New Discourses Bullets, Ep. 134
At the center of Woke thinking is critical theory. So, what is it? In short, critical theory is a tool for delegitimizing a real thing for not being some kind of sociopolitical ideal thing that cannot even exist. The way it works is by holding the real thing up to the standards of an imaginary ideal rather than against the contingencies of reality and criticizing it with the aim of breaking people’s faith in it, simply for existing in reality. It’s a wicked tool almost always used to undermine something legitimate so that something illegitimate can replace it (dialectics). Join host James Lindsay for this episode of New Discourses Bullets, where he breaks it down and makes it clear.
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6 comments
The tip off for me , before I started checking you out , James , was , if its America , for example , they would say nothing but bad things , criticise , tear down , and never once say one good thing .
They do the same to individules in struggle sessions
James likes to criticize gnostic ideas, and this is an example in his own arguments that is not quite realistic. There are some gnostic ideas that are quite valid. Were he to consider these more carefully, rather than rejecting them, he would come to some different conclusions, perhaps, regarding why we are in the situation we are in today.
…and it has been noted that “the Right,” or conservatives, have developed their own unrealistic ideal circumstances, based on freedom, that they can then use to criticize existing conditions and institutions. Ideals like free markets, individual freedoms, even freedom of thought.
But we do run into the question of: What is actually real or true? Are spiritual concepts like reincarnation or out-of-body unreal simply because they can’t be easily observed in the physical universe? How might perceptions and possibilities change if real psychic abilities were allowed into our concept of reality?
And Critical Theory falls – as do many other ideologies – because they don’t allow in certain truths that are in fact fundamental and quite important. Criticism itself is a rather low order of argument. Reliance on physical facts is perhaps on a higher order. But inclusion of non-physical facts brings one to an even higher order of argument, or advocacy, which is essentially non-critical and might be better seen as participatory.
Critical theory is subjective, whereas physical is objective. Someplace in reality those two meet to use them practically but they are still separate and have there own merit. So you can’t compare one against the other.
Nice pseudo intellectual gymnastics.. I hear if you spin around the philosophical pommel horse fast enough while focusing your psychic abilities hard enough, you can make it disappear from reality.
Well done, but I was looking forward to bullet points as you said I could expect. I prefer to read my news, so bullet statements would have done a great job of reinforcing what you were saying. As it stands, this is a recording of you speaking with a few bullet points that never change throughout the video, which makes the video redundant. I could have listened to this while driving with no video at all.
If you “bullet out” everything you’re saying I’ll subscribe.