postmodernism and solipsism...

 the congeries of postmodernism, only your own truths count, cod philosophy  and the advent of the interweb and google has had the effect of leading many people to believe that behaviour and psychology are private privileged and unanalysable.

also  many of the enquiries from the 20th c are now deemed out of date and of no use anymore.

ha.

not true.

I was introduced to Harold Lasswell by professor Margaret Clarke. She was a dyed in the wool tory but to her credit she had a greater commitment to education and raising consciousness.

When I went to UNI in the late 1990's I was convinced I could become a polymath of sorts but was soon disabused of that notion when confronted by the scope and depth of modern knowledge. However I did follow my own path and to my surprise the best educators were the ones I had least in common with. Prof Clarke also introduced me to the writings of Phillip Rieff, another Freudian scholar attempting to analyse the psychopathology of politics.

I was also bemused by the staff in the Philosophy department who had a real downer on Freud. One of my history profs told me it was because they knew it was true. [larfs] anyway they preferred to ignore Platos dictum about knowing oneself and stick with Wittgensteins maxim that philosophy itself was therapy. yeah right.

Well considering that old witty himself was in denial about his own personality and his defects and laying on a red herring like that one it was an uphill struggle there.

so in the end it was all worth it even though Marcus Aurelius enjoins us to put away the books which contains its own contradiction and having the tools to analyse polticians is a great boon to those who would understand how the world works.

The problem now is of course false consciousness. A term coined by Marx to encompass the inability of the working classes to see beyond their own immediate needs in a society putting the pedal to the metal in the acceleration phase of the industrial revolution.

Todays false consciousness is identical in form but different in operation. marx and succeeding politicians and theorists are all total materialists believing in the ability of the world to keep on supplying humanity with an unlimited amounts of goods at any cost to the environment or the ecosystem.

this is plainly false and will bear down harder and harder on the entire global population exponentially while the rulers continue to promise more even while the ship is sinking underneath them and everyone else.