Thanks for the response.

Are you assuming all cultural values are about power and control, or do you recognize, as Jordan Peterson often does, that hierarchies of competence ultimately drive values and control outcomes.

The Critical Theorists greatest failure is their assumption that all cultural values are about power and control. Being “SJW Woke” is like putting on a pair of glasses from the movie They Live, where every interaction gets distilled through that interpretive lens.

I look at the thing one level up. Cultural values have evolved Darwinistically, and modern cultures exist in the way that they do because they are the most game theoretical optimum solutions to the task of their own propagation. Sometimes that means hierarchies, sometimes not. If you run around smashing cultures because you don’t like the hierarchies within them, but you haven’t replaced them with a culture that is better at its own propagation than neighboring cultures, then all you’ve done is yield to the competing culture next door.

So then my version of those They Live sunglasses distills basically all tweets and media artifacts down to their cultural indoctrination motivations, and the motives of the tweeter or writer are simply to act out their indoctrinations in defense of their culture. It’s a different kind of woke.

Nothing’s free. Everything’s an advertisement. You just have to figure out what they’re advertising.