I think often of Allan Bloom's 1987 book "Closing of the American Mind" when I read and/or listen to many of the current political discussions about America (and the collective West) on platforms like Spotify and Substack today. I think that most of the problems we have in America (and the collective West) right now are related to the total abandonment of the Enlightenment/Modern/Rationalist worldview, and a full transition to the post-modern/relativist/wholly subjectivist worldview. Bloom correctly posited that this later worldview--while seeming like freedom, tolerance, and a move toward "equality" to Baby Boomer youth in the 1960s--had actually led to imprisonment, intolerance, and a total closing of the American mind + destruction of the university system as a haven of free Socratic discussion, by the 1980s. I believe that we have gone exponentially further down this path than Bloom could have ever imagined in the late 1980s. Postmodernism has actually moved far outside the university (where it was still an interesting plaything of the mind when I was a student in the 1980s), and now permeates the pores of all American institutions. It is no surprise then that millennial woke globalist "leftists" absurdly embrace authoritarianism to "protect democracy." For that is where the irrationality of postmodern thinking leads: everything is about wielding coercive power, for there are no objective standards around which to unite. Without exerting coercive power and endlessly "building allies," your little subjective narrative bubble may collapse at any time, destroyed by the "racists" and "white supremacists" and "fascists." And with this postmodern worldview, the eventual endpoint, as Bloom correctly pointed out, is nihilism and destruction, which is what I see occurring all around me everyday in America. Thoughts on any of this? Great discussion, as always.
I think often of Allan Bloom's 1987 book "Closing of the American Mind" when I read and/or listen to many of the current political discussions about America (and the collective West) on platforms like Spotify and Substack today. I think that most of the problems we have in America (and the collective West) right now are related to the total abandonment of the Enlightenment/Modern/Rationalist worldview, and a full transition to the post-modern/relativist/wholly subjectivist worldview. Bloom correctly posited that this later worldview--while seeming like freedom, tolerance, and a move toward "equality" to Baby Boomer youth in the 1960s--had actually led to imprisonment, intolerance, and a total closing of the American mind + destruction of the university system as a haven of free Socratic discussion, by the 1980s. I believe that we have gone exponentially further down this path than Bloom could have ever imagined in the late 1980s. Postmodernism has actually moved far outside the university (where it was still an interesting plaything of the mind when I was a student in the 1980s), and now permeates the pores of all American institutions. It is no surprise then that millennial woke globalist "leftists" absurdly embrace authoritarianism to "protect democracy." For that is where the irrationality of postmodern thinking leads: everything is about wielding coercive power, for there are no objective standards around which to unite. Without exerting coercive power and endlessly "building allies," your little subjective narrative bubble may collapse at any time, destroyed by the "racists" and "white supremacists" and "fascists." And with this postmodern worldview, the eventual endpoint, as Bloom correctly pointed out, is nihilism and destruction, which is what I see occurring all around me everyday in America. Thoughts on any of this? Great discussion, as always.