Pontius Pilate was ahead of his time.
Sarcastic? Please note that while this is not an endorsement of Pontius - for Christians or Nazis who call Jews, "Christ Killers" note that if Jesus had not died you'd be going to hell. Source: Bible
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"What is truth?" Pilate famously declared when presiding over Jesus's trial. But I am not that old and wasn't there.
In one university class, though, when some students started making old jokes about me, I told them I had initially fought in the First World War. The conversation degenerated quickly, and by the end, I was making jokes about knowing Jesus and questioning Mary's sexual history; all this probably was quite offensive, wrong and could mean hell is forthcoming. But it's pretty funny.
But still, it’s true; nobody recorded Pilate's "What is truth?"
Theologians have debated the meaning, but theology’s power is dimming. Today, we are too clever for such a thing and are drifting toward a Michel Foucault postmodernist approach to power, rules, and what truth means or, more importantly, how it is made. But since we may be unable to explain it in a 30-second TikTok, that’s a problem.
Power comes to those who can institute power and rules that take more than 30 seconds to explain, and that doesn’t always translate well to video. Nobody will pay attention.
Was Pilate running ahead of Michel Foucault, the father of postmodernism? Was he saying that truth is not an absolute but a construction depending on cultural norms, who has or is taking power, and society's constraints on us? Has truth become like a shelter, made up of what materials happened to be nearby or what was permitted to be nearby, as if the construction of truth was something to keep us out of the rain or make us feel we are being kept out? Is ‘truth’ just what is created by imposed rules, imposing power, and ultimately just the randomness of that hour, just something we cling to because as these bags of flesh, hormones and electrical connections, such truthiness tends to work for us at the moment with the immediate context making us too blind to see anything else?
Foucault did not believe that knowledge grew from a base; this means there was no foundation; it was the opposite of the enlightenment value that focused on a methodical building of knowledge leading to the construction of truth. But Foucault seems very 2024; we speak of a new understanding of climate, gender, criminal development, and learning; power is now deemed to be created by how society structures itself, what it pushes in education, what the media tells us, how economists tell us that debt doesn’t matter. It’s so trending. There is no battle for truth in an absolute sense but a battle for the rules and the power that underline them and that allow us to create fabrication rules for truthiness.
Ultimately, Pilate said truth was not a thing; it was a product of the rules the powerful created. Thus, Pilote was a post-modernist; the rules and the cleaves between word meanings were key, “truth’s” importance then became somewhat archaic, and it makes sense today why so many of our intelligentsia want to take old classics out of the library. Truth is just the outcome of applied power, which leads to “knowledge” and rules. You can’t speak truth to power anymore; power creates truth.
Foucault unsettled me, but to get my English MA and have the hope of going on to win the prize for the most overqualified fast food worker, I had to pass this exam.
So, I was told I must spend four hours wading through Foucault or Marx. Option two, please. So I became a frizzy-haired Marxist between 2 PM and 6 PM on Friday in a University of Minnesota classroom.
But I remember Foucault.
As language becomes more flexible and truthiness becomes more of an imposed product, we can now state with a straight face that a test for "violence" is passed when one feels bad because of one's words. This novel metaphorical bruise-creation method asserts that all one's words are BS and, more importantly, trumpets that one should not be allowed to say them.
We don't debate or think critically much anymore; we often find a word that we hold onto and pretend is a position—the position itself is overrated. We must listen to the rules and new “knowledge” we have empowered our government, intelligentsia, and media to deliver.
So, when someone comes near us, the alarms go off, and we scream at them.
Yes, it's easier than listening and understanding, but it's not good for society. Of course, X, TikTok, and other social media have the power; they set the consumption rules and play to our weaknesses. Authoritarian governments love it; it’s got a bit of the old bread and circuses vibe, except TikTok is providing the circuses, and the bread is coming via Uber Eats, especially after we get those carbon rebate checks.
Orwell's Newspeak in 1984 was intended not only to provide a medium of expression for the worldview and mental habits that worked for the devotees of Ingsoc (the English Socialist group in Orwell’s 1984) but, more importantly, to make all other modes of thought impossible.
Today, we are going the same way.
This seems similar; we can't bring up some topics; of course, I can be fired for saying that I believe gender = sex or even stating a truth that hurts feelings, but the insidiousness is not only the penalty and the fear but the fact that discussion itself is at the centre of the rhetorical bullseye. It’s not so much that you are saying an untruth; you are breaking rules and violating power structures.
If you eliminate the language and the words, do you not stop the thoughts? I do not contemplate nor know how to fly (I understand that more than one homosexual has, after being tossed off a rooftop in Gaza, discovered the same). But I do not want unwalking to be eliminated from the lexicon.
Imagine if learning as a word was only associated with classroom exercises; imagine it was found only through repeating what you were told, not understanding the context, the underlying motives, and the surrounding facts.
