Ethnic demagoguery is what this is! John, you are cited in one of my favorite books “Affirmative Action Around the World: An Empirical Study” by Thomas Sowell. It’s all a very human pattern in different multi-ethnic or caste-based societies as they advance!
If it were very simple, they will filter the arguments or statements of fact through a very complicated analysis; if you play that game you lose.
If it were complex they'd demand you come right out and state it simply; If you play their game you will lose.
If you corner them with facts, they will attack you.
If you attack them and corner them with ad hominem, facts, hypocrisy, contradictions and they sense they are losing the argument they may fall silent. The next day all is memory holed and you may begin again.
What you're actually encountering is double talk which is standard throughout Asia, the Middle East and the Levant. If you point out the double talk they'll fall silent. Then begin again.
There is no talking to these people, the only arguments that work are 'not academic'.
The Elect is simply the religion of Power, it justifies their interests. There will be no O'Brien being honest with Winston and it doesn't matter if they are honest with Winston, he remains a prisoner.
You are not yet a prisoner because they are gathering their strength.
The 'not they' keep talking and not gathering strength and that's their mistake.
As far as agreeing and bowing to Black people of course!
At worst they have to get the checkbook out, or invent some make-work job and the matter is settled. It's not as if they're actually going to listen, and certainly not action whatever the correct, or even contrarian black person says. Sorry, no. They'll smile and agree then go on as before. They're not really worried about losing votes, and not really all that interested in elections anymore. Every election they run will be victorious and you'll probably continue to see the vote margins in the 70~s %.
Look what they do to their own white people, look at what they've got planned and are already openly gloating about. What do you think they'll do to you? Well they're already doing it...meet the Spanish. Who aren't at all shamed at being White Supremacists, indeed far worse.
The good news is they don't yet control anything they don't control, indeed seem to have a terrible Reach::Grasp problem, for now. Nothing will remain beyond their grasp that is talked about or discussed, they only understand fear.
This is nothing new in human history. Just our turn.
Viewed through any other lens distorts indeed conceals the truth: Politics is Power.
In seeking truth academically, you Sir respectfully have missed the main point politically.
Politics is POWER.
In any political dispute, what powers are being contended over?
1] Saying Racist silences debate in Academia, and from Academia most of government, legal, media professions.
2] There are vast fortunes at stake, the middle class livelihood of many middling bureaucrats government, academic and corporate at stake. An honest man such as J/McH might say this is nonsense any 10 year old can see through....well offer the 10 year old the elect's Commissar Powers, income, cars, privileges and you'll see the 10 year old wise up and begin to denounce his or her parents.
3] The agenda of the Elect is the agenda of the Elite: Silence Dissent. Stifle any challenge to power. Disenfranchise voters, and deny them full access to the courts- "you have no standing".
More...hope you don't mind serial points, which are in no way a rebuttal.
It's not ANTIRACISM, it's ERASE WHITENESS...and it's a White Thing.
ERASE WHITENESS: Antiracism simply means Anti-White. It is in truth a White Religious sect, the descendants of the the Puritan Roundheads of Cromwell. This is a continuation of the English Civil War of a battle between competing Protestant Sects, the Elect whites mean to destroy once and for all the non-elect whites, something they've been at since the 1640s.
The Political agenda of the Elect is to silence and now 'erase' the non-elect WHITES.
It's a White Thing in Blackface. It doesn't really matter if you understand or not, but if I didn't understand a fight between others I'd get distance and stay neutral.
I refer to "Erase Whiteness" as the Battle Cry of the 2020 American Kristalnachts coast to coast, which resulted in kneeling by our ruling class.
By "Erase Whiteness" they mean Liquidation of the Kulaks, or at least that's how some of us Whites see it [I should mention I'm white].
If seeing "Erase Whiteness" and "Kristalnacht" together sets the readers alight, remember that in 2020 this was accompanied by actual arson.
If seeing 'Whiteness" makes you want to "Erase Whiteness" - congratulations, in belief at least you are 'Elect." > You're also probably White. Or Jewish White.
You are probably not 'White Hispanic."
The rest of you should understand we do not agree with being 'erased.'
You should also understand that quiet white people are not safe white people, if talking you are safer, if quiet there is a problem that talking will not resolve.
For those honest enough to consider the matter, I think you'll find the 'Erase Whiteness" absolutely meets the conditions in American Law making incitement to genocide a crime, I refer to 18 USC S.1091 C; Incitement to Genocide. > the only condition to be debated making this felonious: Is the incitement taking place in an environment where genocide is likely or possible? Incitement to Genocide an inchoate crime...like incitement to homicide it does not require the crime occur.
It's not ANTIRACISM, it's ERASE WHITENESS...and it's a White Thing.
This is White on White Civil War with not only religious overtones but a continuation of the Protestant English Civil Wars of the 17th century, without that pesky God to serve as conscience or brake.
It's not ANTIRACISM, it's ERASE WHITENESS...and it's a White Thing.
> The rest of you should understand we do not agree with being 'erased.'
Who precisely is "we" here? I vaguely see 3 options.
1. Someone who assumes their whiteness as part of their identity.
2. Someone resisting anti-whiteness and is thus defined by the enemy.
3. Someone who has assumed their white mantle as part of the vocabulary on this particular battlefield.
I'm struggling to imagine a person who is simultaneously proud of their race, and has reached a level psychological development to find this rhetoric graceless and distasteful. To such a person, this is nothing more than the same war on another front and has no distinctive qualities.
---
While this is certainly best framed under the lens of power (whose topology no one seems to understand well, yet), it sure as hell isn't anti-white. It strikes me as anti-universal, and anti-white to the extent that whites have adopted universality.
Part of a universal power structure is that it tries to make alliances with smaller tribes through patronage, and these political and psychological structures has appendages of power that can be exploited if not guarded.
We is defined as Whites. As in exactly we do not agree to be erased.
You are a master, or perhaps mistress of making the crystal clear obscure and obtuse, perhaps that's why you see vaguely. Benefits of a modern education.
My skin is white, it's not optional. The rest aren't my chosen 'options.'
We are all defined by our enemies once they march on us. One may deny it, one could argue for an autonomy of the mind, etc, etc...no one argued this better than Solzhenitsyn yet he remained a Zek and survived because Stalin died before he did.
Power is Power, I didn't touch on it's topology. I don't want to set off any more imaginary struggles.
You are of course not arguing with me here, so good luck with whoever you're arguing with, cheers.
Summary: It's not ANTIRACISM, it's ERASE WHITENESS...and it's a White Thing.
Your African Black Race is simply being exploited again Mr. McWhorter et al, this time for political purposes instead of merely economic.
The Death Warrants of the White Kulaks/MAGA 'Racists' are being written and served on your very skins.
Your magical Melanin Holy Black man skins sanctify the...genocide of non-elite and non-compliant Whites. Truly your dermis the new parchment.
You are all told it's because we're racist; the Truth is we're not 'complying.'
It's not ANTIRACISM, it's ERASE WHITENESS...and it's a White Thing. Black skins merely serve as the parchment the warrant for our genocide is written on.
Dr. McWhorter, in another post you sent out today I see this: "THIRD WORLD ANTIRACISM".....IS THAT SUPPOSED TO BE "THIRD WAVE ANTIRACISM"?
"But Third World Antiracism also outright harms black people in the name of its guiding impulses. Third World Antiracism insists that it is “racist” for black boys to be overrepresented among those suspended or expelled from schools for violence, which when translated into policy, is documented to have led to violence persisting in the schools and to have lowered students’ grades. Third World Antiracism insists that it is “racist” that black kids are underrepresented in New York City schools requiring high performance on a standardized test for admittance..."
This is a great observation about reasoning in general. The only way to avoid generalizing about an almost infinitely complex reality is to never note any observations at all. In this sense, all observations are "oversimplified"; the question is not whether one is simplifying, but whether the ways in which one is simplifying--the pattern being drawn out--helps us understand complexity in ways that are helpful.
Just a small thing - Would you number the emails or something? I get a lot of emails. It’s great btw very thought provoking and challenging. Thank you.
Thank you, John McWhorter. As many of us know, you write with such great and thought-provoking insights, and such clear, powerful, beautifully onrushing prose. I'm a person of the Left and terribly worried about where some of the Left is going with this. Our largest corporations have subscribed to this new religion, and are masterfully using it as a PR and branding device. We have to be wary of giving so much power over to monied interests that spout nostrums, while they underpay their workers, turn millions of employees into independent contractors in the gig economy (with no benefits or security), and outsource labor to the cheapest developing countries. My work is an an employee-side lawyer, and I'm stunned by the willingness of so many activists to tattle on supposedly errant colleagues for even differences of opinion, and hand them over to management.
The establishment/institutional/academic "left" began throwing working class people under the bus at least 50 years ago, and there is now an increasing divide between working class people no college (typically rural and/or religious) and coastal professionals with college degrees. That class/education divide now maps into a "woke" vs "non-woke" divide.
There is a LOT of commentary and research about that stuff and it is increasing. The problem is fairly well understood now vs 5 years ago.
Here is the content of one of my copy/paste files that is a simple explanation:
-----
As Pia Maleny* (Eric Weinstein's wife) said, corporations such as the tech oligarchs, have two basic choices:
1. cheap
Hire some crappy diversity consultants whose ideas have been repeatedly discredited/debunked (including by numerous African American scholars) to create feel good bs and brainwash workers into "woke" ideology (while hiring cheap foreign replacement workers that work 80 hours/week minimum), or
2. expensive
negotiate in good faith with radical labor union organizers over decent wages, benefits and working conditions FOR CITIZEN workers.
---
Thus, cultural leftism/neomarxism, PC, SJW, CRT, etc., is perfectly compatible with the system of oligarchy and the corporate-state.
As the "cultural left" becomes increasingly entrenched in power (and wealth and status), it will increasingly use the existing police state, military-industrial-complex and national security apparatus to marginalize heterodox, non-conforming views that it conflicts with.
Practically every day, I am astounded by how much I am surrounded by a propaganda machine. I’m the only one in my dept with a background in sociology of knowledge, so that is my analytical perspective. I’ve worked on grants that analyze the effects of aggression. And I see the moments when killer eyes emerge. What I observe are ppl who have had a sociopathic streak for years, which is now being reinforced. i think this is collective sociopathological behavior. I wonder what the social sciences and humanities will look like in ten years?
