The Truth About Critical Methods | James Lindsay

I want to start today by telling you how I got here and to do that I want to bring you into how I've been feeling for a while now an analogy will help so back in the 90s I'm a child of the 90s it's been long enough where it's cool to say that there was something of a trope that got popular in big Hollywood movies Hollywood really got into disaster films big cataclysmic disasters like a volcano an asteroid maybe some giant tidal wave everything was going to freeze I don't know maybe it was a virus brought over from the jungle by a capuchin monkey and every one of those movies you had this one particular character not the hero Jeff Goldblum or something he was always some kind of scientist kind of a weirdo and that person saw the problem kind of before everybody else and more or less freaked out they tried to tell public officials the public anyone who would listen something catastrophic is on the way so 20-something years later out of the 90s that's me I'm not Jeff Goldblum he got eaten by a dinosaur on a toilet I think I'm Dustin Hoffman and this is like a virus outbreak a huge cultural shift is taking place right under our noses and this could end badly for a lot of people and it comes in a pretty box social justice so I want you to come away today seeing what's inside that box and to see that it doesn't match what's on the picture on the outside my worried scientist moment hit just over two years ago for a few years up to that point I had been noticing a lot of prominent public intellectuals thinkers I respected getting accused of things like sexism and race for reasons that didn't stack up reasonable folks like Richard Dawkins and sam Harris sir Tim hunt the ESA scientist Matt Taylor who landed humanities for a spaceship on a comet and had made the mistake of wearing a bowling shirt with attractive cartoon women on it and was pilloried for that being that I have two cognitive allergies one two and the other two unfairness I couldn't leave this alone and I engaged it frequently on the internet which is of course the best place to engage anything so every time I engaged if I found somebody who would discuss it with me I was told that racism and sexism are systems and I'd get referred to technical definitions that appeared in the academic literature and what I assumed at the time was sociology this eventually got me looking into Gender Studies and at first I came away thinking okay there's racism there's sexism and then there's this other idea systemic racism or systemic sexism they're two different things and I was really frustrated that the people who kept calling these folks I respected racist and sexist wouldn't take pains to distinguish between them they just said racism they just said sexism to me loosely associating someone with a vague system of racism or sexism isn't nearly the same thing as them actually being racist or sexist as these accusations kept piling up I got more and more curious about them eventually I gave in I resisted it for a really long time actually and I decided to carefully read one specific paper that kept coming across my path two and a half years ago today it was about something called feminist Glaciology what on earth is feminist Glaciology you might wonder because I did so as they say in the paper quote feminist theories and critical epistemology z' especially feminist political ecology and feminist post-colonial studies open up new perspectives and analyses of the history of glaciological knowledge so I know that's a lot of jargon but I want to hone in on one particular word kind of like dr. big ocean did this morning critical is the word I want to talk about today that paper was my first full-on direct exposure to critical methods that's what I want to speak some truth to today my first hands-on experience with critical theory was not a good one as my family and colleagues here can tell you as it happens I recorded that experience in the notes I took as I went through that paper in detail and they began simply enough with entries such as glaciers are key to climate change yeah okay ice should be seen as a part of society as historical scene through a cultural framing of glaciers glaciers have huge social impact I have notes that go on to say this paper is full of weird stuff like a need to explore the relationship between gender and glaciers this paper is very concerned about power I wrote like quote there is even less from a feminist perspective that focuses on gender understood here not as a male-female binary but is a range of personal and social possibilities and also on power justice inequality and knowledge production in the context of ice glacier change and Glaciology end quote so glacier science doesn't focus enough on power I wrote the goal of the paper is to critically uncover the under-examined history of glaciological knowledge and glaciar related sciences at this point I was already thinking something might be wrong here I don't want to jump to conclusions I wanted to get through the paper things kept going downhill my notes got a little more colorful a little further down I wrote the paper seems to call for people to write stories and make films about their way about the ways their lives interact with the glaciers rather than just studying them scientifically and to consider these art projects within the scope of scientific Glaciology this is insane there are other administration's to include art projects as though there are science quote Scottish visual artist Katie Patterson chronicled the ordinary sounds of three glaciers in Iceland and then transferred the audio tracks to LP micro groove vinyl ice records records created by casting and freezing the glaciers own meltwater she then played the frozen records simultaneously on three turntables as they melted the audio recordings available at WWDC org slash ice