Reconstructionism

Commenter Paul gets the virtual prize for his suggestion on the “What shall we call it?” post that the emerging intellectual and cultural movement be called “Reconstructionism.”

Here is what I see is happening. Notice that on university campuses and in the current products of the intellectual establishment, we are not hearing relativism, which considers one truth claim or ideology as valid as any other. Rather, we are hearing what commenter the Jones has described as “absolutist certainty.” Christianity is wrong! Conservatism is wrong! Creationism is wrong!

Nor are we seeing moral relativism, which considers different moral choices as being equally valid. We are hearing dogmatic, judgmental, and intolerant moral denunciations. Christianity is evil! Conservatism is evil! Creationism is evil!

Thus far, the absolutist pronouncements are mostly negative. What these new thinkers believe is evident–conventional leftist sentiments on feminism, the environment, sexual freedom, etc.–though not perhaps ideologically worked out in a positive fashion.

These positions and condemnations are asserted with no epistemological basis in reason or science (modernist style) or in culture (postmodernist style). They are basically assertions of the will and the will to power. This is postmodernist, but taken to a new level and a new phase.

First came the postmodernist project of “deconstruction,” in which all cultural artifacts–laws, literature, philosophy, religion, government, and families–were subjected to a radical critique that undermined them at an essential level. Next comes “reconstruction,” in which cultural artifacts of a different essence will be rebuilt on the ruins.

For example, marriage has been deconstructed by sexual permissiveness. The reconstruction of that institution is gay marriage.

Can any of you see other examples of what I am describing? Thanks, Paul, for your term, which is proving a catalyst for my thinking, making lots of previously disconnected observations come together into a clear pattern!