My guess, based on what I've seen trending since the 1980s, is further polarization and entrenchment into orthodox ("woke" totalitarian) and heterodox ("non-woke" classically liberal) camps.
There are a number of visible groups that overlap on the topic of what the near future might look like in various scenarios: IDW, Game-B, P2P Foundation and a number of individuals, such as David Chapman, an AI researcher and non-dogmatic Buddhist (below).
According to the following model of cultural evolution, we are in a transitional/regressive phase of social development, between modern rationalism (Kegan Stage 4) and the next stage: holistic/fluid (Stage 5).
Postmodernism is a dysfunctional, intermediary, disruptive stage (4.5) a giant pothole, on the road to a post-capitalist social system that is networked and planetary in its awareness.
The "old" stage 4 paradigm, especially the existing neoliberal corporate-state that developed from it, will increasingly suffer from an inability to satisfy emerging coherence needs. The only solution to disruption that is available to the old paradigm is to become increasingly totalitarian, but that just makes it weaken and crumble faster. Part of that will be the revival of old, bad ideas in new wrappings.
“ I'm stunned by the willingness of so many activists to tattle on supposedly errant colleagues for even differences of opinion, and hand them over to management” —indeed.
Leftists almost always engage in ferocious infighting and backstabbing. During the Spanish Civil War, Orwell documented the vicious, frequently fatal infighting. Same thing happened under Stalin, Mao, etc.
This is a tragic account of how (should it be called "structural"?) infighting looks in postmodern leftist activist communities:
Mr. Hill, I am a simple man who finds lots of big words a tangled mess. It's sort of like the extremely dense vegetation one finds in the Smoky Mountains called Dog Hobble. Bears can get through it, but it sure tangles the hunting dogs. You Bears go ahead and carry on without me. I'll just go sniff something.
If you think McWhorter's words are big, you should try reading original texts in Wokeness. Regarding the post-modern piece of Wokeness, Noam Chomsky said on several occasions he had no idea what they were talking about most of the time.
See Rousseau's comments on how he used confusing words to win literary prizes (presumably by manipulating subjective/emotive feelings).
Rousseau was a utopian romanticist, opposed to modern rationalism, as are most postmodern neomarxists (I'm using the phrase in the context of social conditions, not philosophy).
The use of confusing, if not incoherent, jargon seems to be intentional, to cover up the real goal which is to 1. weaken the existing form of civilization, and 2. seize power.
The "anti-racists" can't openly admit that their underlying agenda is to destroy western civilization, so they use a lot of impenetrable jargon.
Here is a guide to that jargon:
*** WARNING *** The more you read, the more you are likely to become disgusted at the bizarre nature of postmodern-neomarxist "thought"
The English language is exquisite when used in art form. When men attempt to outdo the other guy, I lose interest. Maybe this is Harsh Judgement on my part, but posturing is posturing. Give me two bright minds who are both addressing each other with respectful language and putting forth reasoned positions. Then I'm drawn to the flame.
Tbf Chomsky hasn't made the claim about wokeness in particular but about almost all continental philosophy from Derrida onwards, and probably quite a lot before. As much as I respect Chomsky, I don't necessarily think his views on all things are definitive especially when his view is 'I didn't understand it'.
Regarding Mr. McWhorters' detractors, Rule # 1 of White Supremacy (any tyranny will substitute) Always advocate for the bully and make the victim suffer, above all, make the victim hurt. When anyone reacts to a reasoned mind at work and meets the positions set forth with REACTIONS then they refuse to use the good brain given at birth. Instead reaction oriented people use an old, but essential cranial component, not intended for travel in the fast lane today. When confronted with leaping the unfathomable distance from reaction to reason, fear is at work. It's a truly negligible lean within the cranium. Please meet reason with reason. We can recognize reactions as they often pop up today.
Actually another thing. I'm not actually a CRT advocate. But I am not actually seeing how the two statements below are actually in logical contraduction.
"To ensure a representative number of black students and foster a diversity of views in classrooms, we must adjust what we mean by standards regarding grades and test scores.”
“Assuming a black student was admitted to a school via racial preferences is racist, and it’s also racist to expect them to represent the ‘diverse’ perspective (she illustrates this with indignant air quotes) in the classroom.”
If someone can explain it to me then great, but I'm not seeing what requires resolution here.
A school lowers it's admission standards in order to admit more black students. As a result, the school's number of black students increases. Everyone nods, yes, this is good, more diversity. Even though the increase in the number of black students is a direct result of the lowered standards, one must not assume that any black student was accepted because of the lowered standards. Therein is the contradiction. But, everyone nods again, agreeing not to assume. It seems perfectly clear to me.
That's not a contradiction though. Some of the black students would have made it in anyway. So you can't look at any individual black student and know they got it due to lower standards.
Nobody said "any individual." I think you are being a little too literal. It is the attitude: Oh yes, we must lower these standards; it is the right and good thing to do. But also: Oh no, it would be very bad and wrong to acknowledge that anyone was here because of the lowered standards.
I completely reject the 'too literal' criticism. Here's why; it's a thought experiment where a hypothetical 'CRT advocate' hears those words and nods to them both. It's not for that person to think what John McWhorter was getting at, because it's a hypothetical situation where people are saying those exact words. I showed you how to synthesise them. If McWhorter, you, or anyone else wants to propose an *improved* thought experiment...then have at it by all means.
Does "Assuming a black person was admitted because of Jupiter's orbit" have a different air to you?
Do you really take each instance as a hermetic instantiation without even the instinct to attach it to a larger cultural silhouette? Your rebuttal seems virtually entirely rhetorical unless I'm missing something obvious.
Akin to the comical position: "stereotyping is a moral wrong".
No they're not hermetic instantiations, the two statements have been synthesised. That's the point of the thought experiment that I wasn't somehow supposed to be able to do that easily. But yet I did. If you want to design a better thought experiment, please be my guest.
btw it's true that noone said 'individual', the 2nd statement 'Assuming a black student was admitted to a school...' - I mean that sounds like an individual to me, and I wanted to clearly differentiate between top-level strategies and individual treatment clearly. But it in no way a wild reading of the presented text, indeed it's the only reasonable meaning I can see.
I can actually understand and follow your line of thinking, but I interpret the original text differently. So clearly yours is not "the ONLY reasonable" interpretation.
Idea 1: Diversity has benefits (true) and black inclusion is important (also true).
Idea 2: Black people should not have to perform the benefits of diversity.
To artificially add diversity by lowering standards, we need the benefits to be greater or the whole system is worse. If we lower standards and the benefits of diversity go away as well, we just have a system where there are more black people and the whole system is worse.
I think most of us want a society where black people are respected to a degree that they can get in without lowering standards. Much of why I dislike CRT is the "bigotry of low expectations." Black people are competent and smart. A tweak in culture to cherish educational attainment might be enough to fix the under representation without subverting the education system. Examples: Educational attainment by West Indian black people and Nigerian Americans.
Re: "we need the benefits to be greater". The Woke do *not* agree with that. They would gladly accept, say, a higher number of COVID deaths if it was due to prioritizing BIPOC health care broadly (regardless of risk factor) over even high-risk white people. Narrowing the difference is more important than the benefit of all. For example, by prioritizing even very low risk Black people for vaccination, there may be no measurable decrease in deaths among the Black population, but the increase in death rate in whites would narrow the gap, reducing injustice.
THAT SAID, none of us should claim that "we need the benefits to be greater" for something to make sense. If we completely eliminated poverty in the U.S. but it reduced GDP by 2%, would we oppose it because of an aggregate loss? I wouldn't! (Measured properly, many would agree that in that scenario the benefits really are greater than the costs, because escaping poverty is so much more valuable that adding a few feet onto a yacht.
First we need to start measuring poverty accurately. The census does not count non-monetary benefits in their calculation of poverty rates. We do not know what the actual poverty level is at this time. So before we can determine if a 2% reduction is acceptable, we need to understand that someone listed as earning $10,000 a year may actually be getting $30,000 if you included non-cash benefits. I lived on that working 60 hours a week with a master's degree.
I would still say "we need the benefits to be greater" and change the logic. Past a certain point each dollar does not (seem to) make a person more happy/fulfilled/eudemia by as much as the previous dollar. As the wealth of someones increases, the good stuff goes up by less and less. So even if GDP went down 2% (which it probably wouldn't), if society is less miserable (in aggregate) due to the fact that there is less suffering/better allocation between humans than the benefits are greater than the costs. Mostly because the gains in wealth at a certain point are less than the previous gains in wealth. Then you aggregate that and it (theoretically) should make the benefits higher than the costs.
Yes, that was the point of my closing parenthetical. You've got to agree on what to measure, how to measure it, and how to weight it against other costs and benefits to determine whether there will be a net aggregate.
I'd add that even a net aggregate is not enough, because there are some tail costs that we cannot accept.
Very much agree with "there are some tail costs that we cannot accept." I also agree that it's hard to do the measuring, agreeing and weighting. There are even subsets of those that add even more complexity. Good analysis Tom.
Okay thank you for your response. I don't think that's a reasonable summation of the two statements. You can think everything in the thought experiment's first statement, and also think that it's wrong to assume that any individual black student ('a black student') would have needed help to be admitted. Also you can think that, on the whole, black inclusion will increase diversity and also think that it is wrong for any one individual black person to be somehow expected to represent diversity. These are not contradictory ideas and they do not 'translate into nothing whatsoever'.
Right, unfortunately, when every black person has a pass on their representing diversity then black people do not add diversity. So we've lowered standards so black people add diversity, which doesn't happen. That's the contradiction.
This is problematic because CRT advocates often do not understand the costs and benefits. No benefits but increased costs should always be viewed as bad regardless of subject. This is at least how (my) Econ-Brain works.
(This leads to a discussion on "real" diversity versus superficial diversity. Real is hard to describe here. The conversation starts to turn on vague terms. Yada-yada.)
"Right, unfortunately, when every black person has a pass on their representing diversity then black people do not add diversity. So we've lowered standards so black people add diversity, which doesn't happen. That's the contradiction."
No it isn't. Just because individuals have a pass on representing diversity, does not mean on the whole diversity won't be increased. Your argument is logically invalid.
Well that's where you get into what diversity is and that's what the parenthetical in my last statement is about.
I view what you wrote as much more logically invalid in that you're supposing that if every black person has the incentive to not do "diversity" that "diversity" will somehow happen as if by magic.
This is where your likely including superficial diversity (skin color being important). We should avoid skin color being important as much as possible because that's a major part of racism. (the major?)