An example of a new absolute truth - racial identity, if you are white, is a curse; you must find a dead albatross to wear to satisfy society’s woke mariners.
That is now the only allowable perspective; even the word "perspective" must soon be banned as it implies that the word salad your dear sociology professor friend rattles off is anything less than a modern gospel message. He/she is proclaiming rules; the rules create knowledge, and the “truth” is just a little package spit out at the end of the assembly line.
It's strange how we are simultaneously substituting these new flexible words/political positions, human rights talk, gender, safety, diversity, C02 is pollution, etc., as alternatives to discussing anything.
"Lived experience" can become a code word for, "You're not me; shut the f*** up." Most of these pillar words might as well end with, "Shut the f*** up, or we will fire you." It's incredibly anti-intellectual and against any pretence of open inquiry, which used to be at the centre of education. It fits nicely with a post-modern perspective.
Some words are now global absolutes, like poles of moral superiority that are told to stand by and hug, not talk, please, just hang tight. Instead of explaining and figuring out our position, we are encouraged to scream at people if they seem to be moving us to loosen our pole hugs. It’s self-righteousness on steroids.
So remember, if someone comes close, hang on to your moral vanity woke pole and make sure that you are ready to shout insults at people. Although your "Pilatey" postmodern position has been crucial in changing the meaning of the words, they have now solidified, and any word meaning change or questioning of them is hearsay. You are so lucky we haven't brought back the rack. Please stop talking about this truth thing; we have rules now.
But don't worry; it's worse - you might have to do mandatory DEI training with a 23-year-old revolutionary consciousness-holding (do they get a card for that or at least an app?) sociology grad or a minority diversity trainer whose companies' entire profit model is based on the goal that at the end of their seminar, everyone not of colour (if you're Jewish you are a different race but you are obligated to join the whiteys and turn in your Nobel prize, sorry, new rules, oppressor, oppressed, come on get with it); you must make sure that your identity-building foundation includes the phrase, "I am a racist piece of s***, responsible for all wrong." You may use “poop” if you have faecal language sensitivities.
Rules folks.
Today, Pilateism has added its knowledge to your dime store racism and sexism pillars, and we have added settler colonialism, cis everything. Cis is the most arrogant adjective ever created. To many, it feels like when it is raining, and someone corrects you by saying, “You mean wet rain then?”
We seem unable to create criteria and apply them across the board. Consistency isn’t one of the rules for creating knowledge, so just stop that.
Yes, consistent standards seem to be a dated notion. For example, please don’t bring up 500,000 dead in Syria, 277.000 dead in Yemen, and Chechyna flattened (don't you love it when you hear Putin pontificate on the horrors of foreign interference as he sends 1000 poor boys from the Stans surrounding Russia to their deaths each day. There's nothing like ending up on a Telegram channel with heavy metal music playing as a drone drops a grenade on your head.)
Or perhaps the Rohingya Muslims killed in Bangladesh; what does Wikipedia say about Christian deaths in Nigeria, about 100,000 by now?
But comparison or consistency isn’t a rule that leads to knowledge; without such, we can’t have Pilatey-style truth.
No, those moral meters seem to have a particular Jew setting, and the paint has been worn off the Jew knob; it has been so fiddled with—rule #436b. Jew exception switches are always on.
Anti-semitism doesn't seem to have gone away. My grandfather was known to make some smarmy anti-Jew comments, but I know in person he didn't care; he just had heard it on Father Coughlin's radio hour. But I preferred my grandfather's anti-Semitism; there was a little bit of honesty to it; now we have a gamy nasty antisemite wearing the nicest of clothes, the most pleasant of fragrances. It's a bit harder to notice.
But such new, kinder, gentler anti-Semites are the ones whose moral sensitivity meter always has an entirely different Jew scale. I hoped that after 1200 teenagers (okay, babies, elderly, guest workers and a few soldiers), who but for the grace of God were not my children, got slaughtered, it might at least draw sympathy for as long as the bodies were still warm and the DNA experts were still identifying the corpses; you know why not give them a week of compassion, sort of the Jew empathy club trial offers.
But no, anti-semitism is like the cicadas, even though they don't come up every seven years. The talk stays away long enough to fool us into thinking it's gone. And the danger now is that anti-semitism becomes endemic in woke self-branding. But it's not anti-semitism, they bleat.
It's anti-Zionism - I am sure proponents have examined the formation of all borders and countries over the last 500 hundred years. After a thorough investigation, they decided that the formation of Israel uniquely failed to pass their test of proper country formation. Every other country was formed through a beautiful handholding exercise, a happy, ethnically united meeting of minds, and perfect unanimity on borders and religion.
