Hey, thanks for your comment (and nice words about my piece). It’s very nice to hear a (in some respects) opposing position. Let me say what I think a couple of replies the pro social justice people would say, and then say — I think this is less interesting — what my own position is, because it’s not exactly as you present it.
So, the ant stuff (I couldn’t read you piece unfortunately — I guess I’ll capitulate and add medium to my list of subscriptions later — so it’s possible I don’t know entirely what your position is). I do kind of see the attraction of that line of thinking — it strikes me as roughly similar to certain arguments one sees for, for example, traditional family structures. It makes a certain amount of sense that we should look to nature, to what has succeeded in nature, and, given we’re part of nature, seek to copy that success. The thing that I think the opponent of such a line should take is: well, we’re beyond nature. In nature you don’t get — for example — penicillin, running water, Shakespeare. Much of what is distinctive about humanity, one might think, is unique to humanity and so looking to non-human (or archaic-human) forms of life for inspiration won’t help. I think this is a pretty decent response, if I’m understanding you correctly, to your view. I would be interested to hear if you disagree.
As to the SJ stuff, again what you say sounds very interesting but again at the time of writing it’s paywalled for me. So I’ll just make this one quick and kind of rhetorical response: you seem to say that the SJ movement is bad at what it does. But a very common line one sees would suggest precisely the opposite: that SJW’s have taken over the university, have taken over the media, business, etc.etc. That is, a lot of the attention and animus directed towards SJ seems precisely that it is very successful in propagating itself and that’s why people worry about it.
A third, somewhat side point: I don’t think I would phrase my point in terms of everything being made up bullshit. I think — and here I agree with you — capitalism (as you say, of not the crony variety ) seems to do certain things pretty well. Certain aspects of the social justice movement remind us of important points about equality and prejudice. They’re both deserving of our attention. Maybe your point is that by bullshit you mean what others would say socially-constructed or determined things; if that’s so, I think such socially-constructed things are nevertheless fully real things, I don’t think they’re bullshit.
Anyway, thanks again. In particular by writing out my response to the ant stuff it’s made me think a bit more about my position — I’m not entirely sure my quick but penicillin response is completely satisfactory so might need to think about it some more.
