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What can we learn about optimal cultural leadership in light of the 2013-2021 social justice period?
Religious leaders did not adequately stand up against the mass movement. Although many conservatives see value in religious institutions as a cultural defense, mainstream Catholicism and Protestant denominations did not substantively address the social justice craze. In some cases they placated or even promoted it.
Academics did not adequately argue against the mass movement. It is not the case, for instance, that the experts in western history, literature, or philosophy were more likely to argue against the mass movement in any substantive way. This is problematic: if learning the best of western culture does not lead to protecting said culture in any genuine sense when it matters the most, then how great is the actual utility of such learning?
The main “public critics” of the period have little in common except that they were passionate and somewhat neurotic men. Yarvin, Peterson, Weinstein, Scott Adams(?). My memory of who was most dominant in this period is somewhat hazy, maybe someone with a better memory can correct me. There were more psychologists among critics than philosophers. You had people like Stefan Molyneux passionately criticizing the proto-movement well before its zenith. His Twitter attests to his neuroticism.
Random people online were able to sense a threat that leading experts weren’t able to sense, and made arguments that leading academics did not make. Why?
It’s difficult to come away with clear takeaways. IMO: (1) it is beneficial to increase anonymous discussion, as this laid the groundwork for future criticism, and allowed for arguments to spread which would otherwise be banned. (2) It may be essential to increase the number of passionate and neurotic men, over men with other skills, as the major critics were more often passionate and somewhat crazy. A “passionate” temperament is occasionally inaccurate, and may result in behavior that leads institutions to weed them out — but their utility in sensing and addressing threats compensates for the occasional bout of craziness.
There is a funny review of Jordan Peterson from 2013, possibly the first time anyone commented about his personality online. It was made on the anonymous literature board of 4chan in 2013, long before his rise to fame.
Editing for clarity
The question is geared toward users who believe that wokeness constituted a threat — to institutions, America, truth, etc. I suppose there are some users who do not believe that wokeness was a threat. I can’t recall seeing such a comment in years on this forum, but if you’re such a user, you are of course welcome to comment and critique in any way that you’d like. Feel free to comment on the premise, the points, a tangent.
Why were the individuals leading the fight against wokeness outside of the traditional framework of understanding and designating cultural authority? The study of philosophy, the study of history, the study of great works, the study and authority of religion — these things did not create any of the influential “fighters” publicly arguing against wokeness. If they couldn’t detect, grasp, and eliminate the threat, then how important should we consider these pursuits and domains? Why did they fail when they were needed? Are these pursuits less valuable in moral formation than generally conceived? Many conservatives believe that these mainstays of Western education are important to study; yet the students of these were impotent against the threat. There are conservatives who studied these, and who teach these.
”Institutional capture” doesn’t factor in here because there are non-woke members of these domains, perhaps a few percent or a few tens of percents, but none of them were to be found among the influential critics of wokeness.
It appears to me that temperament played a larger role than anything else in deciding who was instrumental in tackling the threat. Do you agree? Do you disagree? From Peterson to Musk, the great “defenders” against it were passionate and somewhat crazy personalities. They cried publicly. They had strange personal lives. If that’s the case, should temperament be considered a greater deal in the selection of authority?
I think this clarifies. There’s a mismatch between “the study of Western things leads to great moral conduct!” and the reality of how everyone behaved during a mass movement which veered toward moral hysteria. “Traditional education” did not avail anything. This is interesting, provided of course that you agree with the premise.
I think wokism is the logical conclusion of blank slate, everyone-is-equal democracy. Blank slate meaning that everyone is born the same, there are no genetic or inborn advantages in intelligence or drive between demographics, and that everyone is equal. This is a sort of immaculate conception myth that all modern liberal democracies believe, not just woke people.
Progressives or “wokists” take this to the logical conclusion: since demographics are clearly not equal in terms of educational achievement, wealth accumulation, property ownership, etc, but since they were exactly equal at birth, it logically HAS to be some systematic form of oppression to cause these sort of disparities.
The logic is sound, but the premise is flawed. Human Bio-diversity is a thing. Ever watch the NBA or NFL? It’s predominantly black, but there aren’t many who have an issue with this. At the upper echelons of business, it’s predominantly white and Asian. Many have problems with this, and a lot of flawed programs are devised as a result like DEI and Affirmative Action.
Unfortunately, you aren’t really allowed to talk about these things in polite company, but most people fundamentally understand this.
Thanks to social sorting by occupation/income/class/education I'm not sure that HBD is that obvious to your average layman. The kind of black person that hangs out in lefty college educated millennial circles is not the sort that drives an Altima with a fake paper tag. If anything, your average college educated white millennial might be more likely to know/be related to some embarrassingly white trash types than they would the average ghetto-dweller. Pro football players are supermajority black, but high school football players and more broadly football fans more closely reflect the demographics of the sort of places that are into it.
To give a Trump-coded example I work for a trucking company in the deep south whose employees are almost entirely black and white, and of the pre Ellis Island variety at that. Your HBD guy would argue that our black employees are in fact an above-average sample of the black population of AL/MS/GA while the whites we have mostly aren't (More accurately, there's an age gap. Our white employees are mostly older/from a time where college education wasn't that common and trucking was more widely considered a good job. Our average office guy was a trucker for a decade or few before they switched to the office.) but IRL it looks like a place where "90s colorblindness" (aka. the normie Trump voter position) is accurate. The black and white men (and it's all men) I work with are largely the same: high school educated/some college at most, very Southern/rural-coded, married or divorced with children (Educated incels would rage at the fact that fatass truckers can get laid and they can't.), of average intelligence, and somewhere between fat and fat as hell for the most part. The drivers (and frankly a lot of the office guys; I was hired into the office with no trucking experience based in part on the expectation that as a college educated white guy I'd have superior computer skills) might not be the brightest guys, but we pay well above-average for trucking so we get the kind who are experienced and by and large have their shit together (especially the owner/operators).
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