[Paleopsych] deconstructionism

[Michael Christopher]

>>For many Americans, in particular, he was the
personification of a French school of thinking they
felt was undermining many of the traditional standards
of classical education, and one they often 
associated with divisive political causes.<<

--What's really ironic is when people who DETEST
deconstructionism use deconstructionist techniques
(often alongside traditional juvenile ad-hominem
attacks) to tear apart evolutionary theory, atheism
and whatever else gets their goat. It's been sort of a
fad among pseudo-intellectual right wingers in the US
(by pseudo-intellectual I mean people who use the
output of deep thinkers as bricks to throw at enemies,
as opposed to appreciating ideas for what they are).
When a left winger uses "psychobabble" it's Freudian
nonsense. When a right winger uses it, whether to
shallowly psychoanalyze homosexuals or feminists or
liberals in general, it's a victory for traditional
values. Double standards abound.

I think there's always a tension between "insider" and
"outsider" perceptions. Even within one's own self,
there is an "inside" view and an "outside" view. When
I am fully occupied with being myself, I'm inside.
When I'm looking back at myself to figure out why I
did what I did, I'm attempting to get an outside view.
Prematurely disconnecting from the "inside" can result
in confusion, vacillation and a feeling of alienation
from oneself. If I'm falling in love, do I trust the
feeling? Do I analyze it and risk destroying it? That
tension between trusting an emotion and dissecting it
may be behind the uproar over deconstructionist theory
-- it symbolizes something everyone must deal with. It
relates to the fear of "flip-flopping" (i.e. going
from certainty to uncertainty) and the fear of losing
the potency of a truly engaged self. By attempting to
observe the self, one risks changing it.

Michael





		
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