Good references... except that none of them have a chance of changing anyone's mind, no matter where they reside on the intellectual scale. Why? Because the essence of wokust egalitarianism is morality. When you attack a person's idealistic delusions such as equality, you're attacking their morality, and as such their identity. They will immediately reject your claims, by rejecting you for being an immoral excuse for humanity who threatens their existence, and who therefore must be proactively destroyed before you can do further harm.
Morality morality morality, it's all about morality. At the risk of going all Sun Tzu, if you wish to defeat your enemy, you must first thoroughly understand her.
That is exactly why you have to shift the discussion to Results. Are you happy with the results produced from spending trillions of dollars per year on social programs? If not, then why do you want more of the same?
Since their ideology cannot produce the Egalitarian results that they say they believe, they have no response.
Another method is to focus on their individual Actions. What have you done directly to help the Oppressed (and political activity does not count)? Then when they hesitate to reply, you as them “Why not? Don’t you care?” It also really helps if you can mention your own volunteer work.
If your approach is simply to attack their lack of results, then by inference you agree with their goals, and therefore their version of morality. But I don't agree with it, it's nothing but a false, fake, pseudomorality. Why? Because equality itself is a lie, and the pursuit of equality is evil. Until and unless that is brought home to the masses, in ways they can understand, you'll never defeat the woke left.
No. Saying that their ideology has failed to produce results despite 200 years of trying is not agreeing with their goals. It is pointing out that they are attempting to do the impossible.
Equality is not a lie. The term "lie" implies that the Woke does not know that inequality exists. They do know that, and are constantly telling us about that inequality.
Equality is a goal that cannot be achieved. If it cannot be achieved, it is irrelevant whether it is immoral or not.
It is like an ideology that has been claiming that we must go to Alpha Centuri for 200 years, but has never been able to achieve it. It is does not matter whether Alpha Centuri is better than Earth or not, because there is no way to get to Alpha Centuri.
Ugh. Equality is FALSE because it's a pristine concept of perfection floating around in people's heads, but cannot be achieved in reality. Yes, of course. But equality and equal outcomes is a goal that egalitarians purport to be commendable or good in some sense. What sense? A moral sense. Equality is a LIE because that underlying morality is false. Lying is immoral, if your morality contains such a tenet. Conversely, only morality can decree that lying is wrong. Otherwise, we have situation ethics, or subjective postmodernism declaring things "authentic" without any sense of objective Truth.
Your article approaches the issue from a utilitarian, technical standpoint. But that entirely misses my point. If someone believes that their idealistic goals are virtuous, then that is morality which becomes part of their identity. If you attack such ideas, you attack their identity, and you become an existential immoral threat to them. Because of a moral underpinning and a moral approach, equality will always be endorsed by the mindless masses. It makes each of them feel they are a good person, something to assuage their otherwise meager circumstances. Any fight against this without a moral context is doomed to failure.
My morality does not include equality as a virtue. My morality says it's a lie. Meanwhile wokism believes it is more moral than everyone else, and is on a jihad with reality to enforce its beliefs on everyone. It's a clash of moralities, essentially a religious war. But if you're too intellectually fastidious, if it's beneath your intellectual dignity to deal with religion and morality, then you've already lost.
Could you add a section for why academic experts don't believe in race? The best answer I got from the deniers is that "race" should be limited to describing populations that might split off into separate species. Thus they agree that there are population differences but they want to protect the biological taxonomy of race.
I know that the FAQs can and should be expanded, but I haven't had the time to think and write about some of the other more complex arguments out there.
I did see it, but I only skimmed it. I thought the best part of it was when he talked about how Newton would not've made it through the modern academic system.
(I kept reorganizing and editing the page sections, which changed the URL fragments. I don't think there will be any more changes, since the writing has drastically improved.)
I made a youtube video which is intended to do just that, present race realism to someone new to these ideas in an entertaining and engaging way that doesnt feel like reading a scientific paper or listening to a lecture. It's just under an hour long, you can have a watch here: https://youtu.be/GE_YHOvFpQ4
I am much less pessimistic than you because I think you underestimate how wokism can be self-defeating.
One of the reasons why BLM became somewhat out-of-fashion is the incredible incompetence and dishonesty of its leaders. It's so obvious that even liberal establishment couldn't ignore it. The disaster of KendiX's shiny new academic center is a good example of that. Eventually, people started to quietly move away from it.
We see the same thing in tech: in word, it's very woke, but to get a technical job, you need to pass the equivalent of a comp-sci exam, and eventually, they almost only hire white and Asian men. You just can't hire someone who is obviously less competent, even for diversity reasons.
In general, every time wokism is having some victory in terms of affirmative action, there is eventually some backlash, because getting rid of meritocracy has a cost, and people love to be verbally woke, but don't really want to bear the real world consequences.
In the same vein, I predict that in a few years, you will have some scandals in US medical schools because of unqualified AA admits, and that eventually, they will quietly curtail the worst excess of affirmative action there, and redirect the acceptable AA admits where they can't do too much harm.
