The Constructivist Paradigm Shift to WOKE
An abridged contemporary history of ideas and how we got here
If you’ve been paying any attention whatsoever to the state of the Western world, you’ve probably realized by now we’re going through a paradigmatic shift. We’ve briefly touched on some of these subjects here and here, but grosso modo we could circumscribe this shift to the invasion of constructivist theories in the realm of the social sciences, and then in society at large.
I studied radical constructivism at University, and I can’t say I was much impressed. This was a while ago, so the ideas had some trouble gaining traction. We read one of the kookiest and, in my opinion, stupidest, authors on the subject, Paul Watzlawick, especially his major works “The Invented Reality” and “How Real is Real?”.
Now, up to that point, we’d studied structuralism and deconstructionism in our pre-grad courses in Venezuela: Derrida, Lyotard, Foucault and all the rest of them. We were all “postmodern”: we were more interested in looking at power structures and language, than at analyzing anything else.
It wasn’t too difficult to agree with the French “Cultural Studies” authors once you plowed through the hermetic language, made-up quasi-nonsense sentences (looking at you, Jacques Derrida) and realized they were basically saying language invents stuff that doesn’t exist and gives it power. Like some normal dude becoming “President” one day and having all this control over us. Or any institution: a courthouse, a university, a film critics’ guild: all made up, all arbitrary, all seething with power.
However, Watzlawick and other cultural profiteers decided to double down and argue absolutely all reality is an arbitrary convention. I personally think they just didn’t understand Foucault, so when they read “the subject is dead” and then ran into Lyotard saying “metanarratives are dead”, they took that sort of literally and decided they might as well kill off all the rest: politics, gender, race and even everything you see or perceive as reality. That’s how we wound up with philosophers babbling about “phalogocentrism in abstract paintings” at philosophy conferences. Nobody understood anything, but if you used the parlance and came up with witty examples about “unreality”, you were accepted and applauded.
I reread Watzlawick last year, wondering if I was remembering him wrong. Surely he wasn’t saying all reality is invented, right? I know this is my right hand, for example. I know Napoleon is dead. I know this cookie I’m eating exists.
To my upmost surprise, Watzlawick wasn’t having any of it. Through a series of more or less elaborate sophistic arguments, the dude rambles on about not being able to know anything. This would be cute, if it came from a Freshman philosophy student who just spent the weekend ripping bong hits while binge-watching all the Matrix movies and decided to write a quick essay overnight.
The impact this sort of “radical” thinking has had on society is visible. Now, we don’t even know what sex is anymore, and some people can’t even define what a woman is (I’m not trying to make political culture war arguments, here, so back off).
I can’t say I’m all that worried about the new paradigm being forced on us. Things change, that’s normal, and I’m not old enough to go about lecturing people about how “my generation” had it right and you Millennials fucked it all up.
On the other hand, I do come from a particular time and culture, so I’m highly skeptical about destroying freedom of speech, policing language or saying the American First Amendment is all a ruse to oppress people. I think Human Rights are laudable, even if they come from the West. I think we’re better off defending Human Rights than not, but I also know politicians manipulate us by explaining they’re spreading freedom around the world to justify their modern-era plundering. That doesn’t mean it’s wrong or culturally insensitive to oppose anti-gay laws. Why is this so difficult to understand?
Also, I don’t think it’s that difficult to know a baby’s sex, on 99,98% of occasions, by looking at secondary sex characteristics, i.e. external genitalia. I don’t think there’s a horrible patriarchy cabal “assigning” sex at birth randomly, based on a whim. Maybe I don’t get it.
The pendulum is going to swing back, pretty soon, because at a certain point reality is going to punch you in the face. Ludwig Wittgenstein had an argument with Karl Popper on this subject once, and it ended with Wittgenstein trying to clobber Popper over the head with a chimney poker to prove reality existed. That’s going to happen on a cultural scale at some point.
I don’t get why it’s that difficult to understand: there is a substrata of reality that is there, and we build upon it arbitrarily through language afterwords. Sex, male or female, is this reality, and your gender (whatever you want to be) is built upon that. Simple.
