Dear KAG: 20210217 Open Thread

Yes, b/c it is true!

And you are exactly right!

The problem is that all this CCP propaganda is built on postmodernism – an effort to expand Marx’s economic critiques into a more holistic system of critical theory. It’s the underpinning for NeoMarxism.

A big tenant of the postmodern’s cultural relativism is “reality is a social construction.”

So when they find that everything is racist, it is because they think that everything in reality is a social construct of racist people, including math.

They don’t have enough self awareness or intellectual honesty to admit that there is a reality that exists objectively or independently of the social construct.

Once you understand that their minds are locked in an irrational “social construct” worldview devoid of any metaphysics (in the philosophical, not New Age sense) then everything else they do makes a lot more sense. Logic, facts and reason are likewise just political, tools for oppressing others. Emotional manipulation, talking people into exhaustion, and screaming outrage (aka, temper tantrums) in their minds work best b/c they don’t legitimize what in their mind are the oppressors’ tools.

A direct consequence of lacking any metaphysical reality, even a Platonic one, is that immaterial objects like numbers and mathematical constructs must necessarily be part of the social construct and not things existing on their own. To them, human endeavor isn’t the story of understanding man’s increasing knowledge of science the workings of the universe, but an oppressive narrative that advances a few at the expense of oppressed people groups. NASA shouldn’t be focused on sending rockets into orbit, but engaging in outreach to Muslims, presumably the most oppressed religious people group in all human history.

The other tenant of NeoMarxism is that all problems that exist are due to inherent oppression in the social construct – economic, racial, gender, etc. etc. and that any other explanations (ie, the Judeo-Christian concept of “sin”, or Enlightenment views of “irrationality” verses “reason”) are simply means of sustaining or advancing oppression.

They inherit the postmodern worldview of “incredulity toward metanarratives.” Everyone has some story of reality, every story of reality is wrong, and every story of reality is created to oppress people. They lack the intellectual rigor and honesty to recognize that this itself is a story of reality (“everyone got it wrong”) that undercuts their position (if everyone got it wrong, that means the postmodern view got it wrong too, and also exists to oppress people).

That’s why they say “everything is politics” – to them there is no metaphysical reality except the social construct which is to them an inherently political oppressor/oppressed construct. They say “the personal is political” b/c to them the story of oppression is the experience of the individual within the collective oppressive society, which can only be corrected one way: A total overhaul of the social systems that removes every oppressive element, including that pesky “reality” requirement.

That’s why they advance the “conflict model” in sociology, and bad-mouth the “structure-functional” or “symbol interaction” models. Sociology is a blunt tool in their mind for social reform, not a way of understanding human systems as they function.

A big part of the problem is that they are never required to navigate the labyrinth of reality at a fundamental level, working from the problems of survival and subsistence to advanced civilization, so their social theories are never challenged by the stubborn teacher that is reality. They can always get a hand out – from friends, from government, an academic job – but they’re never required to navigate reality apart from, ironically, their dependence on the social construct.

Some more on the topic:

https://winteryknight.com/2021/02/07/the-psychological-motivation-of-those-who-embrace-postmodernism-7/