Add: To get past race, we have to get past superficial diversity imo. The typical way to reduce racism without superficiality is through merit and that's where lowering standards becomes yet another contradiction. Another topic for another day. Also includes the bigotry of low expectations.
"I view what you wrote as much more logically invalid in that you're supposing that if every black person has the incentive to not do "diversity" that "diversity" will somehow happen as if by magic."
I'm sorry but you don't actually appear to know what 'logically invalid' means, and that's not great. I haven't said anything about incentives, or speculated how diversity will happen. My job here is merely to show that the two ideas are not contradictory, which I have done.
I think anyone being charitable knows what McWhorter is pointing out. That The Elect, as he calls them, have set up impossible standards where no critiques are ever allowed. He specifically points out the proper response to those who nod: "your job is to not question" and the panel speaker's response is precisely what would happen to someone who questioned the NPR quote, in any way. "Yes we said we need to disregard grades to get diverse voices in the classroom, but don't you ever think that a diverse voice got there without having the grades and don't you dare expect them to be diverse!". It's the spirit of their arguments. If you don't see it, I don't know what to tell you except that there is something discordant, something totally disingenuous in their arguments, even if it doesn't fit the example of an air-tight logical contradiction. Just to point out, JW doesn't reference "logical contradictions" in the post.
You're mostly talking very generally. He suggested a thought experiment involving the two statements above. What precisely is the issue with nodding your head at the two statements above. It's a pretty clear question and...if you don't know what to tell me....I dunno, maybe just don't reply instead of accusing me of being uncharitable?
I think reading your many contributions (now, *that's* charity!) on this post makes it largely unnecessary for anyone to accuse you of being uncharitable. You've practically been working for the prosecution, given the orgy of evidence you've provided.
And he specifically says, yes I have to generalize. So he picked an example that doesn't exactly translate. Social Justice and CRT obviously has a contradiction problem. Cultural appropriation is bad, but only if it's not a "white culture". BIPOC people can't be racist because power plus privilege, they can only be "prejudiced", but all white people are racist by default. White flight is bad, but whites integrating into nonwhite neighborhoods is gentrification. The united states is a white supremacy, and when Asian and Indian people are brought up, they are suddenly "white adjacent". Internalized racism, misogyny, homophobia, all of this crap, it all comes up when the obvious contradictory nature of these people's claims are brought up. This is just off the top of my head.
I easily see a contradiction in what JW is referring to. If you engage with his words in the spirit of binary logic (Allen), it's arguable that he didn't create a perfect 'clinch'. Maybe if you think in more of an analog probabilistic way, the contradiction will come into focus (although it seems you've already picked your track on the issue).
The policy first describe increases the probability that any given black person would be there due that policy, and ... could reasonably lead someone to consider that higher probability when making character judgements (we all think this way) ... but, any failure to hide that kind of thinking would be seen as racism.
Whether something is contradictory or not is binary, it's not really a sprit - it's simple normal use of logical reason. It seems to me that your pov is essentially postmodern, that this is about 'picking your track' on the issue. The problem is that McWhorter made a claim about this 'clinch' - that it would be 'distinctly awkward' to get out of. It isn't remotely awkward (see other posts) and it didn't risk me touching the 3rd rail of being called a racist. Getting out of the clinch was a cinch.
Actually, it now seems you need racism to get yourself 'into' the clinch in the first place. Yes I would call using the higher probability you describe to make judgements as racist, & no I don't think everybody thinks that way.
Because you aren't looking at these arguments in who they are used to manipulate, to trap anyone who critiques them, which is his entire point in his first post on The Elect. For instance:
1. When black people say you have
insulted them, apologize with
profound sincerity and guilt.
BUT …
Don’t put black people in a position where
you expect them to forgive you. They
have dealt with too much to be expected to.
Are these strict logical contradictions? No, they are however in how they are employed to manipulate anyone who pushes back against the worldview, the ideology.
Same here:
3. Silence about racism is violence.
BUT …
Elevate the voices of the oppressed over
your own.
On their own are they contradictory? No. You could speak out against racism and also elevate voices other than your own. It is HOW these arguments are used. There are plenty of examples, Claremont Mckenna off the top of my head with this exact tactic, this manipulative, and yes as it is employed, contradictory demand upon people just trying to do what they think is right, speaking out against racism and then being berated for "centering themselves" and their "whiteness.
It is how these arguments are employed, in a contradictory, you simply can't win, manner.
Nothing you are saying relates to the thought experiment. He claimed even trying to reconcile the two presented statements would be 'distinctly awkward' and 'would risk touching a third rail that could get you called racist.'
I think I've shown pretty clearly above that both these claims are wrong.
You want to have the high-level argument. But that's not the discussion I'm interested in. He has presented a thought experiment and a conclusion that is just patently rubbish. Now does that disprove anything else he ever said. No. But it is interesting how he can slip such terrible reasoning passed a supplicative non-criticial audience.
Alright fine, say he's wrong on this example, he picked a poor one, are you denying his larger point? That this ideology is inherently contradictory in nature? If so, yes, you are being uncharitable or just willfully blind.
I think my analysis above demonstrates that what can appear contradiction can often be revealed to be nuance. I don't think there's a philosophy that's ever managed not to be incoherent in some way so I'm not sure demonstrating it would necessarily be the win you think it is.
It means IDW-fanboys will often nod along to ideas from different 'heterodox thinkers' that are essentially contradictory, but that doesn't seem to mean they're in a religion apparently?
not really bc this thread is old and windy and JM isn't reading. And I'm writing a lot on other topics atm, so not a rabbithole I want to dive into. But the old Dave Rubin 'I agree with that' meme covers the notion reasonably well - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IS71EDAwX1o&ab_channel=FreedomToons
The wider point is that the IDW never claims to be a homogenous school of thought, indeed it takes pride in its diversity. That obviously means ideas contradict other ones. But how much time does it spend trying to work through these contradictions. Very little from what I can see.
They hardly need defining; they're everywhere. They're right here on this substack. They talk about reason and objectivity but they don't actually understand what those concepts mean. They produce highfallutin messages of praise for their IDW gods, which signify nothing. It reminds me of the praying contest I once saw in Istanbul.
That being said, yeah there are some pretty stupid people and you can find someone on the internet saying anything. But I think the idea that anyone thinks you have to back up everything you say with 50 quotes is in itself another strawman, and I hope it doesn't signal an intention to merely generalise. Because yeah, that would be pretty shoddy.
And yes, people do pretty much always apply higher standards to thinks they are negative disposed to, and lower standards to ideas they like. But that doesn't make those higher standards bad.
Here in the West I’ve been waiting for a moment to ask you to join us in the struggle...and your timely reframing of secular ideology (CRT) as a form of discourse analogous to traditional Abrahamic religion is welcomed.
Of course, as I’ve pointed out to my colleagues, the problem with CRT (as opposed to those “true” religions) is the lack of honesty about evil. When I pick up the Good Book (either New or Old) I know where I stand. With Luther and Augustine in tow, I am (and you and anyone else including my Woke brothers and sisters!) are under the gaze of concupiscence. We (all humanity) share a common lot and fate. G-d does not check one’s credentials and there is no get out of jail free (race or other) card.
CRT implies Concupiscence in only one direction; it therefore obfuscates its connection to justice. How can there be justice in a world where evil (as for Luther) shit happens?! And when MLK pursued Justice in Faith, did he not humble himself to the possibility that all hands and feet might need washing? King is instructive (and therefore MUST be removed from the Woke pantheon) because his language game demands we see sin for what it is: missing the mark.
At least in the gospels of Christ’s work, redemption is promised!
Here is a 5 questions sincerity test : who/what/where/when/how do advocates of the CRT-SJW alliance propose to redeem us, in the full sense, all of us?
If some, as Calvinist camp of CRT would have it, are predestined to sin (as racists who are spoiled by white privilege), then isn’t the “small degree of freedom” of action/choice we possess merely an illusion?
And if we are eternally damned (radically stained by “historical but lived” privilege) then what shall G-d do with us that these men demand He do?
CRT (which begs and borrows motifs from Exodus) has no foundation or direction: it lacks the basic tenets of any proper Abrahamic gospel.
Ask yourself when these folks speak: who is G-d in this picture? Who is evil? Why are they evil? What is to be done with those who are evil? Is it possible that some (the Esauian elect) among the evil can be reformed while others can not? And last but not least: is the (“white” or any other color coded) Devil likely to subsume his role in the world soon? If so, why? If not, why not?
Humans survived in ice-age nomadic cultures without a mythic-transcendent deity (and purity myths about evil, sin, suffering) for 100,000s of years.
From a social science perspective, purity myth religion seems to be a cultural-evolutionary adaptation to the social problems that resulted from Bronze Age collapse, 3,000+ years ago.
But mythic religion was marginalized by the Enlightenment, at least originally in "WEIRD"* NW Europe.
Without Enlightenment values, we can see mythic cultures by simply observing the middle east, which is mired in regressive tribalism.
It seems like Enlightenment values have reached an adaptive dead-end, just like mythic values did 800 years ago at the beginning of modernity.
While it seems that people need something like scientific truth AND a religious "good-vs-evil" moral system to exist in a functional civilization as we know it (Constitutional law, classical liberal values, democracy, capitalism), those paradigms are now fragile to disruption.
I am less persuaded by the sociology of religion (a transcendent critique of the Abrahamic texts at best, a mere re-descripton of religious Categories at a higher, more abstract level at worse) THAN our engagement with the topic of CRT as a secular religion that draws its juice from concepts of justice.
Claims within the moral universe of Abrahamic religions (neither Neolithic nor post modern) always imply Evil.
This troubled Neitzsche to no end. Among his other troubles, the never ending quest to tie the problem of good and evil to bad thinking and poor taste.
So back to the point.
What CRT promises (at least implicitly) is a trajectory of human progress that comes at no one’s expense and at everyone’s glory. All will be redeemed who stand with the woke!
For a similar version of the promise of justice demanded but denied, see After Evil (Columbia University Press, 2012) which describes Critical Human Rights discourse as another form of election without consequences—especially for its proponents.
CRT, to put it squarely, has no theory of justice (social or otherwise) in part because it can not locate the source of evil that generated our devilish attachments to power (white or otherwise).
