During Week 10 of class Peter Wood came to class and discussed chapters of his book, The 1619 Project. I thought our talk about postmodernism was interesting. The idea of this concept is that facts are constructed by people who are pursuing their own interests. Therefore, the truth is provisional. Wood thought that it is appealing to those who grew up in democratic society, as it allows for respect for other people’s interpretations. The idea of postmodernism is quite different from the concepts that we discussed in the beginning of the course. The New Left followed careful and critical discourse (CCD). The CCD stated that you needed to justify claims and they needed to have Truth. One could not say something was true just because they have authority. I think recently, if people read one news article, they believe that they know the whole story and feel as if they can provide a truth on it. I think that sometimes news sources want to promote a certain agenda. Therefore, to avoid perpetuating postmodernism it is best practice to read multiple articles to understand the full scope of the situation. I think that it is difficult to fully understand some of the claims that Peter Wood is making without having read The 1619 Project. I believe that I need more context because I was unaware of the project prior to this class. I think that being informed of both sides would have helped me to understand the parts of the readings I was confused about, and having my questions answered.
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3 replies on “Week 10 Blog Post”
I totally agree with you that our society has become more susceptible to “fake news”. This idea that one article that was written by one person, who heard something from another person, and that person heard something or read something from somewhere else about it, becomes a sort of broken telephone and ideas or facts become misinterpreted by the writer. I think this ties in really well with our discussion last week on Mark Mitchell’s book, Power and Purity. That there is one Truth in this world and it is based on the Puritanical interpretation of Christian morals and beliefs. There needs to be ultimate acceptance of the dogma and moralizing judgment will follow if you vary from that Truth. This susceptibility to believe anything that anyone writes stems from this inability to decipher truth, in that everyone has their own truth. This is radically different from any other time period in which there was no establishment of the truth. We discussed that Marxists and Leninists knew the truth, they could clearly tell you what is right and what is wrong in society. Their truth was that the bourgeoisie is oppressing the proletariat and needs to be shut down and removed from their privileged pedestal in society. Anyone who rejected that “truth” was removed from society as an enemy of the state. Here there simply is no universal truth to base utopian goals upon. Everyone is subject to their own truth and only their own truth. You may agree or disagree with someone else’s truth but ultimately it could never be subject to critical discourse because it is their truth. No one could come in and deny them of their truth when it is so deeply ingrained.
I think that your comment about truth is very important when looking at topics that people do not agree on. As I am responding to this comment after our class discussion on truth as Mitchell explains it. I do agree with you that someone else’s truth is theirs and theirs alone and it can’t be denied, a question that I want to pose is whether would it be possible for a group to have a truth that others deny. Because at one level someones experiences might conflict with others and that might be true but on another level, there are things that people can push back on but are simply not true. When something is deeply ingrained as one’s truth I do think that it is possible to deny them of their truth if they are wrong. I am not sure if that section of your comment was in relation to the Marxist and Leninists view or if it was your own, and as I don’t want to misinterpret what was said I want to ask a question of what would an example be of something that is deeply ingrained truth that can not be denied?
I agree with you that people tend to read news articles and think that they are true and I think that the source of where its coming from plays a role in this. For the 1619 project, when the New York times brought in a fact checker, that didn’t agree with Hannah’s thesis because the events from history and evidence didnt add up, then the New york times should have stopped and said well we cant post this. They end up doing the opposite and even defend their work saying that history is all up to interpretation. but if that’s the case than how do we really know if something is true?