Everyone's right... about everything.
This is a weekly column consisting of letters to my perspicacious progeny. I write letters to my grandkids — the Stickies — eventual selves to advise them and haunt them after they've become grups and/or I'm deleted.
Trigger Warning: This column is rated SSC — Sexy Seasoned Citizens — Perusal by kids, callowyutes, or grups may result in a debilitating meltdown.
"An acre in Middlesex is better than a principality in Utopia." -Macaulay
Dear Grandstickies and Gentlereaders,
I have to admit, I never saw it coming, this golden age we now find ourselves in I mean. In fact, I didn't even know we were living in a golden age till Scott Adams, the Dilbert dude, mentioned it in one of his daily video blogs.
{Dilbert dude?}
Mr. Adams created the Dilbert comic strip in 1989 and has been cranking 'em out 24x7x365 ever since. Nowadays he also does a Facebook live stream, 24x7x365, that features his take on current events. He even cranks it out when he's traveling or on vacation.
{Perhaps that's why he's rich and you're not.}
Perhaps, but I think that it's because of my carefully crafted work/life balance, myriad interests that have nothing to do with work, and the fact that I know how to relax and smell the bayberry candle.
{You mean coffee? I don't get...}
I'd like to get back to that golden age thing I mentioned, please.
{Well! far be it from me!}
Mr. Adam's pointed out that there's an upside in dealing with the daily deluge of information; there's an upside in the struggle to keep from drowning in the Information Ocean.
Everyone's right - about everything.
It matters not what the alleged fact is, it's easy to find someone, perhaps several someones, willing to posit a yeahbut, or a maybebut, and confirm what you know to be true in your heart of hearts.
{Wait-wait-wait. Didn't some famous dead pasty patriarch say, "Facts are stubborn things?"}
Yup, John Adams, America's second president. “Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.”
In his defense, the internet didn't come along till about 175 years after he was deleted; he just didn't know any better. Nowadays, virtually unlimited access to virtually unlimited information posted by (potentially) 8,000,000,000 or so Earthlings has made it possible to prove just about anything.
If you know for certain that the World Trade Center was brought down by a covert cabal that included the CIA, the Olsen twins, the Council on Foreign Relations, Mark Zuckerberg, Dr. Fauci, and a handful of members of Skull and Bones to be named later — you'll have no problem proving it.
Not only will you have no problem proving it you'll also have no problem establishing contact and forging alliances with like-minded H. sapiens via various websites and social media platforms and "calling out" said covert cabal to your heart's content.
I'm so old that I have vivid memories of when television shows were only shown on televisions and traditional theory (a.k.a. critical thinking) was revered, was one of the reasons Western Civilization was revered, for having made it possible for life to be considerably less "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short" than it had been for millennia for the average Joe, Joan, or J. Bagadonuts.
Wikipedia: Critical thinking is the analysis of available facts, evidence, observations, and arguments to form a judgment.
That is to say, we trousered apes attempt to use rational thought to overcome our frequently irrational natures and to discover what is objectively true (or at least close enough) to cure disease, perfect indoor plumbing, etc.
That's all well and good, but traditional theory is focused on understanding/explaining society, that is to say, how things are, not necessarily how things should be. The next step is to try and work out what should be based on what we know, in conjunction with our fellow H. sapiens.
But this is the Golden Age, remember? Critical Theory is in full flower, and certain of our intellectual betters have figured out how things should be for us. Marxist utopianism never died, nor has it faded away, it's alive and well and has morphed into (trumpets sound) Critical Theory.
Why should we mere individuals waste time laboriously working out what actually works and what doesn't when it's now widely known that our "social problems stem more from social structures and cultural assumptions than from individuals?"
It's time to wipe the slate clean...
{What's a slate?}
...and start over again. Myriad academics/activists/etceterists are busy working out the details via various versions of Critical Theories that have been invented, many seemingly out of thin air.
Social theory
Literary theory
Race theory
Queer theory
Thing theory
Critical theory of technology
Critical theory of legal studies
Critical pottery theory
Gender theory
Etcetera theory
Utopia is just around the corner, welcome to the golden age.
Poppa loves you,
Have an OK day
{Wait-wait-wait, Thing theory is a thing?}
Absabalutely, but I agree with Dr. Severin Fowles of Columbia. "Fowles describes a blind spot in Thing Theory, which he attributes to a post-human, post-colonialist attention to physical presence. It fails to address the influence of 'non-things, negative spaces, lost or forsaken objects, voids or gaps – absences, in other words, that also stand before us as entity-like presences with which we must contend.'"
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