Disregarding the Past, Evading the Truth
Despising What Was Preserved: One Symptom of Postmodernism
Critics have long excoriated higher education — with some justification — for its fixation on political correctness. But they might just as well take aim at another, equally pernicious aspect of college culture: postmodernism (deconstructionism). In the months ahead, we’ll explore both of these — along with a third, less obvious but no less damaging trend: the way colleges leave graduates feeling satisfied with their education, convinced they’re educated, while failing to cultivate real intellectual humility or discipline. Together, these three — political correctness, deconstructionism, and illusions of competence — form what we’ll later describe as some of the most insidious “yeasts” of the modern Pharisees.
For now, though, we turn our focus to just one aspect of postmodernism.
Postmodern thinking often elevates inner reality, subjective experience, and what feels meaningful in the moment, while dismissing the slow, disciplined work of, say, preserving and transmitting intellectual and spiritual foundations. In this one aspect of postmodernism — disregard for the what came before — postmodernism might discredit the work of copying, archiving, and handing down truth — even treating it as oppressive — because it does not immediately resonate with its own here‑and‑now spirituality.
This mindset is not just skeptical of what was preserved, but indifferent to the very act of preservation — as though Truth with a capital T does not exist at all, and what matters is only the meaning each individual constructs for themselves. It denies the idea that there is something enduring, greater than ourselves, worth preserving at great cost. Instead, it imagines truth can be recreated from scratch in each generation, purely from within.
By Way of Illustration:
A visitor to a retreat on Iona (on west coast of Scotland) may come away enraptured by abstract theological debates about Augustinianism and its universalist counterpart, while failing to even acknowledge — let alone honor — the medieval Irish monks who, through anonymous and rigorous devotion, safeguarded the texts and traditions that make such reflection possible — much less what some, like Thomas Cahill, claim: that they saved civilization itself. This quiet contempt for the classics disregards the idea that objective truth — Truth with a capital T — exists at all, or that it’s worth the cost to preserve.
This is alarming because it suggests our hallowed halls — incl. seminaries and universities — are failing to convey how critical earlier contributions are to what we enjoy today. It suggests a generation has grown up with no spiritual compulsion to appreciate what they have and how it got here. And it points to something deeper and more corrosive: that the cultural focus on “inner” experience — from churches to colleges to commercials — may have eroded the very foundations of character itself.
Postmodernism can rob the Truth of its past.
The erosion of Truth — the social capital holds society and civilization together — deserves better than postmodernism’s contempt. We’re outlining all the ways we deflect, distort, and deny it, one by one. Stay tuned.