CRT advocates waffle between retribution and redemption (as if lost between elements of the OT and NT). They see themselves as a righteous chosen people but they have no compact or covenant with the Diety. They seem lost in a wilderness of protestation and resentment—too often at the expense of analysis. That sense of entitlement and protestation comes directly out of the Abrahamic tradition (Cf Exodus).
So let’s not get lost in a quest for fire-like Anthropology of an imagined pre-Abrahamic past. Honestly I have no idea what people in the Neolithic or some other period we saying or doing with their gods. When I read Torah or the Gospels or the Quran I know what I am dealing with.
In the West, we are the sons and daughters of these testaments that are written and carry force—whether or not we “identify” as Jews, Christians, or Muslims. Our ethics is tied into actual texts—not speculations about the religious experiences of pre-historic men (fully irony intended). My point did not imply or require any “evolutionary” or “adaptive” projections about man’s quest for the shamanic seer or the primal Father or species-Man. It was more straightforward.
Given the premise of John’s book and his positioning of Election in CRT discourse, one ought to complete the thought which gives rise to election—election to what, by whom, for whose good, for what good?
In Abrahamic circles (assuming one reads Genesis), election is exactly about good and evil!
CRT advocates have a problem of evil: they hide in its Garden. They persist in adhering to persistence of evil without ever defining its source. Or its Overcoming. Or its Tragedy. Or its Farce. Etc.
Ask anyone: is racism anything else but evil?
(Who would seriously argue it’s merely a matter of “bad taste” except perhaps Nietzsche or the country club set in Connecticut?)
So again, I pose the question to the Elect: who is evil? How did they form, from what root? What is the root cause of this evil? And how does one atone for it? And can those who fail to atone be forgiven by an act of (secular) grace? Who has the power to reform the (soon to be woke) sinner? On what authority can a secular advocate (Woke speaker on Zoom) intercede to save our (racist) souls?
These I fear are not trivial questions. My guess is that most who resist the evil-white-supremacist-in-all-of-us trope live with an ever present sense of defeat. We seem predestined to a fate that gives us little hope in ever meeting the litmus test of CRT salvation. And we all know nobody wants to be a sinner without some hope of redemption.
Evil (sin, suffering, selfishness) in the western tradition is spiritual impurity.
As E.O. Wilson noted, an ant colony depends for its survival on the self-sacrifice of most of the members of the colony, for the common good. After a number of years of studying colony insects, Wilson realized that humans are similarly adapted to group survival, so "evil" in its most basic biological definition is a moral unwillingness to be unselfish. No "God" or complex religion is needed in primitive cultures. It is only in complex cultures that demand higher levels of complex hierarchical organizations that a transcendent God is needed to maintain social order (keep the slave and peasant classes from rebelling, etc).
As such, it seems natural to be generally sympathetic to religion, but while being realistic about its limitations (democracy and capitalism overcame those limits party because of genetic changes in the gene pool in NW Europe after the ban on cousin marriage and the break down of the political power of clans).
A purity myth is a construct. Constructs emerge in response to disruptions, as adaptations.
Ian McGilchrist's work* indicates that a lot of the most recent evolutionary adaptations to the human brain primarily function to INHIBIT more primitive functions so as to increase social cooperation and altruism. Some evolutionary theorists think that "bliss chemicals" evolved to relieve the stress of being able to imagine a future death.
There are probably other examples of neuro-chemical underpinnings to mythic-contemplative religion.
My guess is that Axial culture and contemplative spirituality are kinda like software upgrades that enhance and magnify such biologically determined "religious experience".
Modern rationalism was another "software upgrade", but it has hit its limits.
It seems like another software update is needed to met the demands of postmodern complexity. I'm not seeing how mythic religion by itself provides any raw material for that upgrade, on the contrary it implies a return to caste systems and rigid social hierarchies and the crushing of individual achievement.
re: Jussie Smollett and 800 other real or potential hate hoaxes
(the grievance-industrial-complex)
A catalog/database of false accusations of "racism" would actually be a good project, including for lawyers.*
Dr. Wilfred Reilly wrote a book** on hate crime and race hoaxes that might be a good starting point for those that demand a catalog of examples of PC and SJW narratives run amok.
Dr. Reilly is a lawyer and political science professor at a HBCU. He started with about 800 cases and was able to document over 100 examples of hate crime hoaxes that he thinks can be supported by evidence that would hold up in court.
In other words, over 100 air tight cases that illustrate that race hoaxes are "real", from a legal evidence perspective.
Off-topic, but but this is surprising to find in the NY Times: "Politicians and prominent intellectuals say social theories from the United States on race, gender and post-colonialism are a threat to French identity and the French republic."
"Emboldened by these comments, prominent intellectuals have banded together against what they regard as contamination by the out-of-control woke leftism of American campuses and its attendant cancel culture."
As you probably know, anti-americanism is a cottage industry in most of western europe, so that part is not surprising (blame game).
I have a Catalan (Spanish national) cousin-in-law who manages a media-tech company in London, and he complained about how French men are more resistant to "diversity" training than any other nationality. In general, he said that French men are more responsible for complaints about informal chauvinism ("macho" attitudes) than any other group.
I come from Austria, a German speaking country and having followed your writings (like "The Language Hoax") and some of your podcast entries on Lexicon Valley, I wanted for a long time ask you something which puzzles me a lot.
As I mention, I am German speaking and listening a lot to English and American voices and what is really disturbing to me how you all in the English speaking world use the word "race".
You may be aware that most common equivalent of "race" in German is the word "Rasse", which was used by the Nazis as a basic category to classify humans (and subhumans), but it is of course much older. Theories about "race" or "Rasse" have been discussed since Gobineau published his book on the issue in 1851 and the term has been used in various languages to create a hierarchy of humans all the way.
It was a topic of discussion in the 80s and 90s how the English term "race" differs from the German word "Rasse", regarding its depth and range of meanings, but listening to the ideological accounts of critical race theory, which I have a lot, gives the disturbing impression that difference between "Rasse" as the Nazis used it and how it is weaponized in the English speaking world to achieve "racial justice" is more or less irrelevant.
Both terms display its target meaning as something that is inherent to the nature of its carrier. While the Nazis understood "Rasse" as the category to describe Aryans, Jews and Slavs as distinct features of group identity, "race" also understands "black" and "white" as ontologically distinct phenomena, which in the case of "whiteness" has the gnostic tone of "oppressor", which cannot be undone by any means, while "black" is the gnostic counterpart.
How do you assess the strange meaning of "race" in this cultural era?
Additionally in the debates around Political Correctness, which happened in the 90s the main strategy of PC was to invert certain power relations. So, the contemporary overemphasis on black identity and black sensitivities seem to be a simple inversion of classical racist stereotypes, which of course are historically totally understandable, but pose a bigger problem.
The objective, in my mind should always be to abandon the systems which create these hierarchical and demeaning attributes, to get rid of racial stereotypes. But the main objective of nowadays anti-racism does not seem to get rid of the system of racial stereotypes, it seems to be a conscious attempt to make the inversion the dominant principle.
"Race" relations in the USA contain a remnant of that fear, and it is exploited by "anti-racists" to gain power over "whites".
The irrationalism and logical contradictions of "cultural marxists" (postmodern neomarxist deconstructive nihilists) are probably rooted in utopian romanticism going at least back to Rousseau, and maybe the counter-reformation and maybe further: the conflict between ancient greek naturalists vs middle eastern supernaturalists.
---
As you have stated, historically there were elaborate pseudo-scientific theories about the superiority of "whites", or more narrowly, Frankish-manorials (such as English who saw themselves superior to Irish-Celts, Slavs, Romans, etc).
In recent times the fields of cultural anthropology and evolutionary theory have generally tried to avoid any real examination of the issue of global human population genetics and cultural systems, but there are a few exceptions, and some controversial amateur work that hints at reality.
Most academics/researchers have tried to avoid controversy because of fear of being stigmatized as "racists".
Ironically, black scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr. uses DNA data in his popular TV show about the ancestry of celebrities. No one seems to notice the contradiction between the standard rhetoric about how "race is just a construct" and the use of modern genetic testing to identify geographically distinct gene pools of origins.
A meta theory is probably needed to resolve (to the extent possible) the controversy about differences between geographical bubbles of gene pools of origin and how they relate to cultural constructs and psycho-social stages of development.
Much is already happening in the United States to dilute by intermarriage what we think of as "race". Demographers and census takers are having an increasingly hard time coding it; this is a good thing. "Whiteness" has to be one of the sillier and more meaningless appellations of the century.
As Michael Ruse said, "...to simplify is to falsify, and yet not to simplify is to remain incoherent..."
Ethnic demagoguery is what this is! John, you are cited in one of my favorite books “Affirmative Action Around the World: An Empirical Study” by Thomas Sowell. It’s all a very human pattern in different multi-ethnic or caste-based societies as they advance!
If it were very simple, they will filter the arguments or statements of fact through a very complicated analysis; if you play that game you lose.
If it were complex they'd demand you come right out and state it simply; If you play their game you will lose.
If you corner them with facts, they will attack you.
If you attack them and corner them with ad hominem, facts, hypocrisy, contradictions and they sense they are losing the argument they may fall silent. The next day all is memory holed and you may begin again.
What you're actually encountering is double talk which is standard throughout Asia, the Middle East and the Levant. If you point out the double talk they'll fall silent. Then begin again.
There is no talking to these people, the only arguments that work are 'not academic'.
The Elect is simply the religion of Power, it justifies their interests. There will be no O'Brien being honest with Winston and it doesn't matter if they are honest with Winston, he remains a prisoner.
You are not yet a prisoner because they are gathering their strength.
The 'not they' keep talking and not gathering strength and that's their mistake.
As far as agreeing and bowing to Black people of course!
At worst they have to get the checkbook out, or invent some make-work job and the matter is settled. It's not as if they're actually going to listen, and certainly not action whatever the correct, or even contrarian black person says. Sorry, no. They'll smile and agree then go on as before. They're not really worried about losing votes, and not really all that interested in elections anymore. Every election they run will be victorious and you'll probably continue to see the vote margins in the 70~s %.
Look what they do to their own white people, look at what they've got planned and are already openly gloating about. What do you think they'll do to you? Well they're already doing it...meet the Spanish. Who aren't at all shamed at being White Supremacists, indeed far worse.
The good news is they don't yet control anything they don't control, indeed seem to have a terrible Reach::Grasp problem, for now. Nothing will remain beyond their grasp that is talked about or discussed, they only understand fear.
