How is that people have come to "speak their truth"?
Why do some people think words can be "violence"?
Politically speaking, why can't people even agree on basic facts?
Whether you know it or not, your thinking has been affected, if not in certain ways infected, by a philosophy that emerged from academia in the latter half of the previous century--postmodernism. So, join Steve for a fascinating explanation of postmodernisms core ideas, and come to understand how it affects your thinking everyday, and how it as broken our world's very conceptions of truth and reality.
Most importantly, learn how to use your understanding of postmodernism to think more critically and discuss things more effectively, even when those around you are succumbing to its negative effects.
How is that people have come to "speak their truth"?
Why do some people think words can be "violence"?
Politically speaking, why can't people even agree on basic facts?
Whether you know it or not, your thinking has been affected, if not in certain ways infected, by a philosophy that emerged from academia in the latter half of the previous century--postmodernism. So, join Steve for a fascinating explanation of postmodernisms core ideas, and come to understand how it affects your thinking everyday, and how it as broken our world's very conceptions of truth and reality.
Most importantly, learn how to use your understanding of postmodernism to think more critically and discuss things more effectively, even when those around you are succumbing to its negative effects.
I'm sure you've all heard somebody say that they're going to speak their truth. I'm also sure that you've heard about a notion that has emerged in more recent years that words can be violence. I'm also sure you've noticed, especially here in the US, an utter inability for us not just to agree upon some fundamental aspects of truth but, more importantly, to constructively discuss those aspects of truth, for example, whether or not the 2020 election was stolen, whether or not Biden really is president. Again, it's not just that people hold such differing versions of that reality in mind. It's that we utterly lack the capacity, it seems, to have any reasonable discourse between the two groups. There's no capacity for constructive conversation. The same might go for whether or not a person born with a penis can identify as a woman, or a person born with ovaries and a vagina can identify as a man. It's not just that people look upon that situation and see very different realities. It's that, again, we've lost, in some very important way, the capacity to talk about it constructively with one another.
Speaker 1:The point of this podcast today is to address why our reality has become so utterly fractured between different groups. What's the root of that and, more importantly, not just why we lack the capacity to talk about these things more constructively and positively, but, hopefully, how we can go about starting to talk about them better, because if we're not able to talk about things as a society, we're certainly never going to resolve them, and one of the fundamental aspects of critical thinking on which we all need to devote more effort is how to communicate our thinking better and how to exercise stronger critical thinking throughout discussion. So what I'm going to do today is speak to the root, the origin, the primordial ooze from which some of these newfangled phrases and emerging concepts have originated. So if you're wondering how it came to be that we could hear someone say that they're going to speak their truth, and if you're wondering why we cannot have a more civil and constructive discussion about the election or trans people or anything else, it seems, then this podcast is going to be a particularly important one. In fact, while I, of course, would say this about all of the critical thinking Institute podcasts, I think this is a particularly important one for a lot of people to hear, because I'm going to talk about the philosophy that changed our very perception of reality, our very conception of what truth is. I'm going to talk about how it emerged in the latter half of the previous century and how it has come to take roots in just about every aspect of our perception of the world, and that means your perception of the world as well, whether you know it or not. And what's going to be critical to understand, in fact, is that this particular philosophical movement actually accomplished some very important things in advancing our capacity not just to think critically, but to discourse about critical thinking, to interact with one another better, to converse with one another better, and in that respect, we actually owe it a great deal. But it also went one step too far and, in doing so, also metastasized as an infection that has had horrible consequences on a great deal of our society, on a great deal of our capacity to interact with one another, and it's where it went too far that we see the origin of our inability to be able to find more common understandings of the nature of reality and truth with one another. So, if you want to understand one of the key reasons why we have such differing views on the truth of the 2020 election and we're unable to have constructive discourse about it, then stay tuned, because I'm going to talk about one of the key and yet most unspoken and unrecognized reasons that we're having this problem.
Speaker 1:But before we go any further into this podcast, I'm going to ask that you hold in mind an umbrella idea, and the umbrella idea comes from F Scott Fitzgerald, who famously said that the test of a first rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function. Again, f Scott Fitzgerald said that the test of a first rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function. Now, I don't actually agree with F Scott Fitzgerald that that is the definitive test of a first rate intelligence, but for the sake of this podcast, it's particularly important that I'm going to ask you to set aside your personal opinions about some of the issues or ideas that I'm going to raise, to set aside whether or not you personally think they are true or good or bad, or righteous or evil, and instead to embrace the idea for a period of time that we need to be able to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still be able to function, because I'm absolutely certain that you're going to find yourself at one or two points of this podcast saying, but the truth is really X, or the truth is really Z, or you're going to say, yeah, but really it's this, or but really it's that. And when you feel those inclinations, when you get those urges, please instead step back and recognize, for the duration of this podcast, that I'm asking you to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still be able to function. And, by the way, if it seems at any point within this podcast that I am criticizing liberalism or I'm criticizing conservatism, then please refer back to F Scott Fitzgerald one more time, because what I'm not doing in this podcast is taking a stance on any of the issues that we might talk about except for one or two, and you'll know when but rather to shed light upon why reality has become so fractured and why our ability to have constructive conversation about these things has broken down so completely. What's important is not how I or any of us think individually about any of the issues we're going to discuss. What's important is learning why we're unable to talk about them and how to talk about them better, and that's the goal here. That's really the only goal here. So let's get to it.
