Has anything done more harm to our civilization than post-modernism? The wholesale repudiation of truth itself, brewed up in our colleges and looniversities–and their favorite target is the Bible, God’s word.
So for these hypocrites there was never a historical Israel or Judah, no King David, no Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem–the whole Bible nothing but a fiction. They do not explain why the monuments and archives of ancient Assyria and Babylon describe abundant dealings with the kingdoms of Israel and Judah. Evidence means nothing to a “Biblical minimalist.”
The whole thing smells of fire and brimstone, doesn’t it?
I am here intending to write blog posts, but I keep falling asleep. I’ve been sitting here for–well, I have no idea how long.
Heckle and Jeckle, “the Talking Magpies,” were among my childhood favorites. The cartoon posted above (“The Power of Thought”) is the one I remember. In fact, I remember it more vividly now than I ever did before. It was released the year I was born.
In this cartoon, Heckle and Jeckle learn that because they’re cartoon characters, they can do anything they please. Anything! The only reality is… your “thought.” Anything you can imagine, you imagine it into being. Into and out of.
Were Heckle and Jeckle the first post-modernists?
If I say I’m a woman, that makes me a woman. If I say I was Joe Biden in a past life, I was. If I say I saw Ramesses II go into a bar with Mamie Eisenhower, you’d be a Racist if you said I didn’t.
What can be done with impunity in a cartoon–just chucking reality aside–cannot be done in real life. Reality is stubborn. If there’s a deep pot-hole stretched across the street, it doesn’t care whether you believe in it or not. No amount of delusionary thinking will save you from eviscerating your car. (I speak from sad experience.) You have to grant reality its due–and not drive into the pot-hole.
I wonder what university Heckle and Jeckle wound up teaching at.
Last night I selected Michael Crichton’s Eaters of the Dead to read in bed, and I stumbled over this passage in Crichton’s”Factual Note” in the back of the book. Please bear in mind that this was written in 1992, twenty-four years ago.
“… [T]he tendency to blur the boundaries of fact and fiction has become widespread in modern society. Fiction is now seamlessly inserted in everything from scholarly histories to television news. Of course, television is understood to be venal, its transgressions shrugged off by most of us. But the attitude of ‘post-modern’ scholars represents a more fundamental challenge. Some in academic life now argue seriously there is no difference between fact and fiction, that all ways of reading text are arbitrary and personal, and that therefore pure invention is as valid as hard research. At best, this attitude evades traditional scholarly discipline; at worst, it is nasty and dangerous. But such academic views were not prevalent twenty years ago, when I sat down to write this novel…”
In 1972 interllecturals still admitted there was such thing as truth. By 1992, they’d changed their tune. And here, in 2016, they never tell the truth if they can help it.
Saying that there’s no such thing as truth, no such thing as an objective fact–well, I guess they think it makes them sound smart.
But there are an awful lot of stupid smart people on the loose today.
Might he have consumed a bit more science fiction than was good for him? Or maybe he just missed the portal.
There is a strong suspicion that this driver might be a bit tetched, a few oars short of a trireme, but I have another theory.
I think this guy bought into the post-modern creed, energetically promoted by universities and collidges throughout the land, that reality itself is only a social construct. Reality isn’t really real. It’s only whatever you think it is.
The man’s car would tell you otherwise. Gee, talking cars would fit right into this scheme of things.
As an aside–funny, isn’t it, that businesses dealing with death and taxes were right next door to one another.
And aren’t you glad this had nothing to do with your Christmas week?