I cannot be the only person who, when in moments of mental turmoil, fantasizes about leveling some ideological opponent with a brilliant quip which shuts them up. I believe this experience is somewhat common among humans.
But lately this unhealthy exercise has become less satisfying, and I think it might be worthwhile to deconstruct why; mostly for my own sake, but perhaps, dear reader, you might glean some understanding (whether of me, yourself, or some potential universal humanity).
The more righteous I feel, the more devastating such quips, which never seem to come at the time they are needed, tend to be. But as I continue to grow as a thinker, the more I am certain that certainty isn’t all that laudable a goal. And in recent months, I have noticed that I catch myself, while formulating some quip, retorting back at myself in the process. It softens my emotional satisfaction, and robs me of the catharsis of which such ruminations are capable.
That is, I have begun to value my ability to see myself from the point of view of my interlocutor and see how the devastating verbal barrage of truth was blunter (double entendre intended) than I anticipated. The next thing I know I’ve discovered nuances and depths of uncertainty I wasn’t able to see in the blinding light of certainty.
It’s not completely unlike the experience of realizing, mid-argument, that your significant other is actually right. In the moment, you are too taken-aback and still too emotional to admit it, and perhaps you dig in because of this, but it changes the experience nonetheless. Anyone who frequents Twitter might have some understanding of this phenomenon, as well.
Idealism and certainty
Back in the halcyon days of 2012 or so, back when I was idealistic and more certain, I found myself in the lap of the burgeoning movement we now think of as the woke mentality. I saw it as progress, and even recognized it as a form of the same PC culture I saw in the 1990s. I saw it as the world finally waking up to certain realities and I saw it as a good thing. I became woke (even if a lot of it wasn’t really new to me) before the term fully took hold.
I was endlessly amused by memes which excoriated the people who couldn’t or wouldn’t see The TruthTM, and enjoyed those in my orbit lambasting those who tried to resist with their own biting criticisms. When blogs I read wouldn’t follow along, I often left them behind and enjoyed seeing other blogs mocking them. Nothing like a good dunk, to use a current phrase.
An example of this would be Jerry Coyne’s Why Evolution is True, which I used to read regularly until he started to chafe at some of what was called, at the time, 3rd Wave Feminism, Feminatzis, etc. While I agreed with Coyne’s view of science in the face of anti-science rhetoric from evolution-skeptics and so forth, I found his anti-feminism sometimes to be off-putting, and sided, at the time, with PZ Myers in those blog wars. There was even a time when I had drinks with PZ, Amanda Marcotte, and other like-minded people (in PZ’s hotel room, no less) at a convention during these times. I was part of a movement, it felt like, and it felt good. For someone with seriously debilitating insecurity, it was tremendously validating.
This was after the days of Elevatorgate, where the rift within the atheist/skeptic community foreshadowed the coming larger cultural, political, and ideological divides which came to dominate much of everything. I saw my side, the side of the coming liberal utopia of awakened skeptics, as being attacked by dim-witted, privileged, and clueless gobshites who were simply too dense or self-interested to hop on the truth train. I saw the red pill movement, which took shape not long after all of this, as angry, resentful, and hateful people who were very obviously wrong. It felt good to be on the right side of justice, and to have a set of smart, clever, and devastatingly witty compatriots ready and willing to throw a quip towards our enemies.
And we felt superior.
An Inception of Awakenings
In the next few years, I went through (metaphorical, of course) Hell. Much of it was my own doing, but what wasn’t mine was a trauma which came from realizing that what I thought were wise friends and allies were, in many cases, toxic, abusive, and dishonest fanatics for a cause which I no longer could support.1
But, as I have said previously, I wasn’t red-pilled. I reject their movement as well and I’m not going to be joining the likes of David Silverman2 anytime soon. And if, after reading this, you think that he and I are of a similar ilk, then you will have failed to understand my larger point here, and have mistook me leaving one set of toxic ideas for joining another. This cultural war doesn’t have merely two sides, and I don’t think any major faction is always wrong (no, not even David Silverman and those who side with him are always wrong, even when they are making asses of themselves).
But it does feel like, in some sense, that I woke up more than once, as if I’m rising through layers of bad dreams, never sure if this, right now, is finally reality. I’m not sure if the top is still spinning.
And in a sense I do realize that this reality, this set of perceptions, beliefs, etc to which I ascribe some level of objective truth, is still a Kantian dream from which I may never wake. Because if our view of the world, viewing ourselves as entities which see ourselves as entities because we have an entity category built into our minds, then it is the case that we are all trapped within an inescapable box completely separated from actual reality, and then there is no waking up. There is no being right or having the truth, there is just an endless process of wittling away nonsense with better questions and methodologies for separating nonsense from tentative objective reality.
Which would mean that thinking of yourself as woke is just, indeed, a kind of spiritualism or religion; just another idea of another world beyond ours. Just another form of being asleep, as it were, but believing, just like every other ideology, that you have the truth. It’s undeserved righteousness, just like everyone else.
In the vein of seeing this in religious terms, I’m looking forward to John McWhorter’s upcoming book, where he promises to explore the idea of wokeism as a new cult, religion, or something of the like (it hasn’t been published yet, but his thoughts on the subject to date seem consistent with such ideas). As a student of religion, culture, and someone who has shifted ideological frameworks myself, it seems clear to me that most ideologies behave in similar ways to religions, insofar as they create pious followers who see their enlightenment in relation to others’ obfuscated perspectives. In other words, all true believers see themselves as woke relative to those uninitiated. Par for the course, in terms of people.
The New Meta-Narrative
To clarify what all that jargon above was about; I’m skeptical that any of us have the truth, but I think there is a truth; it’s just that we may never know what all of it is. So, if anyone is claiming to have the truth they are delusional, wrong, or lying to some degree. And what bothers me about the woke isn’t their worldview. In fact, I largely agree with their goals, some of their beliefs, and don’t think most of them are acting in bad faith. What worries me is their tendency towards an un-willingness to hear criticism without responding with some version of a “Kafka Trap,” which is to say that any criticism is treated as evidence of that which the criticism is aimed.
The most notorious example of this is the idea, and the book of the same name, of White Fragility. This is an idea which essentially states that any push-back against the claim that I (for example), as a white person, am racist (or at least contribute to the support of systemic racism) is evidence of some fragility within myself. It is a claim which the true believers believe has no valid counter. In other words, it’s an assertion, and it is believed with a kind of faith, and to reject it is to deny The Truth.TM In other words, heresy.
It is akin to being told that there is an original sin (racism, in this case) of which we are all subject in one way or another, and we need to repent. But there is no ridding oneself of this sin, but only to keep “doing the work”, perpetually. We light-skinned humans exist in sin, or as a racist and we must confess our sin and seek forgiveness (which will never come). It’s right out of the playbook of religion, so perhaps it takes an atheist contrarian to see it clearly.
This is not to say that the existence of systemic racism has no merit; I, in fact, do think that there are systemically racist policies, cultural norms, etc which are a significant problem which must be addressed. However, the claim that such racism is ubiquitous and inescapable is a claim with a different level of scope than the fact that it exists at all. Further, conflating the criticism of the ubiquity of systemic racism with it’s nonexistence3 is a very common ploy used in the back-and-forth between interlocutors of the cultural conversation going on these days.
And considering my history with insecurity and depression, feeling guilty is sort of my go-to feeling. It took some amount of therapy and perhaps even wisdom to learn that this is a manipulation, and one that is all too easily inculcated onto Left-leaning white people who are currently willing to accept this as the truth about racism in our culture, whether out of fear, guilt, or cynical playing along to not get on the wrong side of the woke police. And I also understand that the recognition that one is being manipulated is one which causes reactionary and defensive behavior. Many people’s reactions against this idea are overkill, such as James Lindsay’s decision to vote for Trump because he fears the woke takeover of the Democratic party, which he sees worst than the threat of a second term for Trump. I find this an unreasonable conclusion, but one that at least makes sense to me because I have a similar reaction to being manipulated. I, however, am not ready to jettison the entire Left, including the current Democratic party, for the sake of a fear of it being led by authoritarian Woke Leftists with some bad ideas.
That is, many people who react to the woke with an overcompensation (support for Trump, intentionally trying to trigger woke people, etc) believe they are seeing wokeism as a new meta-narrative to replace the meta-narratives of the patriarchal, hierarchical, sexist, racist, etc world in which the woke say that we live. The irony of this is (as Cynical Theories points out) that wokeism grew out of a set of Postmodernist philosophical ideas which sought to deconstruct, transcend, or expose meta-narratives, only to later be used to create a new one out of a goal to achieve social justice.
But if the current SocJus movement it’s based on some bad ideas, then if it succeeds in its goals then all it will do is replace it with a new form of injustice, ultimately. At least that’s what many who are critical of the woke mentality believe, and why they oppose people like Robin D’Angelo, Ibram X. Kendi, and their allies in the attempt to create new policies based on woke ideas. Such critics of SocJus wokeism believe that their methods and ideas won’t succeed in creating social justice at all. I think they have a point; it will solve some things, perhaps, but it creates new problems. And the unwillingness of the woke to hear criticism, while understandable as a human response, will be the factor that will make it a new orthodoxy to be opposed once it actually has real power. If the woke would allow skepticism into their ranks, this could be avoided. But they treat criticism as evidence of people being racist, sexist, etc and worthy of being ostracized, ignored, and considered problematic. Therefore, many people are legitimately worried about this phenomenon.
Thus there are so many people quipping at each other, and the most vociferous quippers are the ones least likely to consider that their side is in error. And it reminds me of what it felt like to be surrounded by such a righteous, witty, and insular tribe. I felt like I was part of something, but what I didn’t realize until later was that I was surrounded by many toxic people. The point is that being part of a toxic culture doesn’t feel toxic because even abusive, toxic, and hateful people are capable of great affection, kindness, and loyalty to those inside their tribe.
And this is why I’m now suspicious of any tribe which does not actively seek skepticism, criticism, and ideological challenge from inside or outside that community, which is to say the overwhelmingly vast majority of human groups.
Seeking ideological purity creates an insular bubble where ideas are never challenged, which then creates the very meta-narrarive which the Theories which are the basis of their woke ideologies were originally supposed to correct for. They are, essentially, shooting themselves in the foot because they remove anyone who doesn’t bend the knee. So it’s understandable that even those on the Left who don’t fully agree stay quiet out of fear of losing friends, social connections, or even their jobs. I’m lucky to be in a position where I will, at most, lose a few acquaintances (already have) but my livelihood is not in jeopardy.
So, what I mean to say is that the metaphor of “woke” is especially bad and problematic (I’m taking the word back), because it is self-righteous and entitled especially because it considers criticism to be evidence for their worldview. And this was the basis for how and why I no longer considered myself one of the woke.
The key for them to understand is that I didn’t then join the opposition, because they are also largely toxic. I merely found myself in the no-man’s land between trenches, and have discovered that neither trench looks inviting as a safe space.
A Book Recommendation
Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay deal with these concepts, related to wokeness, Critical Theory, and the history of these ideas, in their recent book, and corresponding website, Cynical Theories. I’m recommending these resources not because I agree with all of their conclusions, but because they expose many of the problems with the philosophical underpinnings of “Theory,” upon which much of the current woke mentality is based. Also, I do so despite the fact that I find much of Lindsay’s tone and conclusions (outside of the book, primarily) off-putting and often incorrect themselves. Pluckrose I tend to agree with much more often, in terms of her public pronouncements, but regardless of their differing political opinions, their criticism of Critical Theory is important to be aware of.