Speaker 1:Today's podcast is about a philosophical movement called postmodernism. If that in any way sounds off-putting to you because you don't like deep philosophical discussions, or because you've perhaps heard a little bit about postmodernism and don't like it, or if you're out to reject it because you've heard it's a liberal ideology and don't really want to hear any more about it, please hang in there, because I'm going to break this down in a way that is particularly interesting and important for everything that's going on in our society today. On the flip side of that, if you're well-steeped in postmodernism, if you are a postmodern scholar, then please appreciate the fact that, given the length of this podcast, this is unquestionably going to be a simplified and whittled down version of postmodernism, and I'm not going to get into all of the internal debates about postmodernism. So for the dozen or so people in the world who are deeply rooted postmodern scholars, this podcast might not be for you. So what is postmodernism?
Speaker 1:Postmodernism emerged as a reaction against modernism and positivism, and because it emerged as a reaction to modernism, that is why it is called postmodernism. We would have hoped that in rejecting modernism, postmodern scholars could have come up with some kind of better term than just adding a post onto modernism, but nevertheless that's the best they could come up with. If you want to understand modernism and positivism, it's really already in the term positivism which was this idea as culminating in the 1950s and 1960s that we in fact could be positive about things. We could be positive that there is a physical reality and we could be positive about the fact that we could know that physical reality, and we could primarily know that physical reality through science. So we're sure that there is a physical reality and we're positive that we can figure out exactly what that physical reality is. And that not only meant that we could come to understand reality, but we could also eventually come to be certain about things like ethics and morality. We eventually, through logic and reason, could be positive about what was right and wrong, about what was good and evil, about what was just and unjust. So modernism and positivism were effectively all about certainty and clarity and the notion that science and technology ultimately would reveal all of the truths, including ethical and moral ones, and effectively solve our problems and make for a more perfect society.
Speaker 1:By way of generalization and this is a big generalization, and I'm going to make a number of big generalizations in this podcast. But by way of generalization, you might think of modernism and positivism as being expressed through classic 1950s American culture. And again, this is obviously a generalization, where what's clearly good is America and democracy and capitalism and what's clearly bad is the Soviet Union and communism. Or to perhaps be a little more specific, think of the show Father Knows Best. And for those of you not familiar with the show Father Knows Best, I think you hear a lot of it in the title. There is a nuclear family. The nuclear family is good and, of course, that family has a righteous structure and the righteous structure of the family is with Father at the helm, because Father Knows Best. And understand that within modernism and positivism there's the comfort of thinking that Father does know best. Again, modernism and positivism are all about not just certainty in itself, but the comfort of certainty, the comfort of believing that when Father gets home from his diligent 9-5 job, he will have the wisdom to solve the problems of the family and help the family understand how to better navigate the world. Again, this is certainly a crude generalization of American culture, of what it valued and the picture that was painted of it through the media, but it nevertheless serves as a useful example of the manifestation of modernism and positivism as a philosophy and a worldview at the time.
Speaker 1:Now, in reaction to modernism and positivism, along came a group of European philosophers, people to the effect of Foucault, derrida Baudrillard for whom we have to thank the movie the Matrix, and, most importantly, francis Leotard, who I will speak about most directly in this podcast, who said to modernism oh, you think that there is a stable reality? You think that there is a material reality? You think that you can know that material reality and understand it and see it for what it is? You think you can be positive about ethics and morality? Well, hold my beer, because I'm about to blow your mind. And in many ways they did so in ways that were particularly right and smart. And the gist of what they said and it's smart in so many ways, and I'm going to walk you through the progression of how they came to say it is that truth, in effect, can be relative. And in that respect we really can go far back if we want to understand the true origins of postmodernism, most notably for the modern era. The notion that truth could be relative really harkens back to Albert Einstein's theory of relativity, because if you've ever heard anyone say everything is relative, then the theory of relativity is really the origin of that concept, because what Einstein proved mathematically, in fact, is that time and space are relative things, that, for example, we're not all actually moving through time at exactly the same rate.
Speaker 1:And these European philosophers effectively created what is, in essence, a theory of relativity for how we think, and in certain respects, they did some very smart things that were very important for advancing our ability to think critically and converse constructively about the world. In certain respects, we owe postmodernism a great deal, but I'm also going to show you where they went too far. To help you understand how interesting this is, I'm going to break postmodernism down into a series of premises. Please know, however, that this is my breakdown of postmodernism and that postmodernism has no official list of tenets. Okay, postmodernism's first premise is this we can only conceptually understand the world through language. I'm going to say that again. Postmodernism's first tenet is that we can only conceptually understand the world through language. Now, the word conceptually there is very important, because postmodernists would certainly agree that you can experience the world in certain ways without language.
Speaker 1:If you put your hand on a hot stove, you're going to get burned and you're going to feel pain. And you're going to feel that pain. Whether or not we have language for the thing that you're experiencing, whether or not we even have a word for the thing that is pain or burned or hot stove, you're still going to hurt. That hurting is, in effect, one kind of understanding of the world. It's a feeling, but that's not conceptually understanding it. In order for us to conceptually appreciate the thing that happened to you when you put your hand on the hot stove, we need a concept. We need a word for that thing that happened and words that we would apply to that are things like burned and pain. We even need a word and concept for the thing that you burned yourself on the stove. They're identifying the distinction between experiencing the world physically and conceptually understanding the world, which requires language. Again, the only way to conceptually understand the world is through language.