This is nothing new in human history. Just our turn.
Dear Sir/Mr. McWhorter,
Politics is Power.
Viewed through any other lens distorts indeed conceals the truth: Politics is Power.
In seeking truth academically, you Sir respectfully have missed the main point politically.
Politics is POWER.
In any political dispute, what powers are being contended over?
1] Saying Racist silences debate in Academia, and from Academia most of government, legal, media professions.
2] There are vast fortunes at stake, the middle class livelihood of many middling bureaucrats government, academic and corporate at stake. An honest man such as J/McH might say this is nonsense any 10 year old can see through....well offer the 10 year old the elect's Commissar Powers, income, cars, privileges and you'll see the 10 year old wise up and begin to denounce his or her parents.
3] The agenda of the Elect is the agenda of the Elite: Silence Dissent. Stifle any challenge to power. Disenfranchise voters, and deny them full access to the courts- "you have no standing".
More...hope you don't mind serial points, which are in no way a rebuttal.
It's not ANTIRACISM, it's ERASE WHITENESS...and it's a White Thing.
ERASE WHITENESS: Antiracism simply means Anti-White. It is in truth a White Religious sect, the descendants of the the Puritan Roundheads of Cromwell. This is a continuation of the English Civil War of a battle between competing Protestant Sects, the Elect whites mean to destroy once and for all the non-elect whites, something they've been at since the 1640s.
The Political agenda of the Elect is to silence and now 'erase' the non-elect WHITES.
It's a White Thing in Blackface. It doesn't really matter if you understand or not, but if I didn't understand a fight between others I'd get distance and stay neutral.
I refer to "Erase Whiteness" as the Battle Cry of the 2020 American Kristalnachts coast to coast, which resulted in kneeling by our ruling class.
By "Erase Whiteness" they mean Liquidation of the Kulaks, or at least that's how some of us Whites see it [I should mention I'm white].
If seeing "Erase Whiteness" and "Kristalnacht" together sets the readers alight, remember that in 2020 this was accompanied by actual arson.
If seeing 'Whiteness" makes you want to "Erase Whiteness" - congratulations, in belief at least you are 'Elect." > You're also probably White. Or Jewish White.
You are probably not 'White Hispanic."
The rest of you should understand we do not agree with being 'erased.'
You should also understand that quiet white people are not safe white people, if talking you are safer, if quiet there is a problem that talking will not resolve.
For those honest enough to consider the matter, I think you'll find the 'Erase Whiteness" absolutely meets the conditions in American Law making incitement to genocide a crime, I refer to 18 USC S.1091 C; Incitement to Genocide. > the only condition to be debated making this felonious: Is the incitement taking place in an environment where genocide is likely or possible? Incitement to Genocide an inchoate crime...like incitement to homicide it does not require the crime occur.
It's not ANTIRACISM, it's ERASE WHITENESS...and it's a White Thing.
This is White on White Civil War with not only religious overtones but a continuation of the Protestant English Civil Wars of the 17th century, without that pesky God to serve as conscience or brake.
It's not ANTIRACISM, it's ERASE WHITENESS...and it's a White Thing.
> The rest of you should understand we do not agree with being 'erased.'
Who precisely is "we" here? I vaguely see 3 options.
1. Someone who assumes their whiteness as part of their identity.
2. Someone resisting anti-whiteness and is thus defined by the enemy.
3. Someone who has assumed their white mantle as part of the vocabulary on this particular battlefield.
I'm struggling to imagine a person who is simultaneously proud of their race, and has reached a level psychological development to find this rhetoric graceless and distasteful. To such a person, this is nothing more than the same war on another front and has no distinctive qualities.
---
While this is certainly best framed under the lens of power (whose topology no one seems to understand well, yet), it sure as hell isn't anti-white. It strikes me as anti-universal, and anti-white to the extent that whites have adopted universality.
Part of a universal power structure is that it tries to make alliances with smaller tribes through patronage, and these political and psychological structures has appendages of power that can be exploited if not guarded.
We is defined as Whites. As in exactly we do not agree to be erased.
You are a master, or perhaps mistress of making the crystal clear obscure and obtuse, perhaps that's why you see vaguely. Benefits of a modern education.
My skin is white, it's not optional. The rest aren't my chosen 'options.'
We are all defined by our enemies once they march on us. One may deny it, one could argue for an autonomy of the mind, etc, etc...no one argued this better than Solzhenitsyn yet he remained a Zek and survived because Stalin died before he did.
Power is Power, I didn't touch on it's topology. I don't want to set off any more imaginary struggles.
You are of course not arguing with me here, so good luck with whoever you're arguing with, cheers.
Summary: It's not ANTIRACISM, it's ERASE WHITENESS...and it's a White Thing.
Your African Black Race is simply being exploited again Mr. McWhorter et al, this time for political purposes instead of merely economic.
The Death Warrants of the White Kulaks/MAGA 'Racists' are being written and served on your very skins.
Your magical Melanin Holy Black man skins sanctify the...genocide of non-elite and non-compliant Whites. Truly your dermis the new parchment.
You are all told it's because we're racist; the Truth is we're not 'complying.'
It's not ANTIRACISM, it's ERASE WHITENESS...and it's a White Thing. Black skins merely serve as the parchment the warrant for our genocide is written on.
Dr. McWhorter, in another post you sent out today I see this: "THIRD WORLD ANTIRACISM".....IS THAT SUPPOSED TO BE "THIRD WAVE ANTIRACISM"?
"But Third World Antiracism also outright harms black people in the name of its guiding impulses. Third World Antiracism insists that it is “racist” for black boys to be overrepresented among those suspended or expelled from schools for violence, which when translated into policy, is documented to have led to violence persisting in the schools and to have lowered students’ grades. Third World Antiracism insists that it is “racist” that black kids are underrepresented in New York City schools requiring high performance on a standardized test for admittance..."
This is a great observation about reasoning in general. The only way to avoid generalizing about an almost infinitely complex reality is to never note any observations at all. In this sense, all observations are "oversimplified"; the question is not whether one is simplifying, but whether the ways in which one is simplifying--the pattern being drawn out--helps us understand complexity in ways that are helpful.
'You can't get accused of using anecdotal evidence if you don't supply any evidence at all"
*ROLL TIDE*
Just a small thing - Would you number the emails or something? I get a lot of emails. It’s great btw very thought provoking and challenging. Thank you.
Thank you, John McWhorter. As many of us know, you write with such great and thought-provoking insights, and such clear, powerful, beautifully onrushing prose. I'm a person of the Left and terribly worried about where some of the Left is going with this. Our largest corporations have subscribed to this new religion, and are masterfully using it as a PR and branding device. We have to be wary of giving so much power over to monied interests that spout nostrums, while they underpay their workers, turn millions of employees into independent contractors in the gig economy (with no benefits or security), and outsource labor to the cheapest developing countries. My work is an an employee-side lawyer, and I'm stunned by the willingness of so many activists to tattle on supposedly errant colleagues for even differences of opinion, and hand them over to management.
The establishment/institutional/academic "left" began throwing working class people under the bus at least 50 years ago, and there is now an increasing divide between working class people no college (typically rural and/or religious) and coastal professionals with college degrees. That class/education divide now maps into a "woke" vs "non-woke" divide.
There is a LOT of commentary and research about that stuff and it is increasing. The problem is fairly well understood now vs 5 years ago.
Here is the content of one of my copy/paste files that is a simple explanation:
-----
As Pia Maleny* (Eric Weinstein's wife) said, corporations such as the tech oligarchs, have two basic choices:
1. cheap
Hire some crappy diversity consultants whose ideas have been repeatedly discredited/debunked (including by numerous African American scholars) to create feel good bs and brainwash workers into "woke" ideology (while hiring cheap foreign replacement workers that work 80 hours/week minimum), or
2. expensive
negotiate in good faith with radical labor union organizers over decent wages, benefits and working conditions FOR CITIZEN workers.
---
Thus, cultural leftism/neomarxism, PC, SJW, CRT, etc., is perfectly compatible with the system of oligarchy and the corporate-state.
As the "cultural left" becomes increasingly entrenched in power (and wealth and status), it will increasingly use the existing police state, military-industrial-complex and national security apparatus to marginalize heterodox, non-conforming views that it conflicts with.
---
* https://www.ineteconomics.org/research/experts/pmalaney
Practically every day, I am astounded by how much I am surrounded by a propaganda machine. I’m the only one in my dept with a background in sociology of knowledge, so that is my analytical perspective. I’ve worked on grants that analyze the effects of aggression. And I see the moments when killer eyes emerge. What I observe are ppl who have had a sociopathic streak for years, which is now being reinforced. i think this is collective sociopathological behavior. I wonder what the social sciences and humanities will look like in ten years?
My guess, based on what I've seen trending since the 1980s, is further polarization and entrenchment into orthodox ("woke" totalitarian) and heterodox ("non-woke" classically liberal) camps.
I wonder whether heterodox will survive?
There are a number of visible groups that overlap on the topic of what the near future might look like in various scenarios: IDW, Game-B, P2P Foundation and a number of individuals, such as David Chapman, an AI researcher and non-dogmatic Buddhist (below).
According to the following model of cultural evolution, we are in a transitional/regressive phase of social development, between modern rationalism (Kegan Stage 4) and the next stage: holistic/fluid (Stage 5).
Postmodernism is a dysfunctional, intermediary, disruptive stage (4.5) a giant pothole, on the road to a post-capitalist social system that is networked and planetary in its awareness.
The "old" stage 4 paradigm, especially the existing neoliberal corporate-state that developed from it, will increasingly suffer from an inability to satisfy emerging coherence needs. The only solution to disruption that is available to the old paradigm is to become increasingly totalitarian, but that just makes it weaken and crumble faster. Part of that will be the revival of old, bad ideas in new wrappings.
https://metarationality.com/stem-fluidity-bridge#landscape
Here is another map (from 1974!) of future development, oldest stages are at the top, newer/future stages at the bottom:
http://www.clarewgraves.com/theory_content/CG_FuturistTable.htm
The orange level is same as Kegan stage 4: modern rationalism
The green level is same as Kegan stage 4.5: postmodernism
The Yellow level is same as Kegan stage 5: holism (post-postmodern construct-aware meta-rationalism)
Rainbow Totalitarianism (see Keith Preston on "The Coming Dystopia?")
“ I'm stunned by the willingness of so many activists to tattle on supposedly errant colleagues for even differences of opinion, and hand them over to management” —indeed.
