There's a tendency in an individualistic society to regard expressions of earnestness or even truth-claims as a sort of obstacle to surmount. As if someone expressing their opinion is reaching for a prize that is only available to one person, in this case universal reverence for being "right," and so the person and their opinion needs to be neutralized. Its as if you have this eternal game of leapfrog in which scores of people mount each other in oscillating cycles, striving ever higher for a sort of perceived throne seat atop universal reverence from the masses.
This happens within every discipline, but I could probably explain its mechanics best by detailing its activity in philosophy. What happened in an institutional setting is that you would have this fashionable discourse - at the time it was logic and language - and within the discourse would be minds competing for top honors by positing the most powerful, explanatory theory available. Everyone has a different way of explaining things, a unique expressive language so to speak. And due to people's personalities and fixations, they see different angles of things, so of course you're always going to have someone stepping up and saying, "well no this is actually how it is," or something like that. Camps form around the most powerful arguments and they become schools of thought, with more refined theories advanced by figures within the schools, and competing schools arising taking up arguments defined by either variants or direct inversions of the arguments held by their opponents.
So let's take an older argument. You had this perennial philosophical debate concerning materialism and idealism. You have a camp saying that everything is material...just matter and that mental properties arise out of that matter. And you have a camp saying it is precisely the opposite: everything arises from the mind and everything we encounter in the world is an idea. Then you have a new camp come in and synthesize these ideas, saying, well no both of you are getting at something but it is a little bit of both. So you have this hybrid argument wherein there is this material world that becomes transformed when perceived by our own minds and so on. This new, more powerful argument unseats the old and now you have a new system of thought to surmount. Of course there's not only one synthesis, there arises multiple schools trying to solve the old dichotomy in different ways.This is the sort of thing that Hegel was trying to explain in his account of history and progress.
Meanwhile, the underlying conditions of living are changing. Societies undergo change. Environments undergo change. World systems undergo change. And there are other disciplines that are presenting their own new bodies of knowledge, freshly energized from vital energies emanating from new systems of philosophical and scientific thought. And there are artistic movements introducing emotional and aesthetic perceptions that modify general consciousness as well (or at least express the current state of consciousness, the validation of which generates vitality). So you have schools of thought arising to unseat the old ideas with their own new ideas in an attempt to bring consciousness in line with the new perceived reality.
A greater reality to be aware of is the fact that all of these ideas are generated at a historical time and place. There is an underlying condition of living, as well as a dominant emotional constellation from which these ideas arise.
There comes a point when the old competitive expansion is exhausted, and the dominant ideology takes on a post-modern outlook. What I mean by this is that everyone collectively becomes aware of the falsity of the old idea, by virtue of the fact that real conditions have drifted past the ghost of the ideological snapshot, and then there arises an ideology that all ideologies are false, or conversely all of them are equally true.
At this point one wonders, what's the point? Why bother having an opinion at all? You're just taking up an insignificant point in time and space, and so are all the others who have opinions of their own, and soon someone comes along to contradict you or history grinds on and your point fades, or etc.
I think one of the more subtle readings of Nietzsche shows that he understood this. It was his wide cosmic understanding that allowed him to be read differently by virtually anyone who picked him up, so that you have progressives and reactionaries finding value in his works, and you could go from the opinion that he was responsible for the formation of Nazi ideology, to the opinion that his work is spiritually therapeutic to read.
But what makes him a therapeutic read? This is one of the most interesting things about him I think. His ideology was life affirming. There was a zest and an energy to it. He wrote enthusiastically about affirming life himself and rejoicing in what one was. He was disgusted with what he called slave morality and its Christian adherents, but ultimately he probably saw them as a just ideological formation that was necessary for their historical position.
One is alive in the world and breathing and thinking. What one believes should be advanced with a celebration that one is what one is. One should rejoice in what one is. There is no backing down, there is no folding over, or shrinking back. One should stand tall, unashamed and embrace the conditions for one's own life. One should be free to create one's values in accordance with what one is, free from the shackles of false morality and religious superstition.
Now his affirmation was warlike, which led to the proliferation of modern individualist consciousness, though that wasn't the only source. He rejoiced in what he was, but intended to do battle with anyone else that had different opinions or was of a differing constitution and that came up against him. He rejoiced in that battle. This of course had to reflect the social undercurrents of the time, but today I'm not so sure this attitude is so appropriate.
Now it is a mark of philosophical strength to be able to believe in truth and be flexible enough to not collapse into dogma at the same time. Such an ideological system allows one to do this. The idea that each ideologies develop in historical time and space is quite powerful, and allows one a powerful framework with which to understand the human world, but then going and emphasizing conflict when unique ideologies clash is not the best thing to do in my opinion.
Perhaps a better formulation is that yes, each of us consists of different characters, and yes we occupy a unique historical period with its social and ecological reality, and its own store of knowledge to draw from. But instead of emphasizing conflict when coming up against these differences, the idea should be to understand them and synthesize them.
Ah but this formulation will only age and die like the rest of them, to be replaced by something new and shinier in the future, until the greater cycle places us back in this position when a similar but new formulation is to be iterated. What is the point? Well I suppose I'll just have to affirm life then.
