The Arc of History

Postmodern Failure

Jack is leading another of his incredible tours this week and will return next week.

Watching the news, studying the journals and events of the week, from a Boeing 737 Max airliner losing a door in flight to the strange absence of the president, secretary of defense, and assistant secretary from the chain of command, at the same time, with no designated responsible persons identified, made me ponder just what is going on?

Whether intentional or accidental, the week’s news did everything possible to hold up shiny objects and divert attention from the collapse of the Trump persecution in Georgia and the woes of Hunter Biden before Congress and the IRS.

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Where it Began

The United States, as we all know, was founded on Enlightenment principles developed between the late 1600’s and early 1800’s. Great thinkers such as John Locke, Adam Smith, David Hume, and Isaac Newton plowed a path that started the Age of Revolution against absolute authority.

• Reason is the primary source of knowledge and truth (with a small ‘t”). People can improve their lives through reasoning and logical deduction.
• The scientific methods are the best way to understand the world through the structured merger of empirical evidence with reason. The goal is to improve lives by discovering the laws of nature.
• Individuals have inherent rights and freedoms, and the state exists to protect those rights. Individuals should be free to pursue their interests, provided that they do not harm others. Equal justice before the law and the right to trial are cornerstones.
• Matters of faith and conscience are personal and not subject to state control, direction, or enforcement. People are free to worship as they see fit or not at all.

From the above emerged a tripartite government, the social contract, market economies, and an explosion of knowledge so vast and rapid that even the most extraordinary computer centers cannot keep pace.

The cornerstones emphasize individual freedom and reason directed toward improving the human condition. These are best protected through elected governments and the rule of law. The Enlightenment burst upon the world with the invention of the printing press and the creation of the salon. Whether one calls it a salon or a forum, as the ancients did, the freedom of free persons to meet and discuss ideas might be among the most significant initiators of the Enlightenment. Universal education, allowing everyone to access the forum of their choosing, is essential to human progress.

The Age of Revolution from the mid to late 1700s and on into the early 1800s applied Enlightenment ideas to transfer power from the hands of small groups of elites to the people. In most, but certainly not all cases, these elites exercised power without regard for the people’s will through elitist control of wealth, armies, and communications.

Before the Enlightenment, the people lived in blind submission to authority under subjective narratives enforced by men with swords. The individual lacked access to power and might be publicly tortured and killed for showing too much interest. Dissenters were usually destroyed, and their families were tortured and starved for the greater good of society.

How it Progressed

Revolutions and governments of laws instead of elite whimsy led to a whirlwind of human development and prosperity. For many who were passionate about systems and mechanisms, a golden age of invention led to great wealth. But for those less inclined, the era led to insecurity and romantic longing for pre-industrial life.

The Romantic Era emphasized emotion and individualism, emphasizing nature as found and art as sources of truth instead of the rationalization of nature. Romantic thinking influenced conservatism, classical liberalism, and nationalism as it found emotions to be the source of authenticity. Feelings of awe, wonder, and terror were considered the basis of the cherished authenticity. Romantics preferred their towns and villages to be small and personal, rejecting the obscurity of modern cosmopolitan life.

Romanticism never really faded in America, as large swaths of the interior are dotted with towns and small cities founded on romantic principles. I know this well because I live in a town established before the French and Indian War. Life is lovely in these small towns.

President Trump built his coalition by combining the values and cultural characteristics from the Romantic Era with those from the Enlightenment. This combination is the secret sauce that moves the mass of the nation’s interior. His competitors cannot tap the passion of the Trump supporter nor the complex effect of intense emotion as a source of political authenticity.

For those who pursued the industrialization track instead of the pastoral track, the Enlightenment led to the Modern Era of bright cities and manicured suburbs. Innovation and experimentation were favored instead of traditional or the classical. New art, literature, and music emerged, yet the individual became more fragmented from workmates and kin. Unlike the Romantic Era towns where corrupt politicians had more to fear from a beating in the streets than a beating at the ballot box, Modern life saw power and nearly absolute control shift to city hall and higher government. Alienated, fragmented, isolated individuals in anonymous cities became the core democrat voters of the 20^th Century.

The Modern Era dominated the 20^th Century until the 1970s and the end of the gold standard. Things started to break down after that.

Postmodernism

Modernists funded large universities and greatly expanded education based on the belief, inherited from the Enlightenment, that the measure of a man is his ability to engage in the forum. For this, he needs to be educated in the human condition and the intricacies of his chosen field. Power grew centralized in the hands of the government as neighbors stopped knowing each other and families scattered to the winds.

Postmodernism emerged as a philosophy of power, starting during the 1970s, that emphasized language, narrative, and subjectivity as sources of ultimate power instead of objective truth, individual rights, and the written law. Postmodernism sharply opposes Enlightenment values of reason, individualism, and merit. Merit is an individual, not a collective trait.

From the Postmodern perspective, language is considered the source of all power; no longer just a neutral communication tool, language becomes the means of exercising power and control and securing wealth. Language and its use create and reinforce social hierarchies, and it is the ultimate form of oppression over the poorly spoken.

