New Discourses Bullets, Ep. 11
One of the most common words we run into today thanks to the incredible spread of Woke Marxism is “critical.” This is because Woke Marxism comes out of the Critical Theory tradition, which is the tool of a mid-20th century Marxist project called “Critical Marxism.” We run into this term especially often in education, where the Woke Marxist objective is to use the pun on “critical” that exists between “critical thinking” and “Critical Theory” to advance their agenda under a positive-sounding cover. Luckily, they explain themselves plainly too. In this quick New Discourses Bullets summary, James Lindsay goes through an explicit admission by education activist Alison Bailey on the differences between the critical thinking and the Critical Theory (and Critical Pedagogy) approaches. Join him and stop getting fooled!
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6 comments
Thank you for this insightful episode on critical thinking and critical theory. It’s essential to distinguish between the two, especially in education and discourse. Critical thinking (https://studycorgi.com/critical-thinking-and-its-components/) encourages objective analysis and individual reasoning, fostering intellectual independence. On the other hand, critical theory often pushes for a more ideologically driven perspective. It’s crucial to promote critical thinking skills to help individuals navigate complex issues without succumbing to bias.
Liberal Feminism was exploited and harvested in many ways including by radical feminism & all were fooled not throwing academic weight into trans rights. Many aspects were were lamentable, but none more than the way the trans movement were either entirely unaware, or were simple taking no notice of this force of effort lent to them in order to achieve more rights. Under those conditions trans people felt they’d won their own battle, & one of the targets from their newly empowered position was Feminism! Thus it has been more refreshing to hear of it whenever members of the feminist movement laterally respond with dignity and normalcy.
Likewise there are many of these ‘crossover’ terms as was phrased in the podcast – for instance ‘Tranformative’ is another crucial term to be denoted as at the event horizon of psychosocial abuse. Thus the dimensions implicit in both critical thinking and anything linked with transformative learning are among many more at a form of leading edge among these issues.
For example – i am myself a proponent of transformative leaning of the jack mezirow school of thought. Over the years i have dispatched electronic communications to endless numbers of schools, colleges, and government link educational bodies including OFSTED ( in the UK this is ). Those communications began 15 years ago and greatly resemble new discourses in many ways. My point is though that all of them were a third line intervention, after critical thinking had been remodelled into critical marxism, and my communications modelled them back into authentic critical thinking strategies almost precisely as Bailey stated, but obviously not in a coincidental language. One good thing to confirm is that critical thinking, the ideal, or phenomenon has this integrity and consistency. But also we are in several ways referring to metacognition in a relationship with critical thinking & certainly when terms such as epistemological adequacy are brought forward. Take metacognition – vs epistemological adequacy and it is hard to separate them for preference superficially. Except that in discussing the intent to describe ‘metacognition’ one is most likely showing intent to offer a model of unconscious and preconcious concepts, leading to the ability for the conscious mind to gain the opportunity to increase personal awareness ( well so long as facilitators have means ). Compared to EA where this more describes an event horizon in learning itself if that makes sense – and its a great term incidentally. This is also why ( only imho ) that to ignore say Freud can be simply an act of cutting off ones nose to spite the face. The man may not have been perfect, but learning is being exploited in all of the ways described on ND’s, and this harvest is almost exclusively done using psychosocial techniques developed by freud deniers. This includes Lacan, whose ‘return to freud’ was a prime post structural remodelling aimed at deconstruction = a way to cultural marxism as counter intuitive as this may seem. So Freud when carefully applied is like a roadblock against all of these pernicious sociological sperms of Goebbels, and this really needs to be understood around these issues. In some forms then there are persons very comfortable with SF, but others who are not so would still be well advised to look closely at how there are antidotes. But moreover ( vitally ) his architectures are perfect , for conceptualists in education, for the purpose of upholding the authentic status of critical thinking. In fact i do not know of a way to guard that authenticity without him, although do now of innovations added to his work that increase this efficacy.
Thus we have a similar circumstance with ‘Transformaive’ = ‘Pedagogy’ – ‘Andragogy’ – it is probably true that long gone is a stag where anything is safe from the social engineers, since they want the same ways into consciousness en masse as a teacher does. Ofc there are teachers who do not know that teaching is link to metacognition as they were encouraged not to know. This sort of teacher will not know that they were shown how to mentor negative metacognition such as critical marxism right ?
In many ways then we are learning matters concerned with the gates of consciousness in subjects of education. Whilst when t comes to various labels, we are only learning the modes by which they reach those gates. These are editions or magazines of neuro linquistic kinds, which contain contagions or not. What they are called at age time only has a limited meaning on one hand, is paraconsistently crucial to take more of on another.
