If the 20th century can be called the Modernist Century, then this is the Post-Modern. That isn't a tautology, it is a fair description of how today's voters / politicians / journalists cognitively operate. In previous posts I have argued how mono-maniacal Modernism spawned this rationally ambiguous Dualism, but in this post I will cite examples so that you can spot it yourself.

Post-Modernism is more than a literary fad

First, less us dispense with the definition of Post-Modernist as some sort of literary doublespeak with liberal  use of "scare" quotes to indicate that words have changed their meanings.  Since literature is nothing if not words, the argument that words have no inherent meaning is a self-referential argument that destroys any content to language even as it destroys itself. Yet seemingly oblivious to this danger, this Charybdis of meaning, Post-Modern literary critics absolutely frolic in its death grip, dragging many others into the Abyss of this strange attractor. So rather than restricting the definition of PoMo to Derrida and colleagues, we should instead recognize what tools Derrida was using.

That is, one response to the mono-mania of Modernism was to accept Kant's "two-world" distinction that supposedly placed an impassable gulf between science and literature, allowing the noumenal search for truth to proceed without Hume's restrictions on logical induction from phenomena. (You've all heard the mantra "Science is about theories, not truth; hypotheses are supported by evidence, but not proven; whereas religion is dogmatic about beliefs, not based on evidence, yada yada".) However, this did not mean that literature was not "true", rather that the methods applied to literature were completely different than those in science. What Derrida did, was to show that  exactly the same self-reference that doomed science, the search for truth from observations, also doomed literature, the search for truth from language.  Just as Goedel derailed the Modern Positivist locomotive and Quantum Mechanics derailed Scientific Materialism with self-referentiality, so also PoMo derailed the romantic / poetic / literary search for Truth with self-reference.
 
So the lesson from Derrida is that self-reference is deadly for any approach that looks for absolutes, whether it be truth, beauty, righteousness or existence.  Dennett said in a recent book that materialist Darwinism is a "universal acid", which, ironically enough, is a high-school Chemistry joke because the acid was always displayed in an apparently undissolved container. Yet Dennett self-consciously advertises himself as the container, apparently unaware that the acid has already begun to work.  Nevertheless, it is not Dennett, but Derrida who shows us what a truly self-consistent hazmat container looks like.

So my first point, is that PoMo is not confined to any specific discipline or Kantian ghetto, but spans the full spectrum of university academic departments and human aspirations.

Self-Reference the Universal Acid, the Suicide Vest

The second point follows quickly from the first, that the tell-tale symptom, the distinguishing characteristic of PoMo poisoning is self-reference. For example, the denial of absolute truth is itself a self-referential statement, making the denial just as much a joke as the rejected affirmation. This is why the giants of the Modernist century, the Russells and Ayers, the men Dennett or Dawkins hope to be confused for, disallow using the tools of Darwinism on their own pet theories or relatives. They were well aware of their inconsistency, doing their best to avoid mentioning it, though there is evidence that at the ends of their lives they conceded defeat. But PoMo applies these wrecking tools back on their own person, happily deconstructing in front of us like a geriatric stripper as an example of their authenticity.

"But" you object, "how can a PoMo claim authentic anything!  Isn't that the same thing as believing in truth?" Or we might add, how is this reliance on self-reference to avoid the fate of Ken Kesey's band, tripped out on LSD and living in their own subjective reality unconnected to a world shared with fire ants and Al Gore? Can such Dead Heads even be dangerous? Wasn't such solipsism a freaky religious philosophy of Bishop Berkeley 2 centuries ago which crumbled at the arrival of Modernism?

The answer is "Yes".

For the danger in PoMo is not that it is an alternative to logic, but that it is the death of logic. Rationalists are at great risk from PoMo because they do not understand its motivation, its methods or its eventual end.  The danger of a Venture Capitalist is not that he desires your stock, but that he desires your financial ruin. The danger of a rapist is not that he lusts for sex, but for violence. The danger of a Al-Qaida is not that it wants to live without the West, but that it wants to die with the West. The cheerful greeting of a man in a suicide vest is not what it appears, nor is debate with a Post-Modernist. Until we grasp the fundamental differences between PoMo and Rationalism, we will remain as vulnerable as NYC on 9/11. There is a reason why liberal academia and militant Islam have made strange bedfellows, they are both on suicide missions.

Think back to our cultural wisdom on September the 10th. We thought that if we were to go to war with another country, such as Germany, there were many stages on the escalation of belligerance that could be monitored: political maneuvering, rational dialogue, compromising treaties, endless talks. Even when the first attack occurred it would be far away: a steamship in the Atlantic, a naval base in the Pacific, a warship in the Gulf of Tonkin, and the demonstration of American strength would soon bring the perpetrators to the negotiating table. War was just the continuation of politics by other means, and as the world became more united through free trade, common language, and instant communication, the need for wars would cease and we would achieve The End of History.  Nine-eleven destroyed all those false hopes, exposing their faulty assumptions, and the Global War on Terror caught just about everyone by surprise. Not that the evidence wasn't there, it just wasn't understood.

So also PoMo has been a long time coming, and is still not understood. For PoMo doesn't want to win a rational argument with you, it wants you to lose all rational argumentation. The nadir of Modernism is not the optimistic atheism of a Sagan, nor even the pessimistic atheism of Monod, but the nihilistic theism Lewis describes in "That Hideous Strength".  For PoMo, self-reference is the suicide of thought.