The “Woke” activists would have had us all on board if they’d stopped there. Sure, the way female human beings express their “womanhood” and this role in society is changing for the best, if you ask me. But I also know what a female human being is: I’m not “assigning” her a sex, she’s a friggin’ female for crying out loud! Yes, 0,02% of human beings will be “intersex” on their external sexual characteristics, not at all if you look at gametes (something we’ve known for 200 years, and now pretend is unsolvable).
But that’s the constructivist approach: if we can’t automatically know the sex of 0,02% of newborns, then we can’t know absolutely anything about sex at all! This is sloppy sophistry. The fact that this has become the dominant model, or that objectivity is dead (it’s all “standpoint” theory: this isn’t mathematics, it’s mathematics from a straight, white, male perspective; this is “black physics” and other nonsense) is not only ridiculous but frankly, quite dumb.
If we trace a quick portrait/caricature of contemporary Man, we’re talking about: a neurotic being floating about a matrix-like world where nothing is real, yet convinced absolutely everything is about power structures (which are, paradoxically, very real according to them), crammed into a hyper-capitalistic society where production and achievement are never-ending goals, trapped in a God-less, a-moral materialistic worldview. What could go wrong?
Yet we wonder why teenagers are nervous wreaks plagued by anxiety, depression, cutting, suicide attempts, designer drugs and no sex. We’ll see where this goes from here; the lack of real philosophers, instead of the pastiche influencers who pass as thinkers today, isn’t going to help…
"Watzlawick and other cultural profiteers decided to double down and argue absolutely all reality is an arbitrary convention."
Well, no. That's not what they said. You were—as you say—a student.
Here's a more accurate presentation of the radical constructivism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radical_constructivism
The radical constructivists are anti-Platonist, which is to say that it questions the representational theory of knowledge and truth first formulated 2500 years ago, and still used as a folk theory in the culture today. However, that theory has been abandoned not just in modern philosophy, but in practical fields as such as education and robotics, because this 2500 year old folk theory simply doesn't work when one starts doing real science.
For instance:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8221426/
"Scientific publications on educational robotics are commonly anticipated by references to constructivism and constructionism."
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/323782114_Applying_Radical_Constructivism_to_Machine_Learning_A_Pilot_Study_in_Assistive_Robotics
"…we match machine learning (ML) and interactive machine learning (iML) with radical constructivism (RC) to build a tentative radical constructivist framework for iML; we then present a pilot study in which RC-framed iML is applied to assistive robotics, namely upper-limb prosthetics (myocontrol)."
This is not restricted to robotics, but I leave further explorations to you.
I also know quite a few young people who are depressed and anxious. Radical constructivism has nothing to with it.
Let me sum up what I hear from them directly:
The world faces a number of critical issues which will affect their future negatively. Their bumbling and/or venal elders are simply incompetent to address these issues effectively. That, they find depressing.
I suggest that rather than theorise about young people. you just ask them directly. They are much smarter than you seem to give them credit. :-)
I understand "there is a substrata of reality that is there, and we build upon it arbitrarily through language afterwords" as division between factual and social reality. Our biology is the same across cultures, the ideas of gender are not. For a change, I won't refer to Polynesian culture, but quote a wise person from the Mohawk tribe I respect a lot:
"Most tribes recognize four genders: feminine female, masculine female, feminine male, masculine male. Some recognize another one or two. There can be two spirits in one body, each can be any one of the four genders, independent of the other.
There is no stigma to homosexuality or bisexuality. It is merely an expression of the nature of the two spirits. In fact, if you try to suppress the urges the Great Spirit gave you, it is an insult to her."
The woke movement behaves like they are trying to solve something we all screwed up, so we are not worth to be allowed even talking about it. Wrong. Well, half wrong. We did screw up, but it also has been solved long ago already, by many cultures, who recognized intersex exists and sex and gender are two things. They live fine since without depression or anxiety about it. How? They just apply the universal human rights, since before they were even worded. Everybody has the right to live in dignity and is treated equal. The fact that the woke movement does not ask for that tells they really are just after political power by oppression, not after better life for everybody.