The Importance of Open Thought
Musings, Questions, and Conversation
I enjoy a lot of decidedly political content on Substack. Most of what I read on this platform is pointed, or at least tangential to some raging cultural or policy dispute.
I try to read some critical theory-infused content as well, although it’s difficult. The writing is vague and general (as a rule) and the ideological formulas are so well-entrenched. I can almost recite some rote blather, like “fatphobia is rooted in white supremacy and colonialism and marginalizes those in larger bodies, especially Queer and BIPOC folks.” I just made that sentence up right now but I guarantee that the idea has been stated or ‘liked’ millions of times online by now (literally). The odd thing is that it’s a very strong, even universal claim… but the meaning is almost impossible to pin down. Essentially it’s a very blurry moral generalization, and its indefinite character is a feature in the circles in which such claims travel. What does ‘rooted in’ mean? What is fatphobia and how can it be separated from biological preferences for health and youth? Does fatphobia occur in indigenous contexts? If so, is it still wrong (for despite their ostensible relativism you can bet that they believe fatphobia to be a sin in every sense of that word)? What exactly are the ties between fatphobia and white supremacy? Colonialism? Is the relationship causal or are there just correlations, perhaps mediated by some third factor? Which direction is the causation moving in and what are the dynamics? Ditto the reference to Queer and BIPOC people. What are some examples, and could another dynamic be at work in them? Is there some general ‘bigotry’ trait that causes people to just fear and dislike fat and gay and brown people? How exactly does that work? How does any of this work?
When I hear a statement like my example, these are the kinds of questions which appear unbidden in my mind. Remarkably, they are not questions which I have ever seen critical theorists (the people stating the ideas in the first place) try to explore. You would think they might want to develop their theory, but instead these kinds of statements seem to act as a kind of mantra: a reaffirmation of the ideas of the collective and an advertisement of virtue. They’re not even arguments in the true sense.
There are serious logical and empirical issues with the people who earnestly say such things, but that’s not what I want to explore. There is also a kind of one-dimensionality, a bleak flattening, which seems to pervade their spaces. Perhaps I just haven’t encountered enough of their content but I’ve seen a lot. In virtually every case it’s not just that they are making vague and unsubstantiated claims; it’s not that they immediately stigmatize all doubts and criticisms (always in moral, and blurry, terms: racist, ableist, sexist, etc. The idea that two people can have sincerely different ideas on important subjects without there being some pathology or bigotry seems not to have occurred to them). The most remarkable thing is that these ideas are all they talk about. I read
about genetic drift and Douglas Murray about poetry. I read today about ‘Prince Versus Party’, in which he explains the two divergent models of political leadership represented by the Republican and Democrat parties in our current election. I realized as a was reading it that I almost never see woke essays or videos like this: ranging freely, using analogy, exploring aspects of the world that do not directly affect ‘structures of oppression’ or sex or race or gender or cultural division. Not only are their essays and videos ideological and uniform (which is what you might expect, after all), marching in lockstep-these issues seem to be all they talk and, presumably, think about. When they review films, sexism and racism and representation are prominent among their points. When they mention literature it’s often only to dive into ‘problematic’ elements, or to explore ‘tropes’. When they write about politics it’s all about power and struggle and bigotry. I might be exaggerating slightly here… but not by much.To those people who see the world through such eyes I want to remind you that every belief systems which becomes stale and rigid and coercive has become a kind of religious system rather than simply a worldview. EVERY belief system must grapple with novelty and integrate anomalies, and if all you have as tools are mantras and the stigmatization of minority opinions or ‘wrongthink’ then you have guaranteed that you will misinterpret new information and that your ideology is on a fast track toward moribund absurdity.
To everyone else: have some compassion. What a bleak way to think and to communicate. What an ugly and hopeless world they must see, compelled to resent and disdain and persecute, by their eternal (and false) concern for ‘marginalized’ people.
This is a cult.