wayfinder;

It has been my lifelong passion—nay, my obligation—to deconstruct and analyse the most effective written structures, particularly within the realm of academic prose. I suspect that is why this... artefact has been presented to me. Perhaps the sender hoped that I might impose order upon its contents, shaping them into a clear, linear argument. Perhaps they merely sought my opinion on a series of pages devoid of coherent thought. Or perhaps—most troubling of all—this entire document is an elaborate joke, a calculated effort to waste my time. This remains to be seen.

Regardless, it is my intention to analyse this Wayfinder and determine whether any semblance of structure can be imposed upon it. If the artefact and its supplementary texts are to possess any true meaning—rather than existing as a loosely gestured metaphor, a feeble proxy for genuine insight—then they must be subjected to rigorous scrutiny. After all, as von Auster (1879) asserts in On the Necessity of Linear Thought in Scholarly Pursuits¹, "a text that rejects order rejects meaning itself."

Our universities have long upheld a tradition of well-structured theses, a principle enshrined in the Oxford Standard for Thesis Composition (1912)² and reinforced in the Cambridge Reaffirmation on Structured Argumentation (1953)³. Yet the acceptance of the disorderly structures I see within this artefact is emblematic of a broader degradation in scholarly standards—one that reflects the misguided priorities of so-called progressive scholars. As Searle (1977) has demonstrated, deconstructionists such as Derrida do not engage in rigorous analysis but instead generate "a fog" of imprecise argumentation that collapses under scrutiny.⁴ Likewise, Chomsky (1988) has observed that postmodern intellectuals are not, in fact, concerned with discovering truth but rather indulge in "a kind of wordplay that masquerades as profound insight."⁵

Indeed, we have seen where this ideological drift has led. Sokal (1996) exposed the intellectual bankruptcy of postmodernist thought when he submitted a deliberately meaningless article—written in the same convoluted, jargon-laden style that so many now champion—to the journal Social Text. Not only was it published, but it was celebrated.⁶ If, as Dawkins (1998) suggests, postmodernists believe "words mean whatever we want them to mean,"⁷ then we have ceased to engage in scholarship at all. We have instead embraced intellectual entropy.

Order is being mocked. Chaos is being elevated. And I will not stand idly by. If this document can be salvaged, I shall see it done. If not—then it must be condemned.

There must be order.