valuable and interesting in music and what is not which is biased towards specific musical traditions which, surprise, are white. Schenker himself admitted to white supremacist values in the development of his ideas. Of course it was en vogue at the time. The music under study isn't white supremacist itself of course, nor is the structural analysis. Whiteness is usually imputed post hoc by less talented hangers-on.
  - TeeMassive 6y ago
    Your whole argument is based on coincidences, at best. I mean, "the guy who created it was a White supremacist", OK, but the same thing is true for the internal combustion engine. Numbered theory is said to be very popular in Asian cultures, yet it was invented by a French man who probably wasn't a saint either in terms of having more or less the prejudices of his time, are they White supremacists too? Using Music theory is like using English as the tech lingua franca instead of Latin or Esperanto, it's not about imperialism, it's just too troublesome to learn and change and does the job pretty well anyway. The idea that ideas carry over all of the context of their creation is simply insane.

vixen99 6y ago

“A writer who says that there are no truths, or that all truth is ‘merely relative,’ is asking you not to believe him. So don’t.” Roger Scruton:

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

ducharmdev 6y ago

I think this is why I enjoyed Deleuze & Guattari a lot; IMO they seemed to be more aware of the futility of the "burn everything to the ground" approach and overall, their conclusions feel more additive than subtractive.

tsimionescu 6y ago

Chomsky had a saying about postmodernism in general: most of their ideas are either absurd or trivial. For example, take moral relativism: it's either a trivial observation - that different cultures have different notions of exactly what is moral or not; or it is an absurd idea, that morality means nothing and you are as justified to pick a flower as you are to rip another human's arms.

xyzzy_plugh 6y ago
Chomsky has a saying, unless he's dead, which he is not, or has for some reason denounced some saying. Your comment gave me doubt, I had to double check.
- tsimionescu 6y ago
  Ooops, sorry to introduce that doubt. I had seen this as something he had said a long time ago, but you're right that I should have used another tense.
kar5pt 6y ago
Chomsky has demonstrated little understanding of "postmodernism" (whatever that vague term entails). I would take any criticism he has of French poststructuralist thinkers with a grain of salt. For example I don't think any of the philosophers usually called "postmodernists" have actually argued for the type of moral relativism you're describing. Foucault didn't, Lacan didn't, Delueze didn't. I don't know if Derrida did, but I'm pretty sure Chomsky doesn't either.
- TeeMassive 6y ago
  > For example I don't think any of the philosophers usually called "postmodernists" have actually argued for the type of moral relativism you're describing They openly reject the notion of aiming towards objective truth and replace it with building ideas that are better at changing power structures. There's a good reason why people are even considering 2+2=5 as an actual hypothesis. Even if they didn't espouse those radical views themselves, it's not hard to see that they laid the framework for it.
coldtea 6y ago
>Chomsky had a saying about postmodernism in general: most of their ideas are either absurd or trivial. Chomsky is an American linguist academic with limited understanding or knowledge of continental philosophy. His comment amounts to some rube saying Asian food is not "proper food" like meatballs, apple pies, and pizza. >For example, take moral relativism: it's either a trivial observation - that different cultures have different notions of exactly what is moral or not; or it is an absurd idea, that morality means nothing and you are as justified to pick a flower as you are to rip another human's arms. Both statements are true, and neither is trivial or absurd. The first, supposedly trivial, has seen the opposite idea taken for granted time and again. And as for the second claim, under the right circumstances those saying that "morality means something" would still be ripping people's arms and feeling good while doing it, if that was the prevailling morality. In the US South, for example, people didn't feel "bad" for owning slaves and/or treating them like cattle. They felt like honorable members of society. The Inquisition who burned people alive didn't felt much differently either. So, yeah, morality means nothing as a general guiding principle that would prevent "ripping people's arms off" being moral.

analog31 6y ago

An old saying: "It takes a carpenter to build a shed, but a jackass can knock it down."

TeeMassive 6y ago

I'm rather surprised by the number of critical theory related articles on HN recently. Maybe it is because hackers are literally people who like to disassemble things to better understand them? Although I'm more cynical and I think it's more likely a bunch of people in political forums coordinating to implant those articles (this is what happened to Reddit after all). On YouTube there was this video about how Music Theory is White Supremacy. Yes you read that right, Critical Music Theory. Of course the points made do not really stand to simple scrutiny and doesn't even direct proof of what they claim outside of "it's not the best system and those who are propagating it tend to be White". There's even reference to math not being universal, and I got into a debate where I had to make the point that 2+2 is not equal to 5, which kinda tells you the intellectual honesty of those espousing this kind of thinking. CR is great at deconstruction, but the problem as you pointed out they entirely fail at making anything that makes sense or is useful. They openly state that it is better to make points that "have the right political impact" rather than being correct (actually a quote from Vaush) under the pretext that since there are no objective truth and that only "those in power" make the point, it's just better to pick models that destroys structures of power.

bitdizzy 6y ago
I dont know which video you watched but it's basically true that what most people call Music Theory focuses much of its attention on a narrow period of music on a narrow continent within narrow analytical frameworks (Schenkerian, for example) and comes associated with a lot of normative baggage about what is valuable and interesting in music and what is not which is biased towards specific musical traditions which, surprise, are white. Schenker himself admitted to white supremacist values in the development of his ideas. Of course it was en vogue at the time. The music under study isn't white supremacist itself of course, nor is the structural analysis. Whiteness is usually imputed post hoc by less talented hangers-on.
- TeeMassive 6y ago
  Your whole argument is based on coincidences, at best. I mean, "the guy who created it was a White supremacist", OK, but the same thing is true for the internal combustion engine. Numbered theory is said to be very popular in Asian cultures, yet it was invented by a French man who probably wasn't a saint either in terms of having more or less the prejudices of his time, are they White supremacists too? Using Music theory is like using English as the tech lingua franca instead of Latin or Esperanto, it's not about imperialism, it's just too troublesome to learn and change and does the job pretty well anyway. The idea that ideas carry over all of the context of their creation is simply insane.