• @yesman
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    15 hours ago

    If you’re going to get rid of essentialism, you’re going to have take on bigger fish than creationists. Because the problem of essentialism is not that it objectifies everything, it’s that it refuses to understand the difference between language and ideas.

    The worst essentialists are called structuralists or logocentrics. This kind of thinking is dominant in Western Philosophy and it infects the minds of people you probably respect, progressives like Noam Chomsky and reactionaries like Christopher Hitchens.

    Essentialism is like capitalism. It’s in the air we breath and the water we drink. It’s so accepted and conventional that people will assume your a fool for describing or criticizing it.