Speaker 1:To appreciate that, just know the importance of the word referent. The word referent is a term used in linguistics and postmodernism to point to that thing which language is referencing. If there were an apple sitting on a table and I used the term apple, then the red fruity thing sitting on the table would be the referent for the word apple. Any referent is, in effect, the physical aspect of reality to which any given word or term is referring. Now here's the problem with referents. Referents can be relatively easy to identify and appreciate when they are simple, physical things such as an apple on the table. When I say apple, it's very easy for us to all look at and agree upon the red fruity thing on the table and say that that is indeed an apple. But referents become much more difficult as they become more abstract. Let me give you an example.
Speaker 1:I certainly hope and I am going to assume for the sake of this podcast that everyone listening to this podcast would look at what happened with slavery in America and agree without any hesitation that it was racism, that when we are dehumanizing and owning other people based on their skin color, that that is in fact racism. Now you might also agree that there are some other motivations for slavery in the United States economics and so forth. But I sure hope, and I am going to assume, that everyone would agree that slavery was racist. But the same level of agreement would not be met when we look at what's currently happening at the US southern border and the debate around immigration policies. When we look at existing US policies and the debate around what the policies should be, there are people who would say that there is unquestionably racism present in what's happening at the southern border. In other words, there are people who would argue that part of the contentiousness of what's happening down there has to do with the fact that it's primarily browner people who are at the border wanting to enter the United States. And then there are people in the United States who would say that it has nothing to do with the color of the people trying to enter the United States and that there is no racism involved whatsoever. And then there are people who would certainly fall somewhere on the spectrum between those two more polarized positions and say that there is racism to this degree or to that degree. And again, if you are inclined at this moment to say, well, the truth is really this or the truth is really that, then please remember F Scott Fitzgerald and the importance of being able to hold two contradictory truths in mind at the same time and still being able to function, because our point right now is not to make any kind of determination about whether or not there's racism at the southern border.
Speaker 1:The point is to understand the extent to which what's happening. There is a murkier referent for the term racism than was slavery. And that brings us back to postmodernism's first tenet, which is that the only way to conceptually understand the world is through language. And now that takes us to the second tenet, and for the second tenet I'm using the words of Kenneth Burke. Kenneth Burke said even if any given word is a reflection of reality, by his very nature it must be a selection of reality and to this extent it must function as a deflection of reality. To simplify, that, burke basically said that any word is at once a reflection of reality but also a selection of reality and a deflection of reality. So, even more simply, any given word simultaneously reflects reality, selects reality and deflects reality.
Speaker 1:Let me give you an example. I say, hey, there's an apple on the table. And if there is in fact an apple on the table, then I have to an extent reflected the reality, but I have also to an extent selected the reality. I did not mention that there is an apple on the table that has four chairs around it, I did not mention that it was a honey crisp apple. And so my language, though reflecting reality to an extent has also selected certain aspects of that reality over others. In another sense, I have also certainly deflected the reality. In saying there's an apple on the table. I may have deflected you from thinking about the oranges that are available to you in the other room. Perhaps I wanted the oranges, so I mentioned the apple on the table as a deflection of the oranges. Or, in another sense, I say there's an apple on the table, deflecting from you the difficult and perhaps migrant labor that went into picking that apple and getting it to the table.
Speaker 1:And so the point is, and the point that the postmodernists will make and rely upon and it is in fact an inescapable truth of language, that any use of language, no matter how comprehensive, is still and irrevocably and unwaveringly supposing it's making an earnest effort to represent the truth to an extent a reflection of reality, but to an extent also a selection of reality and a deflection of reality. And this is where you see the postmodernists start to cut into modernism and positivism. Because what they're saying is that If you think you know what reality is and you're trying to explain it using words, then you are to a certain extent only selecting and deflecting that reality. You cannot fully conceptually understand reality and you certainly cannot communicate through language the full nature of that reality. And so, because the only way that we can conceptualize the world is through language, and because language is a selection and deflection of reality, the entire modernist, positivist perspective on the world is flawed.
Speaker 1:And to go back to the stereotypical example, the notion that father knows best cannot be true. Even if we just take the word best, it is at best only a partial reflection of the reality. It is certainly also a selection and deflection of a greater reality, and that is why father really cannot know best and the comfort and the certainty that you modernists and positivists feel about the world, about father knowing best, can no longer exist. We can no longer agree that that is the reality. And so here's where the postmodernists come in and entirely blow apart the comfort and the certainty of modernism and positivism. And they were right to do it, because there's nothing operating in their premise here that's wrong.
