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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.

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).