Blue Convolvulus or Bindweed
OK lets agree that in his understanding of Post Irony, David Foster Wallace was of the opinion that in it's maturing phase postmodernism had turned irony into an end in itself, it had become a cynicism (in the modern sense of cynicism not the Diogenes of Synope's meaning) a cynicism masquerading as irony and as such it had sort of got stuck with an assumption that authenticity, truth and commitment where just very uncool. He argued that it had go to the point where any suggestion of authenticity, truth or commitment received a sneer, a rolled eye, a cruel laugh and all those classic back row reactions which some of us took solace from and still do. Baxter and I do have to say that while we both love this Post Irony stuff, we are inclined toward the idea that Wallace's call for new and positive "guiding narratives for ourselves and our communities even while remaining mindful that any narrative is not altogether true or universal" is a sad marriage between abject snowflakeism and Starbucks didgeridoo-libtardism. However Baxter and I are right there when it comes to a general desire to engage with a narrative that avoids elitism, sentimentality, whimpering and whingeing. There's a suggestion that Our new Comrade David Wallace's critique of a white nationalist narrative would include the following wonderful words, "unchecked, self-aggrandizing fanaticism - dangerous attachment masquerading as an "enlarging" cause but is, in fact, a narrow, sentimental, and ultimately "pathetic" form of bondage to a chosen self-image." How beautiful, not at all ironic, but let's just say if you were a believer in white nationalism it might be deemed cynicism. Oh that he had lived to conjure a string of pearls for a critique of Christian White Nationalism. Our other friend Arthur Schopenhauer, if you asked him to give thought to a new and positive guiding narrative he would have laughed, or he might have laughed, more likely he'd have directed one of his Poodles to bite you in the leg, because Arthur Schopenhauer was anti-narrative philosopher. He didn't look at the world and ask: How can I be happy? Nirvana for him was Nothingness, an acceptance of the vanity of existence, understanding that the will was restless and born to suffer, no narrative or belief could stop that, so the rational answer to the human condition was stop dreaming and stop believing. Safe to say Schopenhauer had little faith in an objective love, and David Wallace couldn't find one