Speaker 1:And look at the two important things that this transition of thought has empowered. The first is that it makes us able to discuss the world in more complex ways, and this is again an overgeneralization and certainly an oversimplification, but it takes us from the simple idea that father knows best and all of the premises within that, that there will be a father that we know what it is to know, that we know what it is to know best, and says wait a second. There's a richer, more important, more complicated discussion of reality to be had there, and it was partly from that that modern feminism emerged. So it was an ability to say wait a second. This idea that father knows best, that might be some reflection of reality, but it sure is a selection and deflection of a lot of reality. And the second thing it did is equally important, and it's something that we should remember today, which is that we need to have more compassion and more understanding for one another's points of view, because we have to remember that, no matter what we say, as individuals, though we hope to be reflecting reality to a degree hopefully to a large degree we are also haplessly selecting reality and deflecting reality, which means that we have to understand that when we assert to somebody that we are right or that when we ourselves believe that we hold the right point of view, that we know what's what, that no matter how certain we are that we are fully reflecting the reality, we are really still in part just selecting aspects of that reality and deflecting aspects of that reality. And so we have to be more humble with one another in how we converse, because we have to realize that somebody else's language holds some capacity to reflect that reality in ways that our language does not. Now, it's not to say that certain people, experts in certain fields, do not have language that more greatly reflects the reality than ours might. They certainly do, and we have to keep that in mind, but we'll return to that in a little while.
Speaker 1:So let's move on To review postmodernism's first premise the only way to conceptually understand the world is through language. And the second premise is that all language is a reflection, but also a selection and deflection of reality. And that brings us to the third tenet, and this is where I'm going to refer more specifically to the theorist Francis Leotard, who said that, because of the first two premises, we need to be careful of what he called totalizing metanarratives. Totalizing metanarratives is a fancy term for what you would think of as the dominant narratives of the time or, in essence, the things that everyone roughly takes to be true. In other words, leotard said and rightfully so, this is very important that if we're understanding the world through language but all language also selects and deflects reality then we have to be very careful about embracing dominant narratives about that reality.
Speaker 1:Who gets to say what language we use about reality? And don't dominant narratives exist to serve people who have the capacity to put forward those dominant narratives? Don't dominant narratives exist by those who are profiting from or benefiting from the dominant narratives? For example, if we take the 1950s dominant narrative that Father knows best, we should ask ourselves who benefits from the perpetuation of that dominant narrative. Well, so happens that men and fathers really benefited from perpetuating the narrative that Father knows best. If we look at the narrative that capitalism is good and communism is bad, then we have to look at the notion that capitalists who happen to own media stations really also benefit from the narrative that capitalism is good. And this philosophy really started to penetrate academia and it changed the course of education and for most of you listening, depending upon your age, the education you had, unless you're much older than I am, was actually a result of postmodernism.
Speaker 1:Prior to postmodernism, education was much more modernistic and it certainly still hasn't escaped that modernism, but it was much more steeped in the modernist perspective on learning on the modernist perspective on truth, which was that there is a truth to be known. The teacher knows the truth that is to be known. The teacher's job is to communicate the truth that is to be known and the learner's job is to learn and memorize what the teacher says is true. And we assess the learner on how well the learner regurgitates the truth as pervade by the teacher. And there is just no question in reviewing educational literature from the 1950s and earlier that that is firmly the premise upon which education existed. It's not to say that there was no variation and deviation from that. It's not to say that there weren't educators trying to do other things, but it was the dominant paradigm around education.
Speaker 1:After postmodernism emerged, educators started to say hey, wait a second. Shouldn't we in essence be teaching students to push back against dominant narratives? Shouldn't education's job not be to teach students a dominant narrative, but rather have them question it? Instead of education telling students, here's what Hamlet means, shouldn't it be to ask them to think about Hamlet for themselves, because it also became apparent that the dominant narrative at the time was Western and male and white. And educators start to say, rightfully so well, wait a second. Shouldn't we also have feminist interpretations of Hamlet. And then that gave way to saying well, wait a second, if we're going to have feminist interpretations of Hamlet, shouldn't we also have ethnic interpretations of Hamlet, environmental interpretations of Hamlet, and so on and so forth. And we can see in this respect how postmodernism in education and outside of it licensed and again this is a generalization, but licensed in certain respects more critical thinking, more critical interrogation of the world. It empowered that interrogation because it said that the dominant narrative, the supposed truth that education is trying to purvey about the world, is also selecting and deflecting the reality of the world. And so now you are empowered to start to challenge those narratives of truth and look at the world through different lenses.
Speaker 1:And a big pass off to the postmodernists and to Leotard, because they made it so clear that we shouldn't try to understand and we shouldn't teach about reality through only one dominant narrative or through just a handful of dominant narratives, but that other narratives, marginalized narratives, the narratives that haven't been given voice and haven't been given perspective, because they too offer a reflection of reality, should be given voice and in fact must be given voice and attention if we are to more greatly understand and appreciate the totality of reality itself. In effect, there's no way we can think more complexly and more critically about the world if we're limited to viewing it through just one dominant narrative. We need to hear the perspective of the narratives that haven't been given voice, of minority narratives, of marginalized narratives and just of different narratives, and that transformed our society. And it transformed education to involve more active learning, where the student is the participant in constructing meaning about a text and constructing an understanding about the world. And so, to review, we need to question dominant narratives, because dominant narratives typically serve those in power and because there's no one narrative that can help us fully understand the world. But then Leotard took it a step further, and this is where he's still making very important points, but he's starting to push the boundaries of what we can accept from postmodernism. He's not across the boundary yet, but he's starting to push it.
