So, we all know the obvious. I'm not a fan of critical theory. I believe its prominence on the left is excessive, and it's treated like a freaking religion these days. I think its use is divisive, and alienates not just some swing voters of the right who may otherwise come over to the left, but also some people of the center and even left like me. It lumps people into various identities, and pits them against each other over scraps. it serves as a perpetual outrage machine for the left, firing some parts of their base up, and then driving others to the right, leading to perpetual infighting over identity based nonsense and distracting us from quite frankly, more important issues.
But, here, I plan to once again defend critical theory....from the right. Because I'm going to be blunt, the right doesn't understand the theory at all. We can criticize the postmodernist worldview all day, it has a lot of flaws, but the core idea is also fairly valid. The idea is basically a subset of sociological conflict theory. This idea that society benefits one group of people over other groups of people. Essentially, critical theories look at how society benefits whites over POC, men over women, and straight cis people over LGBT+. And let's face it, in ways, it does. It absolutely does. Because we have a horribly racist and sexist past and despite positive changes giving those once oppressed people rights. We still have work to do. My main criticisms with the idea are over the fact that, there's much more to life, and politics, than critical theory, the focus on it is unproductive and distracts from more important issues, and it just...divides people. Half the country doesn't understand it, and half of those who do, like me, don't really care about those issues that much. My issues with the idea are more due to the fact that its staunchest advocates are religious zealots who shove it down everyone's throats, and who want to suppress and censor and demonize everyone who isn't as zealous about it as they are. But do they have a POINT? Are they technically factually correct? Sure. My criticisms come from another faction of the left, and I diss those guys specifically to promote my own ideology in its place, as being a superior unifying ethos for the left that can do a lot more good for the world. Do not confuse me for a rightoid. I've had some discussions with rightoids on critical theory, and that's why I'm posting this.
The right has its own worldview problems. We've discussed them in the past, but one thing they are known for is being anti intellectual, and being out of touch with reality. I've recently had some conversations with some rightoids going on about how critical theory needs to be 'purged" from education and it has no intellectual validity. Bro, WHAT?! They literally compared it to ancient aliens theory and that sort of thing. Oh, I'm sorry, I think you got it confused with RELIGION. And while, yes, the left has a problem with critical theory and treats it LIKE a religion these days, with the zeal measuring that of a christian fundamentalist, the right doesn't like it because it conflict with their traditionalist, religious based view on the world.
Let's go back to understanding the times, a book of right wing origins, but which basically does a good job summing up both the conservative (christian) worldview, and the postmodernist (critical theory based) one. If you recall, I at least partially agreed with postmodernism, and have clear postmodern influences in my worldview, it just doesn't displace my much larger allegiance to the secular humanist worldview and by extension my human centered capitalist economic vision. But the right? Well, that has very little validity. I think the only aspects I agreed with it on were that government overreach should be limited and respect peoples' rights, and that change should be treated with at least SOME skepticism, to avoid ended up in a communist dystopia. But...the right...tends to be outright hostile to any concept of sociology. And I encountered this kind of mentality online. I know a video I came across by as "ex left wing" right winger discussed how he believed in "personal responsibility" over critical theory and how critical theory makes people into "victims." While victimhood on that segment of the left runs a little too rampant and bordering on what I call "oppression olympics"...uh...if you study social sciences, you'll find a lot of personal responsibility narratives fall apart. Actual academic study into these questions shows that there are systemic barriers to get ahead, and the solution to everything isn't just to "work harder" (and even if it was, I'm to the point where I question the whole mainstream narrative from an existential perspective of "why"?). A lot of the reason I was able to come over to the left was my background in the social sciences made me realize just how wrong the right is. And while simply acknowledging the validity of the left doesn't make me think in lockstep with them (for example, on critical theory), come on dawg, the bare minimum here is to NOT be anti intellectual here.
But...the right IS anti intellectual. They reject critical theory because it conflicts with their ideals surrounding all outcomes being related to the individual's effort and skill level, and this is fairly toxic. A social science understanding of things like free will and personal responsibility show that systemic factors do A LOT to influence behavior, and if you want to improve outcomes, you have to improve the social environment. On poverty, we need a UBI or at least some kind of welfare system. The right wants to abolish it and just tell people to work until they die. On crime, we need to understand that social dysfunction related to poverty and anomie (mismatch between norms and reality) creates a lot of it, and by improving the environment, we improve crime. The right insists on being tough on crime to deter people from doing it, as if the solution to everything is tough love. Im going to be blunt, when I was an atheist, I borderline wondered if free will even existed at all. The line where one's circumstances end and where free will begins is unclear and I wasn't even sure it exists. My spiritual worldview make me more of a hard compatibilist where i attempt to reconcile sociology with the soul having experiences and making choices within those experiences, but yeah, I can't deny the actual validity of the social sciences.
