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ZorbaTHut  1yr ago (text post)   44900 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 5, 2022

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I think that the idea that critical theory is an activist philosophy is self-contradictory and that those who practice critical theory to change the world in some way, or motivate action, are basically destined to have an incomplete, irreconcilable worldview.

(edit for clarity: Modern critical theory obviously is often activist, and believing that is not self-contradictory. But believing that critical theory at its core is activist, and should be practiced as a kind of means-to-an-end to affect social change, as many critical theorists believe, I think contradicts with the actual core of critical theory philosophy)

I started coming to this idea watching the Foucault/Chomsky debate, where Foucault is suspicious of Chomksy's Anarcho-syndicalism as a way to bring out a kind of ideal human nature, because he thinks the formulations we make about an ideal human nature, or society without political violence, are informed by the society we live in, which makes violence and non-ideality kind of unavoidable.

This argument is interesting in terms of the political spectrum because on one hand, it "out-criticals" the critical activist, but it also echoes the basic conservative reaction to leftist societal transformation projects.

There's no reason to me that a critical theory couldn't exist critical of social justice projects, BLM, modern Marxism, etc. The modern leftist capture of critical theory appears arbitrary.

But the Foucault debate led me to think, that conservatives, or just anti-progressives, could be a lot more bold in using their own critical theory against them in a way. I think it would be a field worth studying as a way to deconstruct leftist idealism and activism in a way that, like Chomsky, would leave them looking kind of pathetic in debate.

Doing that would kind of require doing the Nietzschian thing of acknowledging power, political violence, etc. and working with it in the debate, which I feel like is probably a step too far for most politicians. But I think specifically that rather than debate competing visions, there's room for a thinker to basically just deconstruct modern "critical theory" on its own terms, argue that it is self-contradictory and unlikely to do anything but breed new forms of political violence and power imbalance.

To tie it back to Nietzsche, it seems his works have an irony to them, even a self-aware irony, and that is what makes his calls for action "work" in some sense. It seems to me that a modern critical theory text that calls for action with no sense of irony is not thorough, and has a huge blind spot by basically not applying self-criticism.

I've been kind of working this idea out on my own, not sure if this is well trodden ground elsewhere, apologies for the half-baked quality.

I've tried this a few times, and here's how it went each time:

Me: Aren't you just imposing a new hegemony in your own interests? Classical liberalism / colorblindness is a good compromise that avoids turning everything into a political race-to-the-bottom, at least for a while.

Them: We're liberating everyone from white supremacy and patriarchy. If your beloved meritocracy functioned at all, why are there so few black, indigenous, or female leaders in our institutions? Surely you don't think people from these groups are inherently inferior...?

Me, unwilling to commit professional suicide: No, no, of course not...

The debate has organically evolved so that the only rejoinder in almost any discussion involves acknowledging an on-average superiority in many professional fields of white men, which is literally a hate crime in my western country. Including East Asian and Indian men in my answer just begs the question about the remaining groups and they know it.

I've noticed in the last few years that my interlocutors are becoming quicker to ask the Unanswerable Question in these kinds of discussions, or even pre-emptively announce their rejoinder to anyone who might suggest such an idea.

If anyone has a suggested reply that won't get them fired or un-personed, I'm all ears.

Generally I findthe most success in splitting the categories further, southern rural blacks are culturally different from northern urban blacks are culturally different from Africans. As an example.

Use the disparity between the outcomes of west indies blacks and Americans to derail the narrative.

Thanks, but in my particular set of institutions, there are almost no blacks at all, so it doesn't help. But otherwise I do like this line of argument.

It has worked for me in some contexts but my answer to the question has basically been "they don't want to work here, cuz they have better things to do". It worked in the context of hiring diverse candidates for a tech department at a medium size tech company.

We weren't gonna beat out FAANG companies in getting our pick of the best available candidates, and it would have been delusional to think we could.

Obviously doesn't solve the general societal argument but can alleviate some pressure at some work environments.

Thanks. At least in our case, there are enough non-white-or-asian-male candidates who apply, but are poorly qualified, to make your argument difficult.

A female colleague argued that of course non-white-or-asian-males require more resources to achieve at the same level (because of society).

That is incredibly patronizing on her part. If you have any colleagues that are non-white or non-asian try to get her to say shit like that in front of them, and point out the patronizing nature of it.

"So wait, are you saying my (black) colleague Brett can't get as much done as me just because of his skin color?"

"But they need the opportunity to succeed first!"

"That is noble, but we can't train the entire country, we still have a job to get done. We can occasionally give an opportunity to a deserving candidate, but otherwise we need to hire candidates that can already do the job."

If this doesn't sound like a conversation you can have, then I'd personally be worried about a few things:

  1. If external hiring is intentionally skewed, how do you know internal promotion isn't also intentionally skewed? Are you getting screwed out of raises and promotions because of your skin color. If so, there is likely little way to directly find out.