Authenticity and the Denial of Absolutes

I have earlier said that PoMo was characterized by the denial of absolutes, and while this is true, it can also be misleading. One might think from this definition that PoMo must then have no absolutes, yet as the examples below will show, PoMo has many and conflicting absolutes. So in trying to use this criterion, a PoMo zombie can still elude detection by claiming belief in some bizarre factoid, making this litmus test more of a secondary confirmation than a primary identification.  PoMo solves this internal consistency problem in a different way than Russell or Ayer, they solve it by making the Process the absolute. As an analogy, think of the fellow who repairs high-voltage power lines. The voltage doesn't kill him as long as he is isolated from ground, as long as he doesn't become just a poor replacement for copper. So it isn't the voltage that kills, it is the difference in voltages, the current flowing through, which is to say, guns don't kill people, high speed bullets do.

PoMo denies the existence of Absolute Truth, but warmly accepts as absolute the Process of denying it.  (If your eyes are blurring and ears buzzing, it isn't you, it is the effect of self-reference on your brain.) This is not a particularly novel idea, for even in 1955 President Eisenhower famously said: "Our government makes no sense unless it is founded in a deeply felt religious faith -- and I don’t care what it is." So apparently our successful American culture of diversity is attributed to this belief in process, and this indifference to absolutes.

The trick to fixing power lines is getting on and off them without becoming a short circuit, and likewise the trick to becoming PoMo is hitching up an absolute process without becoming an absolute noun, never allowing a discussion of processes to stray into the subject or objects. In the past fifty years, the old standbys of male small talk, religion and politics, have become "no-go" zones, being replaced by sports and scandals, the search for Absolutes replaced by trivial pursuits. Note that this balancing act requires only one level of recursion, which turns out to be enough to confuse absolutist zero-level critics, while feigning confusion to two-level criticism. With a little practice, it can be just as easy as Russell's anti-recursion defense for Materialism.

So now that we have learned the basics of PoMo, how do we tell a friend from a foe, how do we tell a true believer from a bored undergraduate who just wants to fulfill his general education requirement? If this were the Catholic Church, it would be adherence to a set of absolute nouns. If this were the Protestant church, it would be adherence to a set of abstract nouns. But for PoMo, authenticity comes from the vigor of the process, the best denier of absolutes. Thus Howard Dean is better than John Kerry because his rants are stronger, and more convincing. Peter Wood's "A Bee in the Mouth"  talks about anger being authenticating for PoMo. All this is a consequence of making the actions, the process, most important.

Analogies

Now before we go further let me use the inductive logic equivalent of an artillery barrage, giving you many examples of how such an approach might be understood and appreciated.

In sea faring, before the invention of the compass and sextant, one had to employ "dead reckoning" to get to a destination, which I suppose describes the fate of all the mariners who tried it. But when a storm arose, one gave up trying to travel in a particular direction, one tried to drop enough anchors to avoid being beached and  just keep the bow pointed into the waves. When that failed, then run with the storm and try to minimize the difference in velocity between the wind, the waves, and you. Luke records just such an event in his travels in the Mediterranean, leaving him shipwrecked on Malta. Absolutists are trying to set a direction, and gauge progress by measuring the distance toward a destination, whereas PoMo is not merely trying to survive the storm, going with the flow, adjusting to the process, but throwing overboard all the anchors and cargo and sextants and sea captains as well.  Absolutists want to know their position, and will infer their velocity from a watch and two GPS readings, whereas PoMo despise their position, desiring only their velocity and inferring their acceleration  (authenticity) from changes in it. Absolutists value history, plotting journeys, estimating arrival times; PoMo not only devalue history, they value the instantaneous derivative, the forces causing to roll or pitch.

In computer modelling, one can set up the physics equations that are important, attempt to analytically find a solution to a simplified set, and then solve the full set of differential equations with numerical methods, comparing them to the previously found simple solutions. This is using a computer to arrive at a known destination. Or one can claim that at the microscopic level there are only a few simple physics equations to be solved, chop up the real world into billions of interconnected microscopic problems, and let the computer find a solution to the messy interaction. This is using the computer as if it were a virtual experiment, not knowing what the outcome will be. Absolutists use the computer as a tool, PoMo uses the computer as reality. Absolutists don't think computers will ever be able to think, PoMo not only believes that computers think, but asks them for advice, especially about global warming.

In politics, PoMo values tactics, polls, sound bites, and good hair, whereas Absolutists value planks, positions, experience, and integrity. In warfare PoMo values tactics, kills, casualties, weeping mothers, while Absolutists value strategy, accomplishments, progress, and proud fathers. In science, PoMo values passionate advocacy, consensus, disaster scenarios (that promote advocacy), whereas Absolutists value accuracy, precision, reticence, slow and steady progress. In finance PoMo appreciate real estate, derivatives, venture funds, investment banking, and Microsoft stock, whereas Absolutists value dividends, bonds, blue chips and gold bullion.    

So I think you will agree that as long as there have been people, there have been those who gravitate toward engineering and those that prefer sales. What is different about PoMo today is the animosity between the two. In H.G. Wells 19th century classic "The Time Machine", it is the engineers who run the future world, but in the 21st century it is the salesmen with the upper hand. For their sabotage of the engineer's world is not a wooden shoe dropped into the metal gears, but a cotton vest packed with metal balls.

In the next post, we hit all the hot buttons of the PoMo detonations...