After Postmodernism; The Dialectic of the Gun

Invariably according to Nietzsche every idea is destroyed by nihilism. The myths we tell ourselves reveal themselves to be nonsense if we question them thoroughly enough. Once I thought that there was a way to prove something, and I think I have for myself, and I still hold out hope that something will be proven beyond all doubt, even though I don’t think the disease can be stopped any longer.

 

Nietzsche diagnosed it correctly; there is no construal of truth that can create a lasting consensus any longer, the skeptical, philosophical mind has undone what it has created with startling ease. Every truth can and will be proven false, all it takes is time. Reason is on the verge of bankruptcy, and the poverty of the petulantly skeptical nihilists is no better than the SJWs who have their myth of Marxism behind them, in fact they may be worse for having no myth at all, no construal of truth with which to organize the world. Postmodernism and its dangerous premise that even reason and science is a patriarchal formuation, is the last breath of philosophy, a dangerous remnant and a prelude to dangerous times, churning debris that has not yet spent its energy in the sand and come to rest.

 

You can even see the effects of this now in that we can’t have honest intellectual discussions any more beyond our ideological in-groups; even the rules of the game of debate and the conventions of philosophical language aren’t universally true enough to save reason from its collapse. Consider what happens theoretically if we sit down for an honest intellectual discussion, lets say I have beliefs, and you’re a skeptic. If Nietzsche is right, as he seems to be, and all conceivable truths are false if questioned relentlessly enough, then I have two choices in the end:

 

1) I can either play the game of philosophy with you until you figure out how to win and I can be good natured about loosing, or 2) I can decide that regarding whatever we are debating, if my assertions are exposed as false, it would be such a human catastrophe, that I’m morally justified in shooting you.

 

**As judge, jury and executioner, I find you guilty of corrupting the youth of Athens**

 

This is the dialectic of the gun, the last position that will be held in the history of philosophy, and the end of the intellect. This ought to be indefensible, the refuge of the incompetent, but notice if you will, that it is the only logical outcome in which I win decisively -- even if only according to my in group -- and that this idea is increasingly common. The dialectic of the gun is the terrorist’s philosophy, and the philosophy of the diehard communist, whose ideas are in disrepute, just like everyone else's ultimately, but whose will to power is still very much alive. It’s the philosophy of shutting off the mind for a sensuous union with a divine something or other or a supposed earthly utopia, now spattered with the blood of innocents and tainted with a twinge of a murderer’s doubt – or not in the case of Islam and Allah, whose murders are considered holy.

 

This is a deeply ugly thought, that in some not-too remote future the mind will be viewed with suspicion, blasphemy laws will be instituted, to assure the paper palace of arbitrary views and we will all be regimented into a totalitarian order to save us from ourselves. This will be the end of philosophy, its Hellenic light occulted forever; the great triggering will stamp out the greatness of the mind.

 

Further Reading:

http://www.iep.utm.edu/nihilism/