Identities Part 4: Victimhood

Critical theory is a way of looking at humanity through power imbalances that may have harmed a person’s human flourishing as currently defined by economic and/or sexual expression.  Critical theory's Achilles heel is that it is unclear about the future institutions and values that the revolution is aiming towards.  Thus, there is a faith in revolution for revolution sake.

Power imbalances were initially defined as economic ones between bourgeoisie and the proletariat.  Critical race theory built upon these economic disparities through racial lines.  Lastly, power was interpreted not only economically but in any power structure that constrained behavior.  With Freud, sexual expression was posited as fundamental to what it means to be human and thus sexual constraints and the power within them must be eliminated.

Now our humanity is increasingly seen through an economic and/or sexual expression lens.  However, increasing freedoms in these areas are not achieving happiness.  

Categorizing an entire group of people based upon race and/or sexual expression is a very blunt and increasingly ineffective way of approaching individuals.  This turns people into objects.  

This oppressor-victim dichotomy results in untruths about individuals and a great untruth of the good versus bad people.  This widens gaps and deepens divisions between people.  Fixing power imbalances by reversing power imbalances appears to be merely throwing kerosene on a raging fire.  

Victimhood identity minimizes personal agency or moral responsibility which leads to fatalism and a sense of lack of control.  Furthermore, it allows "victims" to do wrong with little resistance leading to injustice.  Victim class is increasingly not applicable for many individuals within these historic groups as economic progress and community approval continue to move many previously disenfranchised people forward thus becoming less grounded in the truth.  Critical theory minimizes the importance of truth while also harming the basic good of work by hiring people who are less than fully qualified while also changing the parameters of what good work is in various categories such as science or medicine. 

Intersectionality provides a pecking order or bragging rights for victim status which confers on these individuals even more power and even less moral responsibility.  Exerting power and lording it over others is now what the new power brokers do over everyone deemed inferior (prior oppressors). 

References:

To Change All Worlds by Carl Trueman 

The Coddling of the American Mind by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt

How Identity Politics Is Harming the Sciences by Heather Mac Donald

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