This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Paul Graham is out today with an essay about the origins of woke. There's nothing in the essay that's particularly new. Did he know about Richard Hanania's book? Did Hanania know that perhaps his book would be better as an essay?
In any case, I think the better topic would be this:
How did wokeness die?
Of course, wokeness isn't dead. Far from it. But the vibe shift is real, and I think it's pretty fair to say that wokeness did peak in 2020/21 and is in serious retreat now. Paul Graham kinda glosses over the reason for its decline, saying:
But I'm not sure this really explains it. As the social movement known as wokeness gained power, it was able to get more and more people placed into high-ranking positions. Governments, universities, and big corporations all have what are essentially commissars who are given high-paying jobs to enforce orthodoxy. At first, wokeness was just true believers. But pretty soon it gained adherents who did it for practical reasons – they put their pronouns in their bios because their jobs literally depended on it. It seems like a self-reinforcing cycle. Once woke people get more power, they make demands which include hiring even more woke people, giving them more power, etc... Anyone who speaks out is banished from the organization.
There's no limiting principle here. Other social movements, like Christianity, grew and grew until they took over essentially all institutions. Why couldn't wokeness do the same?
Here's my attempt at an explanation.
Wokeness is ultimately like cancer. It grows but it can not thrive because it destroys the institutions it corrupts. Scott talked about how whales should in theory get cancer more readily than smaller animals. A blue whale has 3,000 times as many cells as a human. Each one could theoretically become cancerous. So why aren't blue whales riddled with cancer at a rate 3,000 times that of humans?
Scott's theory: cancer cells are unstable, and the cancer cells themselves get cancer, preventing the malignancy from growing. It's a rare cancer that grows quickly but is stable enough to not implode.
I can't comment on the accuracy of this biological model, but as an analogy for social movements it works well. Early Christianity grew without limit because it was fruitful. Wokeness died because it was toxic. Today, the left is famous for its circular firing squads in which people are excommunicated for the smallest breaches of orthodoxy. Ultimately, this was its fatal flaw. It couldn't coordinate action against its enemies because it was so obsessed with killing its own.
Eric Kaufmann defines wokeness as the sacralization of historically disadvantaged identity groups. Sacred in this case means it’s profane to consider tradeoffs in pursuit of these groups’ interests.
On this definition, woke is in retreat. I think people are noticing that tradeoffs do exist thanks largely to the liberation of X. These narratives have still not pierced the MSM veil, but people are aware of Boeing and now LAs DEI failures (regardless of whether they are actually linked to outcomes). People are noticing it is hard to get hired as a white man in a status profession. People are noticing their kids schools teach gender ideology and kids bookstores are full of anti racist baby. Meta took away the men’s tampons. Trump won the vote.
If you look deeper though, the belief that enables the woke policy agenda — the blank slate sameness of mankind and its groups — remains undefeated. Indeed beyond criticism. So long as that bastion remains unconquered, the armies of the left will continue to sally forth to attack western institutions by claiming “disparate impact means injustice”. I was talking to a friend and complaining about diversity quotas. He dismissed it as “probably worth it — after all how many black men work in the city’s CBD?” Such an argument can still not be rebutted in public because the answer remains beyond the pale.
I mean that in its original sense: these ideas are in the wilderness and are so low status you cannot utter them in polite company anywhere. Until the right wins that battle, centrists will take the sides of the woke in all but the most aggressive moves and won’t resist their consolidation of power in institutions. And generational and ethnic replacement will not make this easier over time.
I think wokeness is approaching a local minima sure, but it’s far from dead.
regardless of the underlying issues and whether blank state is true or not as soon as you bring in quotas it changes peoples incentives and may change the equilibrium. if you required quotas for left handed people then if left handed people could coordinate to reduce their personal investment then left handed people would start performing worse in the equilibrium. take a toy example where left-handed people all are able to agree to spend half the time they otherwise would have spent in university studying. if quotas are rigid then they are still going to get same personal output but at a lower personal cost.
the reason for the coordination requirement is because I would expect intra-handness competition between lefties would incentivise people to maintain the same personal investment in the quota system.
Given how large some of the gaps are or were, it's inconceivable that quotas are never going to be better than doing nothing.
Especially if the blank slate is true. Then one can argue for maybe a limited quota system (for a fixed time period) to remedy discrimination, under the assumption that whatever gains are made will continue when the original barrier is smashed and a self-sustaining population of female /minority X is formed and the stereotype threat/unfriendly environment is gone.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link