records fused glacier sounds with the high whine of the ice record itself after 10 minutes the actual ice LP record deteriorates and the sound melts away next to that quote I wrote no it really says that like it's science I had a background in physics I was having a hard time with this paper by the end I had notes that were a little simpler like holy hell I can't believe they put examples like this the very last note I wrote reads I can't do this anymore well it turns out I was wrong I could still do it not only did I finish that paper as of this two years later so I've done almost nothing else but read critical theory it's been great for my mental well-being and happiness I assure you and now I finally understand what's going on spoiler alert the infected monkey is loose in the city and just like in the movie people don't believe the threat is real the problem is that the contents of social justice don't match the pretty diversity picture on the Box social justice activists say it's just about respecting people it's about making the world more fair and just that's the picture on the box that's not what's inside the box I want you to look inside the box with me today so I'm not going to tell you what social justice and critical theory are about today we are going to look inside the box together I'm going to read what they say what they teach straight out of one of their books and we'll see this book is everyone really equal by awesome sense oi and Robyn D'Angelo her name keeps coming up which came out in 2012 it's in its second edition now this is the first this isn't some fringe book it's highly esteemed in our pre-service teacher education programs and it has been widely taught from to our future educators it has also been widely and generously distributed often for free to the administrators of many school systems at least across North America and you may not recognize the author's names I guess kind of do at this point but there's a good chance you've heard some of their ideas Robyn D'Angelo as you heard already is the critical theory educator who is responsible for the concept of white fragility she's not a fringe character she's big-time now not only does she have another book titled white fragility they rested on the New York Times bestseller list last year for many months she's also handsomely paid many thousands of dollars per stop on her busy lecture circuit where she tells other white people she's also white that they are racists especially if they don't think they are racists so let's have a look at what she says about what's inside the social justice box let's start with the concept social justice while while some scholars and activists prefer to use the term social justice in order to reclaim its true commitments in this book we use the term critical social justice so here's a first truth to speak to social justice the authors of this book tell us exactly what they mean by social justice and that it isn't what you might expect it isn't just treating people with more respect caring about issues of race sex sexuality and so on or trying to make society more fair that's the picture on the box or as they put it it's true commitments and they tell us they not me they tell us that it's not what's inside what's inside critical social justice this is the same critical as in critical theory and is in the feminist Glaciology paper how do they define it critical theory refers to a specific scholarly approach that explores the historical cultural and ideological lines of authority that underlie social conditions of course they elaborate a bit more so critical theory is principally concerned with power the lines of authority that underlie social conditions this they tell us a few pages later ultimately derives from philosophers in the Frankfurt School in the 1920s 30s and 40s that school as they tell us quote was guided by the belief that society should work toward the ideals of equality and social betterment end quote ok social betterment as defined by who not you not me by the critical theorists of course not any individual person figuring life out for himself or herself the best they can unless they too are critical theorists these philosophers in the Frankfurt School include some famous names Max Horkheimer Theodor Adorno much could be said about them and the other members of the Frankfurt School if we had time but for now let's just focus on how they characterized a critical theory in 1937 and traditional and critical theory Horkheimer explained that to be a critical theory a theory has to meet all of three criteria first it must be explanatory and this sounds right except he meant it in a particular way a critical theory doesn't have to explain how things work it has to explain what is wrong with society particularly liberal society and Western civilization as these have proceeded since the Enlightenment second a critical theory must be practical that means it must be able to be put into practical application by dedicated social activists third a critical theory must be normative that's a fancy way of saying it carries a moral agenda it must provide both clear norms for criticism and achievable practical goals for social transformation so specifically a critical theory demands that we reconsider the facts of society in their moral terms in other words for a theory to be a critical theory it has to apply its moral to society in order to fundamentally transform it at the social level the critical theorists felt this way because they believe that liberalism is fatally flawed and in need of replacing with something they called ideal democracy it has heard the other day that that's apparently how many communists card-carrying communists describe communism is that it provides the access to a ideal democracy so with that in mind let's see what a commitment to critical theoretical approaches means today that