Leftists almost always engage in ferocious infighting and backstabbing. During the Spanish Civil War, Orwell documented the vicious, frequently fatal infighting. Same thing happened under Stalin, Mao, etc.
This is a tragic account of how (should it be called "structural"?) infighting looks in postmodern leftist activist communities:
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/exiting-vampire-castle/
Mr. Hill, I am a simple man who finds lots of big words a tangled mess. It's sort of like the extremely dense vegetation one finds in the Smoky Mountains called Dog Hobble. Bears can get through it, but it sure tangles the hunting dogs. You Bears go ahead and carry on without me. I'll just go sniff something.
If you think McWhorter's words are big, you should try reading original texts in Wokeness. Regarding the post-modern piece of Wokeness, Noam Chomsky said on several occasions he had no idea what they were talking about most of the time.
See Rousseau's comments on how he used confusing words to win literary prizes (presumably by manipulating subjective/emotive feelings).
Rousseau was a utopian romanticist, opposed to modern rationalism, as are most postmodern neomarxists (I'm using the phrase in the context of social conditions, not philosophy).
The use of confusing, if not incoherent, jargon seems to be intentional, to cover up the real goal which is to 1. weaken the existing form of civilization, and 2. seize power.
The "anti-racists" can't openly admit that their underlying agenda is to destroy western civilization, so they use a lot of impenetrable jargon.
Here is a guide to that jargon:
*** WARNING *** The more you read, the more you are likely to become disgusted at the bizarre nature of postmodern-neomarxist "thought"
https://newdiscourses.com/translations-from-the-wokish/
Too bad Lindsay's boorish, bro-ish Twitter clown act is working against many people recommending his New Discourses work.
R3tards are gonna r3tard
I see you appreciate that Lindsay Twitter style...
I see that you are lost in irrelevant bs
The English language is exquisite when used in art form. When men attempt to outdo the other guy, I lose interest. Maybe this is Harsh Judgement on my part, but posturing is posturing. Give me two bright minds who are both addressing each other with respectful language and putting forth reasoned positions. Then I'm drawn to the flame.
Tbf Chomsky hasn't made the claim about wokeness in particular but about almost all continental philosophy from Derrida onwards, and probably quite a lot before. As much as I respect Chomsky, I don't necessarily think his views on all things are definitive especially when his view is 'I didn't understand it'.
Regarding Mr. McWhorters' detractors, Rule # 1 of White Supremacy (any tyranny will substitute) Always advocate for the bully and make the victim suffer, above all, make the victim hurt. When anyone reacts to a reasoned mind at work and meets the positions set forth with REACTIONS then they refuse to use the good brain given at birth. Instead reaction oriented people use an old, but essential cranial component, not intended for travel in the fast lane today. When confronted with leaping the unfathomable distance from reaction to reason, fear is at work. It's a truly negligible lean within the cranium. Please meet reason with reason. We can recognize reactions as they often pop up today.
Maybe you can help resolve the issue of the thought experiment he presented as per my comment below?
Actually another thing. I'm not actually a CRT advocate. But I am not actually seeing how the two statements below are actually in logical contraduction.
"To ensure a representative number of black students and foster a diversity of views in classrooms, we must adjust what we mean by standards regarding grades and test scores.”
“Assuming a black student was admitted to a school via racial preferences is racist, and it’s also racist to expect them to represent the ‘diverse’ perspective (she illustrates this with indignant air quotes) in the classroom.”
If someone can explain it to me then great, but I'm not seeing what requires resolution here.
I'm as fed up with the wokeness as anyone. But I also thought this example was pretty poorly drawn.
A school lowers it's admission standards in order to admit more black students. As a result, the school's number of black students increases. Everyone nods, yes, this is good, more diversity. Even though the increase in the number of black students is a direct result of the lowered standards, one must not assume that any black student was accepted because of the lowered standards. Therein is the contradiction. But, everyone nods again, agreeing not to assume. It seems perfectly clear to me.
That's not a contradiction though. Some of the black students would have made it in anyway. So you can't look at any individual black student and know they got it due to lower standards.
No contradiction.
Nobody said "any individual." I think you are being a little too literal. It is the attitude: Oh yes, we must lower these standards; it is the right and good thing to do. But also: Oh no, it would be very bad and wrong to acknowledge that anyone was here because of the lowered standards.
I completely reject the 'too literal' criticism. Here's why; it's a thought experiment where a hypothetical 'CRT advocate' hears those words and nods to them both. It's not for that person to think what John McWhorter was getting at, because it's a hypothetical situation where people are saying those exact words. I showed you how to synthesise them. If McWhorter, you, or anyone else wants to propose an *improved* thought experiment...then have at it by all means.
Sorry. I am very happy to agree to disagree.
I'm not; you either come up with an improved wording or you are just wrong.
Does "Assuming a black person was admitted because of Jupiter's orbit" have a different air to you?
Do you really take each instance as a hermetic instantiation without even the instinct to attach it to a larger cultural silhouette? Your rebuttal seems virtually entirely rhetorical unless I'm missing something obvious.
Akin to the comical position: "stereotyping is a moral wrong".
No they're not hermetic instantiations, the two statements have been synthesised. That's the point of the thought experiment that I wasn't somehow supposed to be able to do that easily. But yet I did. If you want to design a better thought experiment, please be my guest.
btw it's true that noone said 'individual', the 2nd statement 'Assuming a black student was admitted to a school...' - I mean that sounds like an individual to me, and I wanted to clearly differentiate between top-level strategies and individual treatment clearly. But it in no way a wild reading of the presented text, indeed it's the only reasonable meaning I can see.
I can actually understand and follow your line of thinking, but I interpret the original text differently. So clearly yours is not "the ONLY reasonable" interpretation.
Idea 1: Diversity has benefits (true) and black inclusion is important (also true).
Idea 2: Black people should not have to perform the benefits of diversity.
To artificially add diversity by lowering standards, we need the benefits to be greater or the whole system is worse. If we lower standards and the benefits of diversity go away as well, we just have a system where there are more black people and the whole system is worse.
I think most of us want a society where black people are respected to a degree that they can get in without lowering standards. Much of why I dislike CRT is the "bigotry of low expectations." Black people are competent and smart. A tweak in culture to cherish educational attainment might be enough to fix the under representation without subverting the education system. Examples: Educational attainment by West Indian black people and Nigerian Americans.
Re: "we need the benefits to be greater". The Woke do *not* agree with that. They would gladly accept, say, a higher number of COVID deaths if it was due to prioritizing BIPOC health care broadly (regardless of risk factor) over even high-risk white people. Narrowing the difference is more important than the benefit of all. For example, by prioritizing even very low risk Black people for vaccination, there may be no measurable decrease in deaths among the Black population, but the increase in death rate in whites would narrow the gap, reducing injustice.
THAT SAID, none of us should claim that "we need the benefits to be greater" for something to make sense. If we completely eliminated poverty in the U.S. but it reduced GDP by 2%, would we oppose it because of an aggregate loss? I wouldn't! (Measured properly, many would agree that in that scenario the benefits really are greater than the costs, because escaping poverty is so much more valuable that adding a few feet onto a yacht.
First we need to start measuring poverty accurately. The census does not count non-monetary benefits in their calculation of poverty rates. We do not know what the actual poverty level is at this time. So before we can determine if a 2% reduction is acceptable, we need to understand that someone listed as earning $10,000 a year may actually be getting $30,000 if you included non-cash benefits. I lived on that working 60 hours a week with a master's degree.
I would still say "we need the benefits to be greater" and change the logic. Past a certain point each dollar does not (seem to) make a person more happy/fulfilled/eudemia by as much as the previous dollar. As the wealth of someones increases, the good stuff goes up by less and less. So even if GDP went down 2% (which it probably wouldn't), if society is less miserable (in aggregate) due to the fact that there is less suffering/better allocation between humans than the benefits are greater than the costs. Mostly because the gains in wealth at a certain point are less than the previous gains in wealth. Then you aggregate that and it (theoretically) should make the benefits higher than the costs.
Yes, that was the point of my closing parenthetical. You've got to agree on what to measure, how to measure it, and how to weight it against other costs and benefits to determine whether there will be a net aggregate.
I'd add that even a net aggregate is not enough, because there are some tail costs that we cannot accept.
Very much agree with "there are some tail costs that we cannot accept." I also agree that it's hard to do the measuring, agreeing and weighting. There are even subsets of those that add even more complexity. Good analysis Tom.
Okay thank you for your response. I don't think that's a reasonable summation of the two statements. You can think everything in the thought experiment's first statement, and also think that it's wrong to assume that any individual black student ('a black student') would have needed help to be admitted. Also you can think that, on the whole, black inclusion will increase diversity and also think that it is wrong for any one individual black person to be somehow expected to represent diversity. These are not contradictory ideas and they do not 'translate into nothing whatsoever'.
Thanks again for engaging.
Right, unfortunately, when every black person has a pass on their representing diversity then black people do not add diversity. So we've lowered standards so black people add diversity, which doesn't happen. That's the contradiction.
This is problematic because CRT advocates often do not understand the costs and benefits. No benefits but increased costs should always be viewed as bad regardless of subject. This is at least how (my) Econ-Brain works.
(This leads to a discussion on "real" diversity versus superficial diversity. Real is hard to describe here. The conversation starts to turn on vague terms. Yada-yada.)
"Right, unfortunately, when every black person has a pass on their representing diversity then black people do not add diversity. So we've lowered standards so black people add diversity, which doesn't happen. That's the contradiction."
No it isn't. Just because individuals have a pass on representing diversity, does not mean on the whole diversity won't be increased. Your argument is logically invalid.
Well that's where you get into what diversity is and that's what the parenthetical in my last statement is about.
I view what you wrote as much more logically invalid in that you're supposing that if every black person has the incentive to not do "diversity" that "diversity" will somehow happen as if by magic.
This is where your likely including superficial diversity (skin color being important). We should avoid skin color being important as much as possible because that's a major part of racism. (the major?)
Add: To get past race, we have to get past superficial diversity imo. The typical way to reduce racism without superficiality is through merit and that's where lowering standards becomes yet another contradiction. Another topic for another day. Also includes the bigotry of low expectations.
"I view what you wrote as much more logically invalid in that you're supposing that if every black person has the incentive to not do "diversity" that "diversity" will somehow happen as if by magic."
