The Closing of the American Mind; and worse.

[warpus]

I don't have much hope for the "current university generation" myself, but the thing is that everyone and their grandma are enrolling in college these days. Gone are the days when you thought about your future after highschool and then made a decision on how to proceed - everyone is enrolling in college after high school. Almost everyone, anyway.

Of course, given that this is almost everyone, you are going to run into the problem of "lowest common denominator", especially when dealing with 20 year olds who are finally on their own, without their parents around. This isn't some intelligentia hive-mind, the brightest and most promising young adults, the future leaders of the world, this is for the most part a hive-mind of drunk college kids who don't know how to spell "there".

Numbers are up and standards are down. Meanwhile butthurt student unions rule the land. How could you really expect the college setting to be a place where minds are generally opened? Heck, most people don't even really go there to learn something new.

 

[Borachio]

I don't find this very helpful.

Obviously, Americans in the past were more racist, etc., but that doesn't mean ideological changes have been uniformly good. Your attitude expresses the view that the past was full of closed-minded bigots with nothing useful to say. And really, if we can say the "American mind" is closed now, it doesn't matter all that much whether it was more open in the past. Unless you're suggesting his book should have been titled "The Closed American Mind," but I'm quite sure you're not.

Well, no. It isn't very helpful, I agree.

But then my intention wasn't to be helpful. My intention was to be flippantly irreverent.

Now, you can criticize me for being flippantly irreverent* if you wish. And why wouldn't you? (If you're so inclined.)

But on the grounds of not being "very helpful", your observation of my post clearly fails.

*A position which I can defend, more or less successfully, if such is your heart's desire, btw.

 

[Terxpahseyton]

One point: IMO this relativistic tolerance-ideology people refer to in this thread isn't really post-modernist.

To explain: You can intellectually embrace something and/or you can emotionally embrace something. If you only intellectually embrace post-modernism, you never really embrace it at all. But many people instinctively shun away from emotionally embracing post-modernism, because their "I need to be integrated into my social group"-instinct kicks in, telling them they need to emotionally adhere to socially established values / morals, or they are at risk of being kicked out (which used to probably mean their death, back in the day)

Because if you follow through with post-modernism and actually let it into your heart, you don't arrive at some tolerance-ideology, you arrive at the lack of an ideology. And existing values / ideoligies etc. in the end only are toys and/or tools to play / work with as it pleases / serves you. That is actual open-mindness followed through. Not tolerance.

Also note: If you think this means that you are a selfish dick you have not understood a thing. Though it will entail an ultimate acceptance of the selfish part in you.

That relativistic tolerance-ideology is shallow pop-post-modernism.

 

[Truthy]

That's been a confusion throughout this thread, hence the paradox of tolerance conversation earlier, but I was at a loss as to how to explain it. In my response to jackelgull I noted, but then deleted, that I was using "tolerance" to refer to what Bloom was angry about, which is better encapsulated as "openness." Thanks for clearing that up.

 

[Hygro]

There's a difference between being post-modern and being of post-modernism. The intellectual left is the former, the entire Republican insurgency is the latter, to give an easy example.

I invite Terx to synthesize this with his thoughts/emotions distinction.

 

[Terxpahseyton]

Hm I think I kinda know what you mean. Something like that being post-modern is about actually being it while being of post-modern is about just another ideology which was brought to live by the vacuum created by post-modernism, or something like that?

I am sure there is something to it, but I have trouble to synthesize this with my thoughts. The reason being that I am not sure collective post-modernism can actually exist, at least not in our anonymous mass societies.

All social relations - and most of all those of such mass societies - seem to crucially rely on set value-structures. Weather clearly defined or unspoken. Which is the anti-thesis to post-modernism.

Given a small enough and well enough connected and like-minded group, one could perhaps achieve that post-modernism informs the group's value-structure so well that it is close enough to collectively being post-modernist that we may simply say so.

However, in large impersonal groups, I am far from certain that this is even possible. Rather I think, however open-minded the members of a large group try to be, they can only organize themselves by relying on a significant measure of closed-mindedness, i.e. a set value-structure.

