Of Mental Train Wrecks, Subliminal Leaps and Cultural Suicide

Before straight up nihilism struck, another curious phenomenon hit the postmodern psyche: that valuelessness equals objectivity ... if we are able to take our own personal values and opinions out of the equation, we can come to an objective conclusion. You know: the elimination of bias, those darned preconceptions and preconceived ideas for which postmodernists go to pomo hell, provided they have one.

Note that at this stage objectivity itself is still considered a goal worth pursuing; nor is it considered unattainable or even non-existent, as is currently the case. But because practitioners failed to make distinction between the given - the metaphysical - and the fallible - the man-made, the premise already contained the fallacy that all personal convictions are necessarily 'opinion', not fact and are never actually true.

It was preceded by a meme injected into common popular culture, that one is somehow “not allowed to generalize”. No one ever asked why this self-censorship was pressed upon us, let alone anyone wondering who was the source of this sudden imperative. But this is how postmodern thinkers in ivory towers reconstruct society in accordance with their ideologies.

The mechanism of incrementalism was brilliantly illustrated last week by Glenn Beck and his (rubber!) frog put to gradually heating water: insinuating minute, mental seedlings into the cultural blood stream over a long period of time a big revolution make (ask the European federalists). It was to be a very first step only.

It was followed by two further subliminal leaps: that values are always personal and non universal, in turn resting on the notion that objective truth is only known to God, or but a figment of our imagination.

Let's illustrate this with a typical example involving one of pomo's favorite social factions: homosexuals, otherwise known as “the gay community”. The generalization that “all gays are perverts” was vetoed by the imperative. “But as a hetero, how can I separate the perverted gays from non perverted gays?”, morphing into the hip, Sex-and-the-City truism, “who am I to judge?” The grand finale is an act of suicide: “perversion does not exist, all sexual behavior is perfectly natural”.

Were it to remain at that things might not have been that bad. But the postmodern nudgers are waging a war on reality, so the train of thought plunges into a moral black hole with the worst offenders of pomo subversion calling for lobby groups “protecting the rights of pedophiles”.

Applied to morality we can see where this politically correct assault is getting a wee bit pernicious. This is also illustrative of a claim made by biologist Marc Hauer that man has an inbred moral compass - it's explained in strictly evolutionary terms of course. Atheists can lead perfectly moral lives, but it's their warped view of reality that leads them to draw immoral conclusions.

If we take the absolutism as an example that “all criminals belong in jail”, this is followed by “how can we know which criminals belong in jail and who doesn't?” This question is made possible by swapping “a debt to society” followed by absolution, with “curing the unwashed of anti social tendencies”. This 'civilized' insight itself is a precurser to mental asylums for the dissenting. This shading ends in relativism: “who am I to judge?”, to finally crash to earth in anarchy: “the ultimate cause of crime is the law, let's abolish the law”.

Or, projected on to current affairs: is it morally abject for a middle aged bloke to slip a 13 year old girl a mickey and then Greek-rape her against her will? How do we know? - who am I to judge? goes off the cliff in “she's forgiven him, and it's three decades ago, and everyone was doing drugs back then, and his wife was murdered, and he was a Holocaust victim, and her parents are to blame for letting her out at night, and a 13 year old Hollywood Lolita doesn't look 13, and perhaps she even liked it (or asked for it!) ... how dare they judge him! Free Roman Polanski!

It can get worse. It culminates in moral nihilism when Mary Jo Kopechne is made to ponder the question if her premature death was perhaps “worth” the later accomplishments of Ted Kennedy. Man may have an inbred or God given moral compass, but not everyone is able to use it when the occasion arises.

If - inevitably - we start confusing fact with opinion as the premise requires, we can see where this mental and a moral train wreck also becomes a major impediment to defend the values that define us and becomes an instrument for cultural suicide.

All Muslims are terrorists.

Oops! Thou shalt not lump and generalize!

Then how can we separate the good-willing Muslims from the terrorists?

Who are we to judge? This is followed by irrelevant observations how people are “the same” (or even “One”) and that the worst Koranic Suras do not essentially differ from Jewish and Christian texts (as if that makes - even if true - sacred incitement to hatred and violence any better).

All Muslims are peace-loving innocents and anyway, we asked for it!

Update:

Pajamas TV: "Hollywood's Lame Defense of Roman Polanski"

- Part I
- Part II

Lionel Chetwyd and Roger L. Simon criticizing the reaction of Hollywood and intellectual elites to the capture of Roman Polanski.

One of the list of signatories (others petitions are linked to it at the bottom). Refer to it the next time you spend money on film productions.