Comment by pron
18 days ago
> Fortunately when the aggressively conventional-minded go on the rampage they always do one thing that gives them away: they define new heresies to punish people for
If the "conventional-minded" define new heresies, against a new creed, how are they conventional? What gives Paul Graham away is what he doesn't mention and may be what bothers him more: the old heresies that the surprisingly innovative and even rebellious "conventional-minded" abolish. (Actually, they do neither, but those who believe the former also believe the latter)
As with the myth of the "cancel culture" that Graham mentions (or the similar myth of "the war on Christmas"), the problem isn't the truth of certain events that do occur. It is the exaggeration of magnitude and ignorance of context. Clearly, at no stage in human history were more people not only free but also able to widely disseminate a wider range of views as they are today. Specifically, far fewer people are "silenced" at universities today than were, say, in the 1950s (except, maybe, in super-woke Florida).
> College students larp. It's their nature. It's usually harmless. But larping morality turned out to be a poisonous combination.
Yeah, larping in a world of Jewish cabals and weather/mind control has turned out to be far more poisonous.
Anyway, for a more interesting and astute perspective on wokeness, see https://samkriss.substack.com/p/wokeness-is-not-a-politics Kriss shows why comparing wokeness to socialism or Christianity -- as Graham does -- is a category error:
> [I]t’s not a politics, or an ideology, or a religion. If you’ve ever spent any time in a political movement, or a religious one—even a philosophical one—you’ll have noticed that these things always have sects. Small differences in doctrine turn into antagonistic little groups. There are dozens of denominations that all claim to be the universal catholic church. Put two Marxists in a room and you’ll get three different ideological schisms. ... But it’s hard to see any such thing happening in any of the movements that get described as woke. Black Lives Matter did not have a ‘left’ or a ‘right’ wing; the different rainbow flags did not belong to rival queer militia ... The spaces these movements produce might be the sites of constant churning mutual animosity and backstabbing, but the faultlines are always interpersonal and never substantive. This is very, very unusual. Of course, there’s always the possibility that the woke mind virus is so perfectly bioengineered that it’s left all its victims without any capacity for dissent whatsoever, permanently trapped in a zombielike groupthink daze. This is the kind of possibility that a lot of antiwoke types like to entertain. Let me sketch out an alternative view.
> ... Wokeness is an etiquette. There are no sects within wokeness for the same reason that there are no sects on whether you should hold a wine glass by the bowl or by the stem. It’s not really about dogmas or beliefs, in the same way that table manners are not the belief that you should only hold a fork with your left hand.
> ... What makes something woke is a very simple operation: the transmutation of political demands into basically arbitrary standards of interpersonal conduct. The goal is never to actually overcome any existing injustices; political issues are just a way to conspicuously present yourself as the right kind of person.
> ... Unlike wokeness, the word antiwokeness is still used as a self-descriptor. The antiwoke will announce themselves to you. They won’t deny that antiwokeness exists. But since there’s no fixed and generally agreed-upon account of what the object of this apophatic doctrine actually is, you could be forgiven for wondering whether it is, in fact, particularly real. Wokeness is not a politics. And antiwokeness is not a politics either. It’s a shew-stone
> Every day, the antiwoke are busy producing wokeness, catching visions of incorporeal powers, desperately willing this thing into colder and denser form. What does this look like? Hysteria over uncouth material in entertainment media. Pseudo-sociological dogshit jargon. Endless smug performances of wholesome trad virtue. To be antiwoke is to be just another type of person who mistakes etiquette for politics, putting all your energies into the terrain of gesture and appearance, obsessed with images, frothing at every new indecency, horrified, appalled. We must protect the children from harm! I’m sure that some day very soon, the antiwoke will have their own miserable cultural hegemony. Big companies organising compulsory free-speech training for their workers. An informal network of censors scrubbing the mass media of anything that smacks too much of progressive tyranny.
> What gives Paul Graham away is what he doesn't mention and may be what bothers him more: the old heresies that the surprisingly innovative and even rebellious "conventional-minded" abolish.
Can you give an example of what you mean here?
