why postmoderns are conservative, even if they haven’t read that part of the story yet
Post-moderns attempt to escape the narrow confines of a culture defined by the Enlightenment. That attempt includes moving from pure individualism to community, from propositional claims to narrative, from strict rationalism to contentment with inconsistency, from truth to authenticity, and from integrity to transparency. Every one of those moves is surrounded by dangerous cliffs overlooking jagged valley floors. But that discussion is for another day.
The point here is that by making those moves, post-moderns also end up embracing a type of community which is organic and emergent rather then artificially planned, engineered, and executed. There is something about post-modernity which expects the unexpected, and does not believe that air-tight solutions really have all the holes sealed up. So natural pressures and and the choices of individuals acting as part of a community within those pressures creatively emerge into solutions unforeseen by those living within strict rationalistic guidelines.
Interestingly, conservatives share exactly the same view of community—especially when it comes to the economy. That is, the last thing in the world a conservative wants is a synthetic economic imposition. Conservatives believe in an economy which is organic and emergent, not planned, engineered, and executed. Artificial solutions always have unforeseen consequences and intrusions into the system (such as the fallen nature of humanity). So the free market depends not on design and manipulation, but on allowing members of the community to participate freely toward their own ends in ways which inherently emerge as beneficial for the whole community (or, in this case, society). By so doing, conservatives know neither what an economy will produce nor which businesses or even industries will fail, struggle, succeed, or dominate the community landscape. All of those realities emerge over time as real people make real choices in the real narratives of their lives.
It may be odd to post-moderns that liberal individualism (and its attendant rights-based ethic and free market economy) leads to a world which functions exactly as they would like to tell their story, but it does. And it may be uncomfortable to conservatives that their laissez faire economy is so similar to a post-modern community, but it is.
So perhaps very modern (in the Enlightenment sense) conservatives and the post-moderns whose identity depends on being different from them should discover this truth and/or write a new chapter in their stories (or perhaps story), one in which the economy is not top-down and synthetically forced, but bottom-up and emergent-ly grown. That economy is the free market.
Sphere: Related ContentTags: Economics, Free Market, Postmodern
It seems to me that in reality, the common denominator of the seemingly conflicting economic and social preferences of the post-modern is simply laziness (moral and economic). In a “transparent” social system, the postmodern is free to abhor responsibility–his openness about it is celebrated. Similarly, an “artificial” economy does not require their participation to function. In the postmodern’s reality, complaining and not working is morally acceptable at a minimum and morally preferable at a maximum.
Dr. Creamer,
Not seeing you on Twitter as much as I hoped.