Postmodernism in Dungeons & Dragons
Recently, Megan posted an article about how to reconsider evil characters the same day a video with Nate, Scott, and Kyle talking about whether the alignment system was still viable was uploaded. Along with a conversation I had with the Nerdarchy staff writers about postmodernism, I was inspired to write an article about applying postmodern principles into Dungeons & Dragons.
As a quick warning, I’m going to have to talk about a lot of philosophy, literary theory, and political science, but I promise I’ll always bring it back to Dungeons & Dragons.
Also note that I’m condensing a lot of history and philosophy into the tiniest space. A lot of larger context is necessary to fully understand everything. Entire academic careers are built on even more specific arenas than what I’m going over here. Please don’t think this is the definitive source of information. It’s not. It’s barely scratching the surface. I’m doing my best to fit in as much relative information as possible, but please be aware there’s a lot more than this.
The Grand Narrative
The Grand Narrative, otherwise known as the Metanarrative, is a concept that essentially started with postmodern philosopher, Jean-François Lyotard. All of history, culture, and knowledge are parts of the metanarrative that are controlled by the hegemony. What is and isn’t, is dictated by those who are in power, who are usually political and religious leaders.
The reason why I started at the end is because the metanarrative is the driving force behind everything. It’s a fundamental element of everything, because the metanarrative is what defines societal norms. This isn’t limited to any one era, because if there are people communicating, then there’s rhetoric. If there’s rhetoric, that means there’s a narrative. All narratives compete with each other until one prevails, which becomes the metanarrative. Even postmodernism is in itself a metanarrative, albeit a decentralized one dictated by critics and philosophers, but if there’s a name for it, then it comes with a narrative.
Dungeons & Dragons is a codified and mechanically engineered metanarrative. Every element, especially the alignment system, is designed to convey a specific set of norms and narratives. Dwarves are this way, Elves are that way, Humans are the dominant race, etc. Good is like this and evil is like that. Paladins work this way and rogues work that way. Even if you homebrew a game and dictate different dynamics, you’re still creating a metanarrative. The difference between Dungeons & Dragons and the real world is the level of absolute control.
A Historical Root of Modernism
Dungeons & Dragons is heavily rooted in modernity thinking, that there is an ultimate good and bad with strict socio-cultural norms that are dictated by the hegemony.
The Modern Era
The Modern Era began approximately around the European Renaissance, with the notable events of the rise of capitalism and the Reformation. These two things, in my opinion, are the most significant triggers of the modern era, because they did something important: it gave rise to the middle class and empowered them with economic mobility. Secondly, the invention of the printing press created an unprecedented spread of information, and with it, knowledge, bringing about the Age of Enlightenment. The American and French revolutions, along with the Industrial Revolution, brought about disruptions in power and political dynamics which led the way into the late modern era.
Romanticism
Romanticism came out in the late modern era, preferring Middle Ages sensibilities over the Classic Era ones preferred during the Renaissance and Age of Enlightenment. It was partially a reaction to the sensibilities of the Industrial Revolution, embracing nature and beauty with works like the works of Jane Austen, Frankenstein, Moby Dick, and medieval folklore, while rejecting urban sprawl, the abandonment of religion, and scientific abuse.
J.R.R. Tolkien was heavily influenced by romanticism. He wanted to see more English mythology, which he felt was lacking, especially in comparison to Norse and Celtic mythology. He did what was is often considered the definitive translations of Beowulf and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the former of which heavily influenced The Hobbit.
Dungeons & Dragons is heavily influenced by romanticism and the works of J.R.R. Tolkien, the later of which Gary Gygax eventually admitted was a significant influence. Elves and Dwarves of the Middle Ages are significantly different than those of the Romantic Era, especially those re-imagined by J.R.R. Tolkien.
Modernism
Modernism, like romanticism, sought to reject enlightenment thinking. Unlike romanticism, however, modernism largely rejected religion, and it was aware that it needed to adapt to the new industrial society. Modernism rejected Realism, which was itself a counter-posing movement against romanticism. Aware of literary and social traditions, modernism sought to reprise, revise, and parody through the works of the past.
It also sought to improve society and culture through a re-examination of every facet of life. ‘Modernists of the postwar generation felt that they were the most important bulwark against totalitarianism, the ‘canary in the coal mine,’ whose repression by a government or other group with supposed authority represented a warning that individual liberties were being threatened.”