I feel there is this life-cycle of the liberal / leftist where first they truly believe in systemic oppression / wokism, and then are confronted to the effect of AA at work / in health care / in the school of their children. And then, they quietly move away from it. Sure, they will keep paying lip service to the cause, but they will stop actively supporting it, and that's enough to maintain actual meritocracy. And deep down, they get skeptical. They still have a lot of sympathy for the poor minorities, but not that much faith in their abilities. There is a reason why leftist in academia are so hostile to research into genetic differences across groups: they are not exactly confident in their position. After all, it would be easy to show that intelligence polygenic scores between black and white are the same, if it was truly the case.
Does it mean the systemic oppression crowd is going to disappear? I don't think so, because there are plenty of people and institutions which are protected from the consequences of being woke. So sure, university students will keep being hysterically woke, Disney will produce a lot of woke stuff, and the social sciences and the humanities will keep being woke as well. But everywhere else, any woke offensive will eventually be followed by a quiet withdrawal.
To follow your analogy, people may go to the church and burn a witch or two to make the priests happy and because they somewhat believe it, but when the church requests start being too extravagant and contrary to common sense, they start grumbling, and quietly move away from it.
In the long run, the more the church is intrusive, the more it creates a backlash to its values, and eventually, you get the enlightenment.
But I do agree with you that to really end wokeness and all the discourse around systemic oppression, you need a serious and honest discussion about group differences. And as you said, this will probably happen because (1) those ideas are now mainstream in the far right and (2), and that's what's really important, you have serious academics like David Reich who say large group differences are possible (and who probably thinks much more in private). (2) is important because this is much more likely to convince mainstream people who would have doubted people like Lynn, who are sloppy and obviously prejudiced. In general, the research in behavioral genetics, and in human genetic history has made a lot of progress, and this is what will eventually change the tide.
I want to emphasize that this may happen much faster than you think.
Imagine some younger generation who are pissed off and worried by the worst excess of AA meeting the ideas of respectable and reasonable people like David Reich who are obviously nice and well intentioned but don't shy away from telling uncomfortable truth about the possible existence of group differences: that could easily lead to a large change in the ideological stance of new generations.
In any case, thank you for your article, and good luck with your legal battle.
I think medicine is a good industry to examine this.
Decades ago a lot of medicine was done in private practice. And a lot of the dollars being spent were private dollars. In such an environment, competence and incompetence show themselves quickly.
But medicine today has very little private practice. It's dominated by big hospitals and huge medical provider groups. Even individual doctors are just a cog in the machine of some big group.
And the dollars? It's a lot of Medicare/Medicaid/ACA money. And where it isn't its still insanely regulated employer group.
Medicine is just way way less free market than it used to be, and this is reflected in medicine moving further and further towards the left. When getting the bureaucracy to side with you is more important than healing people, you get a different kind of medical decision maker on top.
As to low performance, as long as all the big conglomerates perform poorly in the same statistical way it's fine. They aren't going to get penalized. It's a tragedy for the patients they fail but not a threat to the institutions.
This is what I think "institutionalized wokeness" means. It's all of our institutions performing worse equally but not being penalized for it. Yes, occasional scandals or ugly marxist struggle sessions will be suppressed, but the overall quality with just generally degrade and costs will skyrocket.
That makes a lot of sense. Indeed, reduction in competition favours ideological capture, since people are now insulated from the consequences.
However, even if this may explain waste under the form of useless DEI departments or programs, it still does not protect hospitals against malpractice from an AA admit to a reputable medical school. And this is where you can have massive scandals because consequences are both big and visible.
However, this will likely create more health inequalities: wealthy people, including liberal ones, will still be careful of receiving high quality care from competent doctors. But we can imagine hospitals deserving poor minorities areas being completely DEI controlled, because that's so aligned with the ideology of the local demographics (in the same way school districts in urban areas are often badly run).
To conclude, I do agree there will still be some DEI tax to pay anyway, but I am skeptical of a large-scale change. The only way I see this happen is if we have a large population change where, for instance, the share of African-American strongly increases. But this is not what we see in the US.
For my firstborn we went to a very posh UMC hospital. The OBGYN was a medical group that had one black doctor within it, which was assigned as our primary though they shared a lot of the burden.
My wife turned out to have a rare medical condition which would have caused a 50% chance of stillbirth in the third trimester and who knows what other health problems. She brought her conditions up with the black doctor but was ignored. She eventually went on the internet (because the pain was excruciating) and self diagnosed. Then brought it up to a white RN who spotted the problem and it was treated. I likely have a firstborn because of this.
I'm not sure if there had been a stillbirth there would have been any consequences. Each medical group has about the same number of incompetent black doctors, so I'm sure if you compared "best practices" the various institutions would have missed it in a statistically equal way.
America isn't getting more black but its getting more brown.
Really? You mean that you are more afraid of facing of the Woke than facing the Communists or National Socialists?
Please.
Name one time in human history when humanity was not facing multiple problems. The problems of the past always look much smaller in hindsight because today we know the solution that our ancestors invented.
Ultimately the Woke are based on mental disorders that have been in existence for hundreds of thousands of years. The Woke are just the latest manifestation of that problem. They never win in the long game.
