Theories as fruit for meaning-polyculture 🍊
Jan 01, 2026
Often when I speak against the primacy of a particular way of making sense of the world, people think I’m against that theory. I’m usually not; I’m against monocultures of meaning. I’m against theories-as-egregores, using people to assert their universal application at the expense of other theory-egregores.
Imagine people only talking about oranges whenever anyone talks about food. There's nothing wrong with oranges, I love oranges! I also love bananas, which have more potassium, but aren't so good for throwing in a backpack. And sometimes I’ve eaten so many oranges I accidentally criticize them rather than notice their overuse.
Freud, Object Relations, Attachment Theory, trauma, Enneagram, Integral: Like different fruits, lots of them are good for me! Some aren't relevant to the goal; some don’t work with certain processes—CBT, EMDR, etc.
In the same way it's obvious that fruits aren't the only foods, sociology, biology, metaphysics, economics, etc, are often just as relevant to whatever we’re using psychological analysis for. All meaning is a context-dependent map, not a universal truth. Including this one.
Join this discussion on Uptrust here
With love Jordan
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