Literary Modernism broke with the mainstream culture, experimenting with unreliable narrators and irrationality. They were heavily influenced by thinkers like Charles Darwin, Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Sigmund Freud. Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness was a scathing attack on colonialism in Africa and a fictionalized account of the very real atrocities committed there.
Following World War I, modernists began to question the rationality of humanity. J.R.R. Tolkien didn’t come out of the war unscathed, with combat throughout The Lord of the Rings mostly relegated to relatively less detail, especially when compared to other events of the novels. It took Frodo four chapters to leave the Shire and two for Tom Bombadil (who didn’t even make it into the movies), but the Battle of Helm’s Deep was one chapter, and little of that covered the actual combat.
Modernism in Dungeons & Dragons
Dungeons & Dragons owes a lot of its roots to literary modernism. Perhaps as much as romanticism. While the connections with romanticism are obvious, there is significant influence from modernism.
First off, there is a significant break from religion, or at least a break from traditional religions. Dungeons & Dragons allows for, and even encourages, all sorts of deities and pantheons. It puts all religions, including homebrew ones, on the same level. It does concede the significance, and perhaps the importance, of religion, making it an essential element of the game. If, as Nietzsche argues, we killed God, that doesn’t mean that religion went with it. In fact, the gods are very real, very tangible, and can set foot on the prime material plane.
Another significant element is the way it manifests creatures. Evil is snarling and ugly. It’s dark and festering. Good is beautiful and illuminating. Except that’s not always the case. Good and bad can be lawful or chaotic. The fey wild is home to creatures who can be good, neutral, or bad, who are often chaotic in nature. However, in the majority of cases, good and evil, lawful and chaotic, are visually identifiable. The alignment system is clearly defined. Lawful good follows a specific set of rules.
Lawful good doesn’t mean lawful nice, but it’s not chaotic good, and it’s certainly not lawful evil. Humanity knows what is good and what is evil, even if we are capable of a great many evils when we lose sight of our rationality. The alignment system is a reflection of that, and we can use it to clearly identify good and evil.
Postmodernism
In postmodernism, there is no moral universalism or objective reality. There is no universality. In essence, each of us experiences the same things in completely different ways. Not everyone thinks like you or has the same beliefs as you because each of us have vastly different experiences from each other. The end result is moral relativism.
Scott Garibay defined moral relativism very succinctly in our group chat when he said: “It seems like good and evil are not even defined concepts in your chosen world and that means each day you could be looking at the task of defining or redefining these huge concepts by yourself and then having to deal with everyone around you also defining and redefining those huge concepts differently than you.” Each of us has to make our own moral decisions based on a great many factors. Some are rational, while others aren’t, and most come from different places. Most people don’t make decisions they believe to be amoral, either.
At the end of the day, no one really wants to be the bad guy. We make the decisions that we make based on what we feel is right. If our actions hurt other people, we’ll justify them because we don’t want to be responsible for harming others, but that doesn’t make us evil. Each of us, of course, will respond in different ways, whether that means we fight back against our perceived threats, we try to do things to appease our consciousnesses, or something altogether different. What moral decisions we make, and how we choose to respond to them, alongside our environment, affects our reality.
That’s why a postmodernist will argue that there’s no absolute truth. That the metanarrative isn’t real, because it only exists because of the influence and the domination of the hegemony. That the reason why people react differently is because those different experiences in concert with our different moral choices work together to create different realities.
Of course, there’s more to it than that, but that’s largely the important part of this particular conversation.
Adding Postmodernism into Dungeons & Dragons
If, in postmodernism, morality is relative, then so is the alignment system. Good and evil are the constructs of the metanarrative, only in relation to what the hegemony has dictated. Evil is evil because it’s greedy, and it takes. But, what if the truth is a matter of perspective? What if my greedy is you acting in your self-interest? What if you take because you, or your family, need to take to survive? What if the only opportunities that you have in life are the ones you take? In that regard, evil isn’t evil, but what’s necessary for survival, and entire races that are aligned evil are actually those who’ve been put in hundreds, or thousands, of years of systemic abuse. What’s good is also no longer a societal norm, but the extent by which you are self-giving in relation to what you can afford to give.