was a long time ago so we'll read again from sensei and diangelo the definition we apply is rooted in a critical theoretical approach while this approach refers to a broad range of fields there are some important shared principles all people are individuals but there are also members of social groups these social groups are valued unequally in society social groups that are valid valued more highly have greater access to the resources of a society social injustice is real exists today and results in unequal access to resources between groups of people okay so so far maybe you're a little like ok I don't know about that but it's nothing to freak out about let's go on those who claim to be for social justice must be engaged in self-reflection about their own socialization into these groups their positionality and must strategically act from that awareness in ways that challenge social injustice this action requires a commitment to an ongoing and lifelong process wait what being for social justice requires a commitment to an ongoing and lifelong process of soul-searching about one's identity as defined by the social theory that they are promoting plus taking on enlightened social activism on its behalf that the minimum requirements this probably isn't what you think you're signing up for when you hear it's just about treating people with more respect just in case that isn't clear enough sense so Andy Angelou also tell us why they make the distinction between what we might consider a traditional approach to social justice what's on its box the true commitments versus a critical approach to social justice what's inside that box pull them out again we do so in order to distinguish our standpoint on social justice from mainstream stand points a critical approach to social justice refers to specific theoretical perspectives that recognize that society is stratified that is divided and unequal in significant and far-reaching ways along social group lines that include race class gender sexuality and ability critical social justice recognizes inequality as deeply embedded in the fabric of society that is as structural and actively seeks to change this so notice that they first reiterate here that the picture on the box doesn't match its contents and they know it we do so in order to distinguish our standpoint on social justice from mainstream stand points the thing they are teaching isn't what people believe they are teaching and pay attention to what it says we need to change they told us in black and white utterly confident that they are correct the very fabric of society is what needs to be changed there's a term for that we call it social revolution this is a real glimpse inside the box of social justice not fairness not respect not equal pay social revolution to unmake our current system and replace it with one they are socially engineering for us that's what you are signing up for when you sign up for your lifelong commitment to social justice your part in their social revolution and they don't try to hide this that's the most amazing part they say it over and over again confidently assuredly and almost everything they write but almost nobody is listening to them and even fewer of us take them seriously at their own words because it sounds properly crazy for example Rochelle Gutierrez who teaches math education at the University of Illinois has written quote much of what currently counts a scholarship in mathematics education assumes we will work within the given system or expand what we currently count as the status quo within mathematics education we have convinced ourselves that equity is a strong enough agenda excuse me a strong enough agenda when maybe revolution should be our goal what I'm trying to tell you today is that revolution is their goal now if you will take a moment and take in our surroundings we're in the National Liberal Club in the Gladstone library among the greatest bastions for liberalism in the world where a flag for liberal ISM was planted liberalism is concerned with freedom liberalism believes in the individual and his or her dignity that people should be judged by the contents of their character because that's really what determines who they are liberalism believes in the universal that there are unalienable rights attached to what it means to be human liberalism accepts the objective that there is a reality out there and we can know something about it liberalism although you probably haven't heard it put this way before is a system of conflict management that allows advanced society to exist it works by guaranteeing freedoms to speak or not to worship or not to make use of one's property as one will to disagree or not to think for oneself as one will liberalism as a set of systems the modern world over the last five centuries and with it Kindle lowest infant mortality rates lowest poverty rates the greatest access to health travel life liberty and the pursuit of happiness that the world has ever seen rooms like this one the one we are in now we're built to promote and defend this system so welcome that's why we're here that's why this conference was held here so we have to ask ourselves why do we need to defend liberalism because liberalism for all of its resilience is also fragile has all the early liberals knew like the critical theorists also realized the critical theorists in the Frankfurt School and since didn't and don't trust liberalism they were faltering Marxists who were already disillusioned with capitalism and who were becoming increasingly disillusioned with a society that seems to like it for them the problem was that liberalism lets people make their own choices and of course people can't be trusted to choose the right things at the time they were concerned with people choosing fascism so maybe that's fair enough it wasn't just them however critical theorists in the