The Postmodern Babel of Self-Definition

So let us therefore create a new guild of craftsmen, free of the divisive class pretensions that endeavoured to raise a prideful barrier between craftsmen and artists! Let us strive for, conceive and create the new building of the future that will unite every discipline, architecture and sculpture and painting, and which will one day rise heavenwards from the million hands of craftsmen as a clear symbol of a new belief to come. (Walter Gropius, Bauhaus Manifesto 1919)

Now let us compare this with:

And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth. (Genesis 11: 4)

The Bauhaus Manifesto is a crystallization of ideas of various artists which began the whole idea of Postmodernism. While definitions are always a bit tricky to come by, it seems to be a defining characteristic of Postmodernism to seek to rid itself from the shackles of the Modern and to purge itself of former things which impede its becoming.

If Gropius is indeed representative of the postmodern movement in art and if art is the means by which people can engage with the thinking of others on the basis of a physical Impression of a form, then Postmodernism can only ever end in Babel and its consequences.

We see this happening now with the distortion of language whereby people are now defining what words mean on their own terms and thereby rob the conversation of any common language. The claim that we can always self-identify and have the right to be what we say we are is wholly solipsist because it denies the point of view of others. To say that we are what we say we are denies the existence of objectivity and the right of others to speak as they see.

I notice that there are those who refuse to debate their acceptance of the right to self-identify on the grounds that to engage in debate would be tantamount to debating their very existence. Their only recourse is to protest violently and fight to silence their opposition on the grounds that their opposition is an oppressor and they victims of this oppression.

These folk are effectively confusing adjective with definition. If they are not described by the adjectives that they deem to make up their person then they believe themselves to have been diminished in a real way which they interpret as oppression. An Aristotelian might say that there is a confusion of accident with substance, but the materialist would say that there is no distinction to speak of between the two concepts. For the materialist, we are the sum of our adjectives. Yet, those who believe in the right to self-identification - i.e those who believe that they can control how they are to be perceived - not only are they materialist in their thinking, but also, in that they believe that they exercise this control, seek to bend the world to their will in a solipsist manner. They are effectively narcissists.

Thus with the destruction of the objective, these folk destroy any and all honest scientific enquiry but rather subject all science to personal politics and personal philosophy.

Thus, a world in which the right to self-identification is inherent is a world of noise as people try and live as a society of atoms, never truly interacting, never truly sharing anything of humanity and labouring all the while to define themselves against the oppression of others' language. Truly, this becomes a case of l'Enfers c'est les autres. Never can there be any rest or relaxation because the fight to exist is constant. I wonder if this may be the cause of an increased rate of suicide and the call for euthanasia. 

To be truly social is to be self-giving. Love requires this at the deepest level and to love means to allow others to make a claim on you. To desire to be part of a better society means giving up any pretence to a right of our own self-definition and allow ourselves to be identified by others. We cannot join a group by defining ourselves to be a member. We have to wait for the invitation and the consent of others so that we know we can be accepted as we are and as others see us. If there is no invitation or consent, then to take membership of the group by force is a form of rape. It is an affront to Love and to Society. The result is confusion, scattering, isolation and an existential nightmare.

Already, Western Governments are paving the way for self-identification to become a legal right. The societies they govern are becoming sick, jaded, faithless, hopeless and loveless. The only hope is to recognise that we have an objective existence over which we have no control, to accept that, and further to allow it to bring us closer to other human beings and to God Who in being the Creator has the right to define us as we really are so that we can be truly loved.