Is anyone else here not really a leftist?
I know this post will be anathema to many, and indeed a lot of people will say the definition of critical theory resides in critique of capitalism in a necessarily leftist way, but i find a lot of use in critical theory and continental philosophy without having an explicitly political agenda. I guess when I was younger I was hard left and influenced greatly by Marxism, but as I've got older and older I've come to see politics as largely surface level froth over deep structures and systems that we can't control or change- economic and technological forces. And I still find a lot of marxist theory informs that, even if I don't believe in revolution or communism any more. Structure over agency.
Idk, i guess my instinctive sympathies and emotional temperament are still left-leaning, but i also find myself annoyed by a lot of leftists these days and see myself in a sort of detached amoral apolitical bird's eye view of everything. I even find myself curious about certain right wing ideas and concepts even if I don't subscribe to them or necessarily agree with them. To a certain extent I find the whole left-right binary too simplistic and unrefined.
And yet I still find theory absolutely valuable and fascinating. I've never been one to subscribe to the notion that you have to wholesale accept or reject a whole system of thought- I always pick and choose the parts I like or that make sense to me. Often I find myself nodding along to a thinker's critique or analysis yet in my head I'm going "but it can't be any other way" or "great critique but terrible solutions"
Am i the only one? Or any other lurkers here feel similar?