The Post Modern Narrative

Post Modernists tell us not to trust “narratives” or ideologies. They are artificial constructs, fictions used to deceive and dominate people. The classic boogeymen in post-modernist demonology are Christianity, Marxism, and Fascism. Despite their dramatic differences, the three worldviews all offer explanations of the world, a set of moral guidelines, and a sense of mission around which to organize my personal life. The post-modernist has the clairvoyance to see they are really nothing more than cultural props for the unjust power of the priests, the Party, or the State, respectively.

I’d like to describe another dominating ideological narrative. It goes like this:

“For all of human history, people were enslaved and deceived by ideologies and narratives. After five millennia of human history, a few philosophers finally figured out narratives were nothing more than lies told in the service of the socially powerful. The philosophers and academics heroically set out to expose, debunk, and deconstruct all the narratives and ideologies they could, suffering persecution from both the structures of power they set out to destroy, and tragically from the simpleton deceived by the system as well. Nonetheless, the academics and deconstructionists pressed on, knowing that someday all humankind would cease believing in any ideology or narrative—or anything at all, really—and therefore be free.”

The post-modern ideology has an all-embracing explanation of the world, a set of moral guidelines (the imperative to debunk and deconstruct), and a sense of mission (to set people free from their ignorance).

In my last blog entry, I wrote how deconstructionists patently fail to explain how their words and ideas are anything more than the power-grabbing fictions they claim all other words and ideas are. In the same vein, their post-modernist cousins cannot explain how their interpretation of intellectual history amounts to anything more than the latest—and rather shoddy—entry in the catalogue of ideologically suspect narratives. The po-mo narrative rather conveniently entrenches the power of academics specially trained to see the “real” meaning behind truth-claims and “liberate” people from their ignorance.

The next time you argue with a post-modernist or deconstructionist, just ask them “What about your ideas? What about your narrative? Where does it come from? What makes it true?”

Meanwhile, the obvious question is, where do we go from here? It feels like a philosophical impasse, or deadend. If western thought has come to an inability to say anything meaningfully, can we rescue the old narratives? Would we want to?