I’d heard a lot about critical theory but didn’t really understand what was being talked about. The Frankfurt School of the 1930s wasn’t really a school. It was philosophers and academics who were arguing with each other about how the world actually works — and about why people keep accepting arrangements that hurt them. And like many things called ‘theories’, it’s easy to be confused about what’s actually being said.
Their core insight: most of what we call “normal” was designed by someone, for a reason, and that reason might not be your reason.
Traditional science tries to describe the world as it is. Critical theory asks: “who benefits from the world being described that way?”
When an economist says “the market determines wages,” that sounds neutral. But it isn’t. It’s a choice about what to measure and what to ignore. It’s a story. And stories can be told differently.
Pioneers like Horkheimer, Adorno and Marcuse (followed and reworked by Habermas)— looked at modern industrial society and noticed that Reason, with a capital R, which was supposed to liberate us, had turned into a tool of control. The Enlightenment promised freedom. What we got instead was efficiency.
They called it instrumental reason: the habit of thinking about how to do things without ever asking whether we should.
Reification: when the made-up becomes the inevitable
The word that unlocks the concept is reification. Human social relations and systems appear as natural, thing-like and outside our control because we end up treating them as if they were rocks. Permanent. Objective. Not up for discussion.
“That’s just how business works.” “That’s just how things are.” “You can’t fight human nature.”
Each of those sentences is a reification. Someone built a thing. Now they’re insisting it can’t be unbuilt.
Critical theory’s job is to thaw what has been frozen. To remind us that the rules we’re following were written by someone, and can be rewritten.
Systems are often invisible, and they hide behind normal. When in doubt, consider the system that we’ve assumed is the only way.
The Frankfurt School wasn’t just academic. They were trying to explain how otherwise reasonable people went along with war, consumerism and conformity.
Their answer: the system shapes what feels obvious. What feels like common sense. What feels like “just being realistic.”
Which means the most important thing a marketer, a leader, a maker can do is ask: am I solving a real problem, or am I reinforcing a convenient story about what people are supposed to want?
When someone points at a system and describes the interests of those who supported it, two things can happen.
The first: curiosity. Who built it? Why? What would a different version look like?
The second: discomfort.
If you’ve organized your identity around the map being true — if your status, your choices, your self-image all depend on the current arrangement being natural and inevitable — then someone questioning the map isn’t being philosophical.
They’re threatening you.
The fact that your status feels threatened is a self-reflective tell. Of course it feels threatened. That’s what the system wants you to feel.
“The market rewards hard work” isn’t just an economic claim for a lot of people. It’s a story about why they deserve what they have. Poke that story and you’re not critiquing capitalism. You’re telling them their success was partly luck, partly structural, partly the result of systems that excluded others.
Most of the fury isn’t intellectual. It’s tribal.
Critical theory became associated with universities and with certain political movements. So defending against it became a marker of identity for the other tribe. You’re not critiquing the argument — you’re signaling which team you’re on.
That’s ironic, right? Because “this belief is really about status and belonging, not truth” is exactly the kind of thing critical theory would say about the people attacking critical theory.
It’s tempting to announce that some questions aren’t allowed.
If you want to buy machine screws or widgets that are exactly the same to five decimal points, you’ll pay a premium for that. In exchange, you’ll get parts that are precisely as expected, making assembly more reliable.
Mechanization’s productivity and our fear of fear have driven us to do this with just about everything. Bananas, fast food and student performance are all pushed toward consistency, often at the expense of the possibility of extraordinary performance.
We do this to humans at our own peril.
Do we really want the artist to produce a carbon copy each time? For every Dead show to be the same? For customer service to be measured with a stopwatch, not our hearts?
Uniformity pays when the best definition of “excellent” is that it “meets spec.” This includes day-to-day freelance work, business hotel rooms and the way our phones work.
For everything else, perhaps we ought to pay a bit more for awe, insight and surprise.
“Vanity” has the same root as “in vain.” Emptiness.
Staring at the mirror, focusing on our appearance. It’s an empty pursuit of a not-very-worthwhile goal.
But modern vanity is amplified. Culture hooked the toxic emotion of shame to vanity. Now, instead of a chance to be seen and admired, vanity is mostly about avoiding the risk of being shamed for not being enough, not successful enough, or, worse, of failing.
This new version of vanity isn’t about being the prettiest, it’s avoiding being not-pretty.
If we erect the deal-killer of shame around not-pretty, then society can extend that shame into all sorts of not. Not-competent. Not-respected. Not-fit. They call social media numbers “vanity metrics” for a reason.
It’s selfish. Not the selfish of hoarding resources, but the defensive decision to hold things back. To sabotage our process and our practice so we’re not exposed.