So while post-modernism may inform value-structures of large collectives, it - in contrast to the individual level - can IMO not replace them. Which perhaps is what the entire point of the book discussed comes down to (haven't read it).

As a consequence, I would strictly differentiate between referring to a single person or a section of society or society itself, with regards to post-modernism.

That's been a confusion throughout this thread, hence the paradox of tolerance conversation earlier, but I was at a loss as to how to explain it. In my response to jackelgull I noted, but then deleted, that I was using "tolerance" to refer to what Bloom was angry about, which is better encapsulated as "openness." Thanks for clearing that up.

Ha, it doesn't happen often that I get very philosophical and as a result things become clearer for people. Glad to have helped

 

[Tahuti]

Post-modernism is essentially the struggle between different value systems as a value system in its own right. It has currently primacy in the West alone, except for possibly for the Post-Soviet nations and Israel, which are still in the Modernist phase of European civilisation.

Before Post-modernism was popular in the West, you had Modernism, which was based on the Enlightenment. Before the Enlightenment, Christianity dominated Europe. Post-Modernism was a natural outcome of the struggle between several values: The increasing hostility between Modernist sub-values of Equality (represented in Social democracy and Communism) and Liberalism (represented by Libertarianism to name one) and the arrival of values imported by non-Western immigrants and the increasing power of non-Western nations in global politics. Thus, the new core value of all of Western society - at least in North America and Western Europe - became the struggle of values. Which Post-modernism fundamentally is.

 

[Terxpahseyton]

Post-modernism is essentially the struggle between different value systems as a value system in its own right.

I don't think so at all.

You always have a struggle of different values and what I take post-modernism to stand for certainly means a whole lot more than to elevate that struggle to a virtue. It changes the whole struggle itself, since you are not even bound by the very idea what a value-system is, let alone by how different value systems are composed. You can oscillate from one single element of one value-system to another element of another value-system, you can compose your very own value-system or altogether forget about value-systems and just think in concrete and practical terms, you can pretty much do anything.

The only requirement is a lack of dogmatism.

That is what post-modernism means to me. Maybe you have just a different phenomena in mind you also call post-modernism. Maybe my understanding of post-modernism is too broad or too radical. But I am not interested in debating its exact definition, as long as we can agree that it is not about tolerance but open-mindedness.

It has currently primacy in the West alone

I don't think it has primacy anywhere. Please take a look around. Western collective narratives are as dogmatically value-driven as ever. Just differently.

But there are post-modernists everywhere. And quit a few of them have no idea what post-modernism is.

They are often stigmatized as cynics (though I mean not to say that cynicism was identical to post-modernism), as though not having something to dogmatically believe in and cling to necessarily meant that you have lost something important and are to be felt sorry for. That is the world we live in. Not one where post-modernism holds primacy. That it only does in academia. But people don't feel academia and society sure as hell does not depend on academia for its values.

------------------------------------------------------------

edit-reply to the next post after mine:

@ Tovergieter and his post below me (I sadly can not reply with another post since this would ruin my beautiful postcount!)

I would have hoped that you could have made the effort to explain how we did not contradict each other, but I also saw the great danger that we might be talking past each other, talking about different things. Hence why I already mentioned that we may simply have a different understanding what post-modernism really means. But honestly, I think the main fault for that would lie with you, since you seem to use post-modernism in a very message- or goal-orientated way, i.e. in a way that fits what you want to grind your gears about. On second thought, however, maybe I do the same

But I at least have made clearl what post-modernism in itself means to me, by now. From you I still miss that, you have only used it in a very contextualized fashion so far.

Post-modernism is a murky word, I suppose and yes, I can also understand why discussion on it can hence frustrate people.

I got the impression you got a narrow-minded perspective on the values, though. Maybe not the kind of values you think of are in vogue. But some most definitely are. Capitalism creates its very own value-system, for instance. Its very own morality. Even if it is not the kind of morality we traditionally mean the word morality to stand for. But the functional role is just the same.
Moreover - look at the large picture of the political discourse. It all is about values and value-based justification. Not very post-modernist, at all, IMO.
Look at your average Joe on the street. They quit often think in terms of values, of good and bad, of do's and dont's.
Not post-modernism.

