This is fine and well if we are discussing competing opinions. All human progress has been accompanied or reliant on competing ideas!

But no man can own his own facts or ignore verified and proven truth.

Professional cynicism is the last resort of scoundrels, scumbags and recalcitrant politicians, who are owned by narrow vested interest?

How else can we understand or explain some of their recent decisions!? Or Lack thereof? Be it on climate policy, energy policy, real tax reform and complete inaction on massively overdue, decentralisation. And sacrificed by the visionless majors at the altar of power for its own sake!?

And in the (new idea free) bubble where these natural incompetents dwell?

Two minute Philosophy of Ethics.

1. Ethics or moral philosophy is a branch of philosophy that involves systematising, defending, and recommending concepts of right and wrong conduct. The field of ethics concerns matters of value.

Ethics seeks to resolve questions of human morality by defining concepts such as good and evil, right and wrong, virtue and vice, justice and crime. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethics

eg. Did you cheat on your Tax, step on an Ant, vote Liberal, or become a Holy Man to access Little Children?

2. Watch The Good Place's 2 minute training video: http://youtu.be/ut0ai4s4mjU

Brought to you by:

Me.

You cant of course get any lower than the very low "morality" and "culture" promoted by the one dimensional cardboard comic book "philosophy" of Ayn Rand, and the Heartland Institute too.

She was of course one of the three principal scribblers that turned the market, and the worship of it into the very powerful god called THE MARKET that by its very nature demands that all living-breathing-feeling beings, both human and non-human must inevitably be sacrificed.

Check out an essay on The Baffler website by Eugene McCarraher titled:
The World Is A Business: the mad alchemy that transformed the market into a god Issue # 38

The image that heads the essay is priceless?

'And we need our leading institutions - especially those like universities that are dedicated to truth-seeking - to make those principles explicit and foundational and instill them in the next generation.'

you mean the ones who can't even acknowledge that a baby born with a penis is a boy

you mean the ones who deny science in acknowledging an unborn child as human

you mean the ones that deny history and Israel's right to exist

which universities are dedicated to truth seeking. Me thinks you live in complete fantasy. Next statement will be that the abc is comitted to unbias journalism. pssss.

And of course you cant get much lower on the scale of human morality and all the way down the line depravity than Donald Trump.

He is a pathological liar and a life long professional grifter. He makes a completely mockery of the moral codes of all traditional religions, and in the case of Christianity the Ten Commandments and The Sermon of the Mount. He also makes a completely mockery of Jordan Peterson's 12 rules for life.

Even worse he is enthusiastically supported by so called conservative Christians including Franklin Graham who is about to tour Australia.

Another "conservative" American Christian recently published a book titled The Faith of Donald Trump A Spiritual Biography - LOL ya gotta b kidding!
The book features a foreword by Eric Metaxas see:
http://americanloons.blogspot.com/2018/04/1995-eric-metaxas.html

By the way Eric Metaxas is featured in a long very chilling interview on John Anderson's website.
John Anderson in turn offers a glowing endorsement of Sam McClelland's promotion of "conservative" viewpoints.

hatred certainly blinds you heh Daffy. Yeah Trump is bad but then again look at the baby killing alternative. You know the ones who rape, wear klu klax clan uniforms, lie about Court appointments and then virtue signal through hashtags. And since when did you think morality matters unless it is of course conservatives not living up to the standards you don't believe in.

To Daffy Duck and Runner.

It's surprising that Donald Trump is a topic with just as much interest and split over hating or supporting in Australia, as he is in the US. The claims of why to hate and why to support are almost the exact same narrative. Except in Australia Trump is either the boggy man of the world leaders and can be the butt of all criticism and all jokes, or he is the envied leader that one hopes to have in your own country who will stand up against the evils and corruption that are drowning the countries of the world.

There is no in between opinion of him it seems, which I'm not surprised in US politics and culture. But why he has become this much of a villain or a hero in the opinions of other nations? That is something to surprise me and to worry me. Because it sounds like Trump is an excuse to turn away from the topics at hand. Either to dismiss the issues in OLO as helpless without someone like Trump to stand up against those issues as well, or to dismiss the topics in OLO using Trump as the ultimate example of a negative leader or negative person; thus by using Trump in that way the topic is dismissed by saying either "at least we're not that bad," or "let's not get that bad."

This forum is largely political in it's opinions, so world leaders would be a topic on their own. But don't bring the topic of Donald Trump into the mix of a different topic unless it actually matters in the topic. Otherwise it'll just be a distraction of the topic given or even dismiss the previous topic in the arguments that follow Trump being brought up.

These are just my thoughts and observations, so take from it what you want, but also know that this topic is a perfect example of what I mean of distracting away from what was originally being discussed.