You didn't read the Overpopulation FAQs (https://zerocontradictions.net/faqs/overpopulation). You don't understand the magnitude of the problems that we're facing today. Humanity's ability to solve past problems does not prove that it will solve future problems. You're not accounting for hindsight bias or the anthropic principle.
We don't live in the same world that our ancestors lived in. In the modern world, the greatest threat is ourselves.
If you believe that wokism is based on pre-existing mental disorders, then please defend your claim. I've written my explanation for why wokism exists: https://zerocontradictions.net/civilization/wokism
You edited your comment, so I'll respond to your edits:
> You mean that you are more afraid of facing of the Woke than facing the Communists or National Socialists?
These are different problems. Defeating the Nationalist Socialists was an easy problem because it was about fighting a war. Humanity has fought thousands of wars, so that was an easy problem to solve.
The Communists were also fought in wars, which is again, a similar problem to what humans have solved before. The Communists lost because they proposed an inefficient system.
Overpopulation is not a comparable problem to war, so you're making an equivocation fallacy here. There is no instance in human history where humans have ever managed to enforce population control on a society to prevent the society from starving and having to fight wars to survive. In the modern world, the only way we will solve overpopulation is if we impose population control on ourselves. We are running out of time, and we probably won't make it before it's too late.
Again, if you are truly serious and genuine about solving the problems that humanity is facing today, then you should read the Overpopulation FAQs (https://zerocontradictions.net/faqs/overpopulation). We can't solve the problems that we're facing if we don't understand them to begin with.
Stop changing the subject to over-population. It is not the topic of the article or my initial comment.
You are dodging my main point.
I am not the slightest bit interested in reading your thoughts on over-population at a time when fertility rates are crashing. The over-population theory was wrong 50 years ago, and it is even more wrong now.
I don't think most of your claims are warranted. It's not clear we have a dysgenic trend right now in the West, for instance. It rather seems that richer and more educated people have more children than poorer one.
In any case, you don't adress my answer that people value efficiency more that affirmative action.
My pessimism is rational, not extreme. Yes, my claims are warranted. Yes, the West does have rising dysgenics. Rising dysgenics is a natural consequence of having nearly all humans live to adulthood and removing traditional selectionary pressures from the genome: https://zerocontradictions.net/faqs/eugenics
> It rather seems that richer and more educated people have more children than poorer one.
But no, it's not true that richer and more educated people have more children than poorer people. It's well-documented that there is a negative correlation between wealth and fertility rates. This well-known knowledge is even used to justify Demographic Transition Theory: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_and_fertility
Yes, it's not sustainable for Western countries to have as much as debt as they do now. The national debts keep increasing, and there's no end in sight: https://zerocontradictions.net/#other-economics
> you don't address my answer that people value efficiency more that affirmative action.
I don't like the term "affirmative action". What's the "action"? And what is being "affirmed"? A better term to use is: "demographic quotas", since it describes what AA actually is.
You're right that demographic quotas do conflict with efficiency and the reality on racial differences. The outcomes of demographic quotas could cause some inefficiency and cognitive dissonance that might make woke people reevaluate DQs, but my prediction is that that would only cause wokists to settle for more limited DQs, instead of ending them entirely. I also don't think it will be enough to end wokism, and I've written an essay explaining why: https://zerocontradictions.net/civilization/wokism
Well, let me qualify my claim about wealth and fertility: in rich countries, richer and more educated people have (slightly) more children. So it's not obvious dysgenics is happening (sorry for not providing sources, I am too lazy).
It's true poorer countries have higher fertilities, but it tends to crash as they develop.
And overall, fertility is crashing worldwide, so I am not as concerned as you by overpopulation, even though I agree that a catastrophic event affecting food production could lead to a disaster (but again, that's a pretty unlikely scenario).
By contrast, there's a negative correlation between education and fertility.
> it's not obvious dysgenics is happening.
Yeah, I guess it's not obvious to most people, but that's only because they haven't seen the evidence, and they don't have the biological knowledge to understand that it is increasing. Most people probably can't even define "dysgenics", since most people haven't thought about it. Regardless, my point stands that there is clear evidence that dysgenics is occurring and increasing around the world: https://zerocontradictions.net/faqs/eugenics#evidence-of-increasing-dysgenics
Overpopulation depends on much more than the number of people:
1. The population is still increasing, just more slowly.
2. The death rate has decreased because more people are living longer than ever.
3. Increasing the world’s living standards would increase the world’s birth rates.
4. Newer technologies may prolong human lifespans even further, further increasing the population.
5. As the developing world transitions towards more developed, first-world lifestyles, that will put further strain on the world’s resources, even if the world population were to stay the same and not grow at all.
6. Once evolution finishes selecting for people who don’t use contraception, the world’s fertility levels will continue to rise ever more.
7. Overpopulation can happen instantly and unpredictably.
> but again, that's a pretty unlikely scenario
Overpopulation is not an unlikely scenario. The FAQs explain that it is inevitable, without either mass death or sufficiently low birth rates (population control).
In any case, I do like your point that the effects of demographic quotas may cause some people to re-evaluate wokism.
By contrast, there's a negative correlation between education and fertility.
> it's not obvious dysgenics is happening.
