28 of 32 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Illuminating., March 13, 2002
This review is from: The Death of Truth: What's Wrong With Multiculturalism, the Rejection of Reason and the New Postmodern Diversity (Paperback)
I found this book to be quite interesting, despite its repetitive style. Written by several Christian educators, it compares theism, modernism (or secular humanism), and postmodernism. They believe that postmodernism undermines all objective truth (i.e., truth that is true whether one believes it or not) and, therefore, is the death of truth, as we know it. Their thesis is that theism believes in objective truth as revealed by God; modernism believes in objective truth discovered through experience and observation, and postmodernism believes truth is subjective and determined by individuals. They aren't fans of modernism, but they believe postmodernism is downright pernicious
The basic tenants of postmodernism are:
· Reason and rationality are cultural biases, and truth, especially God's truth, doesn't exist.
· All lifestyles, religions, and worldviews are equally valid.
· The only real sin is criticizing someone else's views or moral choices.
· Opinions matter as much as evidence.
· Reality is in the mind of the beholder.
The authors believe postmodernism is the source of:
· The political correctness movement.
· Lower academic and discipline standards in public classrooms.
· Tolerance gone extreme and the rising lack of personal responsibility.
· The black community's rising separatism.
· The increasingly widespread belief that every hurt is intentional and legally actionable.
· Radical victimology.
· History is slanted in favor of white males.
· "Male" and "female" are socially created categories intended to enslave women to men.
· Hostility towards science.
To quote from page 20, "Postmodernists believe that truth is created, not discovered. They think things like reason, rationality, and confidence in science are cultural biases. They contend that those who trust reason -- and things based on reason, like science, Western education, and governmental structures -- unknowingly act out their European cultural conditioning. This conditioning seeks to keep power in the hands of the social elite."
Well, I like my European conditioning.
The authors take us through different subjects -- health, religion, science, history, literature, education, etc. -- and compare these 'isms. Not surprisingly, I find myself in agreement with parts of all three of the 'isms, on most subjects. For example, I accept the idea of cultural relativism, or paradigms. Moreover, I've often touted the idea that "reality is perception," not in an absolutist sense, but in the sense that what a person believes is true will govern that person's actions. In that sense I agree with the postmodernist view that people are never objective or rational. "Where we stand depends on where we sit." I also believe that words (semantics and syntax) have power, and how you describe something -- the words you use -- can influence others. However, I take this only up to a point, albeit that point may be where my ethnicity and class kick in. (That's certainly the case in the authors' view.)
I do not see any inherent contradiction between theism and modernism, between the Christian (or anyone else's) concept of God and science. And while I can accept some of the underlying concepts of postmodernism, I definitely do not like where the authors say affirmative postmodernism is taking us. The authors' simplistic approach, which is necessary for someone like me to take the time to read and grasp their thesis, probably necessitates the stark divisions between these 'isms and their absolutist definitions.
Going back to my fondness for my so-called European conditioning, I can see from recent history (i.e., at least the last 1,000 years or so) that European strengths have prevailed over all others with which we have come into contact. Europeans are an inquisitive, individualistic, scientific, warlike culture that hasn't hesitated, until the latter half of the 20th century anyway, to throw its weight around. It has serious flaws -- arrogance, callousness, and greed, to name a few -- but so do all other cultures. We have progressed politically and socially, however. Ironically, it may be that very progress that will bring about our demise. Blacks, for example, for all the righteousness of their cause as they struggled out of slavery and segregation in the United States, could not have done so had there not been significant numbers of white people championing their cause. Blacks have never had the strength of numbers to rise up militarily and throw off the yoke of slavery in this country (although it was often tried - more often, I suspect, than most people realize). In fact, it was only in the past fifty years that have they had the political strength to change the laws in this country and even then it took white support. Moreover, there has been no international pressure put on this country to change. It has always taken American white sympathy -- whites' sense of justice -- to enable those things to happen.
I'm not arguing that it should have been otherwise. Rather, I'm just recognizing what I see in history. Whites (along with help from Arabs and other black Africans) put blacks into slavery in the New World, and it was whites that pulled them out of it. In the United States, it was white Americans. To the extent that blacks refuse to acknowledge this is unfortunate, as is the extent to which white Americans are abrogating, or denying, the very qualities that made us great. White Americans of European heritage have just as much of which to be proud as do any other race, and vice versa. I worry, though, that the high rate of immigration into this country will dilute European traits (steeped in northwest and north central European heritage) and thereby destroy the very thing that makes this country worth immigrating to in the first place.
Well, that was a bit of digression, but I see a connection between the authors' description of postmodernism and the potential erosion of our European values and way of life. I endorse diversity and believe that our American culture benefits from it. I just don't want it to morph into something unrecognizable.
Anyway, this is an excellent book.
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