I'm sorry but you don't actually appear to know what 'logically invalid' means, and that's not great. I haven't said anything about incentives, or speculated how diversity will happen. My job here is merely to show that the two ideas are not contradictory, which I have done.
I think anyone being charitable knows what McWhorter is pointing out. That The Elect, as he calls them, have set up impossible standards where no critiques are ever allowed. He specifically points out the proper response to those who nod: "your job is to not question" and the panel speaker's response is precisely what would happen to someone who questioned the NPR quote, in any way. "Yes we said we need to disregard grades to get diverse voices in the classroom, but don't you ever think that a diverse voice got there without having the grades and don't you dare expect them to be diverse!". It's the spirit of their arguments. If you don't see it, I don't know what to tell you except that there is something discordant, something totally disingenuous in their arguments, even if it doesn't fit the example of an air-tight logical contradiction. Just to point out, JW doesn't reference "logical contradictions" in the post.
You're mostly talking very generally. He suggested a thought experiment involving the two statements above. What precisely is the issue with nodding your head at the two statements above. It's a pretty clear question and...if you don't know what to tell me....I dunno, maybe just don't reply instead of accusing me of being uncharitable?
I think reading your many contributions (now, *that's* charity!) on this post makes it largely unnecessary for anyone to accuse you of being uncharitable. You've practically been working for the prosecution, given the orgy of evidence you've provided.
And he specifically says, yes I have to generalize. So he picked an example that doesn't exactly translate. Social Justice and CRT obviously has a contradiction problem. Cultural appropriation is bad, but only if it's not a "white culture". BIPOC people can't be racist because power plus privilege, they can only be "prejudiced", but all white people are racist by default. White flight is bad, but whites integrating into nonwhite neighborhoods is gentrification. The united states is a white supremacy, and when Asian and Indian people are brought up, they are suddenly "white adjacent". Internalized racism, misogyny, homophobia, all of this crap, it all comes up when the obvious contradictory nature of these people's claims are brought up. This is just off the top of my head.
If CRT has a contradiction problem, why did he pick a thought experiment with no contradiction?
I easily see a contradiction in what JW is referring to. If you engage with his words in the spirit of binary logic (Allen), it's arguable that he didn't create a perfect 'clinch'. Maybe if you think in more of an analog probabilistic way, the contradiction will come into focus (although it seems you've already picked your track on the issue).
The policy first describe increases the probability that any given black person would be there due that policy, and ... could reasonably lead someone to consider that higher probability when making character judgements (we all think this way) ... but, any failure to hide that kind of thinking would be seen as racism.
Whether something is contradictory or not is binary, it's not really a sprit - it's simple normal use of logical reason. It seems to me that your pov is essentially postmodern, that this is about 'picking your track' on the issue. The problem is that McWhorter made a claim about this 'clinch' - that it would be 'distinctly awkward' to get out of. It isn't remotely awkward (see other posts) and it didn't risk me touching the 3rd rail of being called a racist. Getting out of the clinch was a cinch.
Actually, it now seems you need racism to get yourself 'into' the clinch in the first place. Yes I would call using the higher probability you describe to make judgements as racist, & no I don't think everybody thinks that way.
Because you aren't looking at these arguments in who they are used to manipulate, to trap anyone who critiques them, which is his entire point in his first post on The Elect. For instance:
1. When black people say you have
insulted them, apologize with
profound sincerity and guilt.
BUT …
Don’t put black people in a position where
you expect them to forgive you. They
have dealt with too much to be expected to.
Are these strict logical contradictions? No, they are however in how they are employed to manipulate anyone who pushes back against the worldview, the ideology.
Same here:
3. Silence about racism is violence.
BUT …
Elevate the voices of the oppressed over
your own.
On their own are they contradictory? No. You could speak out against racism and also elevate voices other than your own. It is HOW these arguments are used. There are plenty of examples, Claremont Mckenna off the top of my head with this exact tactic, this manipulative, and yes as it is employed, contradictory demand upon people just trying to do what they think is right, speaking out against racism and then being berated for "centering themselves" and their "whiteness.
It is how these arguments are employed, in a contradictory, you simply can't win, manner.
Nothing you are saying relates to the thought experiment. He claimed even trying to reconcile the two presented statements would be 'distinctly awkward' and 'would risk touching a third rail that could get you called racist.'
I think I've shown pretty clearly above that both these claims are wrong.
You want to have the high-level argument. But that's not the discussion I'm interested in. He has presented a thought experiment and a conclusion that is just patently rubbish. Now does that disprove anything else he ever said. No. But it is interesting how he can slip such terrible reasoning passed a supplicative non-criticial audience.
But hey maybe you do agree with his larger point, the post that this post is defending and are just saying he used a bad example.
I just told you, the whole lexicon of Theory, CRT, all of it, is to crush any questioning of it. You honestly don't see what he's getting at?
I'm not interested in your reduction of 'Theory, CRT, all of it'. I'm also not interested in what 'he's getting at'...only what he's actually said.
Alright fine, say he's wrong on this example, he picked a poor one, are you denying his larger point? That this ideology is inherently contradictory in nature? If so, yes, you are being uncharitable or just willfully blind.
I think my analysis above demonstrates that what can appear contradiction can often be revealed to be nuance. I don't think there's a philosophy that's ever managed not to be incoherent in some way so I'm not sure demonstrating it would necessarily be the win you think it is.
I think this article is pretty evasive, but I like it. Do you know why? Because I'm going to have all kinds of fun applying this to IDW-fanboys :-)
Are you using IDW with reference to Eric Weinstein's description of the "Intellectual Dark Web", which was originally a joke?
Are you aware that Weinstein's IDW contains a range of heterodox thinkers, including Jonathon Haidt, from left to right to "none of the above"?
Note I said IDW-fanboys.....;-)
which means what???
It means IDW-fanboys will often nod along to ideas from different 'heterodox thinkers' that are essentially contradictory, but that doesn't seem to mean they're in a religion apparently?
> ideas from different 'heterodox thinkers' that are essentially contradictory
Such as?
Here's a perfect opportunity for you to show JM how it's done.
not really bc this thread is old and windy and JM isn't reading. And I'm writing a lot on other topics atm, so not a rabbithole I want to dive into. But the old Dave Rubin 'I agree with that' meme covers the notion reasonably well - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IS71EDAwX1o&ab_channel=FreedomToons
The wider point is that the IDW never claims to be a homogenous school of thought, indeed it takes pride in its diversity. That obviously means ideas contradict other ones. But how much time does it spend trying to work through these contradictions. Very little from what I can see.
I meant, how do you specifically define "IDW-fanboys"?
Also, how do you define "T-R-0-L-L"?
Also, how do you define "brain damaged"?
Also, how do you define "psychologically dysfunctional"?
They hardly need defining; they're everywhere. They're right here on this substack. They talk about reason and objectivity but they don't actually understand what those concepts mean. They produce highfallutin messages of praise for their IDW gods, which signify nothing. It reminds me of the praying contest I once saw in Istanbul.
That being said, yeah there are some pretty stupid people and you can find someone on the internet saying anything. But I think the idea that anyone thinks you have to back up everything you say with 50 quotes is in itself another strawman, and I hope it doesn't signal an intention to merely generalise. Because yeah, that would be pretty shoddy.
And yes, people do pretty much always apply higher standards to thinks they are negative disposed to, and lower standards to ideas they like. But that doesn't make those higher standards bad.
>>That being said, yeah there are some pretty stupid people and you can find someone on the internet saying anything.<<
Oh, indeed? Do tell.
Open letter response to JM
John,
Here in the West I’ve been waiting for a moment to ask you to join us in the struggle...and your timely reframing of secular ideology (CRT) as a form of discourse analogous to traditional Abrahamic religion is welcomed.
Of course, as I’ve pointed out to my colleagues, the problem with CRT (as opposed to those “true” religions) is the lack of honesty about evil. When I pick up the Good Book (either New or Old) I know where I stand. With Luther and Augustine in tow, I am (and you and anyone else including my Woke brothers and sisters!) are under the gaze of concupiscence. We (all humanity) share a common lot and fate. G-d does not check one’s credentials and there is no get out of jail free (race or other) card.
CRT implies Concupiscence in only one direction; it therefore obfuscates its connection to justice. How can there be justice in a world where evil (as for Luther) shit happens?! And when MLK pursued Justice in Faith, did he not humble himself to the possibility that all hands and feet might need washing? King is instructive (and therefore MUST be removed from the Woke pantheon) because his language game demands we see sin for what it is: missing the mark.
At least in the gospels of Christ’s work, redemption is promised!
Here is a 5 questions sincerity test : who/what/where/when/how do advocates of the CRT-SJW alliance propose to redeem us, in the full sense, all of us?
If some, as Calvinist camp of CRT would have it, are predestined to sin (as racists who are spoiled by white privilege), then isn’t the “small degree of freedom” of action/choice we possess merely an illusion?
And if we are eternally damned (radically stained by “historical but lived” privilege) then what shall G-d do with us that these men demand He do?
CRT (which begs and borrows motifs from Exodus) has no foundation or direction: it lacks the basic tenets of any proper Abrahamic gospel.
Ask yourself when these folks speak: who is G-d in this picture? Who is evil? Why are they evil? What is to be done with those who are evil? Is it possible that some (the Esauian elect) among the evil can be reformed while others can not? And last but not least: is the (“white” or any other color coded) Devil likely to subsume his role in the world soon? If so, why? If not, why not?
Humans survived in ice-age nomadic cultures without a mythic-transcendent deity (and purity myths about evil, sin, suffering) for 100,000s of years.
From a social science perspective, purity myth religion seems to be a cultural-evolutionary adaptation to the social problems that resulted from Bronze Age collapse, 3,000+ years ago.
But mythic religion was marginalized by the Enlightenment, at least originally in "WEIRD"* NW Europe.
Without Enlightenment values, we can see mythic cultures by simply observing the middle east, which is mired in regressive tribalism.
It seems like Enlightenment values have reached an adaptive dead-end, just like mythic values did 800 years ago at the beginning of modernity.
While it seems that people need something like scientific truth AND a religious "good-vs-evil" moral system to exist in a functional civilization as we know it (Constitutional law, classical liberal values, democracy, capitalism), those paradigms are now fragile to disruption.
---
* https://youtu.be/dRUyfW0ECNg?t=2357
I am less persuaded by the sociology of religion (a transcendent critique of the Abrahamic texts at best, a mere re-descripton of religious Categories at a higher, more abstract level at worse) THAN our engagement with the topic of CRT as a secular religion that draws its juice from concepts of justice.
