Postmodernism, cont.

                                                          Christopher Lasch (1932-1994)

At the extreme fringe of philosophy, you get an epistemic relativism that goes all the way down. Precisely this variant is most popular in the culture at large. It is easier for one thing: ‘x is true or good because I desire or need it to be true or good’ (or ‘my identity-group so desires or needs it to be true or good’). This is nonsense but powerful nonsense (cf. witch-burning in the past). I think its power is connected with the dominant personality type produced by consumer capitalism.

   I will make my background assumptions explicit.

·        We need to live in a certain kind of community to develop our nature – our highest most defining capacities. Part of this is contingent: whether a person becomes a craftsman, actor, teacher, physicist, or farmer is contingent; learning to be good at something and to be able to live in fellowship with others dedicated to that goal is essential.

·        We are less than fully human if we do not make virtues part of our being. You only become honest, just, courageous, discerning, etc. by doing honest, just, courageous, or discerning things. Without living in fellowship with others in a community – including friendship, a great gift – which values such virtues you cannot make them a part of yourself. You will be left with your desires just as they are, focused on you, unrefined by the higher needs of living in fellowship with others. (Cicero defines the tyrant as the person who is incapable of living in community with others.)

·        We need roots: ties to a family, a place in the world we care deeply about. We need a home in other words.

·        You can take this or leave it but I think we need hope, faith, and love as metaphysical or theological virtues – that is, as spiritual demeanors. I don’t see how a person can affirm life or find themselves loveable without them. I think this has roots in our mortality and our being subject to great misfortune.

·        We share a common humanity with others, and that has deep moral implications. I love the particular; I love diversity if for no other reason than places on earth are diverse. But without an underlying solidarity with all of humanity, we cannot explain good or evil and thus are incomplete. This absence of this sense of common humanity leads to othering, reducing people to categories. That is a major root of evil.

  

That is an important part of my (and not only my) picture of human nature.

Capitalism (globalization) as a totalizing economy destroys community and the dignity of work, alienates people from their roots (from a sense of belonging: no wonder ‘identity’ politics are so prevalent), encourages vice (greed, sloth, covetousness, violence, etc.), and reduces people and the earth to commodities. The factory worker to the craftsman can serve as an analogy for capitalist vs. human work. The sprawling urban center where people are mostly strangers to one another pursuing their own private interests vis-a-vis the southern Indiana farming community that my great grandparents were part of is an analogy for the loss of roots, our accursed social mobility (or perhaps the airport – masses of strangers from everywhere and nowhere with no interest in each other going on their separate journeys). I could go on. All of this is supported by an ideology of individualism and “success” defined as wealth and status – or today, by finding an identity to latch on to: leaving home and making it big. Or today by self-definition, appearing before others as the self-defined self, usually with the aid of purchased products. I have no time to do a thorough analysis here. I will just quote Christopher Lasch:

 

“Every society reproduces its culture, its norms, its underlying assumptions, its modes of organizing experience— in the individual, in the form of personality.”

 

“Our growing dependence on technologies no one seems to understand or control has given rise to feelings of powerlessness and victimization. We find it more and more difficult to achieve a sense of continuity, permanence, or connection with the world around us. Relationships with others are notably fragile; goods are made to be used up and discarded; reality is experienced as an unstable environment of flickering images. Everything conspires to encourage escapist solutions to the psychological problems of dependence, separation, and individuation, and to discourage the moral realism that makes it possible for human beings to come to terms with existential constraints on their power and freedom.”

 

“Notwithstanding his occasional illusions of omnipotence, the narcissist depends on others to validate his self-esteem. He cannot live without an admiring audience. His apparent freedom from family ties and institutional constraints does not free him to stand alone or to glory in his individuality. On the contrary, it contributes to his insecurity, which he can overcome only by seeing his “grandiose self” reflected in the attentions of others, or by attaching himself to those who radiate celebrity, power, and charisma. For the narcissist, the world is a mirror, whereas the rugged individualist saw it as an empty wilderness to be shaped to his own design.”

 

“In a society that dreads old age and death, aging holds a special terror for those who fear dependence and whose' self-esteem requires the admiration usually reserved for youth, beauty, celebrity, or charm. The usual defenses against the ravages of age—identification with ethical or artistic values beyond one's immediate interests, intellectual curiosity, the consoling emotional warmth derived from happy relationships in the past—can do nothing for the narcissist. Unable to derive whatever comfort comes from identification with historical continuity, he finds it impossible, on the contrary, "to accept the fact that a younger generation now possesses many of the previously cherished gratifications of beauty, wealth, power and, particularly, creativity. To be able to enjoy life in a process involving a growing identification with other people's happiness and achievements is tragically beyond the capacity of narcissistic personalities.”

To the performing self, the only reality is the identity he can construct out of materials furnished by advertising and mass culture, themes of popular film and fiction, and fragments torn from a vast range of cultural traditions, all of them equally contemporaneous to the contemporary mind.* In order to polish and perfect the part he has devised for himself, the new Narcissus gazes at his own reflection, not so much in admiration as in unremitting search of flaws, signs of fatigue, decay. Life becomes a work of art, while "the first art work in an artist," in Norman Mailer's pronouncement, "is the shaping of his own personality.”

 

I see the prevalence of the narcissistic personality type as a sociological phenomenon more than a moral critique. It is usually a “defense mechanism,” a way of protecting the self against an absence of love and all the spiritual needs that capitalist society cannot meet. We are all affected by the structures that give rise to it: weak nuclear families (if that); social mobility and atomization; loss of roots; cut off from history; consumerism and advertising, which encourages consumption as lifestyle; commodification of practices that could promote true character, like sports; the worship of idols, who we call stars; dependence on media (especially social media) rather than interpersonal communication and reading for a sense of reality; work that cannot be imagined as a vocation. Everything conspires to force us back in on ourselves and to prevent the transformation of self-centered desires into virtuous characters.

   What I can add to Lasch is that the perfect epistemology for narcissism is epistemic relativism or subjectivism. And the perfect narcissistic ontology sees reality as something analogous to cookie dough which the self can cut up in any way it pleases. Existentialism – or nihilism – is the best way to look at ethics for the narcissist. And deconstruction is the best narcissistic approach to art. What all of these have in common is this: they remove limits to self-wishes, desires, and perceived needs. Reality limits the self. Truth limits the self. Beauty limits the self. Goodness in things limits the self. The self is constantly seeking to overcome limits to its will. The way the damaged narcissistic self can try to find itself loveable – which is narcissistic precisely because it does not have the resources to find itself truly loveable – is to follow Nietzsche’s advice: having killed “God” (the source of reality, beauty, and goodness outside you that can find you loveable), the (pitiful) self secretly tries to become a God substitute itself. Hopeless and absurd. The more entrenched in narcissism you become, the less objectively loveable you become, except as an object of pity. And outside of being loved and being part of a community that demands virtues, narcissism is all that there is. Except failed narcissism, which results in depression and other kinds of mental illness. Whenever the nature of any being is damaged, illness is the result. And capitalism in its present form damages human nature at its core.

   So narcissism unhinges us from reality. Capitalism manufactures narcissism (and mental illness) by depriving us of the sunlight, water, and soil, so to speak, we need to flourish (in exchange for a bunch of consumer goods and a few genuine benefits like modern dentistry). MAGA and the politically correct left are different expressions of the same thing with the same roots. Both are “postmodern” in a negative sense. I would say they represent extreme cultural distortions of postmodernism that are largely explainable sociologically.