Yeah, I guess it's not obvious to most people, but that's only because they haven't seen the evidence, and they don't have the biological knowledge to understand that it is increasing. Most people probably can't even define "dysgenics", since most people haven't thought about it. Regardless, my point stands that there is clear evidence that dysgenics is occurring and increasing around the world: https://zerocontradictions.net/faqs/eugenics#evidence-of-increasing-dysgenics
Overpopulation depends on much more than the number of people:
1. The population is still increasing, just more slowly.
2. The death rate has decreased because more people are living longer than ever.
3. Increasing the world’s living standards would increase the world’s birth rates.
4. Newer technologies may prolong human lifespans even further, further increasing the population.
5. As the developing world transitions towards more developed, first-world lifestyles, that will put further strain on the world’s resources, even if the world population were to stay the same and not grow at all.
6. Once evolution finishes selecting for people who don’t use contraception, the world’s fertility levels will continue to rise ever more.
7. Overpopulation can happen instantly and unpredictably.
> but again, that's a pretty unlikely scenario
Overpopulation is not an unlikely scenario. The FAQs explain that it is inevitable, without either mass death or sufficiently low birth rates (population control).
In any case, I do like your point that the effects of demographic quotas may cause some people to re-evaluate wokism.
I did get your point about overpopulation not depending only on fertility (which is why I talked about possible disaster).
To be frank, it's a bit late in my country, I am still working, and I don't really have the time to engage in a debate with you, but I will definitely check your blog (already started, to be fair).
""In any case, I do like your point that the effects of demographic quotas may cause some people to re-evaluate wokism.
Love the detail. It’s not just political ideology imbalance in academia, it’s what that imbalance has published over 50 years. I find the greatest barrier to removing woke ideology (what I call Intelleftual), that also tracks with your 60s-90s timeline, is the sheer volume of academic literature in social justice ideology that did not exist 50yrs ago. It’s the new canon, building on itself, granted authority status by virtue of being written by phds. Creates a new default worldview.
Despite my best efforts in 1st year writing courses, the new generations I teach are immersed within it, norming it. Textbook and journal editors gatekeep article submissions as well as job postings (I’m applying to assistant professor positions in writing studies right now - diversity statements are on most postings and many require DEI research emphases).
Great piece. I noticed you mentioned The Economist's attempts to prove that we've reached peak woke. I just wanted to add that The Economist is part of the problem. You also mentioned the James Damore episode. I wonder whether you've come across this appalling screed (https://web.archive.org/web/20180520063602/https://www.economist.com/international/2017/08/19/the-e-mail-larry-page-should-have-written-to-james-damore) they published after the fact of his firing, thereby appearing to endorse it; piling on, instead of criticising, cancel culture. The Economist has never cared too much about social issues, but I would say they became woke after the current editor ("first woman editor") Zanny Minton Beddoes took over.
Nathan, te felicito por el artículo, como lector de Perú y en castellano. De acuerdo con el razonamiento de que las políticas DEI no están en declive, sino que ya estarían incrustadas en las nuevas generaciones. Algo que lo explique, está en las políticas educativas globales insertadas en los colegios, por ejemplo en los colegios de bachillerato internacional que han aumentando mucho en los países del "sur global".
Por lo que veo, comunismo de la raza es más peor en la Hispanoesfera, y la Lusoesfera a también, que en la Angloesfera. La noción quel resto del mundo es "less woke" que los gringos es una fantasía de los anglofónos derechistos. Hay excepciones, como Milei y Bukele, y esos gentes son muy más admitable que ellos homólogos en los EE.UU. o el R.U., y es una posibilidad fuerte ellos victorias cambien el rumbo. Pero esos excepciones son incluso menos números quen la Angloesfera, y en mí experiencia, los generaciones jóvenes son más woke que ellos progenitores. Incluso una mujer conozco para Cuba, quién todavía cree en políticas izquierdas. ¿No cree me? Leer uno de los artículos muchos woke en Wikipedia en inglés, como el articulo sobre raza y la inteligencia. Hay leer eso artículo en español. Te garantizo el artículo estará igual o peor que lo es en inglés.
El grano de verdad es otros pueblos del mundo son mucho patrioterista que los gringos, pero eso no reducido ellos preferencias por las policias wokistas. Principamente odian a las mujeres y homosexuales, porque los chudos anglofónos son retardos quién prefieren el odio de las figuras apropiadas al policias beneficias. La constitución de Malasia tiene acción afirmativa escrita en eso. Creen la sobrerreprsentación de los Chinos Malasia en una amenanza existencial a su nación, y prefieren un aumento de pobreza a contraste de una inegalidad de representación. El ejemplo de Malasia no es único. India y Sudáfrica son aún peores. Los Singapures son excepciones a la regla.
There's a certain percentage of the woke who are driven by a psychological need to be in a battle against oppression and injustice. For this fraction of the woke nothing will convince them of the wrongness of the equality hypothesis so long as wokeness is the prevailing ideology. For them only a more compelling cause will stop their commitment to wokeness. But there is a much larger portion of the woke who are not driven by this psychological need but rather are going along with it because they have unquestioningly accepted the equality hypothesis and, like Nathan says, are acting accordingly and are trying to correct what seems to them to be an injustice. It is this portion that we can convince. If we convince enough of them then the equality hypothesis, will be replaced with the default, commonsense view that groups differ and the people pushing the equality hypothesis will once again stand out as desperate and insecure people who are trying to usurp a position of superior status by claiming to be more caring and nicer than everyone who is not equally committed to the cause.