What about lawful vs chaotic? If laws are an extension of the metanarrative, then internal codes of conduct are the basis of that system. How can we apply a code of conduct that everyone would consider that they’re following? After all, no one wants to be a bad guy. We must then turn to another marker. Since everyone wants to do good, then it’s the way that we choose to do good that matters. Therefore, lawful vs chaotic becomes the means vs the ends. Those who would otherwise be aligned strictly as lawful would say that the ends never justify the means, where those more on the chaotic side would say that the ends can justify the means.
Finally, the last category is the equivalent to neutral, which is the nuanced approach. According to postmodernism, there are no moral absolutes, so those that are more neutral don’t look at everything with a strict code of the means vs the ends, or self-interest vs self-giving. They would weigh each situation individually, and make the best call they feel they can make in any given situation, hoping they made the right one without any strong conviction. Most of us, I believe, would fall in that category.
When you’re thinking about characters, NPCs, enemies, or even quests and missions, using postmodernism you can look at it from the perspective that everyone is going to have a motive that isn’t going to be evil or wicked, but fall somewhere on the sliding scale. Postmodernism would also highlight that you can’t always assume someone’s motivations match their decisions. Their good deeds may be for purely selfish reasons, such as a mayor who hires the heroes to clear out trolls in an area where a lot of swing voters reside. The trolls die and people are saved, but he’s not justly motivated. It can also be revealed that areas that are generally full of voters that are deeply in opposition to him get fewer adventurer contracts. Or maybe consider that urban sprawl is cutting into territory that’s long been the homeland of an Orc tribe. Perhaps they do kill to drive out people, but in their eyes they’re defending their homes, and open combat is part of the nature of their culture in the defense of their lands.
I hope you enjoy this, and take it into consideration when planning your next session. Until then, have fun and stay nerdy!
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Scott Garibay
May 30, 2017 at 12:08 pmFantastic Article. Your summaries of the elements that comprise postmodernism are superb. (I was not aware of the Great Narrative prior to reading your article.)
You are 100% wrong that Dungeons & Dragons owes a lot of its roots to literary modernism. Gary Gygax rejected Literary Modernism in the construction of Dungeons & Dragons. Gary was clear. A Lawful Good Champion is a Paladin, granted by her deity great powers. A Lawful Evil Champion is a Fighter, granted nothing by every one of the listed evil deities. Complete rejection of Literary Modernism.
I did learn something important from your article. Your article clarified that postmodernism heralds that there is no objective reality. I was shocked to see this. I had thought that “Alternative Facts” was a new concept just brought forward in 2017. From many, many instances I read on the Internet I had thought that those who believed in postmodernism were opposed to “Alternative Facts”, but thanks to your article it is clear that anyone who believes in postmodernism is completely in support of “Alternative Facts” as they have carried the banner for there being no objective reality long before 2017. A surprising insight.
Again, Fantastic article.
Dee
December 10, 2017 at 11:41 amIt has always intrigued me that a postmodernist will argue in support of a Moral Relativism but reject cultural relativism and cultural comparison. Because as much as postmodernist is a rejection of Romanticism and Modernism, it is still a product of 19th century Imperialism and it is through this believe in their own moral “enlightenment”: We have evolved beyond “Religion” and “Gods”, Science is the only truth, if you believe in any religion you are obviously trapped by the horrible priests who wish to denigrate the proletariat, or you are uneducated because those who are educated know that religion is meaningless.
For me, D&D has always been unique because the game recognized that for the characters in game, religion had a real and concrete effect on their daily lives, for good or ill. The 5e hand-wave-nominal ignoring of the Alignment system is not a benefit in the long run. While some of the old rules of Alignment were overly complicated, ignoring them wholesale removes a core means of understanding and connection with the world at large. Before the “Enlightenment”, everyone believed and could see the works of their gods in the world around them. In the world of D&D, morality is not relative. Gods of evil exist. Their priest perform evil actions. Could be they justifying themselves that this will make the world better? Yes, but they do not deny the evil of their actions or their patrons.
If we are considering Lawful vs. Chaotic, we should not forget the Greek root of Chaos. Chaos is not a rejection of Laws, but the primordial naturalistic existence from which all creation was spun and to which all creation will eventually return. Laws are created by man and therefore suffer from interpretation and the morality of those who create them. Chaos, at its core, should be outside the boundary of morality. But because most Postmodernists, reject an overarching truth or morality, they most frequently misunderstand chaos as a rejection of laws. Chaos is eternal and still occurs even within the laws of a culture. A lawful good paladin is an actor of the moral good of the laws created by their moral good god. But a chaotic good or chaotic neutral character who rejects the laws, is not considered as acting against the god and would not draw the attention of the Paladin.
