Who Loves Post-Modernism? - New Video

[r0ckyreed]

10 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

My Part 2 outline is nearly complete and it's super juicy.

Twice as juicy as Part 1.

@Leo GuraCould you post your outline after your video? I’d like to see how you structure your videos.

Edited September 6, 2024 by r0ckyreed

[hundreth]

 

[BojackHorseman]

Am currently watching the video.

I really tend to place myself as post-modernist from what I understand, I often really annoy most people with always balancing things and trying to be empathetic to even horrible persons, but I think that being able to think in a fragmented way and seeing many perspectives does not mean some things can't be as we say they are right now on some level
It doesn't have to be everything or nothing/extreme in all regards

A few thoughts I had while listening :

1) "if you put an elephant in a vaccum you cannot tell if it's big or small"
But nothing exists in a vaccum. We don't. Also, this is a data about size, that is not relative. So the comparison to more complex problems, even as a simplificaction, seems wrong

2) Basically we're saying, and I agree, that no country is right. Depends on the perspective. That there is no one truth. But there is. The one truth should be avoiding extinction of living organisms and planets. Avoiding suffering. Therefore, you could objectively say that the best way to do this, is to take simple decisions as sharing ressources, avoiding violence, etc (of course, having an authority strong and connected enough to enforce that, as humans are right now, seems impossible)
You can admit that there are many truth. This is actually undeniable. But over those, the bigger truth is that we should get to this general well-being of the livings.

3) Some things, like some aspects of science, have to be true. It doesn't mean that you can't have a lot of fun questionning many many other aspects of life. But questionning that the Earth is round when we have visual proof of it (and therefore not just biased humans point of views) is a waste of time. Go question ghosts, ki, whatever you want after that, but the world we see with our human bodies is this one. (there might be a million more layers to it, but this one layer here, I think we kind of nailed it on some basic aspects)

4) "There are many facts that you will overlook"/being selective about science.
Probably. But then, what? Is there even a few valuable exemples to this, where people could actually say "damn, we should really study this, why didn't we think about it earlier ?"

5) you can interpret text differently and that's all that matters in the end.
But you cannot deny the intent of the one who wrote it. If they're saying homosexuals should be punished, no matter where this comes from, then they mean it. The "them" that they are at this moment, which is all that matters to describe them as a person when they wanted to communicate something, undeniably wanted to mean this. So why try and say you could interpret that they're actually all for lgtbt or whatnot?
There's plenty of space in your head and the world to find the worldview you resonate with about a given problem. 
No need to try and force other's views about it. 

I didn't finish the video yet (funny how this advocates against me considering the "we see everything selectively" point of view), so I might be surprised, but I think those aspects of it probably won't suddenly be changed as the video continues.
So there's that already.

tl;dr is probably : Lots of things have to be put into perspective, but not everything has to.

(sorry if this was hard to read, english is not my first language)

Not just here to say "Wrong !" by the way, I actually love the video so far, makes me think, I didn't even knew/think about those terms so far

 

Edited September 7, 2024 by BojackHorseman

[Leo Gura]

35 minutes ago, BojackHorseman said:

That there is no one truth. But there is. The one truth should be avoiding extinction of living organisms and planets. Avoiding suffering. Therefore, you could objectively say that the best way to do this, is to take simple decisions as sharing ressources, avoiding violence, etc

No. This is precisely wrong.

You are not realizing that avoiding extinction and suffering are NOT the best. That is your bias.

You cannot say that suffering is bad, because suffering is an important part of life.

[Nilsi]

Nice video overall.

The version of postmodernism you’ve presented is mostly just Derrideanism, where it’s all about deconstruction and endless reinterpretation. However, many postmodern thinkers grappled deeply with what comes after "déconstruction" and weren’t simply nihilistic academics.

When Nietzsche (who, for some reason, you haven’t mentioned once throughout the entire talk) famously proclaimed the death of God—i.e., the death of grand narratives—in his 1882 work Die Fröhliche Wissenschaft (The Gay Science), this was only the beginning of what is considered his "mature works." It also marked the start of his Umwertung aller Werte ("revaluation of all values"), a project cut short by his mental deterioration. From this, we get concepts like the "Übermensch" and "Eternal Recurrence," both of which are about affirming life and embracing one’s "Will to Power"—that is, one’s own values and highest vision—despite fully accepting that there is no rational or transcendent justification for any of it.