The American liberal classes—by which I mean our writers, journalists, artists, actors, professors, administrators etc—have such nice, safe and prosperous lives that throughout the illiberal upsurge of the past decade they have responded by hiding their heads in the sand and engaging in various forms of denial. (Anything else would have been too risky for their careers and 401(k)s).
Just a quick list of things that were never happening: no such thing as cancel culture; no such thing as a turn away from free speech on campus; no one was teaching CRT to kids; no one was teaching Queer Theory to kids; parents in the Florida Panhandle were the real drivers of "book banning" not the censorious scolds who gave us "sensitivity readers" "stay in your lane" "own voices" or the rewriting of Dr Seuss and Roald Dahl etc.
And now they've topped them all by wheeling out the greatest cope of all: Woke is peaking and on its way out—brought to you by The Economist, another corporate house organ meant to calm the nerves of anxious investors. This reminds me of a guy who's too afraid to go outside to confront the prowler on his lawn, so he just closes the blinds (and his eyes) and tells himself that the prowler must have run off.
Social Justice has settled in the same way an invasion settles after the invading army has wiped out its opposition, captured the capital and all the high ground, and only stirs to engage in a few clean-up operations. The Cultural Revolution has been a smashing success and now owns just about every cultural and political institution throughout the Anglosphere as well as almost every educated brain under age 30ish (as our host points out).
America slept while the Trojan Horse called Critical Theory was wheeled inside its gates. The time for fighting back was a generation ago, now's the time for secret bunkers, cabins in the woods, and samizdat.
Nathan, I recently read Christopher Boehm's 'Hierarchy in the Forest: The Evolution of Egalitarian Behavior' and found it insightful. Are you familiar with the book? I think it provides valuable context on the equality thesis and its evolutionary roots, which may offer a useful perspective for considering your argument.
Your main premise asserts that the equality thesis underpins support for wokism, and you argue that dismantling wokism would require dismantling the equality thesis itself. However, might it be more accurate to reframe the equality thesis as an anti-hierarchy thesis—a related but distinct concept? The left often views hierarchies with suspicion (sometimes hypocritically), as those with high status tend to wield greater power to dominate others. If power at the top of a hierarchy could be prudently regulated to prevent perceived harm to those at the bottom, the left, in theory, might be satisfied. Hierarchy handicapping could potentially facilitate the acceptance of differences among human groups, whether innate or otherwise.
Wokism follows from an empirical theory (the equality thesis) *and moral values*, including values related to equality that first manifested in the Pleistocene.
We already regulate the behavior of powerful people to prevent harm to those at the bottom (though you refer to "perceived harm," which may be a different concept). As long as people perceive differences in outcome among groups to be proof of "harm," I don't see how you can get leftists to accept large disparities.
Cofnas is very good at identifying the causes and logic of Wokeness, but the proposed solution - rally behind Trump/MAGA - leaves much to be desired.
First, there's the assumption throughout that Trump/MAGA champion free speech, in contrast to "cackling" Kamala. This idea is absurd. Trump openly fantasizes about locking up people who defy him. Just a few days ago, he said that critics of the judges he appointed who overturned Roe vs. Wade should go to jail. Vance has just stated that it is legitimate to ban flag burnings. (Trump of course has expressed similar sentiments). The idea that MAGA, one of the dumbest, most criminalized, and most authoritarian political movements in American history, are the principled free speech absolutists of their propaganda is incredible a priori, given that free speech is a high IQ value. But it happens to be directly refuted by their own words. There is no credibly consistent freedom of speech constituency in the US apart from libertarians. There is no such constituency in the UK, period.
Second, it is likewise amusing to think that Trump - a self-absorbed narcissist who has backstabbed near everyone whom he ever worked with, to the point that half his former Cabinet refuses to endorse him - will move anti-Wokeness forwards, as if he cares in the least about such issues. The far likelier scenario is that Wokeness will spike up again in response to the stupidity and legal nihilism that a second Trump administration will unleash, just as it did during the 2016-2020 period. Watching HBDists enthusiastically embrace MAGA in 2024 truly makes me appreciate Dubya's great wisdom as a philosopher: "Fool me twice - can't get fooled again."
Now in principle, I understand the logic of electing Trump to combat Wokeness; that was my logic for enthusiastically supporting him in 2016, to the point of marching around in a MAGA cap through the streets of Berkeley, and even tepidly supporting him again in 2020, against the background of BLM extremism. But to support him now in 2024 in light of everything we know about him, how he sullies any cause or vision he comes into contact with, strikes me as insane. And that is why I am endorsing Kamala in the swing states, and Chase Oliver everywhere else.
