Post-post____ism Post (part I)

Post-post____ism: The Wave of the Future (part I)

Less than half-way into this post, I decided that I didn't want to write anymore, which is also a good sign that nobody would want to read this whole damn thing once it's done, so I'm going to publish it in parts. When I get around to it, I'll write the next part, then most likely one more part, possibly two.

Some people may tell you that postmodernism and the plethora of other post-____isms are dead. Oh, would that they were correct. It may be in decline, but it is still perfectly alive. Even worse, it could easily die but the world would be no better off, because the mindset among scholars of the humanities, and some of the social-sciences, would continue to insist that all analytical works ever in their field must be written within a particular theoretical/philosophical framework. I attack post-modernism as the main culprit because in my experience it is the single framework that has the most adherents, making it the one that is the most difficult to bear. If scholars would stop hiding behind their pet philosophical framework, not only would it make my life much so more bearable, but their works would simply be of higher quality, because they would be more relevant to the world, more unique as products of independent thought, and more accessible without sacrificing quality.

By writing an article, essay, book, or what have you from the unerring perspective of one pre-existing framework scholars are necessarily limiting their viewpoints, making them irrelevant to real world application. Rather than starting by taking a look at the real world and seeing what conclusions they can draw from their observations, they start by putting on their po-mo goggles (or whatever their preferred framework is) looking at the world, then formulating their fresh, unbiased conclusions (so long as they fit within their framework). Now I know post-modernism rejects the ability to perceive actual objective reality, but that doesn't mean they can just give up even trying to be objective and unbiased*. To continue with my point, though, as we all know (except the hardcore post-modernists**), starting with forgone conclusions gives bad results in investigation. It leaves us out of touch with reality, which is reflected in our results. Investigations that do not are not grounded in reality, and results that do not reflect reality are irrelevant. Consequently, those results will not help make the world any better for anyone except profs and grad students worried about their scholarly reputation. Now I'll agree with the post-modernists that nobody has complete access to total objective reality, but I think that objectivity in both perspective and results is a matter of degrees. If you try harder to be objective, chances are your results will be more objective and relevant. Otherwise there'd be no point to even trying, thus ... destruction of the world by global thermonuclear war.


*How to go about trying to approach some semblance of objectivity is not something I'm going to discuss, because this essay would end up being even longer than it already will, and I know already that almost everyone will take a look at this and decide it's way too long.
**I know, I'm basically creating a straw-man here, as well as an ad-hominem by villainizing the post-modernists, but I'm writing this for fun, so I don't care if my arguments are totally air-tight, especially since I don't care to take the time and space to make them so.

When I get around to it, hopefully within 3 days, I'll write about how moving past post-modernism (and other ridiculous preconceived philosophical/theoretical frameworks), post-post____ism if you will (hence the name of this post), will help foster independent thought.