Offended and Skeptical; The End of Discourse
Definition Excerpted from Wikipedia:
While encompassing a broad range of ideas, post-modernism is typically defined by an attitude of skepticism, irony or distrust towards grand narratives, ideologies, and various tenets of universalism, including objective notions of reason, human nature, social progress, moral universalism, absolute truth and objective reality. Instead it asserts to varying degrees that claims to knowledge and truth are products of social, historical or political discourses or interpretations and are therefore contextual and socially constructed. Accordingly, postmodern thought is broadly characterized by tendencies to epistemological and moral relativism, pluralism, irreverence and self-referentiality.
**Subtext: We will say anything for grant money**
Based on this definition for postmodernism, the skeptic™ approach to philosophy is just as postmodern as social justice. The main problem with post-modernism is that it is a system, which is evidently skeptical of everything humanity has done thus far according to the definition. As Jordan Peterson pointed out however, the more traditional interpretation of post-modernism nests an essentially Marxist critique within the framework of skepticism, with the end result that ordinarily acceptable social constructs, which have a foundation in reason and universalism, are replaced by essentially pseudo-Marxist constructs, which is a grave danger. The obvious problem with skepticism™ however, is that far from having a new, or old, framework nested within their critique of traditional postmodernism, the skeptic™ community is in fact a bridge to nowhere, potentially just as skeptical of everything as traditional neo-Marxist post-modernists, but without taking the critically important step of suggesting an alternative. This isn’t universally true, but equally important, it isn’t universally false; some skeptics have genuine philosophical positions, but especially amongst the lower tier skeptics, there is virtually no positive position offered except scientism.
**Skepticism™, now with left-wing Science™, Integrity™ you can trust!**
This is quite dangerous in its own way, although it seems quite logical at first view. The best way to think of why it might be a problem is to consider that the actual act of doing science is a non-ideological process, whereas scientism is the acceptance of the results of the process of science as effectively gospel, even though they ought to know that science, especially on the cutting edge is by no means infallible. Especially now with greater transparency brought by the Internet, we ought to know that sometimes people enlist science for the advancement of their political or monetary interests against the interests of the common good. An old example of this was the debate in the mid 20th century about the health effects of smoking. Naturally today, nobody could get away with doing that again, or could they? I think they still can, and are, getting away with exerting undue influence on the scientific community.
**Science is not an incorruptible process**
Perhaps we should take a step back from ruthless criticism of everything, iconoclasm and being called an intellectual iconoclast might seem a good thing, but bear in mind that those words represent acts of destruction. Perhaps we should just take one tiny step back from post-modernism to modernism and think over how we want our society to unfold over the next few decades. Yes, I agree that whatever can be destroyed by the truth should be, but that begs the question; can you really say that you know that the truth, as far as you know it, is true enough or complete enough, such that no negative consequences will arise as a result of that act of destruction?
**Iconoclasm makes the world needlessly ugly, one defacement at a time**
In the end, saying that you’re skeptical of something is turning out more and more to be a very ingenious variation on the trope of being perpetually offended at everything. Being skeptical while having nothing to offer is the new sophistry, and while it might make one seem intellectual, it is in fact a hollow sham. If all philosophy can offer after 2,416 years since the death of Socrates is the petulantly offended versus the petulantly skeptical, then philosophy is dead, discourse has reached its end, and we are poor beyond what is possibly expressible by the name of poverty.