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Anyone else feel there's a connection between the amount of PC/wokeism in a country and their susceptibility to increased government overreach?
Kinda getting that suspicion about the UK and Australia, who both bend over to the progressives and already police themselves and their thoughts, and their implementation of "age verification" for internet usage. It's a blatant power grab, adding even more surveillance and control from the state.
Though, yes, you can probably point to all sorts of countries that have zero wokeism and also are dictatorial police states. But I don't think that disproves the connection, if there is one.
I think there is probably a correlation, but I reckon the causality might run the other way. Countries that are more inclined towards government overreach will see more tangible effects of wokeism, whereas in countries with less of a tendency towards government overreach even if wokeism becomes popular among the PMC or whatever, it will be more difficult to implement woke stuff in government policy.
You may be right about that!
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The UK and Australia have a much older tradition of authoritarian paternalism in government that long predates woke. It’s not that old, but it runs through the traditions of Anglo-Protestantism (which is of course in many ways a weird cultural hybrid between Catholicism and some ethnocultural traditions of the Celtic-Norman population mix that became the Anglo Saxons), the 19th century progressive movement, Victorian views about the moral condition of the working class and general ideas about propriety.
These forces existed in America too, in fact until the 1920s they were stronger there (near-unlimited free speech and American libertarianism about gun ownership are constructs of the 20th century), most infamously in the temperance movement, but mass immigration from non-Anglo Europe fractured American society and created the small-l liberal traditions of the mid to late 20th century that persist.
Well, the Puritans were all into "authoritarian paternalism" as long as they are the authority. The whole flight to America thing has been in large part because they weren't, or at least not the supreme one, so they had to embrace the call for freedom. Which they probably, if the things were set up so that they could exercise unchecked authority, might not. And once the "freedom" as the officially American idea has been established, it has always been an uphill battle to support "yes, freedom, but not like that" - be it guns, speech, drink or everything else, the conflict between the declared (even if not genuinely embraced) ideology and practical lust for power (for their own good, of course!) always surfaces. In UK, let alone Australia, there's none of that.
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Yes.
Governments, or states, are superorganisms that wish to grow. Always. There is never a state that moves to curtail or even reduce its power. Some are perhaps more aggressively expansionist (vertically moreso than horizontally, nowadays) than others, but there isn't a single one that exists to shrink. Any that did would create a power vacuum and quickly find itself replaced by another that had no qualms about expansion. We humans are simply the substrate on which these organisms grow, and what we believe or pretend to believe matters to the states only in so far as it helps or hinders their drive for greater reach and power. Wokism is an attractive belief system for states to support on multiple axes: Firstly it is popular, and so it is easy to get humans on board with your agenda by claiming that you, that state, are the enforcement mechanism for that belief system. Secondly its goals align decently with that of the state, there is nothing in there that demands limits to the state's reach and power (as you would find in libertarianism or luddism, or power-sharing arrangements like with the catholic church in the middle ages), there is much in there that synergizes with greater state reach and power (the ability to control the thoughts and actions of others), and it isn't outright self-destructive to the state (like fascism and communism ended up being).
Which isn't to say that states wouldn't expand as much as they can if only it weren't for those damn SJWs. States always expand as far and as fast as they can. Always have, always will, and any deviation form that is an anomaly that is quickly scrubbed out by the arch of history bending towards ever greater superorganisms. PC / Wokism / SJWs / Leftism are simply the latest method or technique for keeping the substrate in line with the bigger organism's agenda.
You explained it well. Thanks.
Do you have thoughts on what can be done to influence more people to fight government overreach?
No. I absolutely suck at psychology.
But to pull a 90° on you, I don't think it makes a difference. Governments will overreach. The interesting questions, IMO, are:
The first point may tie into your line of inquiry - there are certainly some types of government overreach that could be pruned with everyone (incl. the government) better off afterwards. Anything that costs a lot and has poor returns.
But I don't think you can make much progress on government reduction in principle. And you absolutely won't have any success if your preferred measures actually hinder the government - those will be rolled back.
The age of the citizen as the sovereign of his democratic republic is, in my view, already over. States have gotten too big, too invasive and too powerful. AI developments will only exacerbate it. And it may be that states or governments will be outdone or replaced by other oeganisations or organisms, but whatever entity comes after will certainly not see individual human liberty as its terminal goal. The best we might do is make a successful sales pitch for free-ish citizens being more useful than quasi-slaves or straight-up human extinction.
We're already not at the top of the food chain. Buerocracies are. Consider yourself a domesticated animal, and pray that your future overlords aren't vegetarian.
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