By attempting to integrate the ideologies and concepts of postmodernism into D&D, I think we have lost some of the differences from our own everyday reality that makes it such a joy and benefit to play in. It is a different world and by thinking and playing in that world, the players gain the ability of examine their own morality within a safe enviornment. A large number of psychological studies have shown the benefit of using morality plays to aid in the psyche of humans, both those suffering from mental disorders and the regular population. During the middle ages, the performance of morality plays both taught the population and aided in their ability to work through complex issues and questions. D&D allows for the same experience and psychology role play, but only if we acknowledge that the morality (Alignment) of our characters has real weight and acting against that morality has real consequences.
Sorry for the long winded response. Just something I’ve been thinking about recently.
Joshua Brickley
December 10, 2017 at 4:16 pmYes, religion is meaningless. Not because of faith, but because religion is the political arm that dictates belief. Even within the constructs of religion (of course setting aside the many, many variations of the same religions), members of religion have different views of religion than even their holy books. If you’re a strict adherent of the Bible, as an example, then there is no exception to the rule that followers of the faith go to heaven, and those that don’t go to hell. A pedophile that is deeply religious goes to heaven. An atheist that spends their life and fortunes giving to the poor and disadvantaged goes to hell. There are no exceptions. However, many faithful don’t view their religion that way. To many, heavenly prizes need to be earned, and their belief in God, and following his will, will help guide them to doing good works. Also, a lot of what people believe about Christianity comes from Milton’s Paradise Lost, and not from the Bible at all, so religious doctrine plays less of actual factors in peoples’ belief than they realize.
Secondly, the reason why postmodernists tend towards science as the basis of their reason and understanding is because it comes from a place of discovery. Scientists are willing to shape their understanding of the world based on new information. People thought the world was flat until they discovered it wasn’t (long before Columbus, by the way). Our understanding of the universe is still be unraveled, and we know that there’s still so much we’ll never understand. The other part is that science is less centralized. By no means is our current scientific system perfect, but a lot of that has to do with the way that we fund the sciences, and how much some people (*chough*religions*cough*) attempt to subdue and subvert it. Scientists reason the world, and understand that a banal set of rules are counterproductive to the advancement of mankind. That’s why postermodernists tend towards the sciences.
Also, moral relativism doesn’t mean that there’s no good or evil. It doesn’t mean that fact and fiction don’t exist. That there are no truths or lies. Murder is bad. Like 95% of the population gets that. Laws aren’t stopping us from murdering. Our own personal moral compasses (regardless of where you acquire them) tells us that it’s bad. A lot of Christians turn to their religion to affirm what they believe to be true. As an atheist, I turn to my sense of empathy, and my desire to treat others as they’d like to be treated, to know that murder is bad. Evil is hurtful and selfish. Good is compassionate and giving. However, what moral relavatism teaches us is that there are cultural differences that shade how we look at the world.
Based on what you have to say, I can easily assume that you’re a conservative white Christian. Dee is pretty gender neutral, but I think you’re a male, because men tend to be more blindly intollerably commanding. How you’re shaping your arguments (honestly, regardless of gender) allows me to make certain assumptions about who you are, because of the way that people like you think (I’m thinking Ohio, but maybe Wisconsin). That’s because our cultural backgrounds shape how we view things. As an example, I’m a college-educated white male atheist from Oregon. Basically an elitist progressive liberal. It should be no surprise to you that I have an English degree.
My experiences shape the way I interact with people, the same way that a black kid from New York would, or an old Afghan woman. Each of our cultures dictates a number of values and morals affect how we interact with the world. You and I don’t fear police the way that minorities do, so our opinion of them is different, and our views of government authority is very different. In different cultures, there are different degrees of what’s culturally acceptable. Japan has a completely different set of cultural values that are sometimes more or less conservative, depending what they are.
