https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=a55gvPE7k8s
Do you want to start with postmodernism since this is one that you’ve tackled also many times? Yeah, you want to define it and do you want to… Let’s let everybody know exactly what we’re talking about. At its most basic level, postmodernism begins with the tenet that, you know, there is no objective truth, that we are completely shackled by subjectivity, we’re shackled by a wide range of biases, and so to argue about absolute truths is silly. And so maybe I can… Okay, so sorry, let me add a bit to that. Sure. So we can flesh it out. So the postmodernists also seem to claim, and I’m going to be as charitable as I possibly can in this description, because I don’t want to build up a straw man. They’re very, very concerned with the effect that language has on defining reality. Yes. And the French postmodernist thinkers in particular seem to have come to the conclusion that reality is defined in totality by language. There’s no getting outside of the language game. There isn’t anything outside of language. So that would be exactly that, right? Deconstructionism, language creates reality, is exactly what you just described, right? Right. And it’s weak theory in some sense, because it doesn’t abide by its own principles. So, for example, and this is one of its fundamental weaknesses, as far as I’m concerned, is that Derrida says that, but then he acts as if, and also explicitly claims that power exists. Right. Right. And so that language, so if you’re building realities with language, the question arises of why you would do that. And the answer seems to be for the postmodernists is that it’s power. And that’s a quasi-Marxism. Right. Right. Okay. So you think that that seems fair, don’t you think? What is fair? Would someone who was a postmodernist agree with that definition? I mean, yes. The problem, though, is that postmodernism allows for a complete breakdown of reality, as understood by a three-year-old. It is a form of, this is why, by the way, in the book, I refer to it as intellectual terrorism. And I don’t use these terms just to kind of come up with poetic prose. I genuinely mean, so I compare postmodernism to the 9-11 hijackers who flew planes onto buildings, I argue that postmodernists fly buildings of bullshit into our edifices of reason. And maybe if I could share a couple of personal interactions that I’ve had with postmodernists that capture the extent to which they depart from reality. May I do that? Sure. And then we’ll get back to elucidating the list of ideas that you’ve defined as parasitic. Fantastic. So in 2002, and I think this story might be particularly relevant to you, Jordan, because, of course, you broke through in the public conscience because of the gender pronoun stuff. Well, you’ll see that this 2002 story was prophetic in predicting what would eventually happen. So in 2002, one of my doctoral students had just defended his dissertation, and we were going out for a celebratory dinner. It was myself, my wife, him, and his date for the evening. And so he contacts me before we go out for the dinner, and he kind of gives me a heads up, and he says, well, my date is a graduate student in cultural anthropology, radical feminism, and postmodernism. It’s kind of the holy trinity of bullshit. And so basically, the reason why he was telling me this is he’s basically saying, hopefully, please be on your best behavior. Let’s not. Yes, and you recount this in the book. Okay. So yeah, that’s okay. No, go ahead. I’m just letting everybody know. Yes, yes, exactly. And so I said, oh, yeah, don’t worry. I’m, you know, I get it. I get you. This is your night. I’m going to be on my best behavior. Of course, that wasn’t completely true because I couldn’t resist trying to at least get a sense what this woman, what her positions were. So at one point, I said, oh, I hear that you are a postmodernist. Yes. Do you mind? So I’m an evolutionary psychologist. I do believe that there are certain human universals that serve as kind of a bedrock of similarities that we share, whether we are Peruvian, Nigerian, or Japanese. Do you mind if I maybe propose what I consider to be a human universal, and then you can tell me how that you don’t think that that’s the case? She goes, absolutely. Go for it. Is it not the case that within Homo sapiens, only women bear children? Is that not a human universal? So then she scoffs at my stupidity, at my narrow mindedness, at my misogyny. Says, absolutely not. No, it’s not true that women bear children. She said, no, because in some Japanese tribe and their mythical folklore, it is the men who bear children. And so by you restricting the conversation to the biological realm, that’s how you keep us barefoot and pregnant. So once I kind of recovered from hearing such a position, I then said, OK, well, let me take a less maybe less controversial or contentious example. Is it not true from any vantage point on Earth, sailors since time immemorial have relied on the premise that the sun rises in the east and sets in the west? And here Jordan, she used the kind of language creates reality, the derrida position. She goes, well, what do you mean by east and west? Those are arbitrary labels. And what do you mean by the sun? That which you call the sun, I might call dancing hyena. Exact words. I said, OK, well, the dancing hyena rises in the east and sets in the west. And she said, well, I don’t play those label games. So the reason why this is a powerful story that I continuously recount and hence included in the book is because she wasn’t some psychiatric patient who escaped from the psychiatric institute. She was exactly aping what postmodernists espouse on a daily basis to their thousands of adoring students. When we can’t agree that only women bear children and that there is such a thing as east and west and that there is such a thing as the sun, then it’s intellectual terrorism.