Deconstructing Deconstructionism
I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and gosh darn it, people like me.
Humans have a natural desire to be validated – and to be valid, by definition, means to be right (not right politically, but correct). Such validation is also equivalent to a desire for meaning – to be seen by others as being worthy of attention and existence.
Some folks seek meaning through external validation from friends, family, acquaintances, or the public in general. Some simply don’t need external sources to validate their existence or give it meaning – they are secure in themselves enough that they don’t seek or need any sort of familial or public endorsement to know their life has value, that they matter.
Today’s climate of societal, cultural, and political toxicity has been brought about, not by individual quests for meaning or validation, but rather the desire of individuals that others be forced to accept their idea of meaning. Society is subjected to a perpetual parade of Stuart Smalley clones, endlessly chanting the mantra of “I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and gosh darn it, people like me!”
The fallacy in this proposition is that an individual cannot be forced to accept a validation through coercion. Governments can restrict the ability of any individual to speak about a thing, they can legislate to prevent actions regarding opposition to certain ideas – both of which are examples of totalitarian and tyrannical regimes, but no action of government can control the thoughts inside the mind of an individual. Any coerced meaning or validation is false.
Recalling O’Brien’s torture of Winston Smith in Orwell’s 1984, a government can require me to treat a man who thinks he is a woman as a woman. It can force me to speak to him that way. It can cause me to suffer punishment if I do not act in public as if I believe – but it cannot change the fact the man is biologically a male, nor can it prevent my recognition of such a biological reality.
One of the features (or bug) in our contemporary, postmodern, post-truth culture is a concept called deconstructionism.
As originally contemplated by its creator, the French philosopher Jacque Derrida, “deconstruction” was a linguistic tool that attempted to derive meaning through understanding the use of language and the meaning of words – but in my perspective, it is evolved into an ideology all its own. Deconstructionism is now a challenge to the attempt to establish any ultimate or secure meaning in a text. Basing itself in language analysis, it seeks to “deconstruct” the ideological biases (gender, racial, economic, political, cultural) and traditional assumptions that infect all histories, as well as philosophical and religious “truths.”
Deconstructionism is based on the premise that much of human history, in trying to understand, and then define, reality has led to various forms of domination – of nature, of people of color, of the poor, of homosexuals, etc. Like postmodernism, deconstructionism finds concrete experience more valid than abstract ideas and, therefore, refutes any attempts to produce a history, or a truth.
In my understanding of Derrida’s form of deconstruction, it was to be based on understanding the immediate context, i.e., the reality of the moment in which the language was used; however, the ideology of deconstructionism is somewhat more flexible, seemingly based on what Humpty Dumpty said to Alice in Lewis Carroll’s classic “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland”:
The contemptuous Humpty Dumpty, sitting up on his wall, said to Alice, “When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean—nothing more, nothing less.”
Somewhat perplexed by this, Alice said, “The question is whether you can make words mean different things.”
“The question is,” barked Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master—that’s all.”
Deconstructionism allows people to create an illusion of meaning where there is none as a defense mechanism against reality.
When the search for individual meaning and ideological deconstructionism combines, an environment is created where people try to reconcile the irreconcilable. This being an impossibility, the deconstructionist ideologue will change the meaning of words, language – and ultimately objective truth – to fit the square peg of their definition of meaning into the round hole of reality, driving the peg home with a hammer constructed of government coercion.…and in doing so, create an alternative and false reality.
I am reminded of what Daniel J. Boorstin wrote in his 1962 book, “The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America”:
“We risk being the first people in history to have been able to make their illusions so vivid, so persuasive, so ‘realistic’ that they can live in them. We are the most illusioned people on earth. Yet we dare not become disillusioned, because our illusions are the very house in which we live; they are our news, our heroes, our adventure, our forms of art, our very experience.”
Much of the sociopolitical conflict in our contemporary society is rooted in the political left’s redefinition (as they would say, a “reimagining”) of words, actions, and ideas through this ideological form of deconstructionism.
When people call for truly blind justice, justice without fear or favor, those people are described as bigots when the idea of equal treatment is the exact opposite of bigotry. People who want to create a truly inclusive, race, creed, and gender-blind society are called segregationists even as others campaign for self-segregation by race, creed, and gender. Parents in Florida who want to prevent tender age children from being taught that sexual deviancy is normal are being called perverts and pedophiles while the groomers are defined as the mainstream.
It is all an illusion based on a postmodernist, progressive, media driven ideological perspective, the goal of which is normalization and mainstreaming of every degenerate, deviant behavior imaginable as if deviancy is the path to progress and freedom.
The true shame is that the “heroes” of this movement are little more than predators and parasites, victimizing the very people they claim to champion. So much energy is wasted in the maintenance of illusion that it has become the primary task and goal of society rather than removing illusion in a true quest for meaning and truth.
That a society engaged in such prestidigitation and suspension of disbelief can ever truly progress is the real illusion.