Similarly, Gilles Deleuze expanded upon Nietzsche’s ideas. To put it briefly, he developed a post-metaphysical metaphysics of absolute experience, anticipating and paralleling the teachings of your sacred cow, Peter Ralston (who, to be fair, is quite on point within his domain of thought). Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition argues for the priority of difference—distinction over identity—while Capitalism and Schizophrenia is about "deterritorialization" and "reterritorialization," which Ralston would call "opening" and "grounding." Deleuze’s unfinished work, Immanence: A Life, written shortly before his tragic suicide, centers on the singularity of "a life." This contrasts with your favored Heideggerians, Derrida, and Dugin, who still posit a "Sein" beyond "Dasein"—a "Being" beyond "being." For Deleuze, however, "being" is already absolute "Being." This is, of course, what the death of God signifies, which is why Nietzsche said things like, “Mankind, in its most profound self-abasement, in its most profound self-alienation, has dared to invent an ideal world of being in order to devalue and afflict with suspicion the only world that exists.”

It would have been nice if you had actually engaged with the thinkers and ideas behind postmodernism more deeply. We could have had a much more profound and nuanced discussion on postmodernism and made meaningful contributions to the discourse. As it stands, your presentation is just a collection of loosely connected ideas that you’ve appropriated for your own purposes (whatever they may be). Fair enough, but don’t expect any serious intellectual to give you too much applause for what you’ve done here.

Edited September 7, 2024 by Nilsi

[Leo Gura]

@Nilsi There is a problem in that we have a big difference between "postmodernism" as a broad idea in our culture vs the actual technical philosophical work of specific post-modern philosophers. There is a disconnect in how to summarize the work of all these PM thinkers into a cohesive thing.

Most of the so-called post-modern philosophers like Derrida would not even regard or call themselves postmodernist.

PM has become a sort of gross abstraction, made all the worse by right-wing renditions of it.

The challenge with this topic is that if you get really technical and scholarly with it, there's not even going to be a "postmodernism" at the end of the day. Yet people still talk about the postmodern era.

Laymen and right-wingers still speak of postmodernism as an ideological movement or broad attitude. That's what my videos are focused on addressing, not the individual works of Derrida or whoever.

The point of my video is not to present a lecture on the history of philosophy but to help the mind make sense of important epistemic insights that modernism and premodernism misses.

Making a video about the techncial arguments of Derrida or Deleuze is just not useful to our work. No one but philosophy nerds cares about that and it will not be applicable in everyday life. Even my video is already quite disconnected for most from daily application.

This is one of the problems I have with academic philosophy: it may be scholarly rigorous, but it has zero application in real life. Nothing is actually made sense of. It's just the parroting of ideas some dead guy has said. You can have perfect technical knowledge of Derrida and it will get you nowhere, but you will waste several years of your life to achieve it.

Edited September 7, 2024 by Leo Gura

[Nilsi]

6 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

@Nilsi

Laymen and right-wingers still speak of postmodernism as an ideological movement or broad attitude. That's what my videos are focused on addressing, not the individual works of Derrida or whoever.

Fair enough.

7 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

@Nilsi

This is one of the problems I have with academic philosophy: it may be scholarly rigorous, but it has zero application in real life. Nothing is actually made sense of. It's just the parroting of ideas some dead guy has said. You can have perfect technical knowledge of Derrida and it will get you nowhere.

It depends on how you relate to it. Philosophy and theory orient your values and your life at large, which has radical implications for your everyday life—if you actually make the effort to live by it, instead of just writing dry academic papers, debating with other nerds, and jerking each other off over who has the most citations.

Nietzsche and Deleuze were explicitly anti-academic and practically oriented. This is philosophy to live by. But if you want to live your best life, you’ve got to get it right. I firmly stand by that.

[CARDOZZO]

Great video.

Making your content inclined to 2-Tier/Construct-Aware is one of the most intelligent decisions that you ever made in the history of Actualized.Org

Your unique strengths as a deep thinker are shaped to synthesize and connect deep meta-metaphysical paradigms, insights & POVs.

I suspect that from now on your true colors can shine through to become a pioneer on the philosophy of non-human states of consciousness and alien minds.

Philosophy is a way to live life. We need more deep thinkers reshaping societal structures, building compelling meta-narratives, POVs, paradigms, original thinking and insights to reunite philosophical and practical aspects of life.

For all the people reading this message, I encourage yourself to develop your consciousness at deep extreme levels of awareness and creativity to build a new earth. I don't know if you are aware about the fact that you can become a Newton, Tesla, Einstein, Leonardo da Vinci, Ken Wilber. We are alive and responsible to reshape reality. WAKE UP, DO THE WORK.

Edited September 7, 2024 by CARDOZZO

[Scholar]

Academia is profoundly driven by peer pressure. In poland, in 2014, when the german ethics board declared that incest between adult siblings should not be criminalized, a polish philosophy professor posted on his blog that he thought that they should have an open discussion about the question of incest in poland as well, clarifying that he was not for legalizing incest.

The public was so outraged about this that he was put under investigation for conduct unbecoming of a university member. He was accused of secretly participating in an incestuous relationship himself.

 

And this kind of attitude against consensual incest is prevalent in all academic settings. Anything that is not a clear condemnation of incest, any investigation that could in any shape or form validate incest, comes at significant social and academic cost to university members, whether it be researchers or professors.