I'll try, but it's a little tricky because, again, I don't think wokeness (whatever it is, although I agree with Graham that the term is usually applied to some superficial performance) actually does much of anything. Graham and other centrists latch on to cases where "heretics" are banished, but the sparsity of these cases only demonstrates how few of them are punished. Furthermore, centrists often emphasise how productive and useful past movements were in contrast to excessive and ineffectual current ones (I would say that the use of such a claim is the defining characteristic of the centrist). Of course, they say this at any point in time, and because the effect of current and recent movements is often yet to be seen, the centrists are always vindicated in the present. If a movement does happen to be effective relatively quickly -- say, support of gay marriage -- the centrist retroactively excludes it from the PC category (note that the most significant successes in the gay rights movement coincided with Graham's wokeness, but he doesn't even mention that).
Anyway, to answer your question: the same people who make up new heresies also challenge old creeds. In the case of wokeness, what's being challenged is the centre's (neoliberal or neocon) belief in its rationality, meritocracy, and objectivity. For example, Graham mentions "woke agendas", highlighting DEI (never mind that DEI is a new version -- and an aspirationally less excessive one -- of the 60s' affirmative action), but while he focuses on the ineffective performative aspects, he ignores the underlying claim which remains a heresy to him: That the old meritocracy is not what it claims to be, and that it, too, is missing out on "Einsteins" (to use his terminology) due to its ingrained biases.
>In the case of wokeness, what's being challenged is the centre's (neoliberal or neocon) belief in its rationality, meritocracy, and objectivity.
The ideals of the Enlightment, the epistemological foundations of rationality and objectivity are not perfect, and liberals don't claim it to be such, but it exists because after Fascism & Communism, there wasn't better alternatives.
Regardless, we've had 10 years of trying such post-Enlightment policies, and predictably it's just resulted in just a flood of populism, crime and tribalism. I guess we'll have to go through a crash course again in understanding the reason why hierarchical thinking emerges in the first place, just like in Old Antiquity 2000 years ago. You never really had a solution to the Paradox of Tolerance, or the Friend-Enemy distinction...
But look around you, the rest of the world is moving past you. Even if you succeed in the West, China, India, Southeast Asia, the developing world have all picked up the spirit of modernity anyways. Theirs is a homogenized vision of "soulless" luxury malls, modern skyscrapers and totalizing impression of capitalism, meritocracty, rationality and objectivity that you oppose so much. But they are rising, and I daresay their living standards already exceeeds yours in many areas. In the future, if they seek to impose their domains to your borders, do you think you can seriously think your "woke" frameworks can compete?
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Also, when comparing the empty wokeness to the substantive protest movement of the sixties, Graham not only neglects to mention the real achievements of the former (LGBT rights, some MeToo successes) but also the performative aspects of the latter, as if radical chic never happened or a whole fashion and lifestyle (with a name that lasts to this day) -- also co-opted by corporations -- didn't emerge. I think there was even a pretty famous musical about it.
Do religious and political movements always develop such sects within a decade or so of their founding? If not then I'm not sure wokeness has existed for sufficient time (since the mid 2010s in the form it's discussed in the article I think) that the analysis you present here applies.
But I still find the analysis interesting. I think one difference between wokeness and political and religious movements is that wokeness doesn't seem to have a doctrine.
It's questionable in what way wokeness exists at all without a clear definition. Graham's definition is more personal judgment than definition, but according to him, whatever he thinks it is seems to be about 30 years old. Bolshevik-Mensheviks and Trotskyists-Stalinists sects appeared faster than that (the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks split a mere 5 years after the creation of the party).
Also, I think Sam Kriss's point about sects and splits was meant to be taken in humour. Funnily enough, both Kriss and Graham seem obsessed with convincing the reader they're not boring. But whereas Graham's writing is predictable though he repeatedly insists on telling the reader that his old-school conventionalism is the true rebelliousness, Kriss writes provocatively in a way that's supposed to make you unsure of whether he's serious or not. In any event, Kriss's writing is at least always entertaining even when it isn't interesting.
Right, and maybe one of the reasons that we don't see a split is because there is no clear definition, no clear boundaries. But perhaps we can find splits if we look more carefully. One notion that could be indicative of a split is "white women's tears".
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