I don't see where you get that my "proposed solution [is to] rally behind Trump/MAGA," or that I think MAGA "are...principled free speech absolutists." My solution to wokism is an information campaign about group differences. With regard to Trump, I wrote:
"A Trump win would be better, but unless it’s combined with a hereditarian revolution, it won’t make a difference in the long run. Trump can reverse the Biden administration’s most noxious DEI policies, appoint conservative judges, and tighten the borders. But nothing he does will make liberals give up their conviction that the meaning of life is to wage jihad against the mystical forces of bigotry that lead to racial disparities. If anything, Trump winning the election will reinforce young and educated people’s identity as leftists and Democrats."
Trump would be *better* than Harris. I say that not because I have faith in his intelligence or noble character, but because he won't actively support the woke agenda in the same way as Harris, and he might create a more favorable legal environment that will buy us a few more years. Also, he isn't going to be running the government any more than Joe Biden. But his administration will include people like Chris Rufo, Ron DeSantis, and Stephen Miller who aren't narcissistic morons, and can help make real progress.
This is an excellent, if inadvertent, illustration of my point that the surest path to a new round of Woke histrionics is to elect Trump. Regarding these individuals: Chris Rufo recently engaged in blood libel against Haitians. DeSantis is an anti-abortion absolutist who banned artificial meat in Florida. I don't use the term lightly, but Miller comes off as an actual fascist. It's hard to think of a team more optimized to creep out normie zoomers and millennials - not even particularly Woke or progressive ones at that.
Bro they've spent eight years demonizing Trump and calling him Hitler and he's going to win. Everyone is tired of "Trump made us do it" as an excuse for woke bullshit. Elon isn't buying it. Bezos isn't buying it. The American public isn't buying it. You tried this shit in 2020 and everyone got a look at what things are like with Trump gone. They aren't fooled again.
You beat woke by beating woke, not surrendering.
Haiti is a dump. Florida is one of the fastest growing states in the union and DeSantis got 60% of the vote.
Where does the "you" come from? I said I supported Trump in 2016 and 2020, enthusiastically and tepidly, respectively. I wrote of BLM as a "negrolatry" religion at the height of BLM fever, under my own name. In all likelihood, I have done vastly more to combat Wokeness than an anon poster with an email for a handle.
Miami is nice enough (it votes Dem like all civilized places) but Florida is still a cultural and scientific backwater relative to the NE and California.
So you promote a little of this, and a little of that, and have tangled pseudo-intellectual explanations for all of it.... mmmmmm, sounds to me like you're just a troll, attempting, like trolls always do, to sow confusion in a venue you secretly despise and are dedicated to destroying.
Or maybe, unbeknownst to yourself, you've just been marinated in postmodernist nonsense. You can slide, glide, and elide over topics, morphing the definitions of words, adding or subtracting assertions pretending to be facts, merrily reframing and recontextualizing from one comment to the next in a situation ethics, contrarian stream of consciousness.
Anatoly has about as much experience with the chudosphere as anybody who posts here. The fact that said experience totally broke his faith in their ability to accomplish anything positive should serve as a warning to those of us in the HBD-pilled sect. The retard brigade are firmly in the drivers's seat, and there's no reason to believe they'll necessarily be easier to dislodge than it'll be to HBD-pill the leftoid élite.
That said, I doubt that'll happen with Kamala. For all the jokes about her ideological flexibility, that NYT profile made it clear that DEI is by far her most genuine belief. The question of who to vote for, at least for hereditarians, is thus based on whether one thinks handing the reins to a true-believer will be more damaging than to tie our movement to the very people who most of our current and future élites hate and despise, and see as their principle impediment to a better world. Both options will bring trouble for us ahead, and it's genuinely a tough call to pick the most endurable poison.
But hopefully you are not going to argue that voting Kamala or a democrat state governor is going to expand the « elite human capital » territory and usher a wave of technological progress right? That the causation is vote democrat—-> « civilized » place?
I think this is obviously false and could actually be settled via bet. I would be willing to bet maybe a few grand that commonly used measures of wokeness are below trend in 2028. Are you open to this?
Elon Musk saved Ukraine with Starlink when Russia hacked all their communications on day one, so you decided to go total globohomo faggot overnight.
Now Elon Musk is MAGA and hates Ukraine war. Bezos and the rest of Elite Human Capital won't even endorse Kamala, but you can't quite decide to do yet another 180. Maybe in eight days your attitude will change again.
Get a girl, have some kids, move to TX/FL. You'll have something to do beside flutter in the wind with the latest vibe.
I'm a little more optimistic about path 2 can play a role--that people will become less concerned about solving inequality, regardless of what they view as the source. No one cares about generational poverty among whites, which would imply that inequality as such is not the core motivation for woke ideology. The earlier efforts to address group inequality also took place in a context of society that had aspirations of cohesion, which is less true today. You could argue that well-meaning midcentury liberals of the center-right viewed people across class and racial boundaries as part of a single in-group of Americans.
But as trust and respect erodes across the political spectrum, there is less reason to care about the material well-being of people you do not view as part of your in-group. Wokism partially rests on the premise that once those redneck Christians are out of the way, Democrats will maintain total control as a coalition of liberal whites and virtually all minorities. But the demographic shifts underway that may propel Trump to victory suggest that such a coalition may not form. If some subset of minorities become right-coded, that spells the end of liberal sympathy for them.
