One Extreme Triggers Its Opposite Number

 

Stephen R Hicks is a a Objectivist philosopher, professor, author and Randian expert. His most brilliant work is his 2004 book, Explaining Postmodernism.

 

Hicks is an original thinker, and he might be the foremost expert in the world on Postmodernism.

 

Let me quote him from Pages 84 and 85 of this book: “Chapter Four The Climate of Collectivism From postmodern epistemology to postmodern politics

 

There is a problem with making epistemology fundamental to any explanation n of postmodernism. The problem is postmodernists’ politics.

 

If a deep skepticism about reason and the consequent subjectivism and relativism were the most important parts of the story of postmodernism, then we would expect to find that postmodernists would represent a roughly random distribution of commitments across the political spectrum. If values and politics are primarily a matter of a subjective leap into whatever fits one’s preferences, then we should find people making leaps into all sorts of political programs.

 

This is not what we find in the case of postmodernism. Postmodernists are not individuals who have reached relativistic conclusions about epistemology and then found comfort in a wide variety of political persuasions. Postmodernists are monolithically far Left-wing in their politics . . . Of the major names in the postmodernist movement, there is not a single figure who is not Left-wing in a serious way.”

 

My response: Hicks has noted this glaring contradiction: postmodernists, on the one hand, espouse  extreme epistemological nominalism, skepticism, subjectivism and relativism about any axioms, principles or causes that any objective epistemology, championing the ideals of expressible, comprehensible objective truth and objective values; on the one the hand, the same ideologues are speaking with one unified voice, and totalistic uniformity of political outlook, far-Left absolutism, when revealed, is compatible or leading to Leninism overtaking America and the world.

 

How can a Leftist professor be postmodernist epistemologically and then a political absolutism in the same moment?

 

Is he a hypocrite, confused, unaware of this internal contradiction, or a crazy person that lives with contradictory axioms at work in his mind. Hicks will explore all of these points, and does not dismiss them so much as conclude that postmodernists do follow a narrative, they are Leftists seeking to overthrow all ruling classes and to set up their totalitarian collectivist agenda worldwide. They have a narrative and a set of values that they believe in and that they are noble

 

and correct, and all the world should live by them, whether or not, they accede willingly or at the point and prodding of a soldier nudging them with a machine gun.

 

This is why I have long known that postmodernist Leftism is a Marxist mass movement and these adherents are fanatics. They preach Max Stirner-type epistemology to undermine the American masses still following the main narratives and culture of the American Way, but these Leftists have their ideological values, absolute and pure, to introduce and to crush all, once the revolution is successful, and all in America and the West are overthrown.

 

Fanatics use claims of subjectivity, objectivity, truth and lies, words and force as tools to gaining victories on the road to achieving their real goal: world domination and the subjugation to their cause, their adored set of values, their sacrosanct narrative and loyalty and service to the ruling Party that will run governments and everything else, once counterrevolutionaries are sufficiently trounced.

 

In the sense just mentioned above, it makes sense that postmodernist epistemology is a political tactic for gaining power and winning people over, and this is what Hicks is accusing these mendacious, insincere gaslighters of doing, and he is correct.

 

I think postmodernist Leftists are complex creatures—like all humans—and there are other psychological tensions at work here too. As Hicks points out, logically and empirically, Marxism and socialism were well debunked and refuted 50 years ago, but professors and other ideologues, chose to remain radicalized believes in Leninism based upon irrational devotion and illogical, unswerving loyalty to the cause they idolize. Postmodernist epistemology gives them cover so they can dismiss out of hand the empirical, economic, and logical criticisms that classical liberals and conservative have heaped upon Marxist thought as intellectually bankrupt, practically unworkable, compatible with mass federal murder of millions of people, and an engine for impoverishing whole nations.

 

I add a thought from my ontological law of moderation: one extreme triggers its opposite number. On one hand, they tout relativism and subjectivity in epistemological orientation, and on the other hand, these atheists, nihilists, materialists, and secularists are without values or meaning. No one mentally can toleration a values-vacuum for very long. People are driven by existential emptiness to elevate their political ideal to religious status, a faith to worship, Big Government collectivism is their God, and Marx is their prophet. A lousy faith to adhere to trumps no faith at all.

 

Where people have no objective truths to live by and up to, their lack of value and meaning drives them to latch onto a passing cause as the one truth faith (a fetish or phantasm, perhaps backed by demonic prodding), the star to hitch their wagon to as I believe Eric Hoffer wrote.