And it scales:
Aspiration has a ceiling. You can become pretty enough, accomplished enough, respected enough — and stop. There’s a destination.
Avoidance has no floor. The threat of not-pretty (or not-competent, not-respected or any other imagined failure) is always right behind you. You can never outrun it permanently. Every achievement resets the clock. It can feel like a useful fuel, but it’s not.
Society industrializes this. Once we’ve established that not-X is shameful we have a permanent threat that leads to self-policing behavior. We enforce it on ourselves and those we care about.
If you didn’t care about blame or credit, what would you ship? What would you teach, invent or contribute?
The answer tells you what you’re withholding — and from whom.
Disappearing into apparent safety isn’t safe. It’s an empty and selfish way to make yourself small.
When Sony launched its cheap portable radio more than sixty years ago, it came with a headphone. For the first time in history, teenagers could listen to music without their parents eavesdropping. This opened the door to Chuck Berry and then the Beatles.
AM radio needed hits, the top 40, mass music, and the Beatles made it work.
Steely Dan came from FM radio. Once the number of stations doubled, these new stations needed an alternative to the more common AM hits. And so we get the Doors and Jimi Hendrix.
Rap and hip hop had a hard time getting past the primarily white program directors, and it wasn’t until MTV began featuring it that it spread to millions.
And Taylor Swift and Elle Cordova would have had a hard time catching on without YouTube.
It extends far beyond music. The launch of the Gutenberg press changed the politics of Europe for a century, and the rise of radio in the 1920s did the same. The smartphone has transformed our discourse and created division in the same way.
We’re now facing the biggest shuffling of media in our history. The messages will inevitably change as a result.
If you buy a coal mine, the business model is simple: dig out as much coal as you can economically justify, then walk away.
On the other hand, the model for a brand or a community or a movement is to relentlessly generate value, connection and possibility. Growth can be sustainable and occasionally exponential.
Too often, we slip into the lazy mindset of extraction. Take a great brand and milk it as it fades from neglect. Stop reinvesting in assets because it’s cheaper in the short run to simply take profits. Coast on a hard-won reputation because it feels safer.
When we wring our hands about private equity ruining organizations, it’s mostly because they often follow the lazy and fearful path of extraction instead of committing to generating something new.
Sometimes, extraction is our best option. But it probably pays to call it that to eliminate frustration and confusion.
We avoid this question all the time, and it costs us.
Don’t put kerosene in an electric car. It won’t work. Don’t give your dog dark chocolate, it’ll make him sick.
And yet, we often hesitate to be honest about what gets us moving.
What puts something at the top of your priority list, or pushes you to put in extra effort? What challenges or rewards do you keep coming back to, gig after gig, job after job?
Here are few to get you started:
Extinguishing emergencies
Going a little faster than the person next to you
Pleasing the boss
Undermining the boss (class clown)
Establishing a web of safety
Running away from safety
Earning trust
Getting your way
Feeling safe
Feeling alive
Feeling vindicated
Showing the skeptics that we’re right
Staying out of the spotlight
Someone who is free climbing at Yosemite probably has different fuel than the person on the treadmill at the gym. The emergency room doctor is not the same as someone working in public health.
The structure, shared measurements and near universal recognition of a quest for an Olympic medal can capture an athlete’s life for ten years–but then, once they retire from this special condition, it’s possible that they’ll never again find this sort of motivation.
“How are you?” is a benign question, but the honest answer might reveal which fuel we’re focusing on, helping us see what we’re drawn to–and it’s rarely universal. That’s part of the hiding. We’d like to believe that anyone else facing the same choices we have would use the same fuel and demand the same priorities we do. Look around. Fuel isn’t universal.
If the fuel you’ve chosen is helping you get to where you want to go, that’s fabulous. For most of us, though, it might be worth a pause to consider whether it’s what we really need to fill our days or create the change we seek.
Organizations invest to create an audience that sticks with them, either because they have no choice or because of an emotional connection.
When this occurs, most then take profits. They decrease service, increase pricing and generally seek payback for the work they did to get to this position.
But there’s another path.
Every change creates tension. And if you’ve got lock in and loyalty, you can create that tension without losing too many customers.
What if you use that tension to persistently and markedly improve the experience? Not to make it more convenient, but to make it worth the effort to learn to do better?
On a good day, that’s what companies like Apple do.
Most of the time, the MBAs push for the short-term profit taking we’re all used to (and tired of).
But if you get the chance, perhaps you can help people get to where they seek to go, even if the journey requires effort for you and for them.
The last of the series! Thanks to everyone who was part of it.
Danny Meyer has changed the way we think about hospitality and what it’s like to eat out. His new book comes out in a few days, and it was a great excuse for two friends to sit down and talk about solving problems.
Your turn. Go host your own KnotChat. Thanks for reading and for leading.