I tend to be a little more cynical than you regarding this topic, though I think I'm close to your position today than before I started reading your work. I tend to think that the more significant motivation for wokism is less well-intentioned ignorance, and more self-interested rent-seeking by people who are wealthy enough to earn a college degree but not intelligent enough to put it to proper use. A few generations ago, these types would end up in the leadership of trade unions, but after de-industrialization they had to find a different grift
Bang on! “No one cares about generational poverty among whites…”
Wokeism is about power and status, not about equality. If it were actually about equality, ALL inequities would be “on the table”, which they aren’t.
DEI/Woke has become institutionalized (structural racIALism, if you will), which allows it to continue quietly, behind the scenes (where it’s less likely to be challenged, legally or socially). We’ve been subjected to a quiet revolution, and it’ll take some type of revolution to get out of this (if that’s even possible). Otherwise, we’re looking at Orwell’s prophecy of a boot stomping on a human face, forever.
No one cares about generational poverty among whites because whites are noticeably less poor and violent than blacks, red indians, and mestizos. Appalacia's pretty fucked up, but it's downright livable compared to O'Block or Fishkorn, let alone Kingston or Mogadishu.
As long as these gaps exist, they have to be addressed. The hereditarians are the only ones who have an answer that's actually right, and whose acceptance can hope to break the race-communist deathgrip on our society's right-of-the-Bell-Curve class.
Nathan, there will be no hope of HBD being anything other than an undercurrent among the right wing as long as academia STAUNCHLY refuses to approach the subject honestly. As Hanania says, HBD will never be accepted because “the left has a million more experts than you do”.
People like Rutherford and Sasha Gusev who ought to know better will always have the final say because of their credentials. The kinds of people who go into academia but ESPECIALLY the fields that deal with genetics and anthropology are firmly in the bag for wokism.
It’s not enough for Twitter anons to have endless, fruitless debates with Gusev types about GWAS or the heritability of IQ. These do nothing but confuse people. The only way forward is to infiltrate academia, especially the relevant fields, and advocate for these ideas.
The first thing Kirkegaard and Winegard should have done if they wanted to approach HBD seriously is get a formal education in those fields of study(genetics/anthro/evobiology). But they didn’t.
Nah. I live and work deep in the heart of Blue America, and in this subject area there is no comparison now to a few years ago. DEI and other woke concepts are now roughly as salient at ground level as a dozen other social/political topics. It's still on the list I guess but no more.
Nice to get my prior intuitions on this confirmed with data-led evidence. The only part where I depart is in the suggestion that a Trump win would be 'better'. My hunch is the opposite. The resulting hysteria would provide even more energy for the jihad, is my intuition here.
The president of Harvard had to resign because she protected free speech and a lot of right wing wokesters who otherwise pretend to be pro free speech suddenly wanted a safe zone where the poor Jewish students were protected from hateful speech, very funny .
Terrific post and with absolutely nothing to support it other than a pessimistic nature, this rings truer than claims that we have reached peak woke.
So which very short and preferably entertaining article/video/cartoon should I send to my educated but timid friend to tip him over into race realism?
There's an excellent academic paper, "Dodging Darwin," by Winegard et al.: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191886920301045
Very short article on censorship of the truth and arguments for race differences: https://thecritic.co.uk/my-debunked-views/
Re the problem with environmental/cultural theories: https://ncofnas.com/p/thomas-sowells-wishful-thinking-about
Charles Murray's book "Human Diversity" is great, but not short.
Good references... except that none of them have a chance of changing anyone's mind, no matter where they reside on the intellectual scale. Why? Because the essence of wokust egalitarianism is morality. When you attack a person's idealistic delusions such as equality, you're attacking their morality, and as such their identity. They will immediately reject your claims, by rejecting you for being an immoral excuse for humanity who threatens their existence, and who therefore must be proactively destroyed before you can do further harm.
Morality morality morality, it's all about morality. At the risk of going all Sun Tzu, if you wish to defeat your enemy, you must first thoroughly understand her.
That is exactly why you have to shift the discussion to Results. Are you happy with the results produced from spending trillions of dollars per year on social programs? If not, then why do you want more of the same?
Since their ideology cannot produce the Egalitarian results that they say they believe, they have no response.
Another method is to focus on their individual Actions. What have you done directly to help the Oppressed (and political activity does not count)? Then when they hesitate to reply, you as them “Why not? Don’t you care?” It also really helps if you can mention your own volunteer work.
They are left like deer in the headlights.
If your approach is simply to attack their lack of results, then by inference you agree with their goals, and therefore their version of morality. But I don't agree with it, it's nothing but a false, fake, pseudomorality. Why? Because equality itself is a lie, and the pursuit of equality is evil. Until and unless that is brought home to the masses, in ways they can understand, you'll never defeat the woke left.
No. Saying that their ideology has failed to produce results despite 200 years of trying is not agreeing with their goals. It is pointing out that they are attempting to do the impossible.
Equality is not a lie. The term "lie" implies that the Woke does not know that inequality exists. They do know that, and are constantly telling us about that inequality.
Equality is a goal that cannot be achieved. If it cannot be achieved, it is irrelevant whether it is immoral or not.