 

It's fascinating to see that people truly do not change over time. You would think that, given spiral dynamics, people over time would grow more sophisticated and not be driven by inherent disgust mechanism as they were with homophobia, especially in settings that are supposed to be progressive and sensitive towards unjust discrimination. Yet you see the very progressives spear-heading the judgemental, emotional outrage about this topic, and showcasing a complete inability to engage with this in the sensitivity it requires. Any and all shaming, social and legal persecution is justified, all because of how disgusted people feel about, and the consequent mental acrobatics they do to justify the indulging in that disgust.

Edited September 8, 2024 by Scholar

[Leo Gura]

20 minutes ago, Scholar said:

You would think that, given spiral dynamics, people over time would grow more sophisticated

They ARE more sophisticated!

In the past they would have burned that guy at the stake.

[Scholar]

16 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

They ARE more sophisticated!

In the past they would have burned that guy at the stake.

True, I supposed my standards are just too high.

 

It just feels alienating to know that 95% of people are like this. How do I continue taking them seriously? It's hard not to feel like some sort of arrogant prick when everything everyone says and thinks is just so utterly ignorant.

 

It feels like I was born in the wrong century. Like, I'm walking around in ancient rome furious at how utterly stupid everyone is being.

Edited September 8, 2024 by Scholar

[Leo Gura]

1 minute ago, Scholar said:

like some sort of arrogant prick

Welcome to my world 

[Emerald]

@Leo Gura I was just watching the video you made on Post-Modernism, and I came across the part where you were saying the Post-Modernist would say, "The whole bible is a joke" and that only those who get it would know.

And it reminded me of an irony that occurred to me regarding the Bible.

Like the whole first book of the Bible states that 'eating of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil'  and gaining knowledge of good and evil is the original sin... and that seeing the world through the lens of good and evil is what produces shame and casts us out of paradise.

And then ironically, the Bible proceeds to be regarded as a book about the knowledge of good and evil... and people still see the Bible that way.

So, the first book of the Bible is basically like "It's the biggest sin you could possibly commit to read this book and take it as a moral compass."

[Nivsch]

Just finished the video. As always interesting to me and adds to me more things I didn't think about before, especially at the beginning with the sophisticated ideas and strengths the post modernism has, for example the other ways people can interpret the bible and god's intentions. But there was another even more insightful thing right before that I don't remember at this moment so I will have to hear it again.

Edited September 8, 2024 by Nivsch

[Sandroew]

I just finished too. There is a lot to it. I'm excited for future episodes, especially learning more about cognitive development. Going to check back later, I have some thoughts which I have to articulate for myself first. 

[Nivsch]

On 6.9.2024 at 2:30 PM, KingCrimson said:

Without medication, many of these individuals would pose a danger to society and struggle to survive, let alone lead fulfilling lives.

They have been conditioned for decades to think that what they feel is a malfunction, so of course this is not going to be fixed so fast for them.

Their condition and their perception of their condition are intimately intertwined and bi directionally self fulfilling all the time, so there is a gordian knot to solve very slowely.

Unfortunately the mainstream mental health system does not help with that but rather oftentimes makes the problem worse.

Edited September 8, 2024 by Nivsch

[Flint]

Around 1:30:00 in the video you mention the dichotomies and distinctions that are made by language e.g. men vs woman and the fact that postmodernim would consider one social construct dominating the other and that those dichotomies should be undone.

But isn't that essentially a value judgement of one social construct/idea/concept being better than the other ? The fact that one part of a dichotomy is dominant or superior over another is relative to a certain society or a certain point of view. So aren't Post modernists being biaised in saying that the dichotomy should be undone because they either say it relative to the idea of every perspective being equal in the abstract or in practice deconstructing a certain power structure those duality enforce in a specific society ?

Even the statement that one part of the duality is dominant compared to the other is very relative.

[enchanted]

On 05/09/2024 at 4:20 PM, Leo Gura said:

 

Who are these postmodernists that Peterson, Dugan, James Lindsay, modernists, and premodernists are so against?

Is it solely the SJWs on college campuses? 

Where else does postmodernism exist that has the modernists so riled up?

I'm not sure if the Leos video answered this question or not. 

 

[Leo Gura]

5 hours ago, enchanted said:

Who are these postmodernists that Peterson, Dugan, James Lindsay, modernists, and premodernists are so against?

In their deluded minds it's the entire left.

At this point, anyone who threatens the right-wing worldview is a "post-modernist".

Edited September 8, 2024 by Leo Gura

[ArcticGong]

Does geography count as a grand narrative? Then I’m a strong proponent of its validity. Because I’ve observed that naturally endowed countries tend to do better than less gifted countries. Not to discount human capital and ideas, but some places are just bound to be more successful. But I’m still a fan of many post-modern concepts.