The Modern Condition

Critical theory precludes any depth to a thing behind its cover: You can for example, study white supremacy, blood and soil or other xenophobic philosophies. You can then take what you have learned and create a reliable set of biases, which must be true because the definitions are firmly established after all that study. The biases are then subject to an element of human nature, our desire to attribute motive, who does not want to know “why?” someone did something. The fallacy of attributing motives based on expectations from biases is just a shovel being used to dig the intellectual hole. The cement used to seal that hole with the unfortunate digger still inside would be the model of using understandings from biases to anticipate a demographic's ideological response.

In short critical theory attempts lazily to read people’s hearts and minds. The lazy part is that it has no lever to permit the premise that individuals break the rule of demographics. Another way to say this is that the average is not expected to be consistent with the individual.

On average Asians commit less violent gun crimes in the US but this does not mean Asians are not represented in America’s jails for violent gun crimes. Also, a closer review may show that other data that can be replicated with Hispanics show certain Hispanics of that criterion also are underrepresented in America’s jails for violent gun crimes. In this semi-fictional example, more questions should be raised than answers but that would be critical thinking. No critical theory would assume that an inherent ideological response or bias prevents these criteria from being true for Hispanics thus causing their higher representation in violent crimes versus Asians.

The presence of critical theory is a good thing I think, as failures socially contain more merits than successes do. It is exhausting however to see this philosophy still be thought of as valid or even relevant since it collapses into ad absurdum so readily: (“Everything is inherently in favor of incumbents that’s why we must have revolutions.”)

There is no case I can think of in practical terms for critical theory over critical thinking. Critical thinking leads you to questions while critical theory leads you to answers… just lazy ones.

In most cases where we see the fruits borne from critical theory the damage to the average persons senses from the absurdity leaves them without words. I know it does for me; this exercise into why we are talking about communism, socialism or racial divides in today’s America seems to me absurd, and why is because it is… critical theory.

In conclusion, I believe if we are ready to be rid of critical theory the step one must be to make critical theory  married to absurdity. After all one cannot apply both critical theory and critical thinking in practice and come to the same conclusion. By their virtues the former leads to answers and the latter to questions.