/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.22050346]

It’s ironic, really. Postmodernism was cooked up after the horrors of the two World Wars, because people thought the “old values” led them into that horrible carnage. They thought those values had to be torn down and replaced with new ones, so they set out to “deconstruct” everything.

But now, some eighty or so years later, that same postmodernism they pioneered is leading us towards the exact same kind of carnage. The whole “there is no such thing as objective truth” approach has turned out to be EXTREMELY appealing to liars (who woulda thunk?), and now everyone has retreated into their own little universes, which reinforce their worldviews and teach them to despise all others.

People have no psychological defenses against the most blatant of falsehoods nowadays, and it looks like everything’s about to explode. The movement has failed on every level.

[Anonymous No.22050361]

“Minimalist” postmodern architecture – originally meant to critique capitalism – has become the gold standard precisely because it’s cheap. The overwhelming majority of us still find these buildings hostile and alienating. But the style still thrives, because capitalism loves cutting corners on the financial inessentials that make our lives tolerable.

The right has now learned how to wield the sword of “there is no truth,” and turned into the alt-right. Great progressive thinkers, meanwhile, can’t bring themselves to criticize even the most medieval of regressive ideologies nowadays, up to and including Radical Islam.

And let’s not forget the postmodern mindvirus of transgenderism: a lie built on lies so brazen that it beggars belief. Even I, good liberal that I was, didn’t want to see the paradoxes in that last one. I spent years trying to re-brainwash myself – looking for logical consistencies that were never there – before I was forced to accept the inevitable conclusion.

It’s really incredible what some people will believe. Some ideas are so unbelievably stupid that only the greatest of minds are agile enough to perform the mental gymnastics required to justify their lies. And now we’re all divided, and the wolves are at the door, and the barbarians are at the gate. Our future looks grim, and the art wasn’t even any good.

[Anonymous No.22050383]

None of the postmodernists fought in the wars. The world wars offended their sensibilities, but instead of accepting that industrial technology was what led humanity to mass slaughter, they looked at values that may or may not have led to industrial technology simply because giving up the air conditioning and cruises would’ve been a step too far.

[Anonymous No.22050394]

>>22050346
About a 100,000,000 died in the world wars. Postmodernism didn't end war, so far it's a huge improvement and it's not even close. If China invades Taiwan and we get World War III, we'll see what happens, but until then this pronouncement is premature.

[Anonymous No.22050408]

>>22050361
This is the thing though. If postmodernists hated capitalism, why direct your ire at the culture and values that capitalism was a deliberate revolt from? Did the post-modernists even matter anyway? The smartphone has done more to change how we view the world than any academic ever did. We’ve been on a runaway train since the old aristocracy was thrown off and the machine was unleashed on the world. The collapse of grand narratives probably has less to do with post-modern deconstruction and more to do with the inability to imagine anything resembling a positive public future.

[Anonymous No.22050541]

>>22050383
What does this mean? One of the everpresent discussions in postmodernism, both philosophy and literature, is exactly that. It's not the "impactful" stuff, because of course industry and government suppress it by signalboosting the less-salient aspect of academic thought. Read actual theory before commenting on it.

[Anonymous No.22050556]

>>22050394
I don't know. Perhaps it is premature. But I'm just talking about what's happening in my own country, here in the United States. And in the U.S., things are becoming polarized to the point where it looks like there's gonna be bloodshed.

Everyone on every side, regardless of their political bent, now seems to think that democracy and free speech are outdated when it doesn't benefit them, and that large segments of the population need to be either reeducated, disenfranchised, or killed.

So I'm worried. It looks like both sides are fast approaching a point where "final solution" measures are seen as their only options. It's gotten so much worse in only twenty years, and these maniacs STILL don't think it's gone far enough. I shudder to imagine what it'll look like in another couple decades.


>>22050408
I'm not gonna pretend technology had nothing to do with this. The great lie of the internet is that it can make anything you do seem normal. And people can now build communities around any horrible thing you can think of.

But the technology only accelerated what was already happening. These trends were around well before the internet got started, and the only difference now is that we're moving even faster towards the inevitable. So I don't blame the tech, I blame the people who are using it. Technology changes; people don't.

[Anonymous No.22050595]

>>22050394
>About a 100,000,000 died in the world wars
And? So what?

[Anonymous No.22050602]

>>22050595
People die when they are killed.

[Anonymous No.22050603]

>>22050346
It's the jews ya dingus

[Anonymous No.22050627]

>>22050346
lmao nah russia's imploding as we speak and China's still poor. :)

[Anonymous No.22050632]

>>22050603
mouthbreather, society sucks because of brainwashed shits like you

[Anonymous No.22050667]

There’s kind of a schism in postmodern thought where in theory there is no real Truth, but in practice the most level-headed advocates of it act as if there is one. Jameson, lyotard, Baudrillard, Deleuze, Derrida, Althusser, Adorno, Lacan. All of these men write as if they are speaking of the Truth and not from a certain perspective albeit with the exception of Deleuze who’s Truth was very similar to a Spinozan becoming and as such was the only real radical break with traditional western ontology and metaphysics. I can’t speak to the importance of this schism but all my reading of it has led me to understand that the abandonment of Truth is merely a formality for these thinkers and that the logical frameworks they use are still rooted in an Aristotlean framework of excluding the middle. I’ve begun to work out a little theory that the formal abandonment of Truth actually amounts to a broadening of the horizon of what is considered worthy of being put to the test of reason. The frameworks themselves — dialectics, process metaphysics, becoming metaphysics, etc — are also strained in their applications to the wide variety of material now opened up to philosophy. The true break with postmodernism would be a Reason that could analyze x with y approach and then theta with phi approach with no internal contradictions. Essentially, philosophy would have to become a toolbox of ways of understanding under the aegis of a master-approach that would situate the respective theories without influencing their internal structure or conclusions. The easiest way for this to occur would be to put ethics as the primary discipline before all others but I’m not sure that it has the depth or independence from ontology and metaphysics to do so. Levinas seems as good a shot as any for new ways out of our confusing slog

[Anonymous No.22050672]

>>22050667
no, postmodernism has never said there is no real truth

[Anonymous No.22050706]

The world wars were caused by the previous system of values, though

[Anonymous No.22050721]

>>22050346
>But now, some eighty or so years later, that same postmodernism they pioneered is leading us towards the exact same kind of carnage.
no it's not
>now everyone has retreated into their own little universes, which reinforce their worldviews and teach them to despise all others
yeah this is called tribalism. it's only been around for the past... few million years

none of what you're saying can be ascribed specifically to postmodernism, the human race is just shitty in general

[Anonymous No.22050781]

>>22050394
I hate postmodernism but I agree with this.

[Anonymous No.22050808]

being a neon gnatsi (aka anyone right of stalin), you dont have any of these problems
simple as
you believe in modernism, futurism, values that put a man on the moon
you read 1950s sci fi
you believe science (and engineering, industry etc) are amazing while also believing races are unequal, you dont need to boost with 7 trillion vaccines, and you dont think you need to eat ze bugz aka moralizing politicizing faggotry that passes for progressive modernity of our age

progress, to me, is space shit AND less nonwhites around

[Anonymous No.22051212]

>>22050706
yes, thank you. the world wars were the last medieval wars. that sequence was started by the old aristocracy. you can't wage those kind of wars anymore with the kind of technology we have. ww2 wasn't the dawn of a new era, it was the end of the old one. that's the same thing? well, not quite.