Reason and science no longer register within a postmodernist framework. Objective truth does not exist. Literacy, but not numeracy, is the path to power and influence. The knower’s perspective shapes knowledge so that truth is subjective and personal. Not objective and universal. Knowledge is not discovered through structured methodology. It is merely perceived.

A Philosophical Weapon

Postmodernism’s use of language – call it the narrative – as the means to power benefits the universities, advertisers, and especially the tech companies. Big tech, meaning companies such as Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple, and Microsoft, generate much or most of their wealth through language tools that bait and trap customers through individualized algorithms. An internet search or social media post initiates a process to return a result modeled to the user’s perceived psychological need. Some profits are generated through equipment sales, but the big enchilada is through creating internet dependency.

Postmodernism emphasizes deconstruction, or breaking information into parts that can be organized in a database for further use or sale. “Filter Bubbles” reinforce a user’s preexisting beliefs and perspectives. Filter bubbles are so powerful and so weaponized that some mothers eagerly submit their sons for castration and their daughters to have their breasts removed. It does not require a genius to understand why school shootings are overwhelmingly performed by transexual youth caught in ever more radicalized filter bubbles.

The LGBT+ movement is a form of deconstruction where pathologies are increasingly divided into smaller cells in the databases. Personal truths conflict with universal truths from the Enlightenment.

As regards the big Truth with a capital “T,” postmodernism exists to deny The Way, the Truth, and the Light. Big tech’s business model depends on eliminating and eradicating Christianity. Tech is in the spin business, not the Truth business.

Big Tech’s obscurantism deliberately presents information abstrusely and imprecisely, limiting inquiry beyond Google search results. It is a deliberate restriction of knowledge and, therefore, is anti-intellectual, nontransparent, and anti-Enlightenment.

Big Tech needs a fresh supply of numerate talent who will showcase their preferred power dynamic to the general public. This gap between what they need from employees and what they sell to the public is a great paradox.

Postmodernism is having a profound impact on Islam, and the reaction to postmodernist philosophy was a significant motivation behind 9/11. Using language as a power tool opposes the Islamic emphasis on dialogue. Subjectivity and personal truths are very different from reason or the will of Allah. Postmodernists’ focus on subjectivity rejects Islamic standards of art and architecture that emphasize geometric patterns and calligraphy. Islamic art and architectural design emphasize the beauty and order of the universe. It would be a challenge for anyone to develop a more thoughouly offensive philosophy towards Islam than postmodernism.

The Future

Postmodernism, through its child, DEI, or diversity, equity, and inclusion, is the root cause of a bridge collapse in Florida, design and fabrication errors in modern aircraft, the collapse of services, and the general realization that things do not work as well today as yesterday.

Replacing merit and performance standards with subjective measures that align with the concentration of power narratives is not going well. It cannot.

The World Economic Forum, or WEF, proposes the global adaptation of posthumanism to replace postmodernism. The core concept is to deskill human tasks from flipping burgers to curing disease, from conning a submarine to writing an opera and replacing them with computer code and sensors. The vision is to transfer the human experience to the collective via technology to end individualism forever. Reality ceases to be objective and depends on which program is loaded into the global computer networks.

Presently, governments value individuals for their consumption as consumers. However, in the new philosophy, individuals are valued according to their ability to contribute to the global data collective. Data generation becomes the meaning and purpose of life.

Or perhaps it is time for the Age of Revolution, Part II.

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SecDef

Wow.

Biden only works a few hours daily and not consistently throughout the week. He retires for R&R each weekend. The Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin, was off the grid and allegedly dealing with a post-surgical infection at Walter Reed for four days before his absence was noted.

The press either missed it or was compliant. It is hard to say at this point.

The first narrative was the flu, then prostate surgery, then a gender transition procedure. Who knows why Loyd Austin was out of awol? Maybe he drank too much over New Year’s Eve. What matters is that the three top slots in the chain of command were vacant simultaneously, and none knew of the other’s absence. One thing is for sure: Chairman Xi knew.

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The List

Another tranche of Epstein Island files was released. Bill Clinton was a frequent flier. Suppose the island was a honeypot operated by intelligence services, much like the Chinese brothel serving senior fed and contractor elites, as recently identified in the Washington DC area. In that case, canceling and replacing the diversity classes with security awareness classes seems appropriate.

The FBI disclosed to Congress that the customer list and videos were in the FBI’s hands immediately before Congress authorized the funds for the largest office building in the United States – The new FBI building.

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Elections

As Skye pointed out yesterday, The Georgia case against Trump is collapsing. The New York case looks terrible for Soros, as does Colorado and Maine.

The fat blob is out, and Haley is the new Hillary. Vivek speaks well but lacks experience.

I find it astounding that the election consultants consistently overlook the vast numbers of the electorate that are neither postmodernists nor modernists. No matter what the Democrats do to Trump, he will hold on to the 40 million or so Romanticists that happily live in the nation’s interior. When passion equals authenticity, Trump wins every time.

That’s a wrap.

Mike Ryan is a chemical engineering consultant to the Iron and Steel, Minerals, Heavy Chemicals, and Fiber industries.