Then we have ‘Contradiction’ due to Friere and critical pedagogy etc. I’d advise people to search how to understand the dimensions of Paraconsistency in order to combat contradictory abuse. It isn’t much use just holding a crucifix up to that neural tool more that most as it exploits social paradox. What after all has political correctness the entire collection sought to do ? It has been designed to create a false sense of defeating paradox in as much sociological ingress as possible ( non binaries ffs ) – the shooting match pivots on the decoupling of paradoxes, and it would be a phenomenologist trained person such as myself that would point this out.
Perhaps we arrive at another point of consideration or perhaps not. However this being the coincidental nature of historical phenomenologists who have ben implicated in post structural/modern & deconstruction / critical theory et al movements. Again there are vital elements in phenomenology which make it crucial that a stick is not simple waved at them.
This matters are an entanglement that cannot stand up to rational scrutiny & that is why they are an attempt to cancel rational scrutiny. Those who do not agree with these Ai metalanguages need to think carefully as to what is appropriate in response.
To a level of good probability they are designed to enable Ai run law enforcement. So for example queering may have manifold additional purposes as a pisces of sociological manipulation, but one of them is to help eliminate a machine learning predicament. These designs know that Ai software is only a database & that an ‘Ai’ element only means a series of actions by that software., Thus even a crude act of societal deconstruction based around the metaphysical construct of non binary persons, helps alleviate this difficulty for the sake of is calculating power. Therefore solong as a negative education in dehumanisation is performed eliminating Male / Female concepts alone doesn’t halve the problem that works exponentially. Ai cannot reason whatsoever & the obstacles in designing how it can compare complex totalitarian sampling mechanisms is the real technology, no matter how much propaganda states otherwise. Thats not ‘AI’ – thats just a complex cumbersome misanthropy based database called AI. But unless this extrapolation is wrong, everything we are witnessing could indicate the globalists ( really the continentists who are being continentist collectively ) possibly hope this collaboration will have a moron software running an enforcement system from hades in place.
In that sense there may be nothing that can e done to stop this. The point of the resistance might be to pressurise the establishment concerning how such software operates.
Another matter of note is that AI is is a construct not a concept. For instance a human being is a concept considering the fact that it is still unknown what the purpose of human life is, & where we came from. Evolution may well argue for the prime soup & its a fine argument. But those building blocks came from the universe = w e have no empirical knowledge of origin = Concept. Any ‘conceptual’ style in informatics is a construct.
Thus though it may be a challenge to see what shall have came first, the chicken or the egg, i.e the sociological new order or the database. Queering et al is surely an informatics project, whilst a working knowledge in the reams of the paraconstent can be very useful. It can only approximate things, nevertheless can point point probabilities well enough.
What is there to work with when anything that sounds like the truth is being abolished just so a dumb machine can process it after all ?
When Paulo Freire first came to Harvard!
https://www.thecrimson.com/article/1971/12/9/liberating-the-pedagogy-pbibt-is-said/
I thought you may appreciate this Reason Magazine article on the New Left from 1969!
https://reason.com/1969/10/01/philosophical-origins-and-intellectual-h/
“The line between these traditions [critical thinking and critical pedagogy] is not hard and fast, and I concede that there are times when these traditions can work well together to navigate difficult questions. But I’m adamant that philosophical engagements on issues of social justice must simultaneously track the production of knowledge and ignorance. Teaching social-justice issues requires an attentiveness not only to the ways students take up course content, but also to the strategies they use to resist it. I neither want to encourage nor silence student resistance. I want to make its operations visible by tracking the movements on the unlevel knowing field.”
As a post secondary lecturer/teacher, I’ve learned that the primary objective for anything “critically” motivated needs to be about thoughtful reflection and to challenge biases and enhance knowledge. It shouldn’t be about preserving positions or privilege. Critical thinking is about modeling thoughtful and courageous dialogue, debate and thinking in classrooms (and beyond). Its about learning how to learn.
This to me is one of Critical Theory’s key weaknesses, their smugness.
In Orwell’s 1984, the totalitarian state of Ingsoc is maintained by continuously rewriting history including their own history. This way there is no record against which to falsify the contemporary claims of those who act in the name of Big Brother. Furthermore, Ingsoc and Big Brother gain an almost mythological allure about themselves as the world before the Revolution was said to hold nothing of value and the Revolution itself is shrouded in mythology and mystery.
This is not the case with contemporary “neo-Marxists”. Literally everything they wrote down over the generations is recorded for all to see and they proudly distinguish themselves from Others. Hence one can discern a non-Critical reality!