Post Rational Blur

I read an article on "Critical Whiteness Studies", which tries to expose and analyze white privileged, especially on terrains such as culture and language. The interesting part was the section of criticism of the whiteness studies. Avoiding "white" language could generate the problem of discriminating against people with less access to academic "education" and these studies, that use normal everyday language that could be seen as "white" without being aware of it or having evil intent.
Now I don't want to talk about "whiteness" or political correctness. But what we see here is the problem the western world faces right now. Concepts are deconstructed, rationally analyzed, criticized. But the criticism, the deconstruction, the analysis itself gets in the focus of rational deconstruction. And so on. Leading to total nihilism and chaos, a state where you can trust or believe in nothing anymore.
And this is the appeal of fascism. The fascists don't follow this path. They don't question their belief-system all the time. They don't use their rationality on it. Imagine a fictional Joe McBob from Texas; he was raised with racist views by his father. His friends believed in racism. He stays racist all his life because he never really sat down and rationally questioned his belief.
People admire racist, fascist and rightwing ideas because they're dumb. There is nothing rational about them. You don't have to be smart to believe them. These concepts avoid the "post-rational blur" that I mentioned. Rational critique can not touch them, because they are not rational.
The non-fascists on the other hand will for example criticize capitalism. So, they follow socialism instead. But then socialism gets criticized too. So they choose a "third way" position or maybe anarchism. But this gets criticized too. And so on. But our racists believe that whites are superior but never criticize that belief. That's how they can keep this belief.

What is the solution to this problem then? There are two problems with the "post-rational blur" of the leftists and cultural critics; or rather with the whole of western intellectualism. Which is that it is anti-idealist.
Ideals like freedom, justice, equality, rebellion or anarchy are perfect, spotless, eternal. These are things you can believe in, and you can keep that belief. They are in many senses above critique. Because they are perfect, critique can not touch them. But our westerners will think things like "real equality is impossible" or "there is no true freedom", "anarchy is impossible" or even - the worst of all - "there is no real goodness". If they only knew how wrong they are! This is the very problem.
The second thing that this wayward "rationalism" is anti-rational. It tempts people to stop rational thinking. Say you build a prototype and it doesn't work. On this experience you build a better one but there are still problems. What do you do now? You continue. Even if you have to come up with ten prototypes and "fixes". The same should be done with rational criticism. If there are problems with the criticism of "whiteness"; fix them. If there are still problems, fix these too. But continue to use your rational mind; even if it includes not over-analyzing some things.

These are the problems, and this is what we ought to do; keep rationalism idealistic, and, above all, rational.

No comments:

Post a Comment