(Continued)

(Continued)

To Daffy Duck.

What does Trump have to do with postmodernism or with either fighting that philosophical position or defending postmodernism? If Trump has an relevance outside of a distraction to the topic, then I retract my reply. If not though, then do consider what I've said. The point of the topic of postmodernism might be worth while enough to discuss on it's own instead of being sidelined and dismissed by the ongoing subject of support or anger towards Donald Trump. Either way, I'm going to try to move on to the topics brought up in the article.

Don't you know that according to the left whingers, only fascists want free speech!!

Not_Now.Soon,
>What does Trump have to do with postmodernism
His disregard for truth in the pursuit of power.
Hicks tries to paint it as a feature of the Left, but he's ignoring the elephant in the Oval Office!

To Aiden.

I didn't see in the article anything about the left or the right. But it was about identifying postmodern positions and a critism on them. If Trump fits the discription of post modernism then so be it, talk about it if that is your wish. However it's been my observation that when Trump is brought up in any discussion it pretty much says that the previous topic is over. For that reason alone, I'd recommend letting at least a few replies come through to make their points befor derailing a topic to be another pro-Trump, anti-Trump conversation.

To Stephen Hicks

Looking for solutions to Postmodernism.

Here are a few to consider. They are suggestions for when someone wrongs you, but because postmodernism is about cynicism and critism without much in solutions, these suggestions can be applied just the same.

•When they say something or do something that is wrong. Tell it to them. Privetely if you have the chance. That will lessen the criticism to be between you and them instead of public embarrassment to fight against. If they don't listen let it go, or if it is bad enough bring two other people to hear it out between you and the postmodern person. If the two others agree with you, other person might see their errors. If the two others disagree let it go; you might be in the wrong at that point. Lastly if it really was that bad, and the postmodern person does not see their wrong even with two others hearing both sides and saying the postmodern is wrong then bring this up to the community. Again, let their decision justify or correct your position. If it supports you and the post modern doesn't change, then let them go and have nothing more to do with them. All of this would be to help the postmodern person or face what they did, in order to change. If they don't, ultimately the answer is to have nothing to do with them.

•The second thing to do is if they have a complaint about you (not about society or your place in it, but about you) then consider the complaint honestly and if it is justified, do something about it. Right the wrong if you are able, or just avoid doing the same in the future if it can't be made right.

In this way the battle over the correct philosophy won't be about endless arguing, because in that case postmodern cynicism wins by placing doubt on the other person and ignoring criticism of themselves. Instead it will be about actions and behavior justifying your philosophy, instead of endless bickering.

Stephen Hicks,

An intresting article. Perhaps you might be interested in philosophically more serious discussions I had with potmodernists and others on this OLO about nine years Ago:

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=3445#82274, and onwards;
http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=10189#165587, and onwards.

Not_Now.Soon,
>I didn't see in the article anything about the left or the right.
Then you obviously didn't read it properly.

(From the top of page 2)
| Here again Rorty represents the other, postmodern side. When asked directly about
| the Left’s many historical sins, crimes, and outright brutalities - and it’s important to
| note that all of the leading postmoderns are of the Left, usually the far Left - Rorty
| replied: “I think that a good Left is a party that always thinks about the future and
| doesn’t care much about our past sins.” [Source: “A Conversation with Richard
| Rorty.”]
|
| (How unsurprising, then, that younger Leftists have little understanding of or care
| about the Soviet Union, China, Cambodia, Ethiopia, Cuba, or even Venezuela.)

I was not the one who brought Trump into the discussion. But considering Trump's attitude to truth, I think when Hicks is being rather postmodern himself when he claims that "all of the leading postmoderns are of the Left...".

Stephen,

Yours is an excellent expose of the downside of the pursuit of postmodern deconstruction.

<<Postmodernists don’t fight by the same rules the rest of us do. When everything is subjective narratives, the subversion goes all the way down.>>

Then add reader-response techniques of creativity that postmoderns use in reading any document. This avoids the intended meaning of any author's writing and replaces it with the reader's, 'subjective narratives'.

That's as postmodern, historical Jesus' scholar, J D Crossan, saw it when he gave his working definition of history: 'History is the past reconstructed interactively by the present through argued evidence in public discourse’ (Crossan 1998:20).

When subjectivism of anything by postmodern imposition on the text is applied, anything goes with values or content of any document.

Can you imagine the history of the Port Arthur massacre in 1996 being deconstructed interactively through argument in public discourse, rather than pursuing historical methods to discern what really happened in that shocking event?

You are dead right! Subjective deconstruction will lead to a moral low ground because it is like relativism - every person does what is right for himself/herself.

If this philosophy continues to flood our universities, expect many kinds of idiosyncratic ethics to be pushed.