The gist of the problem is that the philosophical ancestors of woke ideologies are largely anti-science, anti-rational, and are most-definitely anti-liberal (in the philosophical sense not necessarily the political one, though it can be that too). Things such as evidence, logic, skepticism, and other important tools of criticism are denounced and replaced with power dynamics which seem to be cynically utilized for the sake of control and political expediency, which is the very problem I think we should be concerned with, not emulating.
And with the recent rise of woke ideas taking over much of academia, the corporate world, and other parts of society and culture, there is a sense that you are either on-board with justice or you are deplorable; you are with them or against them. It’s too simplistic a dichotomy and it ignores those who are for social justice but not in the way that many of the Woke Left are trying to achieve it. The problem is that most people don’t know that there is such a distinction, and so they conflate people like me, who are critical of much of their methods, with the red-pilled/Alt-Right/Trump-supporting/NAZI-sympathizing/socialist-hating and actually racist and sexist part of our culture which opposes the woke for equally bad reasons as those who support it. I am not Ben Shapiro.
I, and many others out there, don’t have a political or cultural home among the two major sides of this conflict, and we see ourselves pilloried from both ends as being on the other. People who I listen to, read, or both (whether it be the Fifth Column podcast, Andrew Sullivan, Blocked and Reported (Jesse Singal and the “transphobe” Katie Herzog), Coleman Hughes, or the aforementioned John McWhorter) are hated by both sides of this tribal cultural war because they don’t bend the knee to any orthodoxy. I don’t always agree with these people (I don’t always agree with myself), but I appreciate people who are willing to say what they think and challenge orthodoxies on all fronts. And somehow that’s bad, because one is either racist or anti-racist (says Kendi), with no possibility of being neither. That’s ridiculous.
Dreaming of Being Awake, but Still Snoring
The woke ideology is not enlightened, even where it makes good points and is right. They take good ideas and goals and wrap them in emotion to sell them to well-meaning people who want the world to be better than it is. And if you criticize them, you are considered a heretic and labeled as problematic. The whole cancel culture thing is really about how people are afraid to speak up when they disagree, because they know the potential interpersonal, social, and professional costs. The wars going on in many media outlets, between the woke and those who disagree, is going to be an ongoing conflict for years to come.
The point is that I believe that much of the woke world uses ideas such as standpoint theory (which is an interesting, and I think valid, set of ideas worthy of study in general) incorrectly; that is to say too broadly. All ideas have to be subject to scrutiny by any person who is able to parse the logical, rational, or empirical factors related to it. And no (again), this isn’t a form of supporting white, western, supremacy itself.
Postmodern/poststructural/woke ideas are not automatically and universally bad, but they are, I think, used too broadly or liberally (lol) than I think they have epistemologically earned. I frankly don’t think that most of the people policing ideas out there in the Left are sufficiently trained or (frankly) interested in logic, skepticism, and science to wield such a weapon correctly, and so we end up with a loud minority of people seeking justice but creating different forms of, probably unintentionally, injustice. Good intentions, bad execution.
And they do it for a quite human reason; they are caught up in the emotion of the movement. They feel empowered and important, being a part of a set of ideas which could make the world better. That is, their goals are laudable. They aren’t bad people, they are just people with ideas which don’t always survive scrutiny, and like many ideological movements before them, they are overzealous and undeservedly self-righteous.
I understand it because I experience this same set of feelings, thoughts, and a sense of belonging as they do when I come up with those zingers in the shower, on a walk, or unable to sleep. This is a fairly universal human experience, but the difference is that the ideas we want to defend, criticize, or even to expand upon are ideas that are stuck in a whirlwind of historical, cultural, and ideological chaos which is really difficult, if not impossible, to pin down. At different times ideas, even within small pockets of culture, have relative power. Right now, there is a set of ideas about social justice, those that we refer to as wokeness, which are on the rise in terms of influence and power in our culture. And the irony is that the ideology of anti-oppression is now in a role where, at least on small scales, is acting much like an oppressive force upon groups and individuals.
Sure, on a large scale, they are still punching up, but in small ways, in small interactions, it occasionally punches down. Ibram X. Kendi describes this, in his book How to be and Anti-Racist, as the future discrimination that we need:
The only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination. The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination
Ibram X. Kendi, How to be an Antiracist
Kendi views this as righting an historical wrong; a continuous punching-up until the scales are even. But, that’s the thing about policy, cultural mores, and ideologies; they take on a life of their own and become the new mores. A goal of equity is one thing, but if the method one utilizes to attain it becomes the new normal, it won’t stop once the goal is attained, but it will still operate, as if through mere momentum, to punch in the same direction once equity is attained.
The problem with discrimination, oppression, and injustice in general is not who it’s being done to, but that it’s being done. And I don’t trust any potential amendment, policy, or moral idea to right a wrong by use of the very same tools which created the problem in the first place; stopping an attacker with a bat isn’t made better by taking the bat and handing it to the original victim. That’s mere revenge porn. Again, an understandable and very human reaction, but not a just one.
Here’s the point. People in control now believe they are right. People fighting them think they are right. People think they are right. But they can’t all be right, and in fact it’s quite likely that none of them are fully right. So, shouldn’t our highest values as carriers of ideologies, rather than to defensively parry criticism, be to actively self-criticize? Not that we have to accept criticism from any idiot on Twitter or Facebook comment section, but to already be doing it yourself? To do so, you need to take your serious critics seriously.
Shouldn’t we be questioning our most sacred beliefs and values, and find the weaknesses of our arguments, before some clueless bro points it out to you? It’s our instinct to defend our tribes, of course. But we need to, if we’re going to survive this infancy as a species, find a way to stop grouping ourselves based upon ideology/orthodoxy if we want to find truth, justice, or any solutions which will actually work in the long run. It’s too easy to get caught up in interpersonal fights where we defend our friends and attack our enemies regardless of the strength of our arguments. We need to do better, collectively.
I yearn for a day where open criticism will not result in ostracism from communities and then be thought of as merely removing problematic people. The freedom to criticize exists, and of course nobody has to pay attention, but dismissing criticism which points to your ideological foundations as invalid or a source of the problem merely makes your beliefs sacrosanct, which no idea should be. The good ideas keep surviving criticism for a reason, and don’t need your defense by removing critics from your club.
Because actual skepticism, rationality, logic, and critical thinking has never been the dominant meta-narrative of any system which has power, despite what some have said; the colonial, Western, white world is not one based in rationality and logic any more than any other group (yes, this is a claim which derives from Theory). Those things are available to all groups but rarely applied universally. Such tools are usually used as a means to reinforce our biases and destroy our foes (say, with witty quips), but rarely to question the strength of our own ideological foundations.
It’s sort of like how the strongest criticisms of any religion comes from other religions, but it takes an atheist to point at them all and say, “hey, you are all incorrect here.” So, while it might take a deplorable Trumpster to point out issues with wokeism, it takes those of us yeeted out of the Left to point to both said Trumpster and Woke Cultist and say “y’all are all wrong, so let’s actually start listening to each other and then maybe we can figure this shit out, finally,” while being quite aware that both of them will dunk on us with a witty quip, and continue to dismiss us and each other.
Question even your most sacred values and beliefs, and not just those of your ideological enemies.
Notes:
[1] I will clarify, here, that the hurt I also caused them, and our subsequent enmity, was not the reason I ended up on another side of ideological rifts, but being separate from them did finally allow me to reflect more clearly on ideas I previously cleaved to from an emotional distance; a process which took some years.
[2] If you haven’t been following the ravings of David since his various ousters, exposure of his awful behavior, and subsequent leaving of the Left, suffice it to say he’s become anti-woke in a way I will not endorse. That is to say that it’s possible to be critical of wokeness without becoming a snarling, angry, resentful idiot.
[3] And yes, there are woke critics who go this far in their critique. I disagree with such critics.
So, apparently the big online bruhaha is about math.
I ran into this on twitter today:
1/ This is a screenshot of people saying 2+2=5. You read that right…2+2=5.
Among them are teachers, educators, and professors who plan on teaching this stuff to your children. So let's talk about what's going on here, why they're doing this, and how we can stop it.
I’m not a mathematician, but I did take some advanced mathematics while in high school, and have a sufficient understanding of math to understand what, I think, is happening here.
What I think is happening here is two separate things. The first is a subtle point about the fact that we use a standardized mathematics which is somewhat arbitrary, and we could use a different kind of mathematics if we chose to. The idea is that the standard mathematics is often smuggled in as a part of a larger cultural program attached to a system of “Western” oppression. We’ll get to that later.
The 2nd thing is that some people on the Left/Progressive side of things, the super-woke, are picking a fight with logic and truth, as we can hear here:
14/ This "I don't care about truth" view is common in social justice circles. For example, Kevin Bird @itsbirdemic (who mocked @conceptualjames and his followers for pushing back at people saying 2+2=5) admits here that he doesn't care about what the truth is when he does science pic.twitter.com/ewsBltKElf
Now, I don’t feel a need to address this because those who don’t understand that logic, rational thinking, and skepticism are the best tools we have to discern truth from untruth are not those who I feel like I’m ever going to reach. Because I’m not sure what other tool we could use to make distinctions between ideas, and make sense. If you don’t think that’s possible, then we have nothing left to talk about. If you straight up don’t care about truth, well….
If your whole project is that everything is about power dynamics (because “truth” is a Western lie), then you are just using the same tool that those “oppressors” have used which makes you no better than them. The key here is that those in power only utilize truth as a means, not as an end in itself. But if you don’t use it at all, then you will lose. So if you reject logic and the truth, and only seek to utilize the levers of persuasion, deception, compulsion etc to gain power, then you have become the monster you were fighting.
Because if and when your narrative becomes the dominant narrative or political source of power, you will be the same as they are now. Flipping who has the reigns of cynical power doesn’t make it any less cynical nor oppressive, it just switches who is the one in control. And if you claim that your narrative won’t be oppressive, then I suggest you learn some history, because I don’t believe you.
Some of you are already oppressive before the coup is complete, after all. If you actually gain real power, you don’t think this won’t get worse? Again, I don’t believe you. Have you read about the reign of Terror or the Cultural Revolution in China? Revolutions against entrenched power rarely avoid being the oppressor themselves. Hi, there, Polydelphia.
I’m interested in breaking that cycle of power and oppression, not handing the controls to someone else. If you don’t care about truth, then I don’t care if you are on the Left or the Right; we are at odds, and I will fight you (philosophically, ideally). The enemy here is authoritarianism, not whether you are woke or deplorable.
Code Switching
If you don’t know what code switching is, well, go read about it. The gist is that different dialects and cultural groups use different rules for language, and people who move in and out of different communities get used to speaking in different ways to different groups. A mild example is how a teacher might speak to their students in a different way than how they speak to their friends at the bar.
A more common, American, example is from this fantastic movie, Sorry to Bother You. Many Black Americans quite commonly switch between modes of speech depending upon who their interlocutors are. Here’s a clip for context:
You get it.
But what the hell does this have to do with math? Well, allow me to, once again, talk about Ludwig Wittgenstein. Ol’ Witty, as I call him in my head, was among the most important thinkers of the 20th century, and added a number of important ideas to philosophy, linguistics, and to the proper uses of fireplace pokers.
