critical theories of all types allow a dangerous amount of projection of personal psychological distress onto the real world which is always more complex than the inner workings of one mind, or even the collective minds of a subset of people with shared grievances

not that using your experiences to develop a world view is bad in itself, that’s unavoidable, but psychological states and ways of thinking are transient and critical theories can entrench people in maladaptive ways of thinking in a way that makes growth and agency very difficult

distress can very much be caused by real world conditions and can be a testament to problems that do truly exist, but with distress almost always come distorted ways of thinking and perceiving

when this distress and accompanying distortion is shared by a group of people, despite the fact that their grievances are legitimate, the group and its shared world view deviates from productive analysis into a destructive storm of blind emotionally driven action

this is my take on most if not all political movements and critical theories. i may agree with certain tenants of various ones but i don’t think i’ll ever be able to see these kinds of meta-narratives and schools of thought the same way i did before i realized this.

similarly to how individuals in distress often cannot see the counter-productivity and maladaptiveness of their distorted ways of thinking, or errors in perception, people who have taken critical theories hook line and sinker cannot see it in their movement either

most ppl i know including myself who have left ways of thinking centered around a critical theory did so because they grew from that transient state of distress into a new way of thinking and perceiving that was more aware and mature, and found that theory was keeping them stuck