postmodern lion Helen just spoke about they gained prominence from the 1960s to the 1980s they patronized us with other worries about the free choices of everyday people just like their forebears in the Frankfurt School they worried that most people choose badly largely including by not choosing art and poetry and other vestiges of high culture when given the choice they said that people can't choose the right way because they're fed a steady diet of false consumer goods and images Jean Baudrillard was particularly concerned with this others like Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida worried that our means of gathering knowledge and communicating it we're little more than instruments of power that create injustice their solution was that knowledge and language needed to be deacons directed for our own emancipation critical theorist since agree with this but have realized they must also reconstruct society according to social justice designs and critical theorists have been cited more than any other type of scholar in history citation counts tell us something about a scholars influenced top scholars in many fields a few tens of thousand citations over their career nearly all of the fun that the foundational critical theorists have either tens or hundreds of thousands of citations Michel Foucault alone as the most he's been cited over nine hundred thousand times according to Google Scholar so critical ideas have been very influential very widespread and what do they do over and over again they use what they call criticism to tear down liberalism and freedom the freedom to speak to think to choose as we will and to be the arbiters of our own lives which they believe is a myth and replace our freedoms with something better we've seen this kind of thing before and it didn't work then either but we might hope that we know better now right know the critical theorist of today still reject liberalism openly and want to overthrow it so they can replace it with their own social engineering project as send soy and D'Angelo tell us this written in 2012 still taught today especially to our teachers so thus to our children and our grandchildren I'm going to find page five these movements meaning the critical theory movements initially advocated for a type of liberal humanism individualism freedom and peace but quickly turned to a rejection of liberal humanism the ideal of individual autonomy that underlies liberal humanism the idea that people are free to make independent rational decisions that determine their own fate was viewed as a mechanism for keeping them marginalized in their place by obscuring larger structural systems of inequality in other words it liberalism fooled people into believing that they had more freedom and choice than societal structures actually allow so this lets us take a look reveals the truth of what social justice and it's critical methods want they want a social revolution that dismantles those societal structures they want to dismantle liberalism and replace it with something that they tell us rejects liberalism at its roots the objective of social justice is to deconstruct liberal societies and reconstruct them as social justice societies where they determine what is right and what is wrong for everybody so here's another truth they tell us constantly the way that they'll get their revolution is to apply and teach critical theory as widely as possible what the theorists ranging from the Frankfurt School to the radical new left in the 50s and 60s to the postmodern deconstructionist s' to today's social justice warriors all understand and count on everyone else not understanding is one simple truth constant cynical criticism is a solvent that can dissolve liberal societies bits this lets us start telling the truth about their tactics their tactics are simple cynical criticism doing it and teaching other people to do it all the time everywhere about anything it doesn't matter whether your criticism is based on genuine understanding of what you're complaining about the point is to complain and to criticize everything even when it doesn't make sense and especially at times when it is unfair as Horkheimer said the point of a critical theory is to explain what is wrong with society he was quite clear from the beginning that another type of theorizing entirely is used to understand how things work he called those theories traditional theories and he took pains to make clear that they are not critical theory so if you remember whens and so Andy Angelou told us that critical approaches to social justice you quote specific theoretical perspectives that recognize that society is unfair and needs to change they meant these they meant critical perspectives not ones that necessarily take earnest to rigorous pains to understand what is going on before they attempt to change it critical theorists like Horkheimer Adorno sensoria DeAngelo understand that the weakness of a liberal society lies in its greatest strength it eagerly invites criticism this is because the alchemy of a liberal society depends on being willing to examine what it is doing wrong so that it can admit the mistake and correct it that alchemy liberalism's openness to earnest criticism is precisely what led it to create modernity which most of us would recognize as the biggest boom in human progress real human progress and our hundreds of thousands of years on this planet criticism is great in the right amounts especially when it's well informed and well considered but constant cynical criticism from a big enough group especially of under-informed complainers is a solvent that can dissolve liberal societies critical theorists like Horkheimer ranging through diangelo therefore understood that to tear down a liberal society you just need one thing you just have to get a large enough group of people to complain constantly about