Speaker 1:Leotard then said any dominant narrative isn't just a reflection, selection and deflection of reality, it's also terroristic. And he made the assertion and it's true at its core that if you accept anybody else's dominant narrative, you cannot possibly be thinking for yourself. In fact, if you accept anybody else's narrative at all, you cannot be thinking for yourself. Because if you accept someone else's language into your brain as a way to represent the world, then you have not created your own language for the world and therefore you are not understanding reality on your own. You are embracing somebody else's conception of reality. And so if you accept anybody else's language for reality, then you are in fact being oppressed. And he said that the worst thing that dominant narratives do, the most oppressive thing that they do, is to silence the existence of other narratives, and that every narrative, because it represents reality in its own way, needs voice. And this is where we go back to Fitzgerald, because what Leotard is saying here about the oppressive natures or the terroristic natures of dominant realities and accepting other people's language for reality is in one respect very true and in one respect very troubling and potentially erroneous In the purest sense. He's absolutely right Anytime we accept the language of another narrative into our minds, then we are not thinking for ourselves. We are instead embracing the language of someone else's narrative, and that's problematic if we want to be thinking people. But on the other hand, he's starting to ignore the fact that certain people's narratives for the world are better than ours.
Speaker 1:Physicists have much more advanced narratives for understanding the universe than the rest of us do. Their narratives are a far greater reflection of reality than our narratives. But in part because of postmodernism, this is where we see flat earthers emerge who say yes, physicists, you think you're reflecting your reality with your advanced math about how the earth must be round and its place in the cosmos, and so on and so forth. But as far as I can see, the earth is flat. So I'm not embracing your dominant narrative for the nature of the earth. I'm using my own narrative, because I'm thinking for myself and as far as I can see, the earth is flat.
Speaker 1:Or let me put you another way let's go back to the apple example. You say to me hey, steve, there's an apple on the table. And I say, hey, wait a second. Why are you oppressing me with your dominant narrative? Why didn't you mention the fact that that apple is 10 feet away from me? And you say, well, I'm sorry, I didn't mention that it, but we can't agree that it's an apple right. And I say, well, no, I think we should refer to it by its scientific name, malis pumula. And you say, wait, wait, wait, but that's an apple right. And I say, well, that's not what I would call it. And again, the most important thing about that malis pumula to me is that it's 10 feet away from me and in all of that you can start to hear, I believe, where people are saying that they want to speak their truth.
Speaker 1:Because what postmodernism in a certain way troublingly licensed was the notion that if we accept a dominant narrative then we're being oppressed because we're not thinking for ourselves, and instead that we need to apply our own language to the situation if we are going to be independent thinkers. But what Leotard has started to ignore is the fact that some narratives do a far better job of reflecting reality than others do. In fact, leotard goes on to reject science as a privileged narrative for understanding reality. In modernism and positivism, of course, science is our primary means for understanding reality, and that's because it works from the premise that there is a reality and the reality can be observed and tested through science. But Leotard rejects that, and he rejects that in a very clever way, which to a certain extent is true, though it ultimately doesn't bear out what he says. And again, this is true to an extent, and that brings us back to Fitzgerald. Let's hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and keep going.
Speaker 1:She says that because science has to be communicated through language, science is no different from and no better than any other narrative. Sure, you scientists may think that you have a more accurate way of assessing the nature of reality, but the way you're communicating with each other and the way you communicate science to us is through language. And all language, though it might be a reflection of reality, is certainly still just a selection and a deflection of reality, and therefore scientific perspectives, scientific narratives, are no better than any other perspectives, are no better than any other narratives. What he ignored is the fact that scientific narratives have proven themselves to be in certain respects and I want to emphasize, in certain respects more effective ways of understanding reality, and the reason we know that is that the language that they have represented about the world has enabled us to build upon prior experiments so as to continue advancing science forward into more and more advanced understandings of the world that we wouldn't have had otherwise. We would not have gone from fire to the wheel, to writing on tablets, to writing on paper, to typing on computers, where the discoveries of previous scientists, as represented through language, not objectively verifiable by other scientists. So Leotard effectively started to ignore that very important point, but at the same time, he did something very important, which is that he also said science isn't the only important narrative for how we look at the world. And in that tension between the value of science as being, in certain ways, a particularly effective way of looking at the world and, at the same time, as not being the only way to look at the world, we find real tensions playing out today.
Speaker 1:Take the modern example of the discourse that we're having around transgenderism. Let's use a postmodern lens to understand what's happening about how some people are unable to have constructive conversations about it. On the one side, you have people who are saying, scientifically, you were born with a vagina and a uterus and therefore you're a woman and there's nothing else to talk about. On the other side, we have a different narrative, which is someone who might be saying, yes, I was born with a vagina and a uterus, but that shouldn't be the dominant narrative about what my gender is. And we see, among some people holding those differing perspectives, an inability to have constructive discussion about it. And we see in our society, in our politics, too much of an inability to have a constructive discussion between those two perspectives. And if you're prone right now to say, well, but scientifically, a person born with a vagina is X, or scientifically, a person born with a vagina is not necessarily X, then let's refer back, for the sake of this discussion, only to have Scott Fitzgerald, because postmodernism's important point again is that no one narrative can be totalistic in reflecting reality and that we absolutely need multiple narratives if we're going to fully understand the complex nature of reality itself. And so what postmodernism is saying is don't just lock yourself into only one dominant narrative ever. Our balance we are to find between differing narratives is another question, and that will vary depending upon the individual context of discussion. But scientific narratives, despite the fact that they have some particularly exceptional ways of understanding reality, do not always get to dominate the discussion.