Among his more important ideas was that of language-games (also, see this). This is particularly important here because the concept of the language-game was created as part of a self-criticism of Wittgenstein’s earlier attempt to make language precise and purely logical, in his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921), of which his later Philosophical Investigations (1953, posthumously) was a criticism. The Philosophical Investigations includes the introduction of the concept of a language-game, which was a brilliant criticism of his earlier attempt to perfect language into a precise, logical, system.
In other words, Wittgenstein was so brilliant that he not only helped start a philosophical movement with hist first book (Logical Positivism, through inspiration of the so-called ‘Vienna Circle’), but he refuted it himself later with a better piece of literature, revolutionizing the philosophy of language in the process.
In short, the idea of a language-game is that when we use language, we are not building a logical structure but rather we are indicating things with sounds, symbols, gestures, etc and defining meaning through use. Words don’t literally represent reality in a precise logical way, it merely indicates things and we are able to do this in a number of ways which are sensible insofar as they are effective. Thus, there are different ways to indicate a thought, intention, etc which vary according to what rules we come up with. Those rules are somewhat arbitrary (although probably not infinitely so) and differ from language to language, group to group.
Language doesn’t require mathematical or formal-logical precision to function, and the attempt to create a language which is logically precise (or the similar goal of Bertrand Russel and Alfred North Whitehead around the turn of the 20th century, to perfect mathematics; Russell of course mentored Wittgenstein at the latter parts of WWI) is a fool’s errand, as Wittgenstein demonstrates after first attempting to do precisely that in his first work, the Tractatus.
But mathematics needs some level of precision to be meaningful. When I say that 2+2=4, I am assuming a set of meanings to each of the symbols in that string. Depending on what meanings they all have, that statement is either true, false, or meaningless. So we humans came up with a standardized set of meanings and functions for those symbols in order to have a shared mathematics which we can use to figure out problems related to physics, engineering, etc.
And if you have different arbitrary standards of math, it’s quite possible to code switch between them, if you wanted to. But what if you reject the premise altogether?
Different ways of knowing?
And this is where the people saying 2+2=5 come in, and say things like ‘if we had different meanings for those terms, 2+2=5 could be true.’ Sure it could. So what? ‘Well,’ they may say, ‘why is the dominant standard the standard?’
Why can’t we use different, non-Western and colonial ways of knowing?
What other ways? If you had another way of knowing, how would you compare it? what criteria would you use to compare them against one-another? Wouldn’t, say, practical knowledge, technology, and evidence be useful here? What if you also reject those?
Have you seen this?
This may be the fringe, but it is not that rare of a perspective. I run into worldviews such as this on occasion where I live. A rejection of skepticism, science, rationality, and logic are fairly common among those who are criticizing the Western/colonial system of oppression. We have to contend that this is part of the narrative being promulgated alongside anti-racist, anti-fascist, and anti-capitalist ideology (all of which I support in themselves). This is what I’m fighting against in the Left/Progressive world currently. This is why I still identify as a liberal, and am worried about some of the “woke” Left.
But, of course, not all of the Left agrees with this. Sometimes, Lefties are just trying to expand our worldviews about perspective, meaning, etc without actually throwing away logic and truth altogether. Sometimes there is just a point about how math is complicated and often can have different rules.
Listen, you are free to use whatever meanings, standards, or rules for whatever math you desire. You are free to use different “contexts” if you like. But what do you mean by different contexts? Do you mean that you are merely redefining the terms, or maybe just one of them? OK, feel free, but then you are just switching the code you are using to communicate. You don’t have to use the standard meanings, but then you are just sewing confusion by switching mathematical systems without declaring so.
The standards don’t exist to oppress you, they exist so we can share a common set of meanings so we know what other people are talking about. It’s merely a means to make communication possible. Switching the rules is not giving a finger to “the man”, it’s merely going to make you misunderstood. Further, the oppressor (what we used to call “the man”) isn’t oppressing you with logic; they are oppressing you with cynical levers of power and using logic as a tool because logic works at achieving goals because its logical. The goal for power is the source of oppression, not its efficient cause of rational thinking.
As I said above, language does not always require precision. If I’m hanging with my friends around my neighborhood, on the porch or otherwise, and they code switch into a different set of syntax or grammar, I can follow along because doing so becomes obvious in context. I can literally hear the difference in the language and grok the meaning in a number of ways they express it. But if they suddenly decided, in their head, that “tree” meant “trolley,” this is more than code-switching; it is arbitrarily swapping usual meanings to no purpose but to confuse.
If we all decided, perhaps as a private joke, that when I say “tree” I mean trolley, then this is our private code, our private language-game. Perhaps it has an origin in a joke or something that means something to us. To us, in such a circumstance, this would then makes sense and would be clear communication. But it has to arise in a context which this meaning becomes clear through use, not mere unstated fiat. That is, it has to arise organically from context, use, and agreement before its meaningful.
Similarly, if someone simply types “2+2=5” without any context, there is no attempt to indicate the code switch or standard alteration here. I have no way of knowing that you have switched to some alternate or non-standard mathematical system. If, hypothetically, this was a reference to some private joke, in-group code switch, or some obscure non base-10 mathematics we use together, then we’re fine because we understand what was meant.
Again, you are free to use whatever terms in whatever way you want, and utilize whatever mathematics, symbols, etc which you like. However, if your point is that we shouldn’t have to accept the dominant standardization, the dominant code, because that code is part of the western system of cultural oppression, well….
Then we need to have a conversation about that.
But before I do that, I want to make something clear; if the point in saying 2+2=5 is merely to draw attention to the fact that some standard exists and that it is arbitrary, and that it’s possible to see the world using different meanings and perspectives, then fine. I find that impractical, but there is not (necessarily) any philosophical or logical error happening in doing so.
Unless, of course, you just reject logic or truth altogether, as I made reference to above. In that case, we have nothing to talk about.
So, what might we have to talk about?
The West, oppression, and rational thinking
There is no doubt that “The West” has committed atrocities of many scales upon the world. This set of cultures does not have the monopoly on such atrocities, but perhaps it is leading the world in this category. Everything from colonialism to the slave trade has been written on the ledger of Western history and culture, among their many other crimes of history. I am aware of much of this history, and I think that this context must be kept in mind.
Yet this is too simplistic.
The West also has philosophers, scientists, and other intellectuals who opposed–with speeches, literature, revolutions, and other means of resisting–the political, cultural, religious, etc methods of oppressing, enslaving, and otherwise being dicks to people of many regions of the world, including its own people. Also, many other sets of cultures have also committed many atrocities of their own.
The West also doesn’t have a monopoly on such philosophies, literature, and efforts of resistance. No culture has a monopoly on any human behavior. So even if “The West” is winning in the category of awful, and currently holds the reigns of power and oppression, they didn’t invent it nor are they solely liable. But if the point is that “The West” is currently holding the reigns and is primarily responsible for the current awful, then we are largely in agreement.
But let’s assume, for a moment, that “The West” was solely responsible for the general awful, for argument’s sake.
That is, even if “The West” did hold a monopoly on all the colonialism, wage/actual slavery, genocide, environmental ruin, political corruption, etc, and all other times, places, and people were innocent victims of “The West,” this still wouldn’t address the fact that much of the philosophical history of the “The West” are not the foundation of this oppression and historical crime.
Remember, the people holding the reigns also oppress and dominate its own citizens. Hell, my ancestors (primarily Irish) were under the boot of the English for hundreds of years, and while certainly not ideal in themselves, the Irish were rarely if ever in positions of any power with which to oppress anyone. Yes, my skin color offers me advantages in many cases in the world, but much of the historical oppression has landed upon my ancestors as well, even if to a lesser degree than it did to some others. I can still be racist as Irish, but the oppression is not coming from me. (Whether I’m responsible if I don’t resist it and speak out againt such oppression is another question).
But further, there is a tradition of resistance to the oppression, corruption, and dominance from those in charge within “The West” as well. Giordano Bruno? The Enlightenment? Abolitionists? Such individuals, movements, and ideologies were opposed to the sources of power within “The West” itself. And they had to use the tools of logic, rationalism, skepticism, etc in criticizing its own set of cultures. It is part of the “Western” tradition to criticize itself, it’s just that such critics rarely had sufficient power to make change. And when they did manage to achieve change in power, the results were often mixed, if not downright awful. The same is true in the East.
Criticism, resistance, and revolutions against the crimes of “The West” have tried, using rational and martial tools, to stand up to such crimes, usually failing in the attempt. The tools of oppression are not logic, rational thinking, skepticism etc, even insofar as those tools are used for them (because you need to use these tools to do anything well).
And that is the crux, here. To practically achieve any goal, whether oppression, liberation, or mere theory you must use, to some extent, rational thinking. It is merely a tool to be used for building or destroying; harming or helping; killing or healing. To irrationally conflate logic and rationality with oppression is to misunderstand the role that such tools have played throughout history, and is a failure to understand their power and importance as tools to resist and stand up to power.
The foundations of oppression are not logic nor truth. Fear, tribalism, greed, and other human flaws are the source of these things, and because logic, rational thinking, etc work in finding ways to achieve the ends of such ignoble flaws, they are necessarily part of the recipe. But remove greed, fear, and all the rest of those things which drive us apart, and you have no ideology at all; merely helpful tools which are impotent in themselves. That is, if you seek to resist oppression and win, you need to use the tools of rational thinking or you will almost certainly lose.
Yes, the systems of oppression, whatever they are, cynically utilize logic in the greedy grab for power, influence, deception, and ultimately control. But to reject one of the tools it uses, merely because it uses it; to employ resistance against such cynical control while rejecting its most powerful tools–logic, rationalism, and skepticism–is to make the exact mistake they are hoping you will make; you are falling into their trap. They see you rejecting truth, logic, and rationality and don’t have to say or do anything, because that’s how they gained that control to begin with. They denied you education, knowledge, and understanding and so they took power from you. When you reject it on your own you are scoring an own-goal. You are helping them dominate you.
You are not punching up, you are punching yourself in the face.
Power wants you weakened, confused, and impotent. It wants you screaming, irrational, and fueled by blind rage. This is how it manipulates you.
If you really want freedom of oppression, you need the strongest tools at your disposal. Those tools are clear, rational, logical, powerful thinking.
It means breaking your chains of tribalism that take the form of traditions, in-groups, nations, religions, racial identities, and even viewing love and sex in terms of property (which has been one of the intentions of this blog, over the years). The more you insist upon the boxes that are placed upon us as defining us, from the outside, the less free you are. If you really want to break free from oppression, you need to reject the limitations placed upon you; you need to deconstruct and possibly reject the framing of who we are, as humans, according to them.
But this doesn’t mean rejecting humanity’s greatest tools. So-called “Western” logic is not Western. It is a universal set of ideas discovered and improved by many cultures, throughout history, which have allowed us to build greater things, envision better ideas, and overcome previous mistakes. Just because most of us, in the West, talk more about Plato and Aristotle rather than Confucius, Averroes, or Avicenna is more of an historical accident than anything else.
In fact, the reason that we are talking about Aristotle at all has a lot to do with the fact that during the “dark ages” of European history, The Islamic cultures and empires carried the torch of intellectual history, expanded upon it, and gave us those very mathematical symbols we use now.
Remember, 2, 4, and 5 are Arabic numerals, ultimately derived from much older Indian symbols. 2+2=4 isn’t Western; it’s a set of symbols that are influenced from many contributions from many cultures, and have existed for hundreds of years before “The West” even had fever dreams about colonizing anyone except itself.