So why is it that the formation of Israel is uniquely bothersome? Or is the old, mostly ignored rule. that we shouldn’t hold Jews to the same reasoned arguments as the rest of humanity been replaced? Rules, remember this: they are what matters, not truth, you intellectual Luddite. Truth can’t stand alone; it is only meant to follow new societal rules obsequiously.
The new rules of Foucault and Pilate expect Israel to say, "Sorry, you're right; we will just get on Zillow and see if some countries are for sale. Excuse us.”
Can a people be more hated that even after half of the entire population was murdered, the pittance of compassion they received was exhausted one day after their marvellous country was birthed? That is crazy hatred; when hatred runs that deep, it is a mental illness, and even if it is driven by religion, it is truly remarkable.
And I think that what Jews fear is that anti-semitism is soon to join the pantheon of mindless woke jargon "points" bleated by every rich kid who sips on a latte in the Ryerson, sorry TMU (not the most creative naming there, folks) journalism lounge. Che Guevara has been replaced. Hopefully, Palestinians can do more merch offerings than the keffiyeh. It is a beautiful scarf, though.
So when you talk about truth, it's not difficult to move it to "your truth." Then, "your truth" drops "your" and becomes more a matter of political fashion than the end of an intellectual process. Rules now say that the “your’ word is more important than that mushy “t” word that followed us around; I won’t mention the “t” word; it’s so 1994.
So if we are ever whining away about “truth,” remember there is no truth; we are pathetic, weak creatures who have randomly assigned meaning and rules to things and structures. That is THE rule; come on, snap back to Foucault.
Of course, in creating rules and knowledge, we have difficulty separating intention from action. Desire, delusion, aspiration and hope are not veins running through graphite; they are a poorly mixed soup.
It's strange how, on the one hand, we are weaponizing words and ultimately making them meaningless (sort of like when you lend your fat cousin your tight teeshirt and it comes back stretched and shapeless, a useless creation that might as well be used as the go-to shirt when you make homemade dog food every fifth Sunday right after church).
The last bit was a joke; nobody goes to church these days; we are so past that; now, we have to attend meetings to decide what type of tampons for the men's washroom. Blue is such a biased colour. But pink is out also. The Senate will have to step in here and decide on the colour. Please make sure everyone brings their plates, metal straws and glasses. Dissolving paper plates and a communal water bucket will also be offered. However, HR wants everyone to know they have cancelled cholera treatments in the company benefits package.
Genocide, anything with a "phobe" as the suffix, violence, safety, gender, and racism all seem to be part of these new weaponized words. They are more than just words; they are one-word rules for behaviour.
These words that are rules are now becoming like prayer beads draped around the necks of many overeducated people so they might finger their (beads). When anyone approaches the users, their alarm system goes off, and the supplicant starts screaming the noted word.
"Homophobe!!!!" It is trendy. Or cis, the most arrogant of words, the one that takes thousands of years of consensus and creates a three-letter adjective that means “in the old pre-enlightened days.”
But rules change, and knowledge changes; we need to stop fighting.
So perhaps woke language is not a language that exists for meaning transfer, even though that has historically been the point of language. And even though dogs do well with barking, stomping, dipping ears and whining, we still might consider returning to the pre-modern, old-school enlightenment idea of reason leading to truth. Once you arrive at truth, you can use it to fortify and strengthen foundations.
So, despite the presumption that truth and language are just random social constructs, language should not be intended to eliminate thinking nor to eliminate and ostracise those with alternative thinking.
Free speech is not just the bones left over after all the woke hyenas have had their rhetorical lunches.
Perhaps Pilote was not a committed Foucault enthusiastic; it’s hard to make that point with Foucault not arriving till the 20th century. Pilote’s cynicism about rules leading to knowledge and from there to “truthiness” did not open up conversation or understanding.
It offered - and still does - more power to the word bullies; perhaps post-modernism should be nailed to the cross and never resurrected.
If you believe in the importance of free speech, subscribe to support uncensored, fearless writing—the more people who pay, the more time I can devote to this. Free speech matters. I am a university professor suspended because of a free speech issue, so I am not speaking from the bleachers. The button below takes you to that story if you like.
Please subscribe and get at least three pieces /essays per week with open comments. It’s $5 per month and less than $USD 4. I know everyone says hey, it’s just a cup of coffee (with me, not per day but just one per month), but if you’re like me, you go, “Hey, I only want so many cups of coffee!” I get it. I don’t subscribe to many here because I can’t afford it.
But I only ask that when you choose your coffee, please choose mine. Cheers.
Brilliant writing and remarkable insight, such as: “Lived experience" can become a code word for, "You're not me; shut the f*** up." Most of these pillar words might as well end with, "Shut the f*** up, or we will fire you." It's incredibly anti-intellectual and against any pretence of open inquiry, which used to be at the centre of education. It fits nicely with a post-modern perspective.