JIM ‘PAPPY’ MOORE: Post Modernism Philosophical Blather

By Jim “Pappy” Moore

A good friend wrote me recently, sending an article on the Post Modernists and how their dark, condemning philosophy of the past has infested much of academia the past half century. The article summarized the phenomenon. They believe that all the pillars of Western civilization are unjustified suppositions which amount to nothing. They do this while enjoying all the benefits of those centuries of development of the roads they use, the utilities they are provided, the food they eat, the water they drink, the sewer systems that serve them, and the internet they surf on every waking minute.

I recall forty years ago when my friend and I had a discussion about the things humans must have before they can even think about other things like philosophies.

1. Food
2. Water
3. Protection from the elements
4. Safety from other humans and animals

Until one has these things, philosophy doesn’t mean much. I can’t help but think the people who create these self-involved philosophies where everyone who came before them is an idiot have far too much time and far too little threats to their survival. They are very adolescent in nature. No one has ever been as wonderful as they are, and no one ever will be. The past to them is full of lesser humans who lack their sophistication and higher status. Again, too much time, too safe, and too smugly self-involved. Online there is a meme which one sees often that goes thusly:

Some of you

have never been 

punched in the face

and it shows.

I’m in the camp of those who think we all stand on the shoulders of giants who made our lives easy so we have time to ponder the fuzz in our navel. I am certain that post modernists do not have anyone who could hunt and kill an animal, dress it, cure it, and preserve its meat for future consumption. Nor could they dig a well, or a septic tank, or plant a garden, or do anything which involves keeping oneself alive beyond paying rent on an apartment and using utilities long since created by others. They likely live sustained by fast food services, having their food prepared by others and delivered to their door by gasoline powered autos they probably abhor.

The pomposity of those “thinkers” knows no bounds. That’s why I think of them as adolescents, smug in their certainty no one, no generation, has ever been so cool. Of course, those are the people who become foot soldiers for the likes of the Bolsheviks, Nazis, Mao’s Red Brigade, Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge, and now Antifa. To kill fellow citizens one has to have intolerance and undeserved self-righteousness.

I would not worry about these types, but they seem to be gaining the upper hand in Western countries. I keep hoping the pendulum will soon swing back. Every generation seems to produce some self-appointed, self-anointed types who assume their every thought is golden, and that all who came before them were racist, sexist, know-nothings undeserving of respect.

Copyright 2023, Jim “Pappy” Moore. All rights reserved.