“…and the truth is not always beneficial.”
-Lacan
Subjectivism is the epistemological stance that truths, insofar as there are such things, are entirely subjective and relative. This often involves attempting to deconstruct or avoid the need for any kind of objective truth, or even the category of truth itself. Subjectivism in its contemporary forms was first developed in the 19c, and after the ‘post-modern’ turn, is now hegemonic. For a subjectivist – the relative equivalency of discourse/practices is more important than any qualitative differences between them or truth-content they may contain.
Subjectivism and moralism are closely intertwined. The moralist will often be a subjectivist, not because of any real conviction (the moralist has none that are his own), but just because being extra-super-max tolerant of every ignorance and delusion is the morally good thing to be.
That should tell you just about everything you need to know about subjectivism.
Now, there are aspects of subjectivism that are useful, and even true. The postmodern turn has certainly generated useful insights, important thinkers, and new avenues of inquiry.
That there is no meta-language – who can deny this now?
But even by asserting just one of the postulates of postmodernism as ‘true’, I have fatally undermined it. ‘There is no meta-language’ functions like a metalanguage. The end of historical metanarratives is itself a historical metanarrative. The ‘escape’ from ‘binary’ categories into the nebulous fog of multiplicity creates a new binary between non-binary and binary.
Any attempt to logically work out the consequences of postmodernism ends in abject failure, total collapse, a fall right back into the modernist edifices that have been supposedly superseded, now enriched by their opposition.
If there is no such thing as objective truth, then nothing like the sciences could ever possibly have emerged in the first place – and ‘there is no objective truth’ is a truth-claim about objective truth. ‘Nothing is true for everyone’ the subjectivist says, enunciating a truth about everyone in the same breath as he denies the possibility of such a thing.
In order for everyone to have a totally unique, distinct worldview – every single person would have to have their own private language.
Nobody has a private language!
Subjectivism just doesn’t fucking work. It’s like a snail trying to give itself a blowjob. Slimy, awkward, messy, interminable, vaguely nauseating, silly. It’s nice when it stops!
The equality of discourse/practice formations is true only in the most abstract ontic sense – they sure do all exist boy howdy I guess. However, even a cursory dive through our existing cultural edifices will show you that they are absolutely not created equal. They do different things, they have different intentions and purposes, they have different effects in the world, and most importantly – they generate different kinds of minds.
And what kind of mind does subjectivism generate? A mind that renounces its own ability to utter those fateful words: ‘You are wrong’.
In other words – an absolute pussy.
A fucking coward.
A creature of fear.
A conformist shadow.
A human being who cannot advance a truth-claim into the world against other truth-claims has lost one of the most crucial aspects of being a human being. The theists; they know this and they have known this all along – they’re way too smart to fuck around with anything as irrational as subjectivism. This is why the Religions of the Book will continue to generate semi-mature adults with at least some access to their rational faculties, while the twin tire fires of relativistic tolerance – postmodern secularity and new age mysticism – will continue to implode in on themselves in an orgy of adolescent decadence.
Even if all the content the theist reifies is nothing but atavistic fantasy, the structure of his subjectivity is far stronger and more powerful than his relativistic opponent. The ‘bigot’ theist has advanced to a level where he is capable of not caring about what others think of him – a stage of maturation completely inaccessible to anyone reifying any variety of epistemological subjectivism.
Yup, I just went there. And you know what? Neither of these ideals is adequate to the Post-Holocene. Compared to the ideal of the universal subject fully committed to an immanent truth-process, both are way, way worse.
The social effect of the postmodern eruption has been nothing less than catastrophic. Subjectivism is societal cancer, epistemic poison, civilizational suicide. Nothing can be taught anymore, no line advanced, no institutions built, no episteme furthered – because we no longer have any foundations to build anything on or people capable of building anything. Instead of the old ideal of the socially responsible citizen subject, or the historically necessary ideal of a subject committed to a universalist cause – subjectivism has produced a shuffling horde of perpetually victimized narcissists, insisting that rest of the world tiptoe around the purity of their beautiful souls and the sanctity of their delusional enclosures.
Subjectivism has destroyed our civilization’s ability to generate adults.
Just at the right moment, too!
You don’t have to be a subjectivist, and you won’t be for long if you start thinking for yourself. Everything may be a language game – but games have stakes, they have rules, and they have consequences. Every figure of objectivity may be subjectively mediated – but this is objectively the case! Everything may be a social construct, but social constructs are just as ‘real’ as anything else is. They’re the horizon from which ‘realness’ is designated, for fucks sake!
Just because neutrality is impossible and ideology inescapable doesn’t mean that there’s no such thing as facts or knowledge – it just means that that shit was always intentional from the getgo. If you want to know, you can know – just get your ass to the library and start thinking! Subjectivism is so anemic and cancerous that it cannot even make the following claim:
knowledge is better than ignorance.
Perhaps the final nail in subjectivism’s coffin is this – it must tolerate my discourse and discourses like it, and I will never play by its rules.
After having passed through the crucible of subjectivism, we are now in a position to say this:
if you are an honest truth-seeker who does not tolerate delusions in yourself,
you cannot and should not tolerate them in others.
Would you like to know more?