However, that doesn’t mean that some areas aren’t strife with extreme evil. Powerful people who are evil can gain control over a culture for a long enough period of time that peoples’ moral compass can be turned asunder, but that doesn’t make them inherently evil, nor does it make what they do any less evil. Moral relavitism is aware that there is evil. The idea simply is that other people have different perspectives on the world, and those perspective aren’t necessarily more or less right or wrong.
That’s why I’m not a fan of the idea of treating others as you’d like to be treated. That assumes that both of you have the same values. Here’s an example. I enjoy playing sports when I can, and I have fun competing, but I really don’t care about winning or losing. If I were to treat you, who for the sake of argument thinks that winning and losing is very important (I’m probably pretty right on that one), the same as I’d like to be treated, then I wouldn’t bother keeping score, and every time that you’d ask me what the score was, I wouldn’t be able to tell you, even if it was clear that I was dominating you. In that instance, which one of us is right or wrong? Which one has the better values? Sure that’s a pretty tame example, but I’m hoping that it’s vanilla enough (allusion intended) that you’ll be able to listen to the principles.
Secondly, I devoted a fairly significant portion of my article to the importance of gods. Religion has played a significant element of every developing culture on the planet, and I’d imagine in the entire universe (assuming that other sentient life exists). The world is a big, scary place. Religion helped guide us, and make sense of the world. In D&D, (again) as I said, the gods are real. You can literally interact with them, and talk to them. They grant you powers. I’m an atheist, because I believe in Occam’s Razor (among other things), but if I could have a beer with Jesus then I clearly wouldn’t be.
D&D also grants us a thing that doesn’t exist in the real world (along with the proper use of punctuation): clearly defined rules of good and bad. The Abrahamic God (which includes Judism, Christianity, and Islam) has done a lot of good and bad things. He’s got a pretty high death count, for sure, not including how many people he’s told his followers to kill. That’s not to mention how often he’s depicted testing faith with pretty extreme methods (in a lot of super dickish ways). Then there’s the whole end of days thing, with a thousand years of suffering. There’s also a lot of good things he’s done. Honestly, in my opinion, Jesus is the top of that list. He taught tolerance and love, and extoled the virtues of other people who have different views, and with different cultures than our own (man, that somehow seems really familiar, but I’m not sure where from). He fed the poor, and tore down the markets of those who attempted to profit off them (Jesus was a socialist). That kind of rough dichotomy doesn’t exist in D&D gods. They exist purely on the scale of good and bad. Bahamut is supremely good. Tiamat is dark and evil. Pretty much end of story. So, you’re right in that D&D doesn’t follow moral relavitism. It’s just that human religions do.
Third, I’m not telling anyone that they have to do anything. You can read my article and choose to consider it for some of your campaigns, or interject it in some parts. Dragon Age Origins does a pretty superb job of it, in fact. Some parts are purely good vs. evil, and others make you feel uneasy about the decision you make, regardless of which ones you pick. You can also look at it and say it’s not for your campaign, or at least not for all of them. The campaign I’m running on my own channel, Tales from the City Watch (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL_Mr5CpqGkReXZz2BuxYLD4IG-gehprmN) is going to have mostly clearly defined good vs bad moments. They’re peace keepers, and I don’t want them to feel like they’re making the wrong choices. I want them to feel like they’re always on the right side of the law. However, I also like the idea of introducing some moral quandries, like making the choices about the greater evil. Do they start establishing low-level confidential informants? Do they let some criminals loose in order to go for the bigger fish? Do they make the decision to leave some criminal elements in place in order to ensure that peace and order is maintained? What do they do about corrupt cops?
That being said, not every game I run will have even that level of concern. There’s a lot to be said about escapism and just wacking things with sticks and blowing things up. I may have them choose to question pre-conceived notions, like maybe not all orcs are the bad guys, even if they’re generally evil. Maybe they’re raiders and killers, but in this one quest they’re the victims. Maybe I never do it for that campaign, but I like the idea that it’s something that I can think about, and it’s something I chose to share with others, so they can think about it, too.
Finally, I would suggest that if you’re going to make comments like that, try to get a greater perspective. If you’ve read the bredth of my articles, instead of trying to comment in a vacuum, so that you can try to use selective information to try to counter arguments that you disagree with, you’d understand that I made the argument about using games and stories as a means of experimenting with morality. These articles are very short, and the length of article it would’ve taken to make a complete point would’ve been a lot longer. Even with 2,000 word articles (which this article wasn’t), I rarely have the space to make a complete point, so I have to zone in on a singular topic, and hope that people understand that there’s a lot more going on than that.
