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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   29181 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 13, 2025

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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:

How does this kind of cycle ever end? Eventually it leads to disaster, and people start to say enough is enough. The excesses of 2020 made a lot of people say that.

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.

Wokeness only appealed to a segment of the elites and was unappealing to most non-elites. So wokeness gained power quickly but ran out of steam because it lacked any grassroots support. On the other hand, Christianity started out as a religion of the proletariat and by the time it trickled up to the elite of Roman society it had massive grassroots support. I think that's a key difference.

Yeah, maybe communism is a better example.

Like wokeness, Communism only had the support of a few elites. Famously, the Bolshevik's "going to the people" initiative failed because the common people actually liked God and empire. Nevertheless, communists took over Russia and ran it for more than 70 years. Once they seized power, the social climbers came on board.

Four years ago, it looked like woke was going the same way – not because of true belief but because it was personally advantageous to be woke (and incredibly dangerous to speak out against it).

incredibly dangerous to speak out against it

Hyperbole much? Surely a contributing factor to the rise of wokeness is the utter spinelessness of most people. It was amazing to see again and again, the woke attacking some man of considerable achievements with no apparent woke beliefs, which would conclude with him delivering an abject groveling apology. Or the university presidents and professors who went along with radicals they clearly didn’t agree with. The grad students who traded ‘DEI statements’ for a job. Or you, reader, who put his pronouns in his profile.

Part of the reason is, you aren’t allowed to call men pussies anymore (in polite company). In the past, those who prostrated themselves in this way would have been shamed “Be a man and say no fuck off when you mean no.“ The taboo-ization of manliness has left society wide open for this kind of agreeable-emotional scam ideology, which reinforces the taboo further. Wokeness is both a cause and a symptom of it.

We used to reproduce sexually, which gave us some genetic diversity. After we all turned ourselves into female clones doing parthenogenesis, we became vulnerable to viruses. But thankfully for us middle class folk, through cultural isolation, some intrepid billionaires and rednecks avoided being gelded, and so the woke virus was ultimately stopped.

In the past, those who prostrated themselves in this way would have been shamed “Be a man and say no fuck off when you mean no.

If you opposed woke in that way, you would be fired and/or ostracized. It's not that nobody did it; it's that they were canceled for doing so.

There were people who opposed wokeness that way and are still there. Wokeness always had more bark than bite.

The true answer is, of course, somewhere in the middle.

Joe Rogan stood up to wokeness and got away with it. James Damore didn't.

If you have independent power and wealth then you can express heterodox beliefs and get away with it.

But if your power and wealth depends on an institution (such as a government, university, or corporation) then you have to bend the knee or face consequences. Most people are in this group.

On the balance, I don't have a lot of sympathy for @Tree's argument. People have had their kids taken away because of their position on transgender issues. "Just man up" doesn't cut it.

I mostly agree with you- a CEO could not simply say that he has fewer black engineers because HBD. I do think that the power of woke is overstated but, yes, there’s definitely people who are right to fear it. Just want to address this one:

People have had their kids taken away because of their position on transgender issues.

Which people? Jeff Younger lost custody because Texas courts always favor the woman; his position on trans had nothing to do with it. There are probably similar cases, but parents who agree with each other that the correct response to a trans child is ‘no you’re not’ succeed in getting their child to desist.

Perplexity found one. Kudos because this stuff that normally gets buried. Google is not your friend.

https://www.osvnews.com/2024/02/20/catholic-parents-ask-high-court-to-correct-dangerous-precedent-on-parental-rights-trans-identity/

Not only did they lose custody, but they weren't even permitted to talk to their child about their gender. Insane. And this is Indiana, a deep red state.

The Coxes lost custody of the then-16-year-old in 2021. The Indiana Department of Child Services petitioned a Madison County court, alleging that the teen’s physical and mental condition was in danger and that there was a threat of self-harm as a result of the parents’ physical and emotional abuse.

A case manager’s investigation found that the teen had an untreated eating disorder, that A.C.’s parents had pulled the child from school and discontinued therapy, and that A.C. was contemplating self-harm, according to court records. The case manager’s report also found the teen’s mother used vulgar and demeaning language.

The Coxes denied the allegations, and Indiana officials, following an investigation, conceded that they were unsubstantiated.

But the Indiana Court of Appeals upheld the child’s removal from the home, concluding that the arguments over gender identity had contributed to the eating disorder even though agreeing that the Coxes were fit parents. The appellate court upheld a gag order, which it said was allowed under both the state and federal constitutions, over the Coxes imposing their religious views on gender.

“The appeals court left in place a gag order so the parents could not discuss gender with their child other than at family therapy appointments,” Windham said.

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