All of the fundamental claims of post-modernism (
"there is no truth",
"there is no morality",
"there is no reality",
"there is only relations of power", and so on) function as thought-stoppers, also called
thought-terminating clichés. There is an excellent book on the psychology of brainwashing, as practiced in Maoist China, that dedicates some lines to the description of how these kind of phrases serve the purpose of blocking critical and individual inquiry on certain matters deemed unacceptable by certain structures of power. It is kind of expensive, since I think is out of press:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0807842532/re ... g=UTF8&me=
Nihilism has certainly poisoned modern society in pushing it away from positing questions of meaning (after all, one of the most frequent leitmotivs of modern "thought" is that life is meaningless, and that claim is repeated again and again) and making people turn to frivolity and fleeting material pleasures, which clearly cannot make them live a meaningful life. It is not hard to see that the academic intelligentsia (the Frenchy turtle-neck-wearing intellekshuals) have become
de facto the new high priesthood.