When the European powers colonized, invaded, and committed genocide with the help of gunpowder, remember that the West didn’t invent gunpowder. The fact that the West uses gunpowder doesn’t necessarily mean that we shouldn’t ever use it to resist further oppression, does it?
If you agree with my rhetorical point, then you should also agree that we need to utilize logic, rational thinking, etc. And if we’re going to insist upon 2+2=5, utilizing other “contexts,” then we are merely going to divide ourselves into more tribes, and soon we will not be able to communicate, let alone resist oppression. Like the story of the Tower of Babylon in the old Hebrew Bible, we will be cast in different directions, speaking with different kinds of mathematics and contexts of logic, and the oppressors will have no meaningful resistance against them because we can’t coalesce around the powerful tools which many have rejected because they saw them as “Western.”
Even the most evil, most corrupt, and most problematic oppressors use the best tools because the best tools work. To reject their tools is to reject your own power to resist their power.
That is precisely what those in power want us to do. Freedom requires using the best tools we have, and 2+2=4 is the basis for that power.
The current trend of the “woke” left is slipping more and more into the authoritarian side of the political spectrum, is increasingly non-skeptical, and is in danger of alienating the left, in general, through it’s self-righteous behavior. We, as progressives, need to emphasize individual skepticism and enthusiastic willingness to accept authentic criticism from people who want to be our allies, or wokeness will become just another blip in the history of cultural progress which will, in time, become as normal, dogmatic, and oppressive as any of the cultural norms it was conceived to resolve. Authoritarian, rule-based thinking is what makes an ideology oppressive. Shaming, ostracism, etc, which many radical progressives have been doing to people they perceive as “problematic,” is just another form of inquisition against heretics, and can only lead to a a world of authoritarians, Left, Right, and Center, where the Right (and possibly Center) is better at coalescing and thus will be able to win in that fight. The anti-skeptical Left is dooming itself by seeking ideological purity through fear of consequences rather than through agreement through encouraging a community capable of actual freedom of thought.
We all fuck up, because we’re human. But all too often the distinctions between “problematic” people and people in good standing in communities, exemplified here in the local Philadelphia group Polydelphia, are based more upon who you are friends with than what you actually did.
Let’s talk about keeping up with cultural progress within an increasingly toxic and fragmented world.
Popper, Kuhn, and the demarcation problem of cultural progress
A new sort of philosopher is emerging: I venture to baptize them with a name which is not without danger. As I figure them out – to the extent that they let themselves be figured out, for it belongs to their type to want to remain something of an enigma – these philosophers of the future may have a right, perhaps also a wrong, to be described as attempters. This name itself is finally merely an attempt and, if you will, a temptation.
–Nietzsche, BGE #42
For those of us who think of ourselves as progressives, there is a shared value of improving our lives and the world in general by finding ways to make things better. Our goals may be different, and out tactics certainly differ, but we at least share the overall goal of making things better through change, and hopefully improvement, of one kind or another. In some cases, the change is largely a reactionary table-flipping in response to the perceived dangers of the traditional culture in which we grew. In some cases it might be improving of, or slow replacement of, those traditional structures to make sure we’re doing it right. That is, even within the larger umbrella of “Progressive,” in terms of the political spectrum of the United States in particular, there is a tension between those who seek to burn it all down and those who seek to improve by tinkering with some things. And, of course, all the grey areas in between.
But these efforts exist within a cultural milieu, meaning that whatever political goals or tactics become popular must start somewhere outside of politics; they are a function of people making attempts to make sense of and to improve our understanding of the world, ourselves, or to redefine what it means to be human. People who live on the various fringes of society, whether artists or just younger people who grew up with newer information about the world, will continue to expand the logical space of what’s possible, find fault with what has been traditional, or redefine the questions through cultural criticism of all kinds.
Thus, so long as we keep learning and challenging ideas as a species, every generation will push our culture in various directions which will seem uncomfortable or merely unfamiliar to previous generations or those not close to the fringes. This is not to say that these cultural shifts don’t cycle, because they often do, but anyone paying attention now must admit that the cultural tensions, conflicts, and wars are dealing with topics which were not conceivable to the vast majority of the world just 50 years ago. And yet the logical structure of the cultural struggles seems to historically rhyme, as it does from time to time.
The biggest mind-fuck, for me, is the question of whether most fringe cultural experimentation is an analog of Kuhn’s concept of a paradigm shift, or is it one of tentative and slow excavation of the limits what it can mean to be a human in a group of humans, more like what Karl Popper had in mind (if we’re taking the analogy of the Kuhn/Popper tension to it’s limits, here). In short, the question is whether cultural progress is (or should be) a question of completely overturning old ideas and creating new ones or whether it is a slow, deliberate, process of separating the wheat from the chaff, in terms of what’s actually true. Is it revolution, slow deliberation, or a combination thereof?
And this is a difficult puzzle (and perhaps it’s a true “problem”) because if there is a legitimate paradigm shift happening right now, the new paradigm would not only look incorrect to those outside of the know, but it would actually appear dangerous. When you hear Christian conservatives warning their followers of the dangers of (as they tend to call it) “liberalism”–that “liberals” want to destroy the traditional family–they aren’t really wrong in some cases; I, an example of who such people think of as a “liberal”, would be fine with the destruction of the traditional family structures in our culture, at least as the default or norm. But what of the distance between the radical woke left and the more cautious, moderate, incrementalists? Here we have a similar dynamic, which (if you pay attention to places like Twitter, Facebook comments, etc, you might understand) illuminates a potential stark difference in not only the goals, but whether grey areas are even possible.
And then the question becomes whether the new paradigm is “true”, and which methods or definitions we could use to determine such truth or falsity. The very nature of a paradigm shift is one of overturning truths, making this more problematic. Of course, if one’s preferred methodology of achieving progress is not analogous to table-flipping, then one is advocating for the incrementalism of the moderates, or at least some skepticism of the validity and applicability of all of the theory behind a paradigm-shift of (for example) woke politics. Because if even any of the theory or particular conclusions of the woke are in need of skepticism or criticism, then slowing down and making sure that it is well thought out would be wisdom, not conservatism or compromising with actual NAZIs.
In short, just in case woke ain’t all right, we might need to slow down and make sure we haven’t taken a wrong turn somewhere instead of yelling about NAZIs. Yelling about “actual NAZIs,” when faced with internal criticism, is a very good example of the red herring logical fallacy. We’ll return to that issue later, but first we need to address a tangential issue.
Top down or bottom up?
I want to have a better understanding of whether cultural change is better effected by top-down, legal, rule-based methods or by organic bottom-up structures. In other words, does culture change and/or sustain because of rules, or because individuals make decisions which supervene upon the whole through a culture of individual decisions and relationships?
(Side note. Readers within the larger non-monogamous world may recognize a reference to the tension between hierarchy/couple privilege and anarchism/individualism here, which is part of the ideological splits within the poly world and has a similar mapping to this conversation. But that’s a whole post unto itself, and I don’t want this to become another Master’s thesis…)
You may have already guessed my answer, but rather than maintain the dramatic suspense which I’m sure you are all riveted by, I will get to the point.
Rules don’t work as a means to change. Rules are what we create after the change has started and we need to define what’s happening and need to create some boundaries for moral behavior and logic of the ideas. Along with rules come a vocabulary and some redefinition of truth or at least facts held together by some tentative theory to tie them all together. It’s very similar to science (hence the Kuhn/Popper analogy above) in that new ideas are tested and the results start to form a picture, a proto-theory, to describe it all. While it’s happening, at the cutting edge of cultural progress, we can never be too sure about how certain to be about our developing worldviews.
And yet I’m noticing a lot of woke people being disproportionately certain about the world they are in the process of creating, while admonishing and shaming those who either aren’t keeping up, disagree, or are still more tentative than those who are certain would like. And I think that the reasons they have being so confident aren’t justified, and thus their certainty, admonishments, and shaming are unwarranted consequences for not being sufficiently woke, in at least some cases. (I want to distinguish this phenomenon from those on the right claiming, for example, that feminism and the like are mental illnesses or dangerous delusions, which are not, in my opinion, valid criticisms nor interesting, philosophically. I’m talking about disagreements within people who agree with the underlying power-dynamics, but might disagree about tactics or fringe applications of the theory).
People don’t behave because a rules exists, unless there is a fear of punishment by some authority (and then in some cases, not even then, necessarily). In terms of religion, it’s the punishment of some god, either in this life, some imaginary afterlife, or potentially both. In politics, it’s state power; if you break the law, you go to jail, get ostracized, get executed, etc. In the case of relationships, you risk losing a relationship and/or trust which would be otherwise salvageable. In a community, the driver of fear is loss of reputation or even participation in the group. You behave because, if you don’t follow the rule, you’ll get smacked down. Especially if you disagree with the rule and decide to question it.
In other words, rules only work because of fear. And while fear can be a motivator, it also leads to cheating, dissent, and rebellion. And it’s extremely common. Basic game theory here, people. Loosen your rules and they will be thwarted, to the chagrin of leadership, moderators, and members alike. Ruling with an iron fist will make people afraid to rebel or be a dissident, but it requires some level of autocratic or at least top-heavy control to maintain subservience to a strict rule, and makes the community hierarchical and a self-selected binary of the decision makers and those who don’t want to stir the pot, when dissenters are ostracized or removed. When woke people take control of communities, and heretics are removed for not adhering to their ideals, the community self-selects for certain people and the group, as a whole, distances itself from people who have valuable things to add to that community due to mere disagreement and unwillingness to not rock the boat. It creates insular echo-chambers and bubbles where criticism will eventually be invisible and anathema.
This is how authoritarian regimes form, and how dictators or oligarchies come to be. Just look within the bounds of Trumpistan, and you’ll see the same thing. But if you look within certain communities on the left, you’ll see the same behavior and result; even among anti-hierarchical, anarchist-leaning groups you’ll find that there is an orthodoxy, and a few people who defend it at the loss of contrarians and critics who were problematic for the goals of the group, as it is rationalized. It’s so much easier to control because it’s much more efficient for those who seize the levers of power. That is, I don’t think that such leaders actively seek to create such orthodoxies, they are genuinely just trying to keep the group remain civil and weed out trolls and such. But sometimes telling the difference between a troll and a person bringing legit and authentic skepticism is difficult and time-consuming, and eventually personality conflicts will enter into the equation of which this person is. For the sake of simplicity, it’s easier to make rabble-rousers feel unwelcome or to remove them. Completely human and understandable, but with dire consequences for communities of all kinds in the long run.
Thus, eventually what was a cultural conversation and conflict of goals, tactics, and so forth becomes a political one, when the average person is put in charge of moderating, steering, or leading a community. And, if we aim to use politics, laws, or policies to solve our problems within communities, a strong personality who is willing to take a no-nonsense approach to a problem might be needed if we want to minimize drama and conflict. Such a person will be human, be subject to manipulation from other members (lobbying), and some of those people have specific agendas and interpersonal conflicts. And, in the end, the best lobbyists win even while such lobbyists are often guilty of the same, if not worse, behavior. This is how corruption forms, both in small communities and in governments. It’s just an accident of human behavior and how it effects group dynamics, and is rarely intentional or an actual planned conspiracy.
