[SKRIVA] Postmodernismen...

From: Ahrvid <ahrvid@xxxxxxxxxxx>
To: "skriva@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <skriva@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Tue, 8 Apr 2014 00:58:55 +0200
(Tror jag nämnde att jag skulle på seminarium om postmodernism i förra veckan. 
Kom mig inte för att skriva en rapport, förrän nu, när jag såg den utstuderade 
postmoderna dumheten på siten io9.com om att "vetenskap är politik"...  Skrev 
det på engelska, så kan det postas även på utrikiska listor. --AE)
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In a recent posting I had a side remark that the site io9.com (which often 
covers skiffy things) would benefit from less fundamentalist environmentalism. 
But reading the site's update to their "manifesto" I'm inclined to add: and a 
tad less postmodernism wouldn't hurt too. In 
http://io9.com/the-io9-manifesto-science-is-political-1560193187 they claim 
"Science is political".
  Science is finding the FACTS. I'm not saying that everything is either true 
or untrue, but there are definitely lots of things that are true or vice versa. 
Politics on the other hand is OPINIONS, implementing opinions about what would 
be "good" or "bad". Good/bad are claims within the field of ethics, by 
definition things that cannot be proven. True/false is about facts, what is and 
what isn't. With enough data and the right methods you can prove or disprove. 
The mentioned manifesto observes "science is under attack" - but the attacker 
is people like them, who claim science = politics. There's a deep rift between 
facts and opinions. 
  Except that postmodernists don't believe that.
  By coincidence I last week went to a seminar held by the Stockholm "think 
tank" Timbro, with Stephen Hicks as guest speaker, whose book Explaining 
Postmodernism has just been translated to Swedish (as Postmodernismens 
förklaring). While modernism is the idea of reason, science, rationality 
(hopefully leading to progress), postmodernism claims "reason is a scam" and 
"truth and knowledge is empty", like for instance Michael Focault has teached, 
a big guru in this field. Or to put it simpler, the postmodernist thinks:
  "Since there are no truths, *any* wacky idea may be true, for instance my 
wacky ideas...!"
  Postmodernism as we know it was a product of the bankruptcy of marxism, Hicks 
argue. In the 1950's there came a deep crisis for Left wing politics. Communism 
hadn't delivered upon its utopian promises, except delivering tens or hundreds 
of millions to work camps and graves, and half of Europe to the Soviet sphere. 
Since it was obvious that something was wrong, the fans of this Utopia had some 
heavy explanation to do.
  The answer was postmodernism. What you see isn't what you get. It's an 
illusion that market economy delivers and that "scientific socialism" doesn't. 
Postmodernism teaches what is Politically Correct. The ideas of postmodernism 
became especially influential in the universities.
  Academics have always lived in ivory towers, distanced from real life. You 
could sit up there and create your theoretical systems and "-isms", build 
pyramids of meaningless abstractions nobody could understand, against all data 
and practical knowledge about the world, and borrow misunderstood snippets from 
here and there. Eg when Einstein said "everything is relative" (referring to 
time and space, Nota Bene!) you could stretch it to that truth was relative 
too. Easily done, a piece of cake! Hicks called postmodernism "an offensive 
against reason and logic". Postmodernism is extremely emotional, showing traits 
of a religion, he concludes.
  When the retailers of mental snake oil had done their bit to rescue marxism 
and the kids of the post-WWII generation flooded the universities, we got the 
left wing movements of the late 60's and 70's. LSD screwed up your head even 
more and in Germany the Rote Arme Fraktion was eager to implement socialism at 
gunpoint. We'd also get long, complicated books which *really* was empty 
knowledge. We had gaga theories about Gaia and Mother Nature and learned we 
must have bad conscience because everything is improving, so we must *stop* 
things from improving. It's "unsustainable" that things improve. Some guys 
founded a little club in Rome to tell us that. And so on. You know the rest.
  No, science isn't opinions.

--Ahrvid

Some sources on /w/a/c/k/i/n/e/s/s postmodernism:

http://www.stephenhicks.org/publications/explaining-postmodernism/  (Stephen 
Hicks and his book; it seems you can read the whole book there, though split in 
one PDF for each chapter)

http://www.depauw.edu/sfs/covers/cov55.htm  (about science fiction and 
postmodernism)

http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/postmodernism_and_sf  (SF Encyclopedia on 
postmodernism and sf)

http://human-nature.com/reason/books/sokal-bricmont.html  (review of book on 
the Sokal/Social Text affair, the Emperor's New Clothes moment of postmodernism)

But there is much more. Google gives 6,7 million hits on "postmodernism". But 
37 million hits on "wacky"...
--
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http://elib.se/ebook_detail.asp?id_type=ISBN&id86081462 / Läs även AE i nya 
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YXSKAFTBUD, GE VÅR WCZONMÖ IQ-HJÄLP! (DN NoN 00.02.07) 
                                          
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[SKRIVA] Postmodernismen...

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