Modern Error #4: Nuanced Nonsense

Nuance: 1775-85; < French: shade, hue, equivalent to nu (er) to shade (literally,to cloud < Vulgar Latin nūbāre, derivative of nūba, for Latin nūbēscloud) + -ance >

Nuance is the stink left by the literary fart of postmodernism. (How's that for an unnuanced dysphemism?) Making subtle distinctions in complex ideas is delightful and even necessary in art and literature. But for apprehending reality, truth, goodness and beauty nuance is cancerous to philosophy, morality, law, politics, and science. Unfortunately in these latter categories nuance has become a cloak for incoherence, error, exaggeration, contradiction, fallacy and stupidity disguised as 'progressive' thinking. Nuanced stupidity should not be confused with mere ignorance. Nuanced thinkers are typically both intelligent, and well educated. Ignorance is merely a lack of knowledge or experience. Stupidity is the inability to process knowledge or experience. Nuanced, as an adjective for reasoning, about politics, morality, education, journalism, the law and even science is the slickest euphemism of our time falsely implying 'progress' through the literary smokescreen of nuance. Euphemisms are used to comfort us from the rough realities of life by using soft, gentle language. Dysphemisms are the very opposite; using harsh language for gentile realities. Both share the same defect; the falsification of reality, truth, goodness, and beauty. They are the synergistic tools of nuanced thinkers. Here are some famous recent examples.

Postmodern thinking went mainstream after God died in 1966. You remember. It was on the cover of TIME magazine so it had to be true. It seems God's death was a sudden heart attack suffered when the world blamed Him for the horrors of two World Wars that killed approximately 97 million people. Mind you, the people who actually opted for the wars were not to blame, God was. So, God had to die for the postmodern thinkers to declare academic war on Metaphysics (especially objective Ethics), spirituality and of course religion. Although it makes absolutely no sense whatsoever and it's even self-contradictory, here's how the postmodern illogic ushered in the epoch of nuance replacing reasoning once reasoning was futile.

1. Using Kant as a starting place, the first step towards postmodernism is to deny that humans can ever know reality, truth, goodness and beauty in themselves because knowing subjects can only know through their human faculties of knowing and perceiving.

2. Next, you have to somehow infer that because of 1. you must deny any objective knowledge of an objective world.

3. Then, because of 2. every area of human perception and knowledge is really only knowledge of the subject(s) that are knowing and perceiving.

4. From 3. therefore, it must follow that all talk, thoughts, ideas or claims about an objective reality are false misguided language games, delusions, or varying degrees of 'nonsense' literally.

5. Finally, from 1. through 4. only nuanced, subjective, self-reports can be intelligently shared, not as true or false, but as degrees of subjectivity that are all equally valid, sound and valuable even when they contradict each other.

Don't forget, this line of nuanced thinking is claimed to be absolutely true even though it denies the very notion of absolute truth. Hence, the contradiction at the center of this thinking as Jürgen Habermas observes in his classic critique of postmodernism. The result of all this is what we witness all around us. No objective epistemic standards except in the 'hard' sciences where people have no time for this drivel because they know they can put something the size of a washing machine on a comet and proceed to do precisely that. No objective moral law to underpin civil and criminal law. All morality is based purely on 'personal experiences'. Thus, illegal migrants are not really illegal migrants. Marriage is not really marriage. There is no objective social justice, merely 'universal consensus', i.e. whatever gang John Rawles can surround himself with. Nuanced universal consensus even extends to the sciences. Despite the fact that not one catastrophic climate change prediction has materialized over the last 15 years as promises, nevertheless media headlines scream:

“97% Of All Scientists Agree Humans Causing Catastrophic Climate Change.”

"Immediate Political Action Required To Stop Climate Change Says U.N. General Secretary And President Obama."

It's all about me. Everyone is a journalist because no one is a journalist. Don't be judgmental. If it feels good, then do it because God is dead. The jihadist terrorist who slaughters innocents has a moral code equal to that of Mother Theresa who washes the lepers of Calcutta. God is dead. One man's terrorist is another man's hero. Vladimir Putin is the moral equal of Pope Francis. Diversity. That depends on what 'is' is. The Republicans are just as bad as the Democrats. The 1% owe the 99 % income equality because I said so. Nietzsche is dead. It takes a village. You are entitled to wealth stolen from the rich if you think you are poor. Wittgenstein is dead. Everything is permissible. Who are we to condemn the serial killer that sexually tortures, rapes and murders infants? We have not the warrant. Freud is dead and there is no objectivity. Argue in the margins. The workers work and the cruel bosses exploit the poor workers. God is dead all you need is love. Roosevelt and Churchill are the same as Hitler and Stalin. Marx is dead. Government must take care of you from the cradle to the grave. Legislate in the margins. It's all George Bush's fault. War is Peace. If Dawkins is wrong then he's right. Ignorance is strength. Nothing is true except for me. Who's to say? Life is a shit pile. Everything is relative. There is no meaning to your existence except what you say it is. Whoopty Do! It's all about me.What is that unforgettable line? Aldous Huxley only saw the half of it. Philology recapitulates Phylogeny. The medium is the message. Save cans and waste paper. There are no absolutes except that one. Act naturally. Follow this simple rule. When you're done, don't bother wiping yourself unless you have internalized the guilt of your bourgeois oppressors depriving you of poly-genital identities beyond ingrained cultural mores perniciously obliterating the impulses of absurd freedoms while projecting a metalanguage in pure phenomenology. " I never had sexual relations with that woman, Ms.Lewinsky, not once." (Actually, Clinton told the nuanced truth if you had the logic to cut through the nuanced nonsense. He had sex with Monica several times 'not once'.) Dies Ire, dies illa...Miserere Nobis. Amen!