Bruce Pardy Lays Out the Land of Canada's New Religion
Bruce Pardy Lays Out the Land of Canada's New Religion
The unholy amalgamation of critical theory, postmodernism, social justice, and critical race theory
I recently had the pleasure of coming across an excellent article by Bruce Pardy for the National Post titled, “How Canada’s secular religion of cultural self-hate took hold: Critical theory, postmodernism, social justice and critical race theory have morphed into the dominant ideology.”
He begins:
Modern Western civilization grew out of the Enlightenment of the 17th and 18th centuries. The ascendancy of reason in human affairs produced the scientific method and later the Industrial Revolution. Add in the rule of law, individual liberty, private property and capitalism, and you have the basic recipe that has raised much of humanity out of poverty and oppression over two centuries.
Four academic doctrines — critical theory, postmodernism, social justice and critical race theory — are moving the world, or at least the West, from this triumph to decline. These doctrines reject Enlightenment values such as open inquiry, individual autonomy, free speech, scientific skepticism and even reason itself. They claim to champion equality, peace and social cooperation, but instead promote identity politics, elitism and centralized control. They are the four doctrines of the apocalypse.
The whole time I was reading the piece, I was cheering at how clearly Pardy was able to explain what these doctrines are and what effects they are having on society. Part of the success of the slow creep of this new secular religion has been in the difficulty of articulating what seem to be, by design, very esoteric systems. While it is all actually very shallow, the academic-sounding language often used to communicate these ideas is meant to repel any sort of critique, keeping most people in the dark.
Another part of the reason I was celebrating was that I saw exactly the need to communicate these ideas, postmodernism in particular, as clearly as possible in a piece I wrote earlier this year for Reality’s Last Stand, “Who or What Is to Blame for Gender Ideology?” where I argue that:
While it is true that feminists, gay rights activists, and trans rights activists are culpable for gender ideology to the extent that they champion postmodern views, which many of them indeed do, they are not the sole culprits. Rather, they are a product of a society that has embraced this philosophy, allowing gender ideology to proliferate and thrive…
I place the blame for gender ideology at the feet of those who embrace the reality rejection fueled by postmodernism, its subjective lens, and its destabilizing word games. It has unmoored us from objectivity and convinced too many that there is no such thing as objective truth. It is drowning us in obscurantism and nihilism and causing people to throw up their hands in defeat.
I almost didn’t even attempt to write this piece due to imagined critiques that I didn’t “get” postmodernism—but that is exactly what the people pushing these ideas want. They are constantly shifting the goalposts to ensure that you never “get” what they are saying so that they can go right along saying it without any proper pushback.
But I do understand what they are doing—not as well as Pardy, whose straightforward elucidation showed that he solidly has the full measure of this ideology—but more than enough to speak about it and criticize its obvious and devastating flaws.
Or help support my work with a one-time donation through PayPal!
Bruce Pardy Lays Out the Land of Canada's New Religion
When I was in my PhD program studying philosophy of science, I was depressed for a week by the discussion and readings on Post-Modernism. While Modernism may be rightly criticized for being overly certain about the world, rejecting all the truth we can observe in the world has never been an answer. It's extremism blanketed in an odd mix of intellectualism and fascism.
Philosopher Ken Wilber approaches post-modernism developmentally - it’s the stage where you break away from immersion in earlier developmental stages - participation mystique, tribalism, rule and role culture (concrete operations), modernism etc - in preparation for integration of them all and then a leap to a new sense of the self and the world.
Unfortunately people get stuck at post-modernism and drill themselves further and further down into negativity and alienation. It’s somewhat of a normal stage for teenagers, but a disaster when the adults in the society become enamored.
Many post-modernists will say that there is no absolute truth, to which the annoying counter is “except for the one you just said, right?”