THE TRUE 'CIRCLE OF LIFE'

The Post Modern/Neo-Marxist worldview has through its various academic acolytes advocated for the deconstruction of language and has succeeded beyond its wildest dreams.

Relative values are not new, they have in fact being around for millennia, but since the latter part of the twentieth century they have gained enormous traction through the maniacal scribblings of Lyotard, Foucault and in particular Jacques Derrida.

Derrida is the deconstructionist/semiotics philosopher whose major influences included Rousseau and Nietzsche (surprise, surprise) and whose work though considered dull and incomprehensible, significantly impacted the intellectual climate of his day. It is no surprise that his work was unintelligible because it was the logical outcome of his own theory i.e. he considered words to have no meaning outside of their immediate context:

...asserts that words can only refer to other words; and attempts to demonstrate how statements about any text subvert their own meanings. [Wiki]

The English philosopher Roger Scruton said this about the works of Derrida: "He's difficult to summarise because it's nonsense."

Anyhow, we currently inhabit the afterglow of a deconstructed zeitgeist and its landscape of hollow worldviews occupied by hollow men and women. When we view our strange new world with 'eyes we dare not see in dreams' we observe politics and politicians who say one thing and then do another and who, if they are of the left, are never taken to task for such obvious incongruities.

The population at large appear to exhibit no 'common sense' anymore, everything is raw emotion and so many people seem to wear their emotional nerve endings on top of rather than under the skin.
Offence is taken, leaped on in fact, at every possible junction and lawfare breaks out at the slightest hint of a human rights' abuse, all the while admitting to no perspective being 'better' than any other...of course the actual evidence produced on the ground so to speak, points to an overwhelming bias dependant on which 'camp' you belong to.

Of course the blase acceptance of radically egalitarian values is sustainable only in the cultural/philosophical/literary avenues of existence; for example I would love to hear a Post Modern devotee who happens to hold a low skill occupation argue with their heart surgeon on the operating table that their opinion holds as much value as the surgeons. Of course such a view is absolute nonsense given that the surgeon has spent decades learning and perfecting his/her skills plus that such knowledge has quantifiable results i.e. life or death.

This is then the perfect segue to what motivated me to pen this diatribe in the first place.
Having opined briefly on how academic anarchists have altered the use and meaning of language; I draw your attention to an article I recently read featuring a 'bioethicist' named Joona Räsänen.

I grew up in a world that appeared to believe that to have ethics meant to act with integrity and morality under all circumstances. Ethics and morals have now been 'divorced' (maybe they never were 'married?) and ethics today appears to indicate a mere methodology. Hence we have academic superstars such as Princeton Professor of Bioethics Peter Singer arguing for what I would consider a highly unethical position: infanticide:

Singer often claims that his views have been misquoted, so I am quoting directly from his books. From "Practical Ethics": "Human babies are not born self-aware, or capable of grasping that they exist over time. They are not persons." But animals are self-aware, and therefore, "the life of a newborn is of less value than the life of a pig, a dog, or a chimpanzee."[Nat Hentoff]

Singer was advancing his arguments before the new millennium and was, at the time, encountering some push-back. It appears that his ideas are becoming more acceptable these days and in fact are being built upon, as so often happens.
Consider the views of the aforementioned Professor Räsänen:

According to Finnish bioethicist Joona Räsänen, “[T]here might be an argument that gives, for example, the genetic parents a right to kill (or leave to die) their newborn infant even if the infant has a right to life. For example, it might be argued that people have a right to their genetic privacy and having the newborn infant in the world that carries the genetic material of the genetic parents violates their right to genetic privacy. Put another way: the fetus does not have a right to the genetic material of her parents.”[Lita Cosner]

At the risk of activating 'Godwins Law' I should point out that these ideas were advocated by the Nazi's under the rubric; Eugenics, and were, at the time, universally condemned as well they should be.

How times have changed...and yet they have not.

As any student of history can show, the period into which Jesus Christ was born, the early Roman Empire, such practice was commonplace and considered completely 'normal'. Roman law, religion and the entire ethos of the ancient world saw nothing morally wrong with infanticide or with abandoning their newborns on the dung heaps or garbage dumps of cities.

It appears that our modern day academic 'saviours', in their attempt to create Utopia on earth are in fact merely returning us to a time in history that most are quite ignorant of, and would if knowledgeable about, would want nothing to do with, whilst I, being a critic of how Derrida has bequeathed us confusion in thinking and communicating have managed to achieve both in the writing of this short opinion.

My bad!