Crit Theory is about understanding the dialectic process itself, it's more than just understanding how knowledge is created, it's how the entire socio-political order of humanity works mechanistically. It's best seen as a Gnostic style mysticism, as James Lindsay has posited in his excellent work on Foucault and others. I would not categ…
Crit Theory is about understanding the dialectic process itself, it's more than just understanding how knowledge is created, it's how the entire socio-political order of humanity works mechanistically. It's best seen as a Gnostic style mysticism, as James Lindsay has posited in his excellent work on Foucault and others. I would not categorize it as a 'conspiracy theory' per se as it's a totalizing belief system about the nature of reality whereas a conspiracy theory is about one event or phenomenon that is speculated upon with theories that are based on false information and biases. Take the JFK conspiracy theories about the CIA (totally debunked there is actually ZERO evidence of this in case you are not aware). You'll find anarchists, MAGA types, independents, Marxists and Christian conservatives buying into it. Critical Theory is much more than that, it's a metaphysics for Marxists and does not rely on a view of any one given event or phenomena as a conspiracy theory does.
Of course, these terms are used colloquially and imprecisely in our 'discourse' (hehe). It may be useful to see it as a conspiracy theory to understand the false premises its based upon. I was hoping for some deeper treatment than quoting CRT practitioners though.
A question I've longed to ask the folks obsessed with 'oppression' is this: What is the difference between racism and ingroup preference? In all the study of racism and oppression, have we once ever been able to distinguish between the two? One would think if we were going to discuss bigotry, we would axiomatically be discussing how ingroup preferences work, but then again, the actual work on this subject seemed to debunk all the race hucksters, so perhaps that's why?
I'll press on anyway. Ingroup preferences are mostly benefits and advantages we grant to people in our ingroup vs. overt acts of oppression against outgroups. Huh. Let's pause here. How many of you were aware of this distinction? Sorry if I'm being pedantic, but this is a really important phenomena that exists in all social groups. And here's the truth: You will never extinguish ingroup preference. As I type this, you know I'm correct. Blacks and Jews for example exhibit massive ingroup preference, and interestingly, in studies, white people show the least ingroup preference, but it's still there. We all have it.
Shit gets deeper if you will be bound by logic. So, if all groups will have ingroup preferences, and individuals have 'freedom of association', isn't it true that people will always engage in ingroup preference? Isn't this the nature of humanity? Even more profoundly, our social progress/evolution as a species has been and is driven by inter-group competition and selection (read E. O. Wilson's brilliant book The Social Conquest of Earth to understand this, it will change how you see humanity). The entire engine of progress that drove human civilization to where it is today is based on ingroups competing with each other. In other words, to eliminate ingroup preference would be to stop all human progress, lol. Get that.
So, now what are we left with. The authors make a first order error in this article. The posit the sexism and racism and anti-gay bigotry still exist, and that the Crit Theory types are correct to focus on it. No, you Utopian thinkers, that's not possible. People will always have preferences for these things. Christians will never believe homosexuality isn't a sin, that's never going away, there is nothing to be fixed there. We are free to shun it in our personal lives to any degree with care to. Many people also have made the logical decision to excise themselves from dealing with black folks cuz they seem to hate white people, generally. That's a logical decision. They also commit 60% of the violent crime in our society so there is also some logic to it. Be clear, that will never be solved. There will also always be differences between the sexes and ingroup preferences expressed in that way as well. Feminism itself is about seeing women as an ingroup and pressing for privileges and advantages for women vis a vis men. Even worse? All societies have a dominant, majority ingroup, and minorities who have their own ingroups. Successful societies create ways for them to interact and still preserve and underlying, unifying national identity. This is more common than you'd think if you analyze the people's that make up nations.
The idea that we are going to eliminate ingroup preference is a fool's errand. The most we can hope for is to not have govt policies that discriminate based on any ingroup. I do think the idea of public accommodations also works nicely as a social leveler. But it will never eliminate preference. It just enforces a degree of tolerance that is crucial for people of various ingroups to cooperate with each other. The ideal end state is that people work this out among themselves, the govt nor preaching academics (as though scholars are moral paragons and have any standing to preach morality) cannot ever 'fix' it.
The real problem with CRT and all the Crit Theory nonsense is that it starts with a primitive and false idea about human social order. Go ask any Crit Theorist how their ideas account for concepts like 'eusociality' or ingroup preference. The answer is they do not. The entire sociology of the Left is deformed by stupid Marxist victim/oppressor dyads. Don't be confused, this is all just applied Marxism. All Crit Theory does is take Hegel seriously, in a way, just as Marx did...Hegelianism is the core mysticism at the root of both, and actually, the entire field of German Historicism is based on this mystical idea of 'progress' occurring automatically, or as I would put it, magically. It's the 'Deus ex machina' of the Left's belief systems. To tie this together, Fukuyama's ridiculous book, The End of History and the Last Man attempted to reconcile this core belief of Leftist ideology, and really all German historicism based analysis of the world, with reality. And of course, it's idiot speak. I found the book so 'stupid' (brilliant in its own way as only tedious scholars can be) in the sense that it accepted as true ideas that must be rejected. Fukuyama should have debunked Hegel as a starting point. But he instead accepts Hegel and of course, just as with Crit Theory, nonsensical BS is the result.
At the risk of being a dick, I'm hoping for deeper dialog than tediously citing the absolutely anti-intellectual horseshit the likes of Delgado and Bell publish. I tried reading them at one point and just laughed. Do that yourself, then go read say Aristotle or Aquinas or On the Nature of Things by Lucretius and you'll realize todays radical leftist 'theorists' aren't philosophers or scientists at all. They are just Marxist hacks working in the ideological salt mines of Marxism. They will produce more errant nonsense to the degree they are given the power, positions and money to do so. To take any of it seriously as 'scholarship' is a first order error that these authors should correct.