how society can be understood as unfair or unjust as cheating them or somebody they care about whether that's based in genuine understanding of the circumstances or not they don't have to offer solutions they don't have to understand they don't need clear perspective of what they're talking about they just have to air their grievances constantly and make everything they can touch seem problematic while constantly demanding that it therefore be changed and they know how to make this happen teach it everywhere make it a moral imperative and they do it really well sorry gun one too far each of us has a choice about whether we are going to work to interrupt these systems or support their existence by ignoring them there is no neutral ground to choose not to act against injustice is to choose to allow it although it does take ongoing study and practice before a social justice framework will fundamentally shape your work this parts all in italics to decide not to take on this commitment does not mean you are being neutral indeed to decide not to take on this commitment is to actively support and reproduce the inequitable status quo I like that song it is always the primary responsibility always is in italics of the dominant group members to use their positions to interrupt oppression always so maybe this all feels a little theoretical or unrealistic maybe a lot of you have never heard of any of these theorists I know some of you have I know a lot of other people haven't either and you're right maybe these academic theories are being widely taught throughout our schools of Education and they might have some effects but they're not actually making it out into the real world or societal solving can do some real damage actually they are the infected monkey really is loose in the city and the virus is already spreading rapidly you might think it's unfair that I call this a virus by the way deadly nasty virus so before I say any more let me point out that they do that too in 2016 two theorists feminist theorist Brianne phos and Michael Karger published a paper in a small academic journal called hen arrows multidisciplinary Journal of Gender Studies titled women's studies as a virus I'm not going to tell you about this I'll just show it to you here's their abstract it's a little long because women's studies radically challenges hierarchies and lacks a unified identity in canon of thought it often negotiates precarious position within the modern corporatized University at the same time in women women's studies offers by virtue of its interdisciplinary critical and infectious structure cutting-edge perspectives and goals that set it apart from more traditional fields this paper theorizes that one future pedagogical priority of women's studies is to train students not only to master a body of knowledge but also to serve as symbolic viruses that infect unsettle and disrupt traditional and entrenched fields in this essay we first pause at how the metaphor of the virus in part exemplifies an ideal feminist pedagogy and then we investigate how both Women's Studies and the spread of actual viruses like Ebola and HIV produce similar kinds of emotional responses than others by looking at triviality mockery panic and anger that women studies as a field elicits we conclude by outlining the stakes of framing women's studies as an infectious insurrectional and potentially dangerous field of study in doing so we framed two new priorities for women's studies training male students as viruses and embracing negative stereotypes of feminists professors as important future directions for the potentially Liberatore aspects of the field I'm not the one comparing their disciplines favorably to viruses like Ebola and HIV and neither is any enemy of theirs they are and their intention is clear they told us quote to infect unsettle and disrupt traditional and entrenched fields by training students as viruses because the metaphor of the virus in part exemplifies an ideal feminist pedagogy that's exactly what they're doing very successfully not just in the Academy social justice activism has significant influence over many areas of society especially through social media and using institutional administrations not only is social justice and critical theory taught in our universities and increasingly in our primary and and re-education nearly every University in the United States and many through the entire english-speaking world now has an office of diversity equity and inclusion that exists to make that institution compliant with critical social justice Peter this morning talked about bias response teams at over 200 universities he didn't say so but they amount to the red guard they induce struggle sessions this many of these offices require people to write statements of their commitment to ideals of social justice particularly diversity inclusion in equity including self reflective statements of how they've fallen short in the past sometimes not only are these requirements political litmus tests ILI's potentially for hiring the compelled confessions they sometimes contain can be potentially useful for firing - should somebody later step out of line even he said he's a racist this isn't just in our universities law societies many corporations even some cities now have diversity officers in the diversity training industry in the United States alone is above a ten billion dollar a year industry this is an industry that produces no tangible product whatsoever and almost none of what it does is supported by evidence in his favor some of what it does is has evidence against it it may proceed from good intentions but it ultimately exists to evangelize four critical social justice instruct in critical theory and induce individual and institutional compliance and it works large corporations such as Google and the BBC have fired employees based on the