Speaker 1:Let me give you another example of a way in which everybody in the United States embraces that idea. In the United States, we originally began with the premise that all men are created equal. Let me immediately update that to the premise Not that all men are created equal, but that all people are created equal. All people are created equal and endowed with inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And that's fine. Unless we look at it scientifically, science in no way bears out the notion that all people are created equal. Science rather demonstrates that, on any given metric, people are entirely unequal. Some people are taller, some people are shorter, some people are healthier, some people are more prone to getting sick, some people are more intelligent, some people are less intelligent. Some people can sing, some people can't carry a tune to save their lives. Some people are faster, some people are slower. Simply speaking, the narrative that all people are created equal doesn't bear up to the evidence. And we all look at the science of that and we say we don't care. We don't care that some people are taller and some people are shorter. That is entirely irrelevant, because the scientific narrative is not the dominant narrative.
Speaker 1:The philosophical narrative that all people are created equal and deserving of the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is the important narrative here. So to recap, the only way to conceptually understand the world is through language. All language is a reflection, selection and deflection of reality. Because all language is in part a selection and deflection of reality, we must be careful of dominant narratives. Dominant narratives are not only dangerous, they are terroristic, they are oppressive, because anytime we embrace any other person's language for reality, then we are not thinking for ourselves. And that, to Leotard's point perhaps not to mine includes science, which is no better narrative for understanding reality in any way, shape or form, because it still relies on language and language is still a selection and deflection of reality. And that brings us to the next tenet, and this is where Leotard pulls a fascinating sleight of hand and completely crosses the line. And what he does here ultimately doesn't pan out. But what he tries to do here is so smart, it's so interesting, that it absolutely needs to be observed and discussed. I think you're going to find this nothing, if not absolutely interesting.
Speaker 1:To understand what Leotard does, let's just first understand two important terms. The two terms are ontology and epistemology. Ontology refers to what we take the nature of reality to be. Epistemology refers to the means by which we can know that reality. So in modernism and positivism, as I mentioned before, the ontological perspective was that there is a material world, there's a physical reality, and the epistemology was that we could know that physical reality through observation and science. So again, modernism's perspective was ontologically, we're positive that there is a physical reality. Epistemologically, we can know the true nature of that physical reality through observation and science.
Speaker 1:But what Leotard does, as he comes around and says in postmodernism, the epistemology was that the only way to conceptually understand the world was through language. Language is, in effect, postmodernism's epistemology, and there's at least some good reasoning in the postmodern thinking about language as an epistemology for the world, and I've made the case for that throughout this podcast. But what Leotard did was take it a step further and he said language is not only the epistemology, language is the ontology. Language is in effect ontological, meaning that there is no reality at all except for language. Language is in fact reality itself, and he made such an interesting case for this. He really tried to make this work. What he said in essence is that nothingness requires no language, but anytime we are to represent a something, we need language to do it.
Speaker 1:And he used a very clever example to prove this. He said consider the American justice system, where someone is innocent until proven guilty. What effect is happening? There is that if we bring someone before the court, there is absolutely no reason at all to presume that that individual who is accused of murder committed a murder until there is language that gives us cause to think that that person committed a murder. In effect, he says there would be no reason to think that if you look at any random person in the world, that they are a murderer.
Speaker 1:The default position for anyone, for any circumstance, is non-linguistic non-existence. We would have no reason to apply the term murderer to anybody unless we had a prosecutor who put forth enough language to in essence create the reality that that person is a murderer and make us embrace as true the reality that that person is a murderer. Without language, reality defaults in essence to nothingness, or at least to the non. That person is a non-murderer unless there is language to create the reality of that person as being a murderer. Or think of it like this If you're meeting a friend for lunch tomorrow and there were no prior context for thinking this at all, you would have no reason to sit down at lunch and think that that person had been abducted by aliens. The default position for you is that that didn't happen. There would be no reason to think that that occurrence happened and, depending upon your thought of aliens, it would be hard for you to believe that that person was in fact abducted by aliens, unless your friend was able to represent enough effective language to create and make you accept as true the reality that they were abducted by aliens. You don't need language to not presume that they were abducted by aliens. You need language to embrace the construct that they were abducted by aliens. And so Leotard's point is therefore there's no reality at all until it's constructed by language and therefore language is the only reality.
Speaker 1:But that's where he pulled a kind of Jedi mind trick. How long have you had these droids? About three or four seasons. They're up for sale if you want them. Let me see your identification. You don't need to see his identification. We don't need to see his identification. These aren't the droids you're looking for. He can go about his business, you can go about your business. Move along, move along, move along.
Speaker 1:The Stormtroopers looking on their own at the reference of the droids nevertheless don't see it. That's the Jedi mind trick, but that only works for Jedis, and Leotard is no Jedi. And the reason is that we actually do have reference for language. We can see the apple on the table, and if someone calls it an orange, we have a way to talk about why apple is a better term for the thing on the table than orange, and while it's much more difficult to do so. We can still do so with a question of racism in our immigration policy, but nevertheless, postmodernism broadly, and Leotard's overstep specifically, has done a lot to affect our present perception of reality and how we're talking about reality. When we hear someone say that they're a Jedi, they're not.
