We Will Win
Why the Web Will Win the Culture Wars for the Left:
Deconstructing Hyperlinks
Cultural conservatives have a lot of worries. They fear that Grand Theft Auto and other video games will turn their kids into crowbar-wielding criminals, they believe that Hollywood will turn their daughters to floozies and sons to gigolos, and they despise the constitutional barrier between church and state as an unnecessary evil that has estranged religious beliefs from public life and eroded the core values of our country. Underlying all these concerns is the overarching belief that moral relativism -- which holds that competing claims to right and wrong cannot be judged objectively -- is making America a godless, bankrupt country, and a very dangerous place to raise a kid.[snip]
That will change. Like reading or breathing, web browsing itself is agnostic with respect to politics and culture. Unlike reading or breathing, however, surfing mimics a postmodern, deconstructionist perspective by undermining the authority of texts. Anyone who has spent a lot of time online, particularly the very young, will find themselves thinking about content -- articles, texts, pictures -- in ways that would be familiar to any deconstructionist critic. And a community of citizens who think like Jacques Derrida will not be a particularly conservative one...
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Comments
Historical inevitability rears its ugly, battered head once more...
Why don't you ask any of the cultures who have tried living under leftist philosophies about that slogan "WE WILL WIN!!" ?
Posted by: Bill, The Radioactive Monk | May 14, 2003 10:25 PM
I have and they are happy as can be, particularly when compared to what American society is fast becoming. I suppose it has a lot to do with what we define as a leftist philosophy. Why don't you ask any of the cultures who have lived under right-wing regimes what they think about such slogans. The extremes on both sides have problems. I find what I believe Bushes vision of what America should be depressing and frightening. So this take on the culture wars should it prove to be true is encouraging.
Posted by: Norm | May 15, 2003 12:04 AM
The capacity for critical thinking isn't believed to develop in people until at least after the age of 8. Deconstructionism requires something to deconstruct, as well. People appear to learn generally by first understanding a big, overarching concept and then refining it, tacking on exceptions and so forth as they become exposed to more information. If you give young people nothing but fragmented input with no particular authority to any of it, it's simply going to confuse them. Better to expose them to an environment which teaches them to question everything they're told later in life, when they have something to question and some life experience as a basis from which to question it.
Posted by: anon | January 13, 2004 11:59 AM