 

[Tahuti]

I don't think so at all.

You always have a struggle of different values and what I take post-modernism to stand for certainly means a whole lot more than to elevate that struggle to a virtue. It changes the whole struggle itself, since you are not even bound by the very idea what a value-system is, let alone by how different value systems are composed. You can oscillate from one single element of one value-system to another element of another value-system, you can compose your very own value-system or altogether forget about value-systems and just think in concrete and practical terms, you can pretty much do anything.

The only requirement is a lack of dogmatism.

That is what post-modernism means to me. Maybe you have just a different phenomena in mind you also call post-modernism. Maybe my understanding of post-modernism is too broad or too radical. But I am not interested in debating its exact definition, as long as we can agree that it is not about tolerance but open-mindedness.

Except for the bolded part, I have no disagreement here and see no contradiction with my point. I guess that's why debates on the topic have such a bad reputation.

Note that Postmodernism was originally a literary movement which had some philosophical overtones but weren't philosophical in itself: Philip Dick and William Gibson were literary Postmodernists. Philosophers have since borrowed a lot from them.

I don't think it has primacy anywhere. Please take a look around. Western collective narratives are as dogmatically value-driven as ever. Just differently.

Well, Western collective narratives are as stigmatised in the West as everywhere else, possible even more. China is clearly grounded in Confucian philosophy, whereas the West had more or less that in the Enlightenment, then lost it. We are remarkably self-critical yet without any overarching value to replace the ones we are criticising.

I don't have much hope for the "current university generation" myself, but the thing is that everyone and their grandma are enrolling in college these days. Gone are the days when you thought about your future after highschool and then made a decision on how to proceed - everyone is enrolling in college after high school. Almost everyone, anyway.

Of course, given that this is almost everyone, you are going to run into the problem of "lowest common denominator", especially when dealing with 20 year olds who are finally on their own, without their parents around. This isn't some intelligentia hive-mind, the brightest and most promising young adults, the future leaders of the world, this is for the most part a hive-mind of drunk college kids who don't know how to spell "there".

Numbers are up and standards are down. Meanwhile butthurt student unions rule the land. How could you really expect the college setting to be a place where minds are generally opened? Heck, most people don't even really go there to learn something new.

I have decided to drop out because I thought exactly that.

 

[Formaldehyde]

School is something you do until you just can't stand it anymore.

It has always been the least common denominator which has set the level. But the level seems to have changed quite a bit since I last went.

 

[Terxpahseyton]

I have decided to drop out because I thought exactly that.

I came to the same conclusion, but a different consequence. I enrolled in STEM.

 

[Sir Bugsy]

I don't have much hope for the "current university generation" myself, but the thing is that everyone and their grandma are enrolling in college these days. Gone are the days when you thought about your future after highschool and then made a decision on how to proceed - everyone is enrolling in college after high school. Almost everyone, anyway.

Of course, given that this is almost everyone, you are going to run into the problem of "lowest common denominator", especially when dealing with 20 year olds who are finally on their own, without their parents around. This isn't some intelligentia hive-mind, the brightest and most promising young adults, the future leaders of the world, this is for the most part a hive-mind of drunk college kids who don't know how to spell "there".

Numbers are up and standards are down. Meanwhile butthurt student unions rule the land. How could you really expect the college setting to be a place where minds are generally opened? Heck, most people don't even really go there to learn something new.

I am a university professor at a state school. I haven't seen the micro-offendedness that The Atlantic article discusses. Perhaps because the majority of our students do not come from the privileged classes. Perhaps because these are blue collar kids with pretty thick skins. At least in New England, I have hope for the future.

 

[Flying Pig]

I imagine most of the posh students are too busy drinking and playing rugby to be too worried by 'micro-aggressions' - I suspect that the 'problem', as with nearly everything the media tells us is going horribly wrong with our teenagers, is a tiny one that is blown out of proportion to sell papers.

 

[Tahuti]

I came to the same conclusion, but a different consequence. I enrolled in STEM.

I was already in a STEM major (Computer Science) when I made that decision.

 

[Terxpahseyton]

That just makes no sense.