This is a very good manner to introduce such a topic. I remember that the best introduction to the obscure Forth programming language was ... a cartoon book.
Without having spent much time studying either Postmodernism in much depth, or the motivations of its founders, I have long suspected that it was just such a Trojan Horse, similar but different to Romanticism. As I have stated elsewhere, Romanticism was launched concurrently with the 1730's introduction of the so-called 'modern' university system at Gottingen, by the Hanoverian George II of England. While the rhetoric of the modern university was to promote rigorous and rational academic processes, it's very first academic product was the scientifically baseless introduction of Feelings based Romanticism. Furthermore, the new (colloquium?) system literally entrains the approved direction of individual scholarly focus by the mentor / advisor means.
While the anti-Humanist, anti-Rationalist, anti-Materialist (supernaturalist) Church blamed Nazism on the excesses of Modernism, in reality it can mostly only blame Modernist excesses for the bad ideological applications of same, such as with military technology, etc.. And tool can be put to good or bad uses. It was the 'emotional' ungirding of Romantic Feelings that gave the impetus to such concepts as lebensraum, expanding the German living room so to speak. Besides which, we know that the entire World War (x) tableau was a cynical contrivance to begin with, to move the ball forward for global ambitions. And, not so incidentally, invoked the prophecies of Lady Fatima to compel global Catholics to support Adolf in his efforts against the godless Bolsheviks - and to goad America into similar action against North Vietnam. And then pulling the rug out from under both efforts. This is pure Machiavellianism, Realpolitik.
In any case, this all begs the question of what are we, as individuals or 'collectively' (dare I say?) allowed to do, or not do in a so-called 'free' society. I noted that the term 'rationalist, technocratic, centralization' was used, as what might be implied that Preparata was advocating. Well as far as I know, the anarcho-capitalists, at least, here would find two of the three words unacceptable. Or are we to distinguish between (t)echnocratic, and (T)echnocratic, like some do with (l)ibertarian and (L)ibertarian? The capitalized variant perhaps being an obscurantist co-optation of some sort, usually by the fronts of the elites? There are several other terms, like 'bureaucratic rationalism' given in the cartoon that need such discussion.
In fact, the political gestalt employed across the new 'right' spectrum today seems to redefine anything that does not comport with the Kochian anarcho-capitalist's absolutist interpretations as tantamount to Marxism, which in itself was a similar 'cuckoo' extremist co-optation of the left - by what generally appears to be the very same elites. It is expressed as "You know the government will F this and that up". This, of course, is a non-sequitur of the highest order, because now one has to explain how it is when a government program actually did what it was supposed to. Say like programs transitioning the American Irish from being commonly considered a Criminal ethnicity to being considered today as normative 'whites'.
The so-called science of the day, before DNA was discovered, decided psuedo-Romantically, by selective statistics and such, that contrary to the Irish and Italians (aka Catholics - particularly of the lower economic variety), who were redeemable, that the Blacks had an unredeemable bad seed. The biblical descent from Ham as it was figured in the day. Thus, such social rehabilitation programs were not applied to American Blacks.
So, what are we allowed to do, say like ... let our wives work (outside the home), let the daughter go to school (and to what good purpose other than perhaps home economics and baby making)?
The mention of Dionysus was interesting, as I was recently reading a discussion of mystery cults in Rome (Beard and North's Pagan Priests), in relation to the traditional Roman 'pagan' cults. Both were highly decentralized, with the main difference being that the mystery cults were ecstatic in nature (akin to today's jungle Christianity of Low Church evangelism and Pentacostals), while the traditional Roman cultus of piety emphasized a quiet 'dignity' in the approach to its practice.
The Roman patrician's (the Senatorial class) were freaked out by the 'cultural' invasion of such frenzied foreign practices and so, it was with Octavian Caesar Augustus (Christ 1.0 - see Atchity's Messiah Matrix free historical novel), that the new imperium centralized all religious authority under the office of the Pontifex Maximus, the title and office later inherited by the papacy. It was under Augustus that the Western civilization got its conservative Family Values. One reason is that while otherwise good and pure Roman men were out whoring at the corner brothel, the matron was getting illicit satisfaction from her favorite slaves and others in revenge. For such as herbal means to abort pregnancies and exposure, this did not bode well for the production of sufficient numbers of properly ethnic Romans going forward.
So what say we good Citizens?