Speaker 1:When we hear someone say that they're going to speak their truth, it, to my argument, emerges a great deal from postmodernism and from Francis Leotard, from the perspective that all narratives for the world are equal, that because we don't want to accept any dominant narrative or anyone else's narrative, we all should express our individual narrative and that every narrative is a truth. But that predicates on the idea that language is ontological, that any language representation of the world is also, therefore a reality to itself. But we need as a society to be able to find a way to say yes, you're right, you don't have to accept the dominant narrative that isn't yours about this particular reality. You don't have to accept my narrative about this reality as well, but your words cannot be the ontological reality. Everyone, despite what Leotard would argue, cannot have their own individual, unique ontological reality. That doesn't mean that we shouldn't question dominant narratives. I'm not just in favor of that line of thinking. I'm the preacher. I built my entire teaching career in higher education upon developing in students the critical thinking skills to question dominant narratives and any narratives, because the capacity to do so is very much at the root of independent critical thinking.
Speaker 1:Another part of that interrogation is the recognition that some narratives are in fact greater reflections of reality than other narratives and that we all don't get an individual truth. Therefore, I think that notion that someone's going to speak their truth is a postmodern misnomer. These aren't the droids you're looking for, and it was simply better when we said that someone was going to offer an individual perspective, but we rejected the idea that everyone could have their own truth. And we rejected that idea because we recognized that words were not ontological. Similarly, if we look at this notion that words are violence, that notion predicates itself on the idea that words are ontological, because words cannot be violent. Words cannot have a physical impact if they were not reality.
Speaker 1:Having found something to be hurtful is different than embracing Leotard's contention that words are reality itself, and the only reality at that. And so Leotard's overreach really has impaired our capacity to think critically, because if everyone has their individual truth, and all truths, all narratives are equal, then it manifests an inextricable inability for us to ever come to agreement, for us ever to have a constructive conversation, because if we're all equally right about everything all the time, there is no way for us to reach higher understandings than either of us possess, than both of us possess, then our society collectively possesses. So let's move on. I unfortunately need to point to a tragic irony that has emerged out of postmodernism, and when I say it's tragic, I mean it's an infection and it is growing. And the harm that it is causing and the lack of critical thinking that is resulting from it is not just demonstrable on an individual level, but it is truly undermining aspects of our entire world. And it emerges out of Leotard's assertion that any dominant narrative is terroristic, and let me again affirm that his point has a lot of very important merit to which we need to pay great attention, which is that if we accept any dominant narrative into our mind and use its language without thinking about that, without interrogating that for ourselves, then we are in fact not thinking critically, we are adapting the status quo as truth when, in fact, though it might reflect reality to a certain degree, it is certainly also selecting of reality and deflecting reality. And if it is fostered by people whose power has an interest in maintaining that narrative, then it is very possible that it is deflecting the reality more than it is reflecting it. Let me also note, as I did earlier, that there have been, in academia and elsewhere, the emergence of some very important points of resistance to what have been dominant narratives in academia for hundreds of years, not just Western centric narratives but, to be much more specific, often, but not always, white, european, male narratives. And academia is absolutely right to say that we need to question those narratives and we need to welcome into the discussion what have been more marginalized or even suppressed narratives. And that's because, again, any narrative is only in part a reflection of reality. So if we want to better understand a reality, we need to be open minded to and carefully consider multiple different narratives about reality. And if that's where postmodernism and current academic trends stopped, we'd be in great shape.
Speaker 1:But instead academia and our society as a whole has taken a tragically ironic wrong turn. Instead of saying that we must think critically about any dominant narrative, western or otherwise, it has gone the step too far of saying that any dominant narrative must be rejected outright. And it has taken a view of the world that has bifurcated it only into and exclusively the existence of oppressors and the oppressed. And what it has said, wrongly, is that if there is any existing dominant narrative, it must be rejected outright because it must inherently be oppressive. And while that might have been, to a certain degree, leotard's point, it's nevertheless a terrible one. Yes, of course, in theory, any dominant narrative is only to a degree reflecting reality and to a degree it is selecting and deflecting reality. But that doesn't mean we should reject it outright. That doesn't mean it is socially or politically oppressive in our culture, and it in fact only truly becomes oppressive in the postmodern sense if we fail to think critically about it.
Speaker 1:But instead of simply interrogating these narratives, the trend has become to reject these narratives outright, to cast them out, to see them only as oppressive, to see any dominant narrative as bad and any suppressed or marginalized narrative as good and righteous. But look at the irony in that. The tragic irony is that the postmodern call is to recognize narratives for their capacity to be dominant and to interrogate them and in doing so thus exercise more critical thinking about dominant narratives and all of the other narratives. But instead, rejecting dominant narratives on face value, for the notion that they must in fact be oppressive, and embracing subordinated narratives or marginalized narratives as being more righteous simply because they have been marginalized, results in a lack of critical thinking and a sacrifice of personal intellectual agency. Because it is equally unthoughtful to embrace a dominant narrative just because it is dominant narrative as it is to reject a dominant narrative just because it is a dominant narrative. It is equally unthoughtful to reject a marginalized narrative just because it has been marginalized, as it is to embrace as true and righteous a marginalized narrative just because it has been marginalized. And the consequence at the risk of some generalization, as I warned that I would do has been, in effect, that any westernized structure of power has been deemed as bad, if not evil, and demanding not of our interrogation but of our rejection and our rebellion, while any subordinated narrative, any minority or marginalized opinion has come to be embraced as righteous. And if you think for a second that I am saying that we should not interrogate dominant narratives or that we should not absolutely embrace the many marginalized narratives that have not been given the intellectual forum over the years that they deserve, then you are missing the point entirely. My point has nothing to do about thoughtful engagement of narratives of any type. My point is that we should think critically about all narratives, but that that's not what's always happening. We should think critically about all narratives, not reject or embrace any narrative because it has been dominant or because it has been marginalized. Here are some examples I see On the conservative side, and I'll give a liberal example next.