Granted, even within the confines of this article, if the goal is to experiment with how to deal with moral situations, then D&D should be exactly the place where you experiment with moral relavatism, and other forms of perspectives, so you can test out what it’s like to be a different person. Maybe try your hand at playing a gay or transgender character, or work with your DM to work out how to experience life as a part of the powerless minority (try maybe monsterous character options for that, like a goblin or kobold). Wouldn’t that go with the point that you’re trying to make? Or, are you trying to justify that you’d rather sit inside the safety of the world that you know and understand, and use meaningless and convenient arguments in order to make you feel better about the fact that you’d rather not challenge your preconeived notions?
Oh, and sorry for the long-winded response. I haven’t really been thinking about it. You know how much easier it is to respond to the hard work that others put into something than to make something of your own.
Dee
December 10, 2017 at 5:39 pmFirst of all, I am Classically-Trained Irish/Sicilian Catholic Woman, thanks, raised on multiple military bases. Your assumptions about my politics aside, I was addressing the in character and historical reasons why religion/faith, had both a moral and cultural necessity. Also why a number of postmodernist fall into the same traps that they are protesting against. Like you did in your response to me. You assumed I was anit(fill in the blank) and your response was that I should play (fill in the blank) to “gain a greater perspective”. Nothing in my comment was anti-gay, trans, race. I merely addressed the cultural necessity of relgion/faith within the framework of a traditional mid-evil D&D world.
NO I’m not Conservative. I am a Teacher of Classics (That’s classical Greece and Rome) with a degree in Classical Languages who spent most of my studies looking at how gender and language are intertwined with culture. Denying the historical and cultural relevance of religion and its effect on people to claim a moral relativism ignores (like most postmodernists do) the culture of the people who believe, who according to the postmodernist rhetoric should have its own value and importance. Being a classist means that I am aware of how religion can be both positive and negative. Negative in the way people have used it to justify their own desires for centuries. Positive for its moral and psychological effects on the believers. Personally, some of my favorite academic research is in the Anthropology of cultures and religion. If you have an opportunity, I really recommend reading Karen Armstrong’s “The Great Transformation” that addresses the concept of the Axial Age and how monotheistic religions impact on the development of cultures across the planet.
Finally, I made a point of saying that this was something I had been thinking about for a while and your article allowed for an opportunity for me to express my opinions and thoughts. As such I appologize if it seemed that I was specifically attacking your article rather than issues with the concept as a whole.
Joshua Brickley
December 10, 2017 at 7:02 pmTo start, I don’t care if you attack my article. I don’t care if you attack me. I don’t even care if you don’t like postmodernism. I don’t care if you choose whether to include it in your game, or not. I care that you are trying to mischaracterize the point in order to fuel your views. Knowing that you’re classically-trained (in I’m assuming literature and rhetoric), meaning that you should know better, irks me a little more. If you replied using an argument about why you like the classical thinking over postmodernism, comparing them properly, this conversation would be significantly different. You didn’t. You made some smarmy comments about postmodernists, and why you think they’re wrong. By the way, you still haven’t backed up your arguments. You’ve made your blind-faithed Catholic feelings known, based solely on the fact that you think that ultimate good and evil exists because of your belief structure, despite the fact that even in the Bible, there are many shades of right and wrong.
Going back to knowing better, by pure virtue of you being educated on the subject (I’m assuming you’re educated on it, based on how you’re inferring your credentials), you should know that my arguments are a very small sliver of the bigger picture. The article isn’t about postmodernism. It’s not even about saying that postmodernism is the best philosophy. The article is about introducing the idea of including postmodernist thinking into your game to make things more interesting, to allow players to think more about what’s going on in the game. As with any philosophy, I think there’s usually at least a little value in all of it. There’s no such thing as any one supremely perfect or corrupted system. Saying otherwise is the sign of a limited mind.
The only thing I assumed in your response was that you’re anti-postmodernism. I conjectured about a number of things about you based on the arguments you were making, which I’m mostly right about. You are a white (Irish and Sicilian are white) religious (a pronounced Cathoic) person. I was 50/50 on male or female, but being a military brat makes sense about your forcefulness. I’m not implying anything. I’m saying that, having spent a decade in the military, you being a forceful female doesn’t surprise me. It’s a big part of the culture, where everyone is expected to be a leader.