  2. If your organization cannot hire competent talent then it will die a slow and eventual death. You are on a sinking ship if quality people can't be replaced. Even a slow rate of replacement can be a death sentence if you are in a competitive industry.

  3. If this lady is high up in the organization then the organization doesn't have its priorities straight. The priority should be about keeping the organization alive, not picking out who gets the best deck seats on the titanic. (if she isn't high up, then go above her head, and tell her manager that she is making it hard for you to find quality talent, and that she is being unhelpful in the hiring process. If they don't care then the problem still exists, but if they get her out of your way then some of these worries don't apply as much.)

I like that name, The Unanswerable Question as it feels very accurate. I have always wondered why democrats dont push republican politicians on this very directly in debates? It literally does feel unanswerable, so why isn’t it used more often? Why didn’t Hillary or Biden just repeatedly cudgel Trump with this for instance?

I'm guessing because avoiding these pitfalls is politician 101. They're not actually having a debate up there, Trump doesn't have to answer the question he can weasel out somehow, and Dems know it. This is more useful for actual debates where opponenets are trying to convince each other or the audience, i.e. they answer questions more or less honestly

If anyone has a suggested reply that won't get them fired or un-personed, I'm all ears.

I think this might get you fired/un-personed faster, but here's my answer.

The problem is much less "white supremacy" or "patriarchy" and much more something having to do with socioeconomic and networking effects. The problem is that we don't really have a meritocracy right now, due to these forces. By focusing on these things, we can create something more of a meritocracy. The focus on identity, frankly, is an unconscious bias to push away from any sort of need for self-sacrifice from fixing these issues. It's not a solution to the problems that they're pointing to. Truth is, I believe that Neo-Progressive politics amplify these socioeconomic and networking effects.

Going back to the OP, this is what I believe "expanding" Critical Theory looks like. I think it looks like including these other, largely non-identitarian facets of power, privilege and bias into the equation. And I think it's absolutely a non-starter. My belief remains that people will abandon Critical Theory as a whole once that process starts (and I still do think it will start eventually). But I do think people react badly to this sort of thing, because it's seen (not necessarily incorrectly) as a demand that they set themselves on fire to keep other people warm.

That said, I think the activist Right are essentially reacting to the same human impulse.

I don't understand your point. Leftists would probably agree that these days white supremacy and patriarchy are instantiated through socioeconomic effects and networking effects.

There is only one solution. The truth. I know you're afraid of it but there is no other way. And honestly I've found that embracing the truth gets you a lot less hate than you might think, especially in personal contexts, I'd still be wary in certain professional contexts. But through chats with friends I've found that most people are a lot more receptive to HBD arguments than you might think, so long as you explain it right. Most normies have genuinely never heard anyone who isn't genuinely hateful suggest that blacks might have lower IQs so start off slow. Emphasize that what we observe is overlapping Bell curves with different means and make sure to note that you are not saying "every one from this race is dumb". Talk about twin studies. If you're white and not Jewish talk about Asian and Jewish over preformance to make you sound less biased.

Also, to add to this, it's not like you have to make an HBD argument. There are many reasons why an organization (or even an entire field) might not attract black people, and not all of those reasons are necessarily "they're inherently less capable" or "the organization/field is biased". Point out some of those reasons, and say you think that the burden of proof is on the one who claims that it must be bias rather than any other possible reason.

I don't think "burden of proof" makes sense in the context of actually trying to solve a problem. But in any case, yes that is the usually tack that I or others take, suggesting that something like better elementary schools would eventually fix the problem. But then you've ceded that at equilibrium we should expect equal representation, so why not help speed up our approach to that equilibrium? Again, for competitive fields, arguing that the under-represented just don't care enough to try as hard is about as unspeakable as saying they're not as capable (see Damore).

Thanks. I have had the honest convos with people one on one and it has usually gone OK. But lots of my educated acquaintances have heard the basic claims about IQ and also a bunch of rebuttals or claimed debunkings. E.g. They think Gould's Mismeasure of Man showed conclusively that race realists were wrong.

I any case, I am talking about professional contexts, again where people explicitly disavow the possibility that differences in group outcomes could be possibly due to "inherent inferiority".

I see two avenues.

I like personally to just reject collectivism altogether. I don't give a shit if the random distribution of history means people with black skin have weirds stats, why are you obsessing over it? How come this means you get to mistreat my friend here who's a real human being over your skin color percentage fetish? Why are you racist like this, etc.

But if you want to remain within group politics, there's another one:

How come the Asians? How come the Jews?

I've made those anti-collectivist arguments, but the reply is usually that these differences in outcomes are evidence of extreme discrimination, which is unjust and hurting our effectiveness.

As for Asians, they just double down on anti-black racism. Mentioning Jews just makes you sound anti-Jewish.

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