basis of complaints couched in social justice terms these often follow from social media outrage induced by articles written in popular media venues like BuzzFeed and Vox which have dedicated themselves to the project of mainstreaming critical methodologies bigger media outlets have taken up the charge - why can't we hate men was a headline in the Washington Post it was written by the editor-in-chief of a feminist academic journal of rather high standing white women come get your people was in the New York Times following the 2018 midterm elections other major companies get called to account for their products to just pull one example among many Macy's recently found itself at the center of an outcry that began with one offended person on Twitter they had to cancel the product line and publicly apologize for producing a plate that showed portion sizes in relation to jeans sizes which was considered fat shaming online platforms themselves increasingly ban and block and otherwise punish users who produce content that can be deemed offensive as Peter pointed out even by proxy YouTube regularly D monetizes videos it seems to have transgressed some standard these are sometimes seemingly arbitrary Facebook has become so vigorous in its censorship that years old posts that are being read out of context by its algorithms occasionally result in account suspensions and bans and Twitter has updated its rules to ban all kinds of speech in particular that which they call dehumanizing language for religious groups as well as gender critical feminism and the words of all those who do not accept trans people's stated gender or even sex identities this effectively means that handfuls of activists or the most affluent and politically active sectors of society or they enter the internal cultures of a handful of our corporations like Twitter Facebook can censor social media which is sort of the new public square social justice activists are very visible on social media and they're particularly keen to punish people who are influential within the arts and within media calls for the punishment of artists who have spoken against or stepped out of line with social justice are often referred to as you've heard now has canceled culture this is a chilling practice that involves the utter destruction of someone's career or reputation if possible for something she might have said decades ago even as a teenager the black actor Kevin Hart was forced to step down as host of the Oscars for example when tweets containing gay slurs old tweets were discovered the actor Matt Damon incurred online feminist wrath by saying that sexual assault occurs on a spectrum and describing a pat on the butt as different than rape game show host Mario Lopez was pressured to apologize by an online mob who was outraged by his view that parents shouldn't uncritically accept a three-year-olds self defined gender identity tennis superstar Martina Navratilova was mobbed online for arguing that it's not fair for trans women tennis players to compete against natal women feminists Megan Murphy was permanently banned from Twitter for saying that men are not women feminists giant Germaine Greer was declared not a feminist for saying something to the same effect this is I think my favorite one Slate Magazine even recently published an article insisting that Robyn D'Angelo's white fragility has a whiteness problem [Music] because mostly white people who are D'Angelo's explicitly intended audience engage with it and according to them they do so so that they can become what critical race theory now calls good whites it's not good to be a good white examples aren't limited to these I get emails literally every single day it's quite depressing talking about yet another walk of life that's been infected by social justice and critical methods rock climbing hiking knitting craft ceramics Catholicism Lutheranism Americans and Buddhism the Southern Baptist Convention personal finance law societies New York State and city schools Dungeons and Dragons the examples actually are kind of nearly endless nothing can be safe from a critical theory because nothing can be perfect so what's happening then as my friend Mike nenna over here where the camera says we're Marxist revolutionaries believed that power was tied up in wealth and so step one was to seize the means of economic production their immediate successors the critical revolutionaries that we have today believe power is tied up in how people think and how we communicate so step one is to seize the means of cultural production like education media art language and religion including the the limits of free exercise for these put another way social justice is yet another and a long historical line of ugly and self-serving power grabs allegedly designed for our own good so we have to ask and then I'll be quiet how could it have come to this now I'll tell you it's the exact mistake that liberalism exists to manage and hopefully avoid it is this our ideas often look better on paper that's on the outside of the box the picture then in practice I'll tell you a quick personal story key you know what I mean I was in exactly one fist fight a real fist fight as a child I was about eight I was with my best friend of course he's three years older than I was a little bit bigger and stronger it ended spoil that for you they ended with me on the ground getting repeatedly punched in the face this isn't a hero story it's not a victim story this is an idiot story and I'm the idiot I can't remember the circumstances I'm gonna lie we had had a few weeks of relating kind of badly it was summer it was really hot things were getting tenser you know a fight was gonna break out at the time I played a lot of video games and those games had given me a theory about how fighting works it amounted to this jump kicks are the most powerful fighting move so if it