Religion has done bad and good. The same way that there are positives and negatives about both conservative and liberal thinking (it’s of my opinion that the GOP are no longer a conservative party, but that’s not a conversation for today). However, I think that religion tends to get in the way of belief, because it’s more autocratic in nature, where I feel that religion should be democratic. Having graduated from a Catholic university (which you’d know if you read my bio), and been exposed to some Catholic teachings (one of my favorite courses was Catholic Social Teachings, which I recommend for everyone, regardless of religion), I see the good that exists, but religion also limits beliefs, and it forces subjects to be put in boxes that are dogmatically locked away. That’s why religion is, on the balance, not preferable, but I think belief is a very good thing. If you can stay home and read the Bible, learning personal truths from it, I think that’s a wonderful thing. The fact that there are arbiters of religious knowledge is a problem to me. Also, there are examples in the Bible about bad things done by God. The Egyptian plagues, Sodom and Gomorrah, Jericho, and the Flood, to name a few. Their sins were not adhering to Abrahamic beliefs. They didn’t commit any crimes that warrented mass genocide, but that’s what happened. Worse, those are examples that Abrahamic religions pride themselves in, and will glady share. How good is that religion?
Before I forget, I never said you were against anyone in the LGBTQ community. What I said was that you should try to play as those characters, or a character in a cultural minority. In fact, WotC encourages it in the character creation process in the PHB. The idea of that is you get a shot at experience the kinds of things they deal with on a daily basis. It’s like that video of the guy that dressed like a woman and walked through New York to see what being cat-called felt like. Sure he was able to take off the dress at the end of the day, and not have to deal with that for his entire life, but it gave him a little bit of perspective on the kinds of things that women have to go through. As I said, by playing characters with different life perspectives, you get a chance to understand them more. If you feel like you can’t go so far as to play as someone that different than you, use your education and try to experiment with other philosophies. Create a postmodernist character, who believes in moral relavitism, who doesn’t judge other cultures. You shouldn’t go so far as to not intervene when people are harming each other, because that would miss the point, but experiment with the idea that your way isn’t necessarily the definitive answer.
In fact, that’s kinda the point of moral relativism. It’s that different people come from different cultures and backgrounds, and see the world from a different perspective, which is something that we should consider interacting with others. You are allowed to have your own opinion about the world. I encourage it. What I take issue with is attacking a group of people that believe that everyone has a right to a reasonable variation (like murder and stealing is bad) of social and moral distinctions by saying that they’re wrong because you value your perspective over theirs, especially when the point of moral relevatism is that you have a right to your views, as long as you’re not hurting other people (physical, emotional, or psychological).
By the way, if you’re feeling attacked, please understand that you are in the vast majority. Christians love to say that they’re being persecuted, but you still make up 70% of the US population. If you want to feel attacked, pick a group of those in the vast minority, and engage with them. Talk to racial minorities, people in the LGBTQ community, one of the disabled communities, those in a religious minority or atheists, or some other group whose voice is legitimately drowned out. Have an open and honest discussion where you listen more than twice and much as you talk. Engage with them as a person. Find out how they feel, and listen.
Finally, as an educated person, especially one who has an understanding of rhetoric, you should understand that context and audience matter. If you’re going to go off on a random article about postmodernism, make sure that you adjust your approach to the rhetorical audience. Use those tools that you learned in your rhetorical criticism classes. Connect and substitute. Find the right approach. Otherwise, you’re just yelling angrily at the world with no purpose other than to feel like you’re being heard. If that’s what you want, expect the response you’ll get.
Dee
December 12, 2017 at 7:11 am@Joshua, thanks for being a great teaching example for my student on how Not to engage in academic debate.
@Doug I always enjoy reading the articles on Nerdarchy. They are always in engaging and thought provoking.
Doug Vehovec
December 11, 2017 at 2:55 amThank you for sharing your thoughts and comments on our post, we always like to hear what the Nerdarchy community has to say. As the Nerditor-in-chief, it is wonderful to see any of the content here on our website provide thought-provoking experiences. I hope to continue shepherding the site towards more and better content across a diverse array of topics for a long time to come. Feedback and thoughtful comments such as yours are always appreciated, and we welcome you sincerely to visit here with us often.