Speaker 1:Among those people who believe that the 2020 election was stolen, there's a percentage who are, to some degree, subconsciously influenced by the postmodern premise that, because the government's dominant narrative is that Biden won, that narrative must be wrong for no other reason than that it's the dominant narrative of the government and all dominant narratives must be rejected out of hand. I'm not saying that everyone who believes that the election was stolen is operating out of postmodern reactionism. I'm saying that some percentage of people who believe that the election was stolen are to some degree rejecting, rather than interrogating, the dominant narrative just because it comes from the US government. If you are of the mind that the 2020 election was stolen and you are not rejecting the government's narrative outright just because it's the government's narrative, then my point doesn't apply to you. For a liberal example.
Speaker 1:Among those people, especially young people, who are critical of Israel's actions in the Middle East, there's a percentage who are to some degree subconsciously influenced by the postmodern premise that because Israel is the seemingly Western or quote unquote European power, it must by default and for no other reason be in the wrong and be condemned. I'm not saying that everyone who voices critiques of Israel is operating out of postmodern reactionism. I'm saying that some percentage of people hold a postmodern influence bias against Israel only because and for no other reason than that it is the Western or more European state. But let me give you a non-political example of it which is playing out in our schools, where some students certainly not all students, but the trend is certainly growing can only see the world through oppressor versus oppressed lenses and thus are pushing harder and more severely against their teachers. Why? Because teachers hold power and anyone who holds power is therefore an oppressor. And if the teachers are oppressors, then the students must therefore be oppressed Because, again, they're only seeing the world through the lens of oppressors and the oppressed.
Speaker 1:And consider the two ironies of this happening in schools. The first, obviously, is that teachers are nobly at least trying not to oppress students, but to educate them, improve their thinking and help them achieve whatever they want to achieve in their lives. The second irony, however, is more interesting, which is that education is the place in which the postmodern, oppressor-oppressed lens of the world was forged in the first place. Academia created the students and their parents. Let's not forget their parents, who argue that their paper deserves an A because they have a right to their own truth and no one can grade their truth, who yell at teachers because they believe themselves to be self-righteous in standing up against oppressors and who believe that every history lesson or literary text is pervading the wrong narrative because it's too dominant or too marginalized or not marginalized enough or not traditional enough for them. But my favorite example, which applies to people across the political spectrum, is this Almost everyone in the US, and I think in much of the world, has condemnations to make of the media.
Speaker 1:You know they say that you can't trust the media. I'm sure you've heard someone voice something to that effect, but they've succumbed to a Jedi mind trick. Because what's so amazing about condemning the media is how that language and we can only conceptually understand the world through language takes the vast array of media outlets in the world, which vary greatly in terms of their points of view and their integrity, and transforms that large, heterogeneous group into a singular, all-powerful entity. And once the media is a singular, all-powerful entity, it therefore must warrant nothing but our unthinking condemnation for being the bevayer of a dominant narrative. But look at how suggesting that we can't trust the media undermines critical thinking in the guise of critical thinking.
Speaker 1:On the surface, it seems like the thoughtful argument that, because narratives can be oppressive, we need to reject the big media and think for ourselves instead. In effect, it seems like it's saying don't just believe the media, think for yourself. But in reality, once multiple, varied media outlets become the media, an abstraction that doesn't exist and therefore cannot be interrogated, the potential for critical thinking is undermined. We no longer, as we should do, critically interrogate this particular news story or that particular news outlet. We're instead intellectually flopping about in a puddle of faux intellectualism that rejects the singular and all-powerful media as oppressive just because it exists, even when that singular it does not exist.
Speaker 1:I could list so many more examples, but I hope instead that you'll be inspired to look around a little bit, because I am sure you'll start to see many of your own.
Speaker 1:In wrapping up, it would be absurd of me to suggest that postmodernism is the only cause behind all of the examples I just listed, but I hope to have made a strong case for the fact that it's a particularly insidious part of the problem.
Speaker 1:Nevertheless, let's remember F Scott Fitzgerald and the importance of holding two contradictory ideas in mind at the same time, because, for all of the important criticisms to be made of where postmodernism went wrong, there are at least an equal number of points to be made about how much postmodernism contributed to transforming education to include more critical thinking, more active learning, more narratives that had for too long been marginalized or suppressed, and more agency for learners to make their own meaning of the world and to think independently.
Speaker 1:Ultimately, because it reminds us that no language, including our own, ever fully reflects reality, postmodernism should make us more compassionate and humbler and more open to other perspectives and to other narratives, and we should think critically about all narratives, the dominant and the marginalized. But whenever someone tells you that whatever is Western and European is inherently, irrevocably, totalistically bad by its nature, that the media can't be trusted, that everyone gets their own reality, or that they don't need experts because, as far as they can see in their reality, the earth is flat. Remember that what they're really trying to tell you is that these aren't the droids you're looking for.