Take our current political climate with this president, this congress, and the continued presence of lobbyists and special interests at war for control and influence. My problem with our current cultural climate is that the tension is pushing us towards either a dictatorship by a narcissistic, inept, and corrupt millionaire (Trump and the like) influenced awful people versus a set of progressive ideas by a community who is similarly incapable of self-criticism and seems allergic to pragmatism (often for good reason, but the question is when it’s NOT a good reason to defy being practical). On the left, especially by woke elites, most criticism is handled as if it were indistinguishable from a snide comment by Infowars, Fox News, or actual Nazis. Anyone remember that argument between Sam Harris and Ben Affleck? Yeah, Ben Affleck is an idiot. Sam Harris, despite his own flaws, is correct here.
And the larger point is that even if Sam Harris and Bill Maher were wrong here, that doesn’t mean they are equivalent to actual islamaphobes or other right-wing bigots. There is a difference between being critical of someone who holds Affleck’s view and someone who wants to destroy all leftist ideologies. Sam Harris, and also I guess I, want to create a world where it’s still OK to have arguments and disagree, but not be considered apostates or -ists of various kinds just because we disagree with your conclusion. The attempt to legislate laws or top-heavy hierarchies of control is not creating an open, just world. Rather, it’s just another form of authoritarianism. And if the left wins this cultural fight (it seems unlikely to win the political one, partially because of this problem), then it is just another kind of orthodoxy and heresy to divide us even further, and make us more inneffectual and perpetually powerless.
But at least we can feel self-righteous.
The narrative of ‘The Right v. The Left’ is too simplistic; but insofar as it has any meaning, each facet of the current social/political/cultural divide is subject to tearing themselves apart from within. And in such an environment, it’s the one which coheres around a narrative which will survive. Right now, the narrative gaining strength is the one on the capitalist/fascist/Trump end of the spectrum, while the Left is arguing itself into oblivion over nuances so allusive and arcane that I can’t even follow the threads. But what I have seen within the many communities I have been a part of is an increasingly authoritarian tendency, creating the above-mentioned orthodoxy and the heretics that become pariahs. We can, and need to, do better.
Authoritarians, both Left and Right. But the right tends towards obedience better, so they will win that fight, unless we make some serious cultural changes within the left, now.
I’m not optimistic.
Political Power and the Cutting Edge of Cultural Growth
So, is politics the art of compromise and pragmatism? Isn’t all politics, especially the notion of practicality the center of realpolitik? Therefore, aren’t the fringes, including the radical “woke” left and the proto-fascist (alt-)right (among others) of our current political conversations merely a means to make any actual political movement impossible except via power struggles?
Isn’t the failure to realize that politics is not the cutting edge of cultural growth the very failure responsible for the political tribalism, factionalism, and ineffectualism of our current state? Isn’t the inability to compromise the reason we’re falling apart in an #AmericanDecline?
I’m making the point too strongly. I don’t actually believe that change and progress are impossible within the political sphere. I don’t actually think that practicality, or the willingness to compromise with one’s opponent, is the only valid move within politics. I don’t actually think that (for example) Nancy Pelosi’s incrementalism or Joe Biden’s willingness to work with segregationists in the past, as compared to the more radical efforts of the Congressional “squad,” is better or more wise. I don’t actually believe that idealism and real progress is impossible in politics.
But I do believe that no matter how much idealism and radical change exists within the purview of people in positions of political influence, it will always, by necessity, lag behind whatever cultural progress people are cutting into the vague, undefined, space of the universe that human intuition, intelligence, and imagination are charting. The more one lives in the halls of power, the more they lose track of the ideological cutting edge out there in the world, mostly because of time-management and exposure to such things makes it harder to be near that cutting edge.
Having to work within the framework of any system necessitates some level of compromise to such a system. The question then becomes to what extent one compromises. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and her “squad” compromise minimally (perhaps), and Nancy Pelosi compromises a lot more. It’s a question of quantity of compromise, not whether one will compromise. The only way to not compromise would be to become a dissident, off the grid, not intertwined with the political system at all (except, maybe, as a prisoner within it).
Total anarchy, right? For that, maybe check out this guy (who just put up the attached video, below, today about getting too woke, for a different perspective on this issue), who seems to pretty minimally interact with political power and does not advocate for doing so, and makes great videos with a very interesting point of view. But I’m not advocating for anarchy, exactly. Not at this point, in my growth as a political thinker, anyway.
To reiterate for emphasis, I believe that the more time a person spends in politics, they will necessarily lose the narrative of that charting of new ideological space. Digging into policy and whatever compromise with realpolitik, which such positions necessitate, ushers one’s attention from the cutting edge of all human experimentation. And I think that we need to keep in mind that all of this exploration of what is possible–from all the artists, cultural critics, and daring explorers of what it means to be human–is a space of testing and not yet conclusions.
Because sometimes those attempts fail, or at least need some significant reconsideration before implementation. We need a way to test these ideas in a way that will figure out if they actually work, sort of like what Adam Gopnik argues in this book recently published (and which I just started reading) about the concept of liberalism; liberalism not as a centrism, but as a methodology rather than community membership. It’s a method, not a clique.
To sum up, those who cut into the unknown fabric of logical space around our culture, language, and social mores occasionally fuck up, as all experimentation will inevitably do. We need to apply an effectual set of tools to figure out how and in what way they have fucked up, and this self-criticism needs to be built into not only the policies of the ideas but into the very culture of the people who take part within expanding our view of it. Because sometimes it takes decades or centuries for us to figure that out, thus we need to defend against creating orthodoxies or sacred laws which we’ll just have to fix in the future.
Even entrenched political, cultural, and social rules were once revolutionary, radical, ideas. As we continue to chart the expanses beyond the status quo, remember that what is radical now may one day be an oppressive status quo for some future generation. So we need to be extra skeptical and critical of what we are creating, for their sake. Wouldn’t it have been great if our fore-bearers did that better?
Religion as an example
Whatever the origins of religion, and it’s utility for society, it was certainly one that allowed human genius and creativity to make many wonderful and terrible things. The insight that there was a source of inspiration for moral improvement and a space to explore the meanings, origins, and goals of human life is one that, at least metaphorically, was necessary for our human development, I think.
And yet, the insights of religion, especially the notion of gods, spirits, and all the other supernatural beings, were simply incorrect ideas about the world. In addition to being wrong, they have caused as much (perhaps much more) harm than it has assisted us in our exploration of what it means to be a thing in the universe aware of itself.
Religion was both a source of creativity and growth, while simultaneously a delusion and a mistake. It is, in fact, the same mistake that the philosopher’s made in the mind of Nietzsche, who’s insight into how profound this mistake has been has been one of the most earth-shattering realizations of my own life. Here’s Nietzsche:
“To translate man back into nature; to become master over the many vain and overly enthusiastic interpretations and connotations that have so far been scrawled and painted over the eternal basic text of homo natura; to see to it that man henceforth stands before man as even today, hardened in the discipline of science, he stands before the rest of nature, with Oedipus eyes and sealed Odysseus ears, deaf to the siren songs of old metaphysical bird catchers who have been piping at him all too long, “you are more, you are higher, you are of a different origin!”—that may be a strange and insane task, but it is a task”
We have fooled ourselves with our own genius. We, throughout history, have had revelations of both sacred and profane matters, and the light from these realizations have both blinded and led us to new horizons of human possibility. Walking into each of our sunsets, unable to see either our future nor the true source of our inspiration, leading to the error of placing gods in the place of minds reaching blindly into unknown space.
And throughout history there have been critics who stand by, willing to look the sun directly in the face and stare it down until it resolves into shapes, and have been willing to say “uh…what?”
We are in a cultural moment, historically, where there are a lot of things up for grabs. Religion and unskeptical thinking concerning the nature of reality is still dominant, in both organized and unorganized spiritual forms. Various forms and levels of economic slavery, and general manipulation of the masses by people with power, money, and influence is still as common as land and water. And millions of people affected by these realities still follow and chant in favor of the foundational political orthodoxies and cultural dogmas responsible for their position, genuinely ignorant of the underlying problem. People are overwhelmingly unskeptical, easily manipulated, and ignorant. Some people, some of them smarter, wealthier, or at least luckier get to take advantage of this for their own benefit. Nothing new, really. It’s just scarier to lots of us right now because we see Trump’s rallies continue to get more and more ridiculous and potentially dangerous, and so we are anxious, scared, and want to stop it before it’s too late.
Subsequently, some people are waking up and seeing potential ways out. People are using their intuitions, intelligence, and imaginations to find ways out of this mess, and coming up with all sorts of ideas, explanations, and worldviews to make sense of it all. We have red pills, woke, people, and Brights all over, trying to lead others out of the morass of lies and manipulation. And they all have conflicting answers.
We have been a species desperately trying to figure this out for at least 6000 years of civilization, 3000 years of philosophy, literature, and oral traditions, and decades of sharing this historical information through technology. And we’re making the same goddamn mistakes over and over again. Because even in our genius we are blinded by our own insights.
And just like with every other era, there are people standing on the side, watching it all, and saying “um….what?” from every direction.
And you know what’s worse? Those contrarians, cynics, and grouchy commentators are just as easily subject to the same fundamental software bug that all humans share, and they have ideologies of their own. So there’s no simple way to say “it’s fine, just look to the contrarians and skeptics for the truth” any more than there is a way to say “no, it’s fine, because the young people, on the cutting edge of defining what it means to be human, will figure it out.”
Nope. It’s never that simple. The kids might not be completely alright, just like we weren’t all right.
Skepticism and the Left
I, primarily, identify as a skeptic. This is not a community identifier, it’s a methodological one. Again, method and not tribe. That is, I use skepticism as a methodology of belief and inquiry, but don’t think of myself as a part of any skeptic community any longer. This qualifying distinction is necessary because within the atheist/skeptic community, to be called a skeptic is often associated with a group of people who, according to some others, are “problematic”. And, in many cases, they are right.
Michael Shermer, for example.
Right. So, in case you don’t know, Michael Shermer, who leans right politically and largely identifies as a Libertarian (which, in the US, is a person who is a capitalist who wants a small government and lots of personal freedom, free speech, and freedom of thought through dissent). He’s also the founder of the Skeptics Society and publishes Skeptic magazine. In addition, he’s also been accused of rape, racism, and a bunch of other things which are largely anathema to the Progressive “woke” world. I met him once or twice, and was not especially fond of him. But I like some of the things he values, in the Venn diagram sense where I will overlap with pretty much everyone on something. Thus, while we share some values I’m not a fan of him personally. Concerning the accusations referred-to above, I’m unconvinced of the extent of PZ’s vilification. Let’s say I’m skeptical.
So, there’s a difference between being a skeptic and a Skeptic. An unfortunate consequence of the association of skepticism with personalities such as Michael Shermer is that the word ‘skeptic’ itself is largely met with derision by some within the woke left, which has led to a lack of the practice of methodological skepticism within those circles in recent years. Perhaps incidentally, there has been a rise of practice of things such as tarot, astrology, and pagan “magick” within the left, especially among younger queer people. I have no idea if there is a causal connection between these facts, but it has always struck me as interesting and depressing for the communities I am closer to, in terms of their not valuing critical thinking and truth.
One more controversial facet of this conflict lives, I believe, within the #MeToo movement. The idea that we need to believe accusers (“believe women”) and support them is in philosophical tension with the core of skepticism, which has led to many arguments between people within the larger skeptic community and the woke world that sides with people who claim to be victims.