ever came to a fight I would just do a jump kick and I would win simple as that so once the fight came I remember how it ended it didn't matter that I didn't have the slightest idea how to do a jump kick or fight I believed and I knew that jump kicks were the most powerful fighting move I knew it could work so that's what I did I ran straight out the guy stuck my leg out in front of me and jumped at him and hindsight I guess we could say I was testing my theory against reality the details of what happened next aren't really clear I don't think it took very long to get to the point it all ended pretty fast with me on my back on the ground getting punched repeatedly in the face by an 11 year old who I did not defeat or even hit with my jump kick so the truth is our theories which have been called the best laid plans of mice and men often look better on paper than they work in practice they off to go awry the famous line continues so let's scale up a little take communism for example on paper communism presents the idea that it advanced technological society can organize itself around cooperation and sharing resources so we can minimize human exploitation the injustice --is that spring from the disparities between capitalism's winners and losers can be eliminated that's the picture they put on the box and it's kind of not that bad of a picture if you look at it that way but what's inside an application communism has generated some of the greatest atrocities of history millions dead tens and tens of millions starved shot and dead communism is a great example of the human tendency to fail to appreciate how our best theories can fail catastrophically in practice even when the adherents are motivated by an idealistic vision of the greater good perhaps especially then social justice isn't communism but it has some similarities on paper social justice says we can eliminate bigotry oppression marginalization and injustice and heal the world we can remake our society to be more fair and socially just nobody will be left behind everyone gets an equal start everyone will be treated fairly and with respect that's the picture on the box what's inside the wholesale rejection of our shared liberal tradition the same tradition that defeated the Nazis they really don't like Nazis partly from this very room which even survived one of their bombs the same values that took us to the moon and it's slavery and modern medicine social justice demands that we reject human freedom for the greater good it demands that everyone toe the line and follow its vision and rules rather than the contents of their own character their own best judgment or the contents of their personal conscience --is this is because social justice believes those freedoms as they told us obscure and maintain oppression and this will fail it will fail for the exact same reason that communism failed and that is because it rejects liberalism social justice tells us if we could all just care a little more and care in the right ways which they'll tell us we could have a fair and equitable Society we just have to get everyone on script we all just have to commit to a lifelong process of dismantling our own complicity in theoretical evil and start thinking in socially just ways we all must become critical theorists to do it though we will have to do away with liberalism with freedom because then people can't choose their own things and mess up our theoretical plans for a utopian society just like with communism the limits of freedom in a social justice society will be defined by critical theorists their job is to do one thing scrutinize every conceivable cultural artifact for hidden and Justices speech food dress text performance outcomes everything the point of a critical theory is not to understand a liberal society it is to change it and to replace it with something that openly rejects liberalism it is to apply constant and cynical criticism till to everything everything until that happens even Dungeons & Dragons I promised to speak two critical methods here today so here's the truth critical theory is a means of applying uninformed in cynical criticism to cause a social and political revolution it exists to get rid of liberalism to limit freedom to trol thought in action for our own good which it says we can't be trusted to know their constant cynical criticism is a solvent that will dissolve our liberal societies if we let it it is already dissolving them now again my friend Mike naina has pointed out nothing can long survive a persistent enough cynical critique not an individual not a movement not a piece of art not a mass not masculinity not a society that has done everything it can to reject into test racism not right and wrong not an institution not a nation not Dungeons and Dragons not anything and critical theory can be applied to literally anything absolutely anything you don't even have to understand it this is the truth about critical theory and we cannot let this happen so I'm here today to warn you we are late to this fight this is already well underway thank you [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: New Discourses

Views: 290,103

Keywords: New Discourses, james lindsay, critical social justice, critical methods, london, conference, gladstone library, liberalism, Robin DiAngelo

Id: rSHL-rSMIro

Length: 50min 38sec (3038 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 19 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/breticus07]

Submission Statement: Dr. James Lindsay in his talk, “The Truth About Critical Methods,” makes very clear that Critical Social Justice is not the same thing as social justice. He argues that the branding of social justice, which is how Critical Social Justice promotes itself, misleads people about the nature of that movement.

[u/ApatheticPhilistine]

Good to see he's still fighting the good fight.