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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   21969 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 22, 2025

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Is wokism fundamentally the same thing as so called "slave morality?"

The way this issue came up for me is that a few threads back I claimed the following:

I think wokeness is the current name for a phenomenon which has infested Western culture for thousands of years.

So for example, consider biblical accounts of Jesus, who supposedly stood up for prostitutes and adulteresses. And proclaimed the poor are blessed, for theirs is the holy kingdom. While at the same time, stating that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.

In other words, the idea of revering and exalting low status, marginalized groups while dunking on the (perceived) elites -- as a way of virtue signalling -- is an old idea. it's difficult to see it going away any time soon.

To which another individual responded as follows:

Slave morality.

I was only vaguely familiar with the concept of "slave morality" so I had to look it up. This actually seems like the sort of thing for which AI might give an intelligent answer; here's what I found:

Slave morality, a concept by Nietzsche, is a value system originating from the weak and oppressed (like early Christians) that inverts the values of the powerful "master morality" out of resentment (ressentiment), turning traits like weakness, humility, and pity into virtues while labeling the masters' strengths (power, pride, wealth) as "evil". It's a reactive morality focused on equality, fairness, and protecting the vulnerable, contrasting with master morality's affirmation of strength, nobility, and self-creation.

Key Characteristics of Slave Morality

Origin: Arises from the powerless who lack the ability to act on their own will, leading to a reactive stance against their oppressors. Core Emotion: Driven by ressentiment (resentment, envy) towards those with power and status. Value Inversion: Redefines "good" as what the weak possess (humility, patience, kindness) and "evil" as what the strong have (pride, power, aggression). Focus: Emphasizes justice, equality, pity, and the alleviation of suffering for the downtrodden. Goal: Subtly seeks to overthrow the masters by making their values seem corrupt, ultimately aiming for universal mediocrity or control through subversion, not direct strength.

This does seem to ring a bell, but I think there's an important difference. In the drama of "slave morality," there are two players, the masters and the slaves.

By contrast, wokeness follows what Lawrence Auster used to call the "liberal script"

The answer is found in the “script” of modern liberalism, into which all phenomena in liberal society are automatically fitted. As I have explained before, the liberal script has three characters: (1) the liberal, who represents the principle of goodness, defined as compassion toward and inclusion of nonwhites/non-Westerners and other victims; (2) the non-liberal, who represents the principle of evil, defined as greed, discrimination, and intolerance toward nonwhites/non-Westerners and other victims; and (3) the nonwhite/non-Westerner or other victim, who is not a moral actor in his own right or even a fully formed human being, because his very function in the script is not to do anything but rather to be the passive recipient either of the liberal’s goodness or the non-liberal’s wickedness. If the nonwhite/non-Westerner were a moral actor, then his own actions, including his bad actions, would have to be judged. But to judge him negatively would be to discriminate against him, which would be to violate the very meaning and purpose of liberalism—the elimination of all discrimination against nonwhites/non-Westerners. Therefore the nonwhite/non-Westerner cannot be seen as a moral actor—as a human being who acts and is responsible for his actions.

In other words, there is (in my opinion) a third and key set of players in the wokeness movement -- elites (or aspiring elites) who pursue self-aggrandizement by advocating on behalf of Nietzsche's "slaves."

So it might be better to call it "striver morality" as opposed to "slave morality."

One of Scott's best recent works is a deep dive on the modern embrace of slave morality and he explains a lot of social and artistic trends that have been bothering him.

Matt Yglesias Considered as the Nietzschean Superman

you may not be interested in slave morality, but slave morality is interested in you. Master morality isn’t interested in you - the masters are out achieving things and conquering places, they’re not going to take time out of their day to turn missionary and “convert” you to master morality too2. But slave moralists are obsessed with ideological purity and invested in cutting down anybody who’s less slave moralist than they are. Even if you find it easy to avoid yourself, you need to be prepared to live in a slave morality world.

...

Parts of this vibe shift still confuse me, but the zoomed-out version seems clear enough. The old pro-embiggening world was complicit in moral catastrophes - racism, colonialism, the Holocaust, the destruction of much of the natural world. At some point these atrocities caught up to and outpaced its very real accomplishments, and society stopped being proud of itself and shifted to a harm-reduction approach. Nobody comes out and says outright that harm reduction necessarily has to mean doing as little as possible and trying to make yourself smaller and less impressive and sadder and uglier until you curl up into a tiny point and disappear. But “slave morality” and “master morality” are attractors; if you select too hard for part of one, you end up with the whole package

He doesn't use the word "wokeness" in this post but you can read between the lines.

Warning: it is long, even for a Scott post.

Started reading this. Didn't finish. Know what it will fall into. It's going to be one of these split the world into a dichotomy that doesn't actually map onto reality then spend thousands of words agonising over the discrepancy between the real world and the 2 variable system. There should be a name for this. Perhaps Retard's Dilemma.

Master Morality is just the more natural way of things. Bears, lions all live under master morality. So do elk. They can't co-ordinate much to create moral systems or aren't incentivised to.

Slave Morality is just the moral rules people come up with when the want to push away some of the harshness of nature. If we don't constantly compete over each others wives, and we don't steal from each other etc. etc. we can all be more successful (as a group). I don't know if group selection is involved biologically (I have heard this is controversial) - it certainly can be in culture. And cultures which punish those who break group norms will de-select those people from the gene pool. Japanese are very different to Africans.

Systems which organise people with better incentives to co-operate will outcompete those which don't. African people are much closer to Master Morality. Strong rule. You see this in black NBA players when they are close to an MVP - they will talk themselves up saying they are the best. White players do not do this. In most white cultures it is very impolite to do so. You perform and let others judge you for your performance. You don't make the judgement on yourself. Also - much of the distaste of Trump (it is distasteful once you stop laughing, but it takes a long time to stop laughing).

Obviously a society is made up of individuals and they still need to do things so you only want your moral system cutting down antisocial behaviours. Extremely boastful behaviour is like this - it creates a race to the bottom. Moral systems are basically that - what rules and enforcements are needed to avoid races to the bottom so the group (individuals in the group) can be better off. And then gaming the moral system.

We still need to show off and so negotiate rules around these behaviours, then try to break the rules, accuse other of it etc etc.

The strong want to game the system by lionizing their strength and taking what they can get away with (or are at least incentivised to) and the weak limiting their harm. All while attaching themselves to strengths they can feed off. There own strengths aren't actually fair strengths to target etc. etc.

So a starting point for negotiation is all your behaviour that doesn't benefit me is bad (can simply be you doing good stuff that makes me less competitive with you) and vice versa. Then argue, lie, and try to create a ven-diagram of what we agree on and can/are willing to enforce. Thus, morality.

It makes groups stronger so it persists. It creates genetic selection in the groups.

And Slave Morality is the Master Morality of moralities, because it is clearly most effective and now people are blindly justifying it whatever the outcome because it is powerful and blindly justifying whatever is most dominant is ... Master Morality. Gee wiz that sounds like recursion.

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