Claims within the moral universe of Abrahamic religions (neither Neolithic nor post modern) always imply Evil.
This troubled Neitzsche to no end. Among his other troubles, the never ending quest to tie the problem of good and evil to bad thinking and poor taste.
So back to the point.
What CRT promises (at least implicitly) is a trajectory of human progress that comes at no one’s expense and at everyone’s glory. All will be redeemed who stand with the woke!
For a similar version of the promise of justice demanded but denied, see After Evil (Columbia University Press, 2012) which describes Critical Human Rights discourse as another form of election without consequences—especially for its proponents.
CRT, to put it squarely, has no theory of justice (social or otherwise) in part because it can not locate the source of evil that generated our devilish attachments to power (white or otherwise).
CRT advocates waffle between retribution and redemption (as if lost between elements of the OT and NT). They see themselves as a righteous chosen people but they have no compact or covenant with the Diety. They seem lost in a wilderness of protestation and resentment—too often at the expense of analysis. That sense of entitlement and protestation comes directly out of the Abrahamic tradition (Cf Exodus).
So let’s not get lost in a quest for fire-like Anthropology of an imagined pre-Abrahamic past. Honestly I have no idea what people in the Neolithic or some other period we saying or doing with their gods. When I read Torah or the Gospels or the Quran I know what I am dealing with.
In the West, we are the sons and daughters of these testaments that are written and carry force—whether or not we “identify” as Jews, Christians, or Muslims. Our ethics is tied into actual texts—not speculations about the religious experiences of pre-historic men (fully irony intended). My point did not imply or require any “evolutionary” or “adaptive” projections about man’s quest for the shamanic seer or the primal Father or species-Man. It was more straightforward.
Given the premise of John’s book and his positioning of Election in CRT discourse, one ought to complete the thought which gives rise to election—election to what, by whom, for whose good, for what good?
In Abrahamic circles (assuming one reads Genesis), election is exactly about good and evil!
CRT advocates have a problem of evil: they hide in its Garden. They persist in adhering to persistence of evil without ever defining its source. Or its Overcoming. Or its Tragedy. Or its Farce. Etc.
Ask anyone: is racism anything else but evil?
(Who would seriously argue it’s merely a matter of “bad taste” except perhaps Nietzsche or the country club set in Connecticut?)
So again, I pose the question to the Elect: who is evil? How did they form, from what root? What is the root cause of this evil? And how does one atone for it? And can those who fail to atone be forgiven by an act of (secular) grace? Who has the power to reform the (soon to be woke) sinner? On what authority can a secular advocate (Woke speaker on Zoom) intercede to save our (racist) souls?
These I fear are not trivial questions. My guess is that most who resist the evil-white-supremacist-in-all-of-us trope live with an ever present sense of defeat. We seem predestined to a fate that gives us little hope in ever meeting the litmus test of CRT salvation. And we all know nobody wants to be a sinner without some hope of redemption.
Evil (sin, suffering, selfishness) in the western tradition is spiritual impurity.
As E.O. Wilson noted, an ant colony depends for its survival on the self-sacrifice of most of the members of the colony, for the common good. After a number of years of studying colony insects, Wilson realized that humans are similarly adapted to group survival, so "evil" in its most basic biological definition is a moral unwillingness to be unselfish. No "God" or complex religion is needed in primitive cultures. It is only in complex cultures that demand higher levels of complex hierarchical organizations that a transcendent God is needed to maintain social order (keep the slave and peasant classes from rebelling, etc).
As such, it seems natural to be generally sympathetic to religion, but while being realistic about its limitations (democracy and capitalism overcame those limits party because of genetic changes in the gene pool in NW Europe after the ban on cousin marriage and the break down of the political power of clans).
A purity myth is a construct. Constructs emerge in response to disruptions, as adaptations.
Ian McGilchrist's work* indicates that a lot of the most recent evolutionary adaptations to the human brain primarily function to INHIBIT more primitive functions so as to increase social cooperation and altruism. Some evolutionary theorists think that "bliss chemicals" evolved to relieve the stress of being able to imagine a future death.
There are probably other examples of neuro-chemical underpinnings to mythic-contemplative religion.
My guess is that Axial culture and contemplative spirituality are kinda like software upgrades that enhance and magnify such biologically determined "religious experience".
Modern rationalism was another "software upgrade", but it has hit its limits.
It seems like another software update is needed to met the demands of postmodern complexity. I'm not seeing how mythic religion by itself provides any raw material for that upgrade, on the contrary it implies a return to caste systems and rigid social hierarchies and the crushing of individual achievement.
-----
* Jordan Peterson and Ian McGilchrist
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ea4mEnsTv6Q
More McGilchrist, Rebel Wisdom:
part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fI1ngqwH5us
-
part2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uN0HKAJHHzA
The above YouTube is linked from:
https://weirdpeople.fas.harvard.edu/joseph-henrich
re: Jussie Smollett and 800 other real or potential hate hoaxes
(the grievance-industrial-complex)
A catalog/database of false accusations of "racism" would actually be a good project, including for lawyers.*
Dr. Wilfred Reilly wrote a book** on hate crime and race hoaxes that might be a good starting point for those that demand a catalog of examples of PC and SJW narratives run amok.
Dr. Reilly is a lawyer and political science professor at a HBCU. He started with about 800 cases and was able to document over 100 examples of hate crime hoaxes that he thinks can be supported by evidence that would hold up in court.
In other words, over 100 air tight cases that illustrate that race hoaxes are "real", from a legal evidence perspective.
* https://www.jamesgmartin.center/2019/10/the-totalitarian-impulse-in-the-title-ix-racket/
and:
https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-mark-crispin-miller-sue-for-libel
** https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/wilfred-reilly/hate-crime-hoaxes-why-they-happen/
Off-topic, but but this is surprising to find in the NY Times: "Politicians and prominent intellectuals say social theories from the United States on race, gender and post-colonialism are a threat to French identity and the French republic."
"Emboldened by these comments, prominent intellectuals have banded together against what they regard as contamination by the out-of-control woke leftism of American campuses and its attendant cancel culture."
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/09/world/europe/france-threat-american-universities.html
As you probably know, anti-americanism is a cottage industry in most of western europe, so that part is not surprising (blame game).
I have a Catalan (Spanish national) cousin-in-law who manages a media-tech company in London, and he complained about how French men are more resistant to "diversity" training than any other nationality. In general, he said that French men are more responsible for complaints about informal chauvinism ("macho" attitudes) than any other group.
Dear John McWorther!
I come from Austria, a German speaking country and having followed your writings (like "The Language Hoax") and some of your podcast entries on Lexicon Valley, I wanted for a long time ask you something which puzzles me a lot.
As I mention, I am German speaking and listening a lot to English and American voices and what is really disturbing to me how you all in the English speaking world use the word "race".
You may be aware that most common equivalent of "race" in German is the word "Rasse", which was used by the Nazis as a basic category to classify humans (and subhumans), but it is of course much older. Theories about "race" or "Rasse" have been discussed since Gobineau published his book on the issue in 1851 and the term has been used in various languages to create a hierarchy of humans all the way.
It was a topic of discussion in the 80s and 90s how the English term "race" differs from the German word "Rasse", regarding its depth and range of meanings, but listening to the ideological accounts of critical race theory, which I have a lot, gives the disturbing impression that difference between "Rasse" as the Nazis used it and how it is weaponized in the English speaking world to achieve "racial justice" is more or less irrelevant.
Both terms display its target meaning as something that is inherent to the nature of its carrier. While the Nazis understood "Rasse" as the category to describe Aryans, Jews and Slavs as distinct features of group identity, "race" also understands "black" and "white" as ontologically distinct phenomena, which in the case of "whiteness" has the gnostic tone of "oppressor", which cannot be undone by any means, while "black" is the gnostic counterpart.
How do you assess the strange meaning of "race" in this cultural era?
Additionally in the debates around Political Correctness, which happened in the 90s the main strategy of PC was to invert certain power relations. So, the contemporary overemphasis on black identity and black sensitivities seem to be a simple inversion of classical racist stereotypes, which of course are historically totally understandable, but pose a bigger problem.
The objective, in my mind should always be to abandon the systems which create these hierarchical and demeaning attributes, to get rid of racial stereotypes. But the main objective of nowadays anti-racism does not seem to get rid of the system of racial stereotypes, it seems to be a conscious attempt to make the inversion the dominant principle.
Do you think I am getting this completely wrong?
If I recall correctly, Germans never had an elaborate system of maritime slavery, much less "black" slavery?
Historically, slave owners feared slave rebellions.
"Race" relations in the USA contain a remnant of that fear, and it is exploited by "anti-racists" to gain power over "whites".
The irrationalism and logical contradictions of "cultural marxists" (postmodern neomarxist deconstructive nihilists) are probably rooted in utopian romanticism going at least back to Rousseau, and maybe the counter-reformation and maybe further: the conflict between ancient greek naturalists vs middle eastern supernaturalists.
---
As you have stated, historically there were elaborate pseudo-scientific theories about the superiority of "whites", or more narrowly, Frankish-manorials (such as English who saw themselves superior to Irish-Celts, Slavs, Romans, etc).
In recent times the fields of cultural anthropology and evolutionary theory have generally tried to avoid any real examination of the issue of global human population genetics and cultural systems, but there are a few exceptions, and some controversial amateur work that hints at reality.
Most academics/researchers have tried to avoid controversy because of fear of being stigmatized as "racists".
Ironically, black scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr. uses DNA data in his popular TV show about the ancestry of celebrities. No one seems to notice the contradiction between the standard rhetoric about how "race is just a construct" and the use of modern genetic testing to identify geographically distinct gene pools of origins.
A meta theory is probably needed to resolve (to the extent possible) the controversy about differences between geographical bubbles of gene pools of origin and how they relate to cultural constructs and psycho-social stages of development.
You might find this interesting:
https://amp.theatlantic.com/amp/article/615496/
I am in the middle of "The WEIRDest people", so I didn't want to read the spoilers.
But thanks a lot. I do find it interesting.
Thank you very much. That was a really interesting response.
Much is already happening in the United States to dilute by intermarriage what we think of as "race". Demographers and census takers are having an increasingly hard time coding it; this is a good thing. "Whiteness" has to be one of the sillier and more meaningless appellations of the century.