Until I went back to graduate school 12 years ago, I really had little exposure to post-modern thought. Let’s just say after getting my master’s I’m very familiar with it now. It just wasn’t taught in the 90s when I got my bachelors. But now? I got a rude awakening.

Post-modern thought is not a complete philosophy like say the Enlightenment or the Renaissance, or even Aristotle’s great efforts at systematizing human experience. Nor is it an ideology. What the totality of post-modern thought represents, both its Continental version and its Anglo-American offshoot, is a highly adaptable toolset to critique the modern world, to learn to understand it in very uncomfortable but real ways: a toolset that alters a persons perception away from preconceived notions they are often born and indoctrinated into at an early age, that will inevitably challenge their view of the world and the processes that dominate their lives. But it is not an ideology like capitalism—backed up by the fantasy of Chicago School economics, or socialism or Communism. It is incomplete, not a totality of ideas for living and creating government like the Enlightenment philosophers imagined.

That said, the collection of post-modern thought is a highly worthwhile corpus of texts to read, which soon becomes a very useful toolset to engage in modern and ancient texts, modern media, nationalism and government. At least, that’s been my experience. Yes, I know I kind of repeated myself. Sue me.

Perhaps an example will be efficacious. Let’s go with Foucault’s discussion of the nation owning a person’s biology. An excellent example from my own life is my father had stem cells harvested to rebuild the cartilage in his knee several years ago for a procedure in Mexico. He had the stem cells harvested in the US and they prohibited the export of them to Mexico. So he had to start all over. I can think of many other examples, such as female body autonomy in the United States. I would never have conceived of my own nation owning my biology, but when I consider that corporations can now patent DNA Foucault’s ideas first ring true and second increased my analytical rigor towards just how much power “they” have and how little choice I truly have. Not to mention how my choices are only growing less and less as we go full fascist and I grow older.

Why do I bring this up? I have no idea. It’s 2:11 AM central time and I can’t sleep. My unsleeping brain got stuck on Foucault so I decided to write this up. Maybe I should read some Foucault next time. That guarantees sleep.