How did we get to this Dysfunction? Post-Modernism

How many articles have your read or conversations have you been a part of where the theme is some version of “the loss of civility” or “an increase of nastiness/mean-spiritedness” or the “loss of shared norms of behavior (a.k.a. ‘manners’)” in today’s America?

At the time of the Watergate scandal (circa 1973-1974) we had a capacity to be scandalized by President Nixon’s law breaking and lies. We had a shared sense of right and wrong. It was, after all, his fellow Republicans who told him he had to go. Norms and moral codes might be broken, but we had them. Today, behaviors far worse than Nixon’s are blown off and ignored.

How did we get here? Many attribute our current state to Donald Trump. Yes, he has infused a lot of nastiness into our common life, while normalizing lying and self-dealing.

But he is more an expression of a societal sea-change than the cause of it. Nor are our normlessness and incivility limited to national politics. They have seeped into most everything — behavior on the roads and in classrooms, at sports events and in local civic life. In churches, too. Sure, there are lots of decent people doing good work and being considerate, but it sometimes seems they are the exception rather than the rule.

While there is no single or simple answer to explain how we got here, ideas have played a role. Specifically, a school of thought became prevalent in the late 20th century that reduced everything to power. According to this idea, there is no truth, not really. There is only power. There is no legitimate authority, only power. There are no objective facts, but only narratives that support or diminish one group’s power over others.

There’s a heady term for all this constellation of ideas: post-modernism. In a recent excellent article, the Brooking Institution scholar Jonathan Rauch traced the evolution of post-modernism. In particular, Rauch explains how a movement that was mostly identified with the political left has now found a home on the political right. Rauch’s article is titled, “The Woke Right Stands at the Door.”

Here’s a description of the post-modern idea or take on things:

“[Post-modernism] adopts a radically skeptical epistemology, viewing all claims to capital-T truth . . . as assertions of power: efforts by dominant social actors to impose and legitimize their own, often oppressive, agendas. Wherever you see a truth claim, you should unmask it: look behind it to see whom it might benefit . . . modernism [post-modernism’s precursor] wants to assess claims, not claimants; postmodernism reverses the emphasis. ‘Who were the scientists?’ ‘What color were they? What gender? What country are they in? What biases do they have?’”

There is a place for skepticism. Absolutely. In theological terms, we are talking about unmasking “idolatry.” Idolatry is claiming ultimacy for that which is not ultimate, claiming too much for a particular social arrangement or earthly authority. But like all virtues, this skepticism, when pushed too far or too single-mindedly, flips over and becomes a vice. In this case the vice is cynicism, believing that everyone is motivated always and only by self-interest and anything else is merely insincere posing. No one can be trusted. It’s all just smoke and mirrors to justify powerful people getting their way.

This approach became dominant in the American academic world and elite schools in the 80’s and 90’s. To academics it offers an edginess and sense of being on the side of the downtrodden.  Radical skepticism is heady stuff!

But post-modernism has also evolved, morphing into a second wave, which Rauch describes this way:

“Radical skepticism is like the acid that eats through every container. And sure enough, postmodernism’s skepticism undermined itself. How could it be for anything if all truth claims, including its own, are masks for power? The answer came in what Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay in their book, Cynical Theories, identify as a second wave of postmodernism, which—handily enough—exempted itself from skepticism.”

With second-wave post-modernism:

“Identity and oppression now took center stage. Society is best understood not as an association of autonomous individuals but as congeries of groups contending for dominance and organized into hierarchies. All people fall into one of two categories: the oppressors or the oppressed.

“Because some groups dominate and oppress others, not all standpoints are suspect; marginalized groups’ vision is less distorted by the dominant narrative. Identity thus confers expertise and oppression confers authority. Now equipped with a worldview which justified their own claims of epistemic privilege, second-wave activists welded onto the original postmodernist engine an assortment of progressive ideologies, including post-colonial theory, queer theory, critical race theory, and intersectionality.”

The words, “Identity thus confers expertise and oppression confers authority” describe the way that postmodernism exempted itself from its own radical skepticism and became what we know as “Woke.” It explains how campus protestors could hail a group like Hamas as “freedom fighters.” And woe to any who might challenge this. “Objecting to Woke’s hypocrisy, inconsistency, and empirical shoddiness,” comments Rauch, “got you mocked, disqualified, and personally attacked. However philosophically unintelligible Woke may have been, its rhetorical virality and sheer aggressiveness conquered the intelligentsia with astonishing speed.”

In Part Two of “Reaping the Whirlwind” I will turn to the way in which the postmodern ethos has come to influence the political right, leading to the paradoxical development of “The Woke Right.”

To return to the questions I raised at the beginning, the skeptical/cynical ethos of postmodernism — “Wherever you see a truth claim you should unmask it,” and it is all just self-interest–has devolved into a general cynicism and nihilism, the “acid that eats through every container.” All claims of truth, objective fact and legitimate authority (unless made by victims of oppression) are out the window. Reality is up to you to define for yourself or your tribe.

This leaves us in a world trapped in a kind of perpetual adolescence, with people and groups shouting at one another, “Who are you to tell me what to do?” “And, F — you, anyhow!” “Get out of my way!” No truth, no shared facts, no norms, no authority (almost always a dirty word), just power, raw and naked power. Ergo: Trump, not cause but symptom and manifestation.

Whether in the classroom or the courtroom, in the office or on an airplane, it is an anxious and dangerous world especially for the most vulnerable. We are now reaping the whirlwind.*

*The phrase “reaping the whirlwind” comes from the Bible, the prophet Hosea, “For they sow the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind.” (Hosea 8:7)