The Postmodern Relativist (redundancy intended)

Use of the One and the Collective has Happened Before

If just one life can be saved, we must pass healthcare reform. For the good of the collective, we must pass healthcare reform. Well, which is it? Is one life worth the sacrifice of the collective or is the good of collective worth sacrificing one life? Surprisingly, progressives arguing for the adoption of the "Affordable Care Act" successfully argued both. That is the beauty of postmodern thought, one can be a champion for the individual and collective at the same time regardless of the obvious contradiction. Accepting this dichotomy is the result of becoming comfortable with relativistic truths. 

The same is true with conservative supreme court nominations. Individuals making unprovable claims of distant malfeasance must be believed because it is the will of the collective that the charge must be categorically true. We are asked to ceremoniously believe the brave individual accuser because the will of the collective is that the character essence of the accused could have plausibly done the dastardly deed. Again, every individual accuser must be believed even through it goes against legal protections and precedencies that protect the collective. And, for the good of the progressive collective, every individual accuser must be believed. Again, contradictions do not exist the universally relativistic world of the postmodern progressive. 

The challenge in postmodern relativistic states is figuring out who decides these relativistic truths and is it an individual or a collective decision? Unsurprisingly, it is both and these elite deciders were endowed with the spiritual gift of knowledge by taking the “truthful” fruit from the hands of teachers and professors. This modern knowledge class then spread throughout our nation’s cherished institutions. These postmodern tea leaf readers are the media elites, the university elites, and the government's elites that control so much of our daily lives. The allure of eliteness spreads far beyond the classrooms of ivy walled institutions. Libs of TikTok shares videos of unabashedly woke individuals spouting protective relative truths daily. This broad group of individuals are protected by the elite class because their narratives suite the collective, even if the shock of their appearance and message is insipid or offensive.

The army of postmodern truthsayers awake early each morn and toss their ballots into clay pots in hopes of being selected as an elite ruler for a day. One would think the odds of being selected as one among the "wise" be sheer luck, but the odds greatly increase with one's proximity to our modern-day Forums. The postmodern "Stoa," or epicenters of import daily life, are the coastal enclaves of media empires, the ivy-covered walls of academia and marbled facades of our vaulted State houses. These “jurors for the day” scour the news ever seeking individuals that corrupt the collective truth and attempt to try them in the daily courts of relative purity.

These daily witch hunts brings to mind another trial. One that pit the rights of an individual against the will of the collective. A famous trial where one man was accused of crimes against humanity at a different time of societal decay. A crime based on the subjective hearsay of unnamed victims. A crime of no less importance than that of corrupting the minds of the youth and believing in false gods unrecognized by the State. And, like that kangaroo court trial 2400 years ago, the will of the collective majority proclaiming his guilt did not save their dying democracy. Socrates' conviction and death did not stay the decline and fall of Athens. Nor will our daily trails of modern-day corrupters of youths and believers of non-collective approved gods stem the decline of our Republic. The postmodern hemlock is cancelation and today’s progressive elites seek to issue that judgment upon all who dare speak counter to the approved narrative.

The societies of the West are now at that same turning point where the glories of our pasts are fading, and the city's protective walls have been allowed to decay. Instead of mustering men and might to refortify society, we seek to find and blame the “unpure” among us. The collective elites, once again, ordered hemlock to the cure to a society in decay? There is another path to societal salvation. Humans are indeed weak creatures of the heart, but they have the capacity for love, for morality and for Truth. But first, we must accept the gift of light. This light is not subject to the relative whims of self-appointed elites but resides within us as a guide to salvation.

And Zeus condemned Prometheus because he was kind and compassionate to a wretched and dying humanity. Seeing their need, Prometheus brought to the suffering mortals the arts, the sciences, and (light) to protect and preserve their lives. And, then, Zeus punished Prometheus by chaining him to a Caucasian Rock, and each day sent an eagle to devour his liver, which, each night, grew back to its full size because (knowledge) was immortal. -Hesiod, Theogony, 507-525, adapted