Pomo Periscope III: From Sex and the City to Spengler

30 October 2006 at 2:25 am Nicolai Foss Leave a comment

| Nicolai Foss |

Although it lies somewhat outside the scope of the Pomo Periscope (cf. this and this), Steven LaTulippe has an interesting commentary, “Statism, Post-Modernism, and the Death of the Western World,” at LewRockwell.com that simultaneously blasts post-modernism and defends cultural conservatism, while reaching from “Sex and the City” (here is another great blasting of that show) to Oswald Spengler. It is a bit like “Scruton light.”Praising traditional, trust-based, “organic cultures,” LaTulippe argues that post-modernism is a fundamentally destructive force: “Post-modernism is marked by extreme relativism, secularism, and multiculturalism. In fact, post-modernism prides itself in its disdain for any system of ethics, believing this disdain represents “liberation” from oppressive social structures.” The four female characters in Sex and the City are perfect incarnations, says LaTulippe, of the major post-modernist flaws of ethical relativism, auto-genocide (children are at best a peculiar and expensive hobby), and the death of the sacred:

In essence, their lives are more akin to that of animals than to anything that could be called genuinely human. They live lives dominated by impulses and sensations rather than by the intellect or the spirit, lives of indulgence rather than of purpose. They reside in the “eternal present,” without regard for the future and without reverence for the past. Even more disturbingly, their lifestyle has a spooky passivity to it, a sense of slavery to their vices. If someone takes them to a swanky Thai restaurant, they’ll eat. If someone hands them a martini, they’ll drink. If a handsome guy appears, they’ll copulate.