The War on Reason-Part 4

The table that follows lists two schools of thought you need to understand for our next segment: Modernism, which is what built America, and Post-Modernism, or Woke as it’s called now. The main pillars of each camp are listed below.

The tenets of Modernism are listed on the left-side of the table, and how Woke-ism has altered each tenet is listed on the right followed by a comparison/contrast explanation of each one.

Modern	Post-Modern/Woke
Individualism	Collectivism/Social Construction
Objectivism	Subjectivism
Capitalism	Socialism/Communism
Realism	Anti-Realism/Social Lingustic Constructs

Let’s quickly deal with each of the four tenets and see if you recognize the absurdity of the Post-Modern (Woke) way of viewing the world.

Individualism vs Collectivism

Individualism is based on reason and reality. It recognizes you apart from anyone else, a “group of one”, free to think and speak your thoughts and determine your own actions, pursue your own version of happiness. It includes your right to own property and your very right to exist apart from the State.

Collectivist thought says Individualism is the root of all of Capitalism’s problems, our pursuit of self and money leading to our own internal ruin. It says we exist in culturally related groups as the basic unit of life. Everything you are, have, or ever will be is a product of that group and that you are responsible to that group. Their concept of Social Construction stems from their multicultural strategy and would have us believe that who you are is an unavoidable product of the group you belong to and your interaction with other groups.

A big weapon in the Woke arsenal is the concept of Aggressor and Victim groups. You’re in one or the other. Aggressor Groups take advantage of Victim Groups (based on the old Marxist, "Rich get richer and the poor get poorer” hack even though that’s been scientifically and empirically debunked long ago) and can even alter the very nature of the other group with words.

An example of this might be the attack on white men of the past few years. White men are supposedly an aggressor group, of course. Everyone in it is economically and politically privileged and things they say are physically harmful to lesser privileged groups. In classifying people as groups and not individuals it makes it much simpler and quicker to dismiss (cancel) large numbers of people from the conversation. One at a time simply takes too long.

Objectivism vs Subjectivism

Objectivism is a way of viewing reality, the world we live in. It works in tandem with reason and is highly cognitive. For example, it's the thing that allows us to look in the mirror and see either a male or a female because that’s what logic and common sense tell us the rules are.

Subjectivity dismisses reason and cognition. When I look in that same mirror I can now make up my own set of rules that are “true” for me and I can be anything I want to be because there’s really no way to know if the rules you Objectivists go by are really….true. So now I’m free to be a cat or a hamster or a teenage girl or whatever I think I may be today and no one is entitled to tell me any differently because there are no objective truths.

This is why it is so incredibly difficult to converse with these people, because everything about their philosophical beliefs are fluid. It’s all subjective and can change as they need it to in order to win an argument or avoid one. It's like arguing with a two-year old (apologies to all two-year olds).

Capitalism vs Socialism/Communism

Capitalism is all about the Individual and Free Markets---supply and demand. In a free market economy, the individual is free to start his own business or work for someone who has. Government interference aside, a free market determines the overall direction of the economy.

Socialism/Communism sees an elite class of politicians and/or aristocrats seizing power (force is a stated, preferred political tactic) and running the economy using one of several models. Under the Socialist banner you are a servant to the greater good, the State and the socialist economy ties in nicely with the collectivist mentality. You own nothing and you won’t have any opinions about it, either!

The major economic minds of the period have shown why socialism must necessarily fail. The past 150 years have given witness to a grand global experiment which pitted Capitalism against Socialist/Communist economies and the verdict is in long ago. Capitalism won.

Realism vs Anti-Realism

Realism is the idea that because you can reason, you can know that the thing you’re sitting on is indeed a chair. It can be seen, it can be touched, and it does exist even when I’m not thinking about it. Reason and cognitive abilities are a part of the process in determining the chair's existence and my relationship to it.

Remove reason and common-sense and you have Anti-Realism which “deconstructs” the idea that we can know that the chair exists or anything about it. Imagine the places you can go if you're not tethered to reason and common-sense anymore!

Social Linguistic Constructs/Wordplay

At this point I need to remind you that everything about the Post-Modern/Woke Movement, especially since the late '50's, is a reaction to the decisive global defeat of socialism/communism. What we're experiencing is the absolute refusal of the die-hard supporters to call it a day and move on. In the '70's their philosophical leader, Marcuse, predicted the movement's retreat to academia where it would continue the fight not so much to implement socialism, but to defeat capitalism. It's the last rag-tag group of fighters who know they've been defeated but have vowed to take as many capitalists with them as possible. And they would do it with the only weapon they have left....words!

As a professor, when the larger body of literature and evidence are working against you then you need a way to dismiss it all (cancel it) so it doesn't hinder your argument and your philosophical recruitment efforts. "Deconstruction" is the answer to that problem. Words have layers of meaning so if you can persuade that those layers are in some way flawed you can reduce words to a literal-only meaning.

And since words are not tied to a concept or idea (no reality, remember) you have essentially cancelled the body of literature that works against you. It's like grouping people then labeling them as Aggressors so you can get the public to ignore them. It's a lot of mental gymnastics to get there but when it's the only thing you have left to fight with, you do what you have to.

Post-Modernists like to deconstruct language and redefine things to suit their political objectives. This is where all the pronoun nonsense and anything that has to do with altering the language we use stems from.

Read this blog post on DEI and see how changing definitions just a little bit without telling your opponent can win you a lot of real estate in the war on “Rational”.

Summary

The more I study this stuff the more I'm convinced I'm witnessing a global temper-tantrum; a two-year old that has been running amuck for over 200 years now. Fortunately I believe we're in the final stages of that tantrum where words are the only weapons left and the toddlers are all screaming, "stupid-head!" at the top of their lungs.

It's a really sad chapter in our world history but the silver lining is we have an opportunity to snuff out the candle once and for all and make sure this never happens again. And I believe mental health counselors will have a huge, front-line part to play in it.

We got this.