The issue is complicated, and I don’t want to spend too much time with it, because I don’t feel qualified to do so and because it’s largely tangential to my primary set of points, but I cannot completely gloss over the topic, either. The truth is that for decades (centuries, millennia, etc) men have gotten away with all sorts of sexual misbehavior towards women, and we exist in a time when feminists are leading the way towards a future where this can be ideally minimized and, hopefully, a cultural change can make this a bad historical memory rather than a perpetual reality.
The general goal of the feminist movement, in this regard, a very good thing and I certainly support a world where a woman (or anyone, really) feeling safe to step up and talk about their experience in an effort to identify problematic people, behavior, and social mores concerning sexuality, consent, etc is a good thing. But the tension exists precisely where we have been instructed that it is morally superior to believe women immediately, which includes to not speak in favor of any skepticism about the accusations. Because a skeptic, qua methodological skepticism, should require evidence before believing a thing. The fact that we exist in a world where a non-consensual sexual behavior can be hidden behind the wall of the lack of evidence has pushed us into a cultural moment where believing women appears to be a necessary act to protect people. I understand this perspective, and I want to believe women when they make their accusations because I understand how pervasive the problem is.
However, where the line of skepticism is placed depends on who you talk to. In some cases, the false accusation problem is considered so minor that it shouldn’t even be factored in, so such people will argue that we need to believe the accusations in all cases. I’m uncomfortable with this, as are many people who hear this narrative. Where the line should be? I am not sure, but absolutism is not the answer.
And, let me be clear, I do think that false accusations are rare, but I also think that this is a false dichotomy. I believe false accusations, as in claims of events which never occurred, happen,* which is why I think that this progressive value of believing victims is in need of some skeptical criticism. I accept the underlying reality that sexual harassment, sexual assault, rape, etc are serious matters that need to be addressed with restorative justice, as opposed to transitional justice or any sort of “justice” which amounts to assumed guilt, ostracism, etc.
But then we need to deal with the fact that this false accusation/belief narrative is a binary which needs to be put aside, because that is not the real problem. The real problem is the tendency in recent years to equivocate regret, resentment, bad breakups with abuse, impossibility of consent, and predation. The reason it’s a problem is that it equivocates actual predators and mutually toxic relationships or situations where people who did very little wrong, in my view. In other words, the arguments that many people make concerning the definition of abuse and particular instances of it have not, in my mind, made their case well. I’m not convinced, in very much the same way and I’m not convinced a god exists. My disagreeing with you is not a form of enabling or giving cover (we’ll get there), because I just think you haven’t made a strong logical case. Am I supposed to pretend I agree because it will get me woke points? That’s what critics on the right call virtue signaling. The result of such equivocation is that many people who read about a situation with a lot of grey areas will apply that equivocation to the times when they read other stories about actual predators, and thus conflate them.
In short, we need to stop equivocating bad or regretted relationships with abusive ones. Because any “justice” system which equivocates (for example) any power imbalance with an inability to consent, and therefore concludes that any such power imbalance is equivalent to abuse or rape automatically, is not what I mean by the term “justice.” Both may be bad and may need to be addressed through work and so forth, but we need to be careful with our new attempts to redefine these words and rules designed to police such behavior within our communities. Such ideology and subsequent rules seem, to me, to be attempts to grow culture in a direction that is emotionally compelling, but doesn’t stand up to skeptical scrutiny in many cases. We need to be able to criticize when we see this policy-making go badly, as it sometimes does despite best efforts of people trying to do the right thing.
There are way too many people being vilified, accused, and generally made to feel unwelcome because of a combination of petty personal politics, exaggerations of actual events, and flat-out fabrications that can be fit into the letter of the law, but which would never hold up to actual scrutiny by most people. My removal from the secret Facebook group, Polydelphia, could be included as an example. Not only was I informed I was threatening people (which was the reasoning given for my removal; I most-definitely was not threatening anyone), any request for evidence of any kind was brushed off. I was treated the same way an actual predator was, with as much recourse to appeal as they would have. And I know of many other similar situations of other people both from this group and others (of which I cannot, or will not, speak publicly at this time).
There. Now I’m outed as a problematic person to everyone. It’s already become clear to me that much of the “woke” left is incapable of handling nuance or critical thinking in any effectual way, so even while I overwhelmingly agree with their worldview when it comes to systematic racism, sexism, and all the systematic problems in our world, I’m already a pariah so I won’t be heard nor taken seriously by their leadership. All because of a few bad apples playing political games, and manipulating some people who have never even spoke to me, but who have the levers of power within their local groups and have unskeptically believed what they have been told by people with bad blood against me, but with whom I have not spoken in years.
So, for those people here’s what I have to say; I’ve done a lot of awful things in my life, and hurt people. I’ve also had years of therapy, self-reflection, and growth. I like who I am, have healthy relationships, and my experiences have led me to a place in my life where I’m not only not a danger to your community, but may be a person your community needs. I have heard that you feel like your actions and opinions of me are justified, but very few of you have ever actually spoken to me, and the ones who have haven’t done so in years. So, all I can figure is you still consider me anathema because we disagree and I have challenged some of you in comments? I still haven’t learned to stay in my lane as a privileged person? Or do you actually believe I threatened people in the community? (if so, where are the screenshots? I unequivocally deny those charges). Perhaps you should look to the people who have been the most powerful lobbyists against me, and consider what I may know about them and their behavior? (cards I haven’t played because I know everyone fucks up, and I believe they are generally good people, as I am myself).
I think you need to apply some skepticism towards your decisions, your policies, and perhaps some of your friends. Because if all of our skeletons were removed from our closets, I think just about everyone would be considered problematic
And this is the thrust of my essay, here. The Left, in general and specifically those small groups I’ve seen this pattern emerge within, needs to clean their own houses. And not clean as in remove problematic people, but by taking a hard, self-critical, skeptical look at it’s values and group policies and make damned sure that your own shit makes sense before trying to self-righteously remove people, lecture to the world about moral behavior, and define social justice. Because nobody is going to listen to you if you aren’t making any goddamned sense and you allow personal enmity to drive who is problematic. Because we’re all problematic; we’re all humans who fuck up.
Transcending Woke
Personal politics doesn’t equate to truth, although that is effectively what it happening.
As a former acolyte of the extreme wokeness, I am willing to say, publicly, that many of y’all have lost your damned minds. And no, I’m not red-pilled. I’m not an MRA or an incel. I’m not a NAZI and I’m not even a centrist (I’m pretty far to the left, politically), but I simply reject some of the values and arguments popular in much of the communities on the left (including the atheist community, poly community, political organizations, and even just some friend groups) where most disagreement, especially by contrarians and skeptics is treated as heresy. Because much of the left has become authoritarian in its thinking and is drunk on their own self-righteousness and power. They have created, for themselves, a kind of proto-privilege which could, potentially, become oppressive if they win the culture wars. So no, this isn’t a white cishet male claiming I’m the victim, this is a person recognizing the same logical structure of what you want with what you are fighting against. You have emulated the enemy, and while their conclusions are worse (at least, I think so), it’s not the only dimension that matters, in terms of calculating what’s problematic.
And that’s the issue. Because in the classic 4-quadrant political diagram, there is a left and a right, but there is also a top and a bottom; authoritarian and libertarian (the above mentioned “Libertarians” in the USA exist on the bottom right). And, in recent years, those on the Left have been divided by those on the upper end of the spectrum from those, like me, on the lower end.
The authoritarians have been advocating for sets of rules. A lot of groups require that the leadership must have people who are not white, cishet males, for example (Polydephia has a rule, like this). We must believe victims. We must use pronouns of people’s choice. And whether these rules are good things or not is not the issue. The issue is what happens if you violate one of these rules? What’s the punishment?
Laws and rules are impotent without a consequence, and so such rules are really about creating fear. That is, this effort of setting rules of behavior, language, and safe opinions seems to be less about building up a culture of understanding why we don’t do these things, and more about creating consequences, such as ostracism, being labeled as a heretic (“problematic”), and considered equivalent to the enemy (you know, actual NAZIs) for breaking the rules. It creates an us/them mentality where anyone who doesn’t accept the rules is a “them,” and thus, in this binary thinking, the “them” become functionally the same as the actual fucking NAZIs.
Remember; rules don’t work without fear. So, the rule that we must believe “victims” will only backfire the more we learn that some people are making shit up and other people are equivocating a power/age imbalance with sexual assault or predatory abuse. If you are not willing to have a real conversation about the important nuances, then you are simply practicing a form of orthodoxy and orthopraxy, which is a top-heavy, legalistic, rule-based system which seeks to change the world through law rather than actually working on ourselves as individuals who are willing and capable of questioning the orthodoxy. You force people to become dissidents, which then trigger the us/them responses in our brains, and expands the rifts between people rather than understand why they disagree; after all, any of us, at any time, might be wrong.
There’s no need for orthodoxy. If you’re right, then your values and arguments will survive criticism. But the woke left is becoming increasingly uncomfortable with criticism, as I have seen, personally, time and time again. Criticism makes one problematic. A relationship regretted becomes a power imbalance, and therefore abuse and possibly sexual assault. And heterodoxy makes one a threat, and subject to ostracism.
And, locally, Polydelphia has become an example of all these things. I’m sure you all have people, communities, and ideologies that fit the same bill. I’m done playing nice. Y’all aren’t woke. You’re just self-righteous. If y’all were really woke, you would be skeptical more and comfortable having your worldview challenged from within, rather than remove or isolate people with differing conclusions or who you heard stories about. I know several people who have left Polydelphia in recent years (most of them female, incidentally), in some cases with messages left behind telling the leadership that they are akin to Mean Girls (you know, like the movie about cliques), and the political games played within is a microcosm of the problem that may end the United States as a country.
Our road to becoming Gilead (the name of the country that replaces much of the USA in The Handmaid’s Tale) is being paved by people incapable of introspection and self-criticism to be willing to coalesce into a group powerful enough to defeat a community led by a corrupt, narcissistic, inept person named Donald Trump. Let me emphasize; Donald Trump will continue to win, politically, because the woke Left insists upon rules of behavior, 1984-style, backed up with consequences. This dynamic is pushing people away who think that you, defenders of the right truth, are incorrect or corrupted by personal politics. And it’s possible that they are, sometimes, right. Your self-righteousness is part of the reason we are in this place, because without it, we could coalesce into a leviathan with reality and science on our side, except that you insist upon ideological purity to a set of ideas which are so new, so cutting edge, that we can’t rationally even be sure are yet well thought out enough to be worth your certainty. Because even if you are, ultimately right (and I think you, at least generally, are right), as a person who could be wrong, you should dial back your certainty.
If Donald Trump wins again (and I think that’s likely, at this point), it will be because y’all woke motherfuckers won’t wake up to the reality that you are pushing millions of people away from your cause because you are so far up your ass that you can’t actually grow among disagreement or nuance. We can’t have revolution if the leaders of the potential revolution can’t even see their own plank in their own eyes. We need everyone to have a revolution within themselves, first. We need communities where people are able to safely be skeptical of the whole enterprise, and these mini-revolutions can create a culture of enlightened, awakened, wise people who don’t need rules to be decent people because they have worked it out for themselves why woke is right and how woke is right, rather than feel the fear of being ostracized for mistakes, disagreements, etc because they had some questions or concerns about whether and to what extent woke is right.
Criticism is not uncivil, and it should also be part of being woke. Right now, in many places, it’s not.
The false-equivalency argument, “Centrists”, and actual fucking NAZIs
I know, I know….actual fucking NAZIs, white supremacy, and systematic injustice.
