[pelathais]

Added to this were the enduring themes of Rousseau's Blank Slate and The Noble Savage. These two thoughts led inexorably to Freud's ideas that we're all messed up due to the overly rigorous demands of our toilet training and other "evils" of Western Civilization. Basically, we were all born into this world pure and unstained by any competitive thoughts or politically incorrect attitudes. Then, the evils of Western society bore upon us and molded us into the monsters that we are today.

All of society is a huge mistake. We should go back to running naked through the forests. This attitude of course ignores the fact that it is only safe to run naked through the forests today because Western society has hunted down and killed all of the cave bears, dire wolves and saber tooth cats.

Another major player in POMO thought was Derrida, who like his much earlier predecessor Descartes, was actually quite brilliant; but he too suffered from having sloppy devotees and so his ideas get a bad rap. He was the one who coined the whole "deconstruction" method. He also pointed out the major flaw in all human thoughts - "Binary Thinking." Unfortunately the beatniks all took to "deconstruction" and ignored his warnings about Binary Thinking. The results of this can be found in most of the media output that you see today.

In my view, we are thankfully coming out of this nonsense as academia is again arming itself with effective tools for discussing and examining ideas. One of the first signs of "revival" was (of all people) Noam Chomsky's work on "The Language Instinct" back in the 1950's. This seminal work established the idea that there was such a thing as human nature; that is - we are not slaves to the memories of the suffering and abuse we suffered during toilet training but that we can actually choose to be the kind (or nearly the kind) of person we desire to be. Chomsky proved that the "slate" was never really "blank."

A good anthem for the Post-Post Modern Movement is Steven Pinker's "How the Mind Works" and its follow up "The Blank Slate." If you're interested (and up to it) these are great reads. If you're only curious and wonder what I meant by "up to it" then "The Blank Slate" is the place to start.