The right does. The right rejects any of this is even real. And their version of the culture war against the left is to try to suppress and censor the left. Which is why desantis is so hardcore on removing CRT and teaching people that homosexuals exist from schools. These guys want their christian worldview to remain supreme, and to suppress the competition. I have criticism of the left trying to censor the right, and I do think that, censorship in general is bad, but let's call it what it is. The right wing are generally a bunch of authoritarians who want to impose their conservative worldview on society. And that's actually a huge reason I joined the left. Because as someone who is vaguely libleft, I respect both free speech but also believe some ideas are superior to others. And I do believe we need to educate people better. But the right sees people going to college and coming out more liberal as a bad thing. It threatens their worldview. So they want to suppress educational institutions from wanting to teach people things about the world. Reminds me of how the texas GOP wanted to ban critical thinking skills in schools or something like that. Yeah, they're crazy. I might criticize the left for acting like the right, but that's what I'm doing, criticizing the left for acting like the right. We should be BETTER than the right. We should be a force that allows our opposition's ideas exist, and then blast them to hell through good old facts. Like the atheist community used to when that was prominent on the left. Not pull up the ladder from behind us after we ascend using it. Brainwashing is bad. Cultural indoctrination is bad.
Even "libertarian rights" want to use the forces of the market to force CRT out of existence. Talking to them, they want to remove student loans so we don't subsidize it, and force people to choose "useful" majors in markets. As a social science grad, while I couldn't find a job out of college with my degree, people in college dont know that. These people dont understand social sciences or how college works at all. All these ideas would do is make college once again the privilege of the rich. Also, there's more to college than just employability. We should be teaching people to be educated well round citizens. Ironically, they agreed, but they just rejected social sciences as valid while believing say, history, is. Nonsense. Pure nonsense.
Social sciences look at the world through a scientific perspective. They literally study human behavior. Political science applies it to the political system. Economics looks at money and markets and incentives. Psychology focuses on individuals. Sociology focuses on groups. And critical theory is a subset of sociology. It's valid. But, these guys don't accept them as real. They think it's made up nonsense because they dont understand it and because it threatens their worldview. As you guys know i aint big on critical theory from my own worldview, but then again someone as broadly educated as me is going to have a broad understanding of the various fields out there that I also understand no one perspective is an end all. That's the problem with all tribalism, and why I rip on so many groups: libertarians, socialists, postmodernists, georgists, all of them have some valid points SOMETIMES. The problem comes from them being very fundamentalist in their worldviews and treating that perspective as the only valid perspective. Life is complicated, and we need to educate people MORE to understand that. We need someone to know economics but also know not everything is economics. We need someone to know critical theory but also know not everything is critical theory. We need someone to know marxism while understanding the world outside of it. KNOWLEDGE IS GOOD. But clinging tightly to a particular camp and refusing to even acknowledge the other side's validity is the source of all of the tribalism and problems here. And I know I tend to do this too. But to be fair, I also know the world outside of my worldview and feel I can navigate it properly. People are inevitably going to have their worldview be influenced more by certain perspectives than others. That's fine. i do that. The problem comes when people are so fundamentalist they hold a stubborn unwillingness to even understand the other side. That's the problem with both the post modernists and the right.
To outright reject the validity of critical theory is just....ignorance. Pure ignorance. It;s fine to criticize it, and more specifically, its supporters. BUT, acting like the perspective isn't valid is ignorant. Will I say the same of the right? Well, some aspects of the right can be valid. After all, there is that ~4% of my worldview that is still conservative. Mostly to rein in the left and ensure that the changes we adopt are positive and actually feasible. But other than that? The modern left is based on traditionalism and religion. It has no real validity. Traditions have no value of their own. Religion is not a valid way of seeing truth in the world (note: religion is different than broader spirituality IMO). And if your ideas conflict the established knowledge of the world, the problem isn't that knowledge, it's your ideas, and you should change your ideas sooner rather than later.
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