The Anti-Conceptual Wall Street Occupiers

I've recently seen a number of interviews featuring members of the Occupy Wall Street movement, and I was struck by a common theme that appeared in all of the interviewees: an anti-conceptual philosophy.  Definitions, to them, are arbitrary constructs that have no bearing on reality. How could they have bearing, when they implicitly state that reality is unknowable? Let me provide an example of this: One of the interviewees, a woman, demanded she be refereed to as a "female bodied person." She found the term "female" offensive because she thought that not all "female bodied people," identify as "females." Essentially, she is stating, (I say state, not argue, because one can't rationally argue such an absurd position) that a judgment, or a definition, has no real bearing on reality, and that it cannot be separated from the person making the judgment. Concepts don't exist, in her way of thinking; A is only A because we say it is. A female is only a female because we've said so, and a female can be something different if "she" chooses.

By this "logic," 2+2 only equals 4 because we say so. Somebody could be equally justified in saying it equals 5. The occupiers deny the facts of reality, saying that there are no absolutes, no facts, just opinions. The contradiction in this is blatant; one can't absolutely argue there are no absolutes. By arguing against concepts, they're subconsciously trying to form one, only, it can never hold. One need only look at science to see that men and women are genetically different. This is not to say that one is better than the other (it's sad I need to include that to shield myself from the women's libs), they're just different, and that's good! Nature intended it to be that way! These occupiers seem to think that feeling trumps reality; that one can feel something and it can be true based on feeling alone. This is absurd and disgusting. A human being is only different from an animal because he or she can concretize the facts of reality into concepts. The occupiers wish to exist on the sensational and perceptual level, claiming that feeling is truth, and perceptions are arbitrary from person to person. I'll elaborate more on this later.

-L.C.