I’ve heard y’all screaming about it. I get it. I agree with you. There is a significant problem with the rise of the right, of fascism, and autocracy in much of the western world, formerly the great democracies of post-WWII. There are real bigots, racists, and a lot of people are worried about their cultures and communities no-longer having the privileges they are used to. True, they frame it as a kind of reverse-racism or a threat of being erased, but what it really is is a loss of privilege.
It’s the same with religion, especially Christianity in the west, which sees itself as being under threat. Millions of Trump supporters see him as a savior, a Cyrus-like great leader who will save Western Christian culture from the hordes of secular, liberal, and family-hating nihilists who will stop at nothing to destroy their values and bring about a demonic world of ash.
Think I’m exaggerating? Then you aren’t really paying attention. Because much of the Right is cohering around a narrative. Now, their’s is a narrative much less based on reality than that of the woke Left. They are much worse at believing bullshit, usually peddled by their insular media outlets (Fox News being the moderate voice in their world). Their worldview is conspiracy theory upon lies upon paranoia, and it’s truly terrifying and absurd and represents an existential threat for millions of people, and needs to be stopped.
So, why am I not directing my rage and criticism at the Right? Well, 1) I am 2) They view me as part of the demonic/atheist (they often don’t understand the difference), secular, and perverted (they may be right, there) world they think is unreliable and dangerous, 3) they very likely aren’t even reading this and 4) because I think that the progressive left is potentially reachable and fixable before it’s too late.
See, I’m not totally cynical? A touch of optimism.
The Right and the Left are both suffering internal problems, but I’m part of the Left. I’m interested in cleaning up my own house, even if most of the people there hate, distrust, or consider me problematic. And while I don’t have the readership I used to (a couple years of inactivity and the drama from a few years ago fixed that), I have some readers, and some who are probably keeping an eye on me to make sure if I misbehave they can tell their friends that I’m still being awful (hi there, former friends! Hope you’re well….)
So no; this isn’t an argument for some moral equivalency or relativity in which I state that the values of the alt-right are just as valid as those of the radical left. Nor am I saying that the woke Left is just as bad as the proto-fascist Right, because it isn’t. But just like small injustices are still unjust, small errors are still errors. I’m not a moral relativist. To be clear, I think the woke left is largely on the right track, but I see them as too prickly and defensive to criticism, especially from a cishet white male, such as myself.
I just hope to be judged by the content of my argument.
Again, I’m not optimistic.
What am I saying?
I’m saying that all of the woke people fighting for social justice, historical awareness, and a better world have their hearts in the right place, but are blinded by their own ideologies to see when they are occasionally fucking up and giving ammunition to our cultural opponents and enemies. I’m saying that all those red-pilled, alt-right, or Jordan Peterson admiring people also have their hearts in the right place, but are similarly blinded by their own biases to be able to see how silly they look. And I’m also saying that the cautious, skeptical, incrementalist liberals are too far up their own asses to see that they are similarly fucked up. Literally every one of us is subject to this, without exception.
Especially me (just in case you might be wondering how narcissistic I am)
It’s not that the truth is relative, or that all is permitted because of the death of gods, but is is true that we’re merely specs of semi-sentient bits of carbon taking a ride on a big rock orbiting a ball of fire in a universe so immense we cannot conceive of it, and someday we’re going to die–we’re going to simply blink out of existence–to be replaced by trillions of future bits of semi-sentient pieces of matter all over the universe, each with their own perspective, worldview, and tribe of friends, family, and co-ideologues to exist for a little while, all signifying nothing.
The Truth exists, it’s just that none of us have it. What truths we do have are based upon biased perspectives and narratives shared among people with similar experiences, and are at best statistically defensible based upon limited evidence. We know evolution happened but we aren’t so sure that your conclusion about your ex is going to hold up to scrutiny. And yet we yell at each other over the meaning of “concentration camp” and “racism” and “patriarchy” and “freedom of speech” and on and on and on to no other effect than demonizing each other and creating safe tribes for ourselves.
Let me be really clear. You don’t know shit about the vast majority of everything. You don’t mean shit to anyone except maybe a few dozen other people who don’t mean shit to most of humanity. You’re ideas are, merely from a probabilistic point of view, probably stupid and incorrect. And you are yelling at someone else in the same goddamned predicament as you, because they got a different question wrong from the one you got wrong. That’s all the culture wars are, at bottom.
And it doesn’t matter that one side or the other may be more wrong or right, because insofar as you ignore your own shit, you will never effect change in any meaningful way by merely yelling at other bits of semi-sentient carbon. You cannot convince your enemies to side with you, excepting rare individual cases, by sticking to your narratives and orthodoxies and not trying to understand the orthodoxies of others. So, unless you are willing to wipe them out, you’re going to have to work on making yourself better and hope that in the process you inspire more people outside of your peer groups to pay attention more and dismiss you less. Ideological purity and self-righteousness just magnifies any differences between bits of semi-sentient carbon, and only hastens the coming apocalypse which we should be trying to avoid.
Your beliefs about the world, again statistically, are hung upon a thin string of hearsay, from a small segment of people who happen to cohere to your experience and community, and it’s almost certain that the vast majority of every thought you have ever had is in some way wrong, biased, and informed by other wrong and biased people.
And yet all you do is shame, ostracize, and dismiss other people making different mistakes. It’s absurd.
But sure. You heard a thing about a guy, and because it fits with a narrative which you have accepted based on cognitive and emotional factors which you barely understand or even have access to, that thing is true.
Have fun with that. Continue to spread your memetic narrative of what the world is most definitely like along with your tribe, and feel self-righteous. Refuse to challenge yourself, or listen to the problematic person who broke the orthodoxy and made some mistakes, because what has conflict and mistakes ever taught anyone? What could that person, with whom you disagree about much, possibly teach you? They are obviously wrong about that one or few things, so they can’t have any value to you, right?
And I’ll be sitting along, on the side, saying “um…what?” while you sneer at me saying “um…what?” and then we’ll all die, letting the next generation to continue the dance, for as long as our species manages not to kill all of ourselves.
But sure, you’re woke. Or sure, you aren’t one of the sheeple. Sure, you are enlightened. You know what’s real. You know what’s right. You know that throwing a milkshake is not comparable to actual violence, so fuck all them. Or you know that abortion is murder, so fuck all them. Or you know that atheism is devil-worship, so fuck all them. Or you know that men who say that it’s #notallmen misses the point so fuck that guy and possibly all men. You’re perspective is special and right, and you don’t need any more perspective at all.
Nonsense.
Last question; Why do you think that the direction you want culture to go isn’t a mistake at least in some ways, just like every worldview that every human being in all of history has promulgated?
You don’t.
And neither do I.
All I’m hoping for is that as we try to create a better world, we have enough humility to build into our cultures the enthusiastic willingness to prove ourselves wrong. If we, as a progressive segment of our culture, have any chance of making the world better, we better make damn-sure that we are making ourselves better individually, and include in our next culture patch the enthusiastic willingness to consider that our newer attempts to make rules, guidelines, and means towards justice are all correctable and open to criticism from grumpy contrarians, centrists, and other crotchety progressives such as myself.
The alternative is that we risk being mostly right, and mostly and perpetually powerless.
*It happened to me; some Facebook friends may have received a message from a woman (no need to name her) back in February accusing me of abuse and sexual assault, but nothing of the sort ever happened with her (I can provide screencaps to show that she was, in fact, pretty awful to me when we were living in the same house). I do not believe she is necessarily lying (that is, intentionally telling a falsehood) but I do believe she is not only capable of lying, but I think she actually might have rationalized it being right to do so in this case for political reasons related to people trying and succeeding to get me removed from the secret Facebook group Polydelphia, who trumped up charges that I was threatening people through the group (I wasn’t) within a day or two of her messaging people on my Facebook friends list. I was informed by a few female friends who received these messages, who either blocked her or responded skeptically. I subsequently blocked the woman and limited access to my friends list only to friends. I also lost some friends who unskeptically believed the claims, because that’s the “right” thing to do. I don’t blame them, nor am I surprised, because who would make that shit up? This experience has heightened my skepticism of this worldview, where previously I was on-board with believing “victims” on face value. More, similar circumstances I have become aware of has also raised my level of skepticism. I hate that this is the case, but nonetheless, here we are. I don’t want to disbelieve women who come out publicly, but now I have reason to be skeptical.
So, this image popped up on my social media radar, today. It, of course, turned into a dumpster fire of a conversation. And, unsurprisingly, it demonstrated Seth Andrew’s point.
So, I don’t listen to Seth’s show. I’m saturated with podcasts and also since I’ve felt like the atheist community has become largely a cesspool of infighting and absurdity (much like the local polyamorous community here in Philadelphia), I’m mostly unplugged from movement atheism. Aside from the Puzzle in a Thunderstorm people and their affiliates, especially The Scathing Atheist, I don’t listen to much atheist-oriented podcasts, anymore.
That is to say that I don’t know enough about Seth Andrews to know what his positions are, specifically. From what I do know about him (he’s a friend of friends), it seems he and I would agree on most topics. But when it comes to this post of his, I think I can say I agree with the underlying sentiment.
As a leftist, I see a lot worthy of criticizing on the left. The fact that actual NAZIs exist doesn’t erase this point.
Woke
I grew up attending a school back in the early 1980s, and graduated in 1996, in an educational environment which valued things such as tolerance, diversity, community, and social movements dedicated to making the world a more peaceful and just world. In those days, I didn’t know terms like “social justice” or “woke,” but those terms would have described the culture in which I grew. And, from what I can tell, those values are part of the culture of the current culture of that same school.
I like those values. I still largely value the same types of things to this day. But I’m also critical of Quaker values, for a number of reasons. It’s true that in comparison with much of the rest of the world, and especially our own United States’ cultures (yes, plural), it’s pretty idyllic. But if I’m concerned with the truth and the striving for a yet greater world and worldview, I will not ignore the relatively small imperfections just because larger ones exist.
When I read criticism, from the Right, of my own Leftist communities I see a caricature and often many outright falsehoods in such criticism. But I also see genuine misunderstanding; a failure of two framings, worldviews, and sets of values to understand one-another. In other words, I see authenticity on the Right, Center, etc when they criticize “wokeness,” even if I disagree with their criticism. It’s possible to be authentic and also be wrong.
I’m aware of the fact that I’m playing the game of life on easy mode. I’m aware that the color of my skin, my gender, my sexual preference, and many other facets of my life give me an automatic set of advantages in our society that I am able to easily ignore or shrug off. That’s what privilege is; I’m able to not be faced with certain social injustices that many other people cannot ignore nearly as easily or at all.
I also have some aspects to my life that give me a disadvantage, though this disadvantage is significantly less likely to get me discriminated against, beaten, or killed. But I am aware of the privilege which practicing traditional relationship structures and being religious (especially Christian) provides in our culture.
The fact that I’m aware of this, that I’m (too some extent, at least) woke is, I think, a good thing. I’m aware that the tiny amount of discomfort and annoyance I have to deal with when trying to explain what being nonmonogamous means, or why being an atheist is not “just as bad as being a fundamentalist,” is easy in comparison to being (for example), a POC trans woman. But it’s still true that the world would be a better place, that justice would be better served, for those small injustices not to exist, right?
That is, even the small injustices are still unjust.