Crit Theory is about understanding the dialectic process itself, it's more than just understanding how knowledge is created, it's how the entire socio-political order of humanity works mechanistically. It's best seen as a Gnostic style mysticism, as James Lindsay has posited in his excellent work on Foucault and others. I would not categorize it as a 'conspiracy theory' per se as it's a totalizing belief system about the nature of reality whereas a conspiracy theory is about one event or phenomenon that is speculated upon with theories that are based on false information and biases. Take the JFK conspiracy theories about the CIA (totally debunked there is actually ZERO evidence of this in case you are not aware). You'll find anarchists, MAGA types, independents, Marxists and Christian conservatives buying into it. Critical Theory is much more than that, it's a metaphysics for Marxists and does not rely on a view of any one given event or phenomena as a conspiracy theory does.
Of course, these terms are used colloquially and imprecisely in our 'discourse' (hehe). It may be useful to see it as a conspiracy theory to understand the false premises its based upon. I was hoping for some deeper treatment than quoting CRT practitioners though.
A question I've longed to ask the folks obsessed with 'oppression' is this: What is the difference between racism and ingroup preference? In all the study of racism and oppression, have we once ever been able to distinguish between the two? One would think if we were going to discuss bigotry, we would axiomatically be discussing how ingroup preferences work, but then again, the actual work on this subject seemed to debunk all the race hucksters, so perhaps that's why?
I'll press on anyway. Ingroup preferences are mostly benefits and advantages we grant to people in our ingroup vs. overt acts of oppression against outgroups. Huh. Let's pause here. How many of you were aware of this distinction? Sorry if I'm being pedantic, but this is a really important phenomena that exists in all social groups. And here's the truth: You will never extinguish ingroup preference. As I type this, you know I'm correct. Blacks and Jews for example exhibit massive ingroup preference, and interestingly, in studies, white people show the least ingroup preference, but it's still there. We all have it.
Shit gets deeper if you will be bound by logic. So, if all groups will have ingroup preferences, and individuals have 'freedom of association', isn't it true that people will always engage in ingroup preference? Isn't this the nature of humanity? Even more profoundly, our social progress/evolution as a species has been and is driven by inter-group competition and selection (read E. O. Wilson's brilliant book The Social Conquest of Earth to understand this, it will change how you see humanity). The entire engine of progress that drove human civilization to where it is today is based on ingroups competing with each other. In other words, to eliminate ingroup preference would be to stop all human progress, lol. Get that.
So, now what are we left with. The authors make a first order error in this article. The posit the sexism and racism and anti-gay bigotry still exist, and that the Crit Theory types are correct to focus on it. No, you Utopian thinkers, that's not possible. People will always have preferences for these things. Christians will never believe homosexuality isn't a sin, that's never going away, there is nothing to be fixed there. We are free to shun it in our personal lives to any degree with care to. Many people also have made the logical decision to excise themselves from dealing with black folks cuz they seem to hate white people, generally. That's a logical decision. They also commit 60% of the violent crime in our society so there is also some logic to it. Be clear, that will never be solved. There will also always be differences between the sexes and ingroup preferences expressed in that way as well. Feminism itself is about seeing women as an ingroup and pressing for privileges and advantages for women vis a vis men. Even worse? All societies have a dominant, majority ingroup, and minorities who have their own ingroups. Successful societies create ways for them to interact and still preserve and underlying, unifying national identity. This is more common than you'd think if you analyze the people's that make up nations.
The idea that we are going to eliminate ingroup preference is a fool's errand. The most we can hope for is to not have govt policies that discriminate based on any ingroup. I do think the idea of public accommodations also works nicely as a social leveler. But it will never eliminate preference. It just enforces a degree of tolerance that is crucial for people of various ingroups to cooperate with each other. The ideal end state is that people work this out among themselves, the govt nor preaching academics (as though scholars are moral paragons and have any standing to preach morality) cannot ever 'fix' it.
The real problem with CRT and all the Crit Theory nonsense is that it starts with a primitive and false idea about human social order. Go ask any Crit Theorist how their ideas account for concepts like 'eusociality' or ingroup preference. The answer is they do not. The entire sociology of the Left is deformed by stupid Marxist victim/oppressor dyads. Don't be confused, this is all just applied Marxism. All Crit Theory does is take Hegel seriously, in a way, just as Marx did...Hegelianism is the core mysticism at the root of both, and actually, the entire field of German Historicism is based on this mystical idea of 'progress' occurring automatically, or as I would put it, magically. It's the 'Deus ex machina' of the Left's belief systems. To tie this together, Fukuyama's ridiculous book, The End of History and the Last Man attempted to reconcile this core belief of Leftist ideology, and really all German historicism based analysis of the world, with reality. And of course, it's idiot speak. I found the book so 'stupid' (brilliant in its own way as only tedious scholars can be) in the sense that it accepted as true ideas that must be rejected. Fukuyama should have debunked Hegel as a starting point. But he instead accepts Hegel and of course, just as with Crit Theory, nonsensical BS is the result.
At the risk of being a dick, I'm hoping for deeper dialog than tediously citing the absolutely anti-intellectual horseshit the likes of Delgado and Bell publish. I tried reading them at one point and just laughed. Do that yourself, then go read say Aristotle or Aquinas or On the Nature of Things by Lucretius and you'll realize todays radical leftist 'theorists' aren't philosophers or scientists at all. They are just Marxist hacks working in the ideological salt mines of Marxism. They will produce more errant nonsense to the degree they are given the power, positions and money to do so. To take any of it seriously as 'scholarship' is a first order error that these authors should correct.