Providing NAZIs with “Cover”
The image above was posted to a facebook group I belong to. And since I decided to procrastinate at work, I decided to scroll through some of the comments below it. Now, the comments were all over the map, and there were many I agreed with and many that were making Seth’s point for him.
The accusation is that people like Seth, and his defenders (in terms of this post from which the image derived), are spending too much time being critical of the Left while not paying sufficient attention, or perhaps out-right denying, the reality and threat of actual NAZIs.
I don’t know how many actual NAZIs there really are. And if we added the white supremacists, white nationalists, and all the other bigots in the world, I imagine that the number would be “way too many” of all of them. Mostly because any number is way too many, in my estimation.
But can we agree, I hope, that not all of the people on the Right, and especially the Center, are NAZIs or other bigots? I’ll assume we’re in agreement there. So, then, are those same people overwhelmingly complicit with many of the goals of all those NAZIs et al? That is, are the people who exist in the gray part of the continuum between woke progressive social justice warrior and actual NAZI all providing cover for NAZIs, insofar as they disagree with any particular pertinent conclusion of the woke Leftist in question?
I mean…I don’t know. It seems to me that many of them probably aren’t. And then I’m reminded, once again, of Sam Harris.
See, Sam Harris is seen, by many on the woke Left, as providing cover for the Right, especially insofar as he is willing to have conversations with people who have all sorts of questionable political perspectives. Whether it’s Charles Murray or Ezra Klein, Sam Harris is willing to have difficult conversations with people he doesn’t necessarily agree with. And Sam Harris, being human, is going to make mistakes, have bad ideas, and disagree with you (no matter who you are).
But there is a sort of irony here, since it was Sam Harris who, for me anyway, introduced the idea of moderates providing cover for extremists. In his case, he’s talking about moderate Muslims, Jews, and Christians providing ideological and political cover for extremists within their communities. In other words, people on the Left who criticize free speech advocates, such as Sam Harris, because they provide cover for the far-Right are utilizing the very same type of argument that Sam Harris uses against the Left for defending Islam and religious belief in general.
It seems to me that we might, as a culture, need to take a closer look at the logical structure of these similar arguments to see what values we might choose to apply to them.
The Relativity of “Liberal”
In our various ideologies–whether they are political, religious, etc–there will be people who exist on greater or lesser fringes or closer to some cultural center or “norms” (which, of course, shift with history).
In politics, we have the familiar Left/Right and Libertarian/Authoritarian diagram, as below:
This is the diagram which Seth’s meme refers to, and which largely encapsulates the various political ideologies in much of the world (though I’m sure it has it’s critics).
For a person on, for example, the far right of this but towards the bottom, we have what we call, in the U.S., a “Libertarian.” They have tendencies towards a free market (which usually includes free expression) and allowing that market to choose who is successful and who is not. Our efforts determine our place in society, and they just want governments to generally leave them alone; lower taxes, legal drugs, smaller government.
Looking at them from the point of view of someone from (again, for example), the upper left region of this diagram, one can obviously see where they would conflict. And they would not agree on very much, at least politically.
But what about someone closer to the center? Where does a “classical liberal” land on this diagram? Are they near the center? A little more to the right? to the left? Above or below the horizontal line? To be honest, I’m not sure. I know Sam Harris thinks of himself as a classical liberal, and I know I share some of those values, but what this really means is Sam and I are definitely not in line with the culture of progressive wokeness.
Wait, but I thought I was woke? I thought I was progressive? I’m aware of my privilege and I want the world to keep learning and evolving into a better world, so then the question becomes to what extent are the cultures who refer to themselves as woke and progressive reflect the same values as those of liberalism. I mean, I know a lot of the woke progressives detest liberals, and this means that both the Trump-supporting MAGA hat wearing crowd and those they refer to as “libtards” often both dislike liberals, but I am not sure they are referring to the same groups of people when they use the term liberal.
For me (and, I think, Sam Harris), liberalism is about freedom of thought, speech, and determination in life. The idea is that there isn’t an overbearing cultural or social authority demanding submission to an ideology. No church, political party, or moral framework being imposed from above telling me how to live my life. I can choose to be what I want to be. That’s the gist.
To the MAGA crowd, it means a whiny snowflake artsy type with purple hair, probably a Wiccan, and probably a bunch of homos and lesbos. They are brainwashed and hopelessly naive, and most definitely won’t survive without the mommy state to protect them.
To the Progressive woke Left (which the previous crowd ironically includes within its collective term libtards, obviously derived from “retarded liberals”), “liberals” are the comfortable, entitled, and largely privileged center. They are hurting progress by being (ignorantly) politically tied to the corporate powers, and they are part of the problem. Because while the political Right, including those ubiquitous NAZIs, are the actual drivers of everything awful and bigoted, the liberals are just standing by with their Amazon Prime and brunches to be aware of the struggle against the impending fourth Reich. They are complicit.
In other words, both the Left and the Right view the center as complicit in the other’s destruction of America (or ‘Murica, depending). I mean, those are the framings, anyway. Except those framings are both dubious.
There is a real divide in values here. And while it’s not binary, it’s definitely fractured and potentially irreconcilable. What’s worse, even if one of them were actually more rational, evidence-based, or even just plain right, the other factions would never be able to see it because of the nature of human tribalism and the subsequent demonization and enmity.
So, we’re fucked. Might as well just blow it all up. It’s all corrupt. Let’s just drain the swamp, completely.
Oh fuck, I think I just figured out why we are here, at this political moment….
Where’s my MAGA hat….
And so I’ve found myself having slippery-sloped myself into the centrists’ nest, looking at the Left with distance and the beginnings of distain. I’ve become “problematic” and I’m probably providing cover for the Right and possibly for NAZIs, because I, indeed, will fight for a person’s right to say a thing even if I disagree with them. In fact, for many years part of my signature file on my personal emails is this exact phrase:
I’ll fight for a person’s right to speak so long as that person will, in return, fight to allow me to challenge their opinions as the content of their ideas merit.
This is the core of my ideological values. This is my highest goal. And I think I have found myself uncomfortable with the parts of the Left which are slipping from the libertarian left to the upper, Authoritarian, left.. So when I see memes such as the one below, I feel a pang of agreement.
And then I have the thought; shit, am I an alt-right type, about to be red-pilled at any moment? Do I have to, contractually, start attending Trump rallies?
I sure hope not, because fuck those guys.
I mean, whenever I engage with people on the left, I find we have largely the same goals and beliefs, but I think we might have different values, insofar as some of the Left seem, to me, to be advocating for a kind of world where certain ideas, words, and criticisms are “problematic” and should be ostracized and possibly outlawed. And people get booted from communities for being critical or not toeing the political line. And then I just realized (or was this all a set-up?) that I’m describing how those snowflakes on the Left are so politically correct that they can’t handle any criticism and live in their little “libtard” bubble, and so I might as well go get a MAGA hat, because these questions are obviously binary and you are either with the snowflakes or you are against them.
And it is exactly here where I think the problem exists.
We are Gray. We stand Between the Candle and the Star…
Because these questions are not digital nor binary. We have gotten to a place in our society that there is, for some people (and they are quite vocal) a kind of purity test that one must submit to. That’s how it feels, anyway. That’s not the truth, because the reality is much more nuanced than that, but the arguments on social media are the loudest, most angry, least-nuanced people who are the ones who keep coming back. Any attempt to see the gray areas between positions are not disallowed, but they are quickly scrolled past, at best, or labeled as giving cover by those loud voices.
Because to say something like “NAZIs have the right to speak,” whether or not you add the epithet “fuck NAZIs” is allowing a genuinely awful and destructive set of ideas to exist out loud, in the world. Those woke progressives, doing the necessary fighting against actual NAZIs, will so often bridle at any criticism of them. They are doing holy work, after all. The NAZIs cannot be allowed to return to power, so there is no room for criticism of their methods or ideology, because ACTUAL FUCKING NAZIs!
But this is a cover, and I see right through it. Nobody likes criticism. I’ll bet the Inquisitors would have responded the same way, as they were battling ACTUAL HERETICS! The analogy is weak, I know, because heresy is a label for being wrong about a thing that isn’t even real, and actual NAZIs are real people doing actual harm to real people, but the structure of the defensiveness is the same.
And this is where we need to be able to pay attention. Because whether we are defending our wokeness, our inquisition of heretics, or our Nazism, it is the same set of human behaviors, tribalism, and groupthink at work. That is, it’s not the content of the arguments I’m objecting to (please, keep fighting NAZIs!), but it’s the unwillingness to clean one’s own house.
All criticism must start within one’s own self and one’s own group. It must be built into the fabric of your fight. So that when @centrist_John2472 on Twitter points out that your ideology, method, etc might be irrational or problematic itself, pointing out that you are fighting actual NAZIs sort of misses the point. We need to make each other stronger and better by hearing what we and our loved ones might be doing wrong, openly and enthusiastically, or we risk calcifying orthodoxy into our communities and ideologies.
A Rebel is Gonna Rebel
What happens when you tell a child not to do something? What happens when a word is a “curse” word (the history of that concept is really interesting, btw) or when a certain group is anathema? When you forbid something, it becomes interesting and potentially drawing to people, especially if they are already largely dismissed or socially awkward.
Forbidding words, groups, or ideas might be done with good intention, but it will never work. It’s pragmatically not feasible, and will cause a backlash. You want to understand the alt-Right? just look at human behavior in general. Humans go where they are told they shouldn’t go, and do what they shouldn’t do. How many kinks are formed by this very notion?
That’s why Donald Trump is so loved and revered by so many people; he doesn’t give a fuck. In his case, I think it’s partially narcissism and ignorance as opposed to mere rebellion, but it’s also just classic bad boy entitled swagger. It’s a rebel without a clue nor care.
It’s as American as it gets.
So, to the Left. I’m with you. We need to grow, progress, and make the world better. But the more you make ideas taboo and define yourselves as woke (fellow movement atheists, remember how the Brights were reviled? It’s the same thing), the more you are going to be ignored. The Right will never cede to your wisdom, whether you are right or not. They are just going to be human and tell you to fuck yourself and call you a snowflake, because nobody likes being told what to do. So, enjoy being right and also enjoy watching Trump win again while the Right continues to ignore, not understand, and yet still win on the political stage.
And to the Right, you’re acting like a damned child. You’re selfish and you’re woefully ignorant of so many things. I also know that they are not likely to be reading this, so that was really for the Left as well. Because that’s what they hear from us, and it’s not going to work. If you’re ideas are correct, then argue your points. Because I think we have reality on our side. But first we need to take the self-righteous stick out of our asses. Or we will lose any chance to save the future of this society and culture. We, on the Left, need to drain our own swamp, because we know the Right has no interest in actually doing so.
I think the Right is incorrect in maintaining capitalism and the like. I think a socialist direction is better. But the more we, on the Left, slide into authoritarian thinking, the more the Right will ignore us. So yes, there are real, actual, NAZIs out there. And yes, we have actual homophobic, Christian dominionist, and greedy capitalist politicians supporting this Trump administration and raking in millions while fucking over the environment, the majority of the people, and the place of The United States in the world.
And if they keep up their trajectory then we would not only have a Right wing capitalist society, but eventually it will become more and more authoritarian. And then we truly will be a culture of Right and Left authoritarians yelling at each other, and all the rest of us caught in the middle as the country, and the world, slowly dies. And the Left will lose this fight, almost certainly.
To everyone: stop the authoritarian dictator within yourself, first.
Skepticism, Properly Applied 