It is like an ideology that has been claiming that we must go to Alpha Centuri for 200 years, but has never been able to achieve it. It is does not matter whether Alpha Centuri is better than Earth or not, because there is no way to get to Alpha Centuri.
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/why-achieving-equality-is-an-impossible
Focus on Results. They have no counter-argument.
Ugh. Equality is FALSE because it's a pristine concept of perfection floating around in people's heads, but cannot be achieved in reality. Yes, of course. But equality and equal outcomes is a goal that egalitarians purport to be commendable or good in some sense. What sense? A moral sense. Equality is a LIE because that underlying morality is false. Lying is immoral, if your morality contains such a tenet. Conversely, only morality can decree that lying is wrong. Otherwise, we have situation ethics, or subjective postmodernism declaring things "authentic" without any sense of objective Truth.
Your article approaches the issue from a utilitarian, technical standpoint. But that entirely misses my point. If someone believes that their idealistic goals are virtuous, then that is morality which becomes part of their identity. If you attack such ideas, you attack their identity, and you become an existential immoral threat to them. Because of a moral underpinning and a moral approach, equality will always be endorsed by the mindless masses. It makes each of them feel they are a good person, something to assuage their otherwise meager circumstances. Any fight against this without a moral context is doomed to failure.
My morality does not include equality as a virtue. My morality says it's a lie. Meanwhile wokism believes it is more moral than everyone else, and is on a jihad with reality to enforce its beliefs on everyone. It's a clash of moralities, essentially a religious war. But if you're too intellectually fastidious, if it's beneath your intellectual dignity to deal with religion and morality, then you've already lost.
What you are describing is some of the woke. Really the most extreme of them. But not all or even most.
Shady shit.
That's great. I will now head off and read them. Thanks.
The Race FAQs are a great introduction: https://zerocontradictions.net/faqs/race
Could you add a section for why academic experts don't believe in race? The best answer I got from the deniers is that "race" should be limited to describing populations that might split off into separate species. Thus they agree that there are population differences but they want to protect the biological taxonomy of race.
Well, there is this section: https://zerocontradictions.net/faqs/race#academia. I mentioned that biologists are far less likely to deny race than anthropologists.
Blithering Genius also has an essay on why Academia can't be trusted with everything: https://thewaywardaxolotl.blogspot.com/2019/05/why-most-academic-research-is-fake.html. I also wrote a sequel to it: https://zerocontradictions.net/epistemology/academia-critique.
Beyond that, the reasons why academics don't believe in race are just tactical nihilism and bad faith. For example, I've debunked Lewontin's Fallacy here: https://zerocontradictions.net/faqs/race#lewontins-fallacy.
I've also addressed the problem with the genetic thresholds argument that you mentioned here: https://zerocontradictions.net/faqs/race#race-taxonomy
I know that the FAQs can and should be expanded, but I haven't had the time to think and write about some of the other more complex arguments out there.
Did you ever read AltHype's document on academia?
Whoops, the genetic thresholds argument is actually addressed here: https://zerocontradictions.net/faqs/race#taxa-classification
I did see it, but I only skimmed it. I thought the best part of it was when he talked about how Newton would not've made it through the modern academic system.
Final, Correct URL: https://zerocontradictions.net/faqs/race#too-similar-too-different
(I kept reorganizing and editing the page sections, which changed the URL fragments. I don't think there will be any more changes, since the writing has drastically improved.)
I made a youtube video which is intended to do just that, present race realism to someone new to these ideas in an entertaining and engaging way that doesnt feel like reading a scientific paper or listening to a lecture. It's just under an hour long, you can have a watch here: https://youtu.be/GE_YHOvFpQ4
Thanks. I'll give it a try.
I am much less pessimistic than you because I think you underestimate how wokism can be self-defeating.
One of the reasons why BLM became somewhat out-of-fashion is the incredible incompetence and dishonesty of its leaders. It's so obvious that even liberal establishment couldn't ignore it. The disaster of KendiX's shiny new academic center is a good example of that. Eventually, people started to quietly move away from it.
We see the same thing in tech: in word, it's very woke, but to get a technical job, you need to pass the equivalent of a comp-sci exam, and eventually, they almost only hire white and Asian men. You just can't hire someone who is obviously less competent, even for diversity reasons.
In general, every time wokism is having some victory in terms of affirmative action, there is eventually some backlash, because getting rid of meritocracy has a cost, and people love to be verbally woke, but don't really want to bear the real world consequences.
In the same vein, I predict that in a few years, you will have some scandals in US medical schools because of unqualified AA admits, and that eventually, they will quietly curtail the worst excess of affirmative action there, and redirect the acceptable AA admits where they can't do too much harm.
I feel there is this life-cycle of the liberal / leftist where first they truly believe in systemic oppression / wokism, and then are confronted to the effect of AA at work / in health care / in the school of their children. And then, they quietly move away from it. Sure, they will keep paying lip service to the cause, but they will stop actively supporting it, and that's enough to maintain actual meritocracy. And deep down, they get skeptical. They still have a lot of sympathy for the poor minorities, but not that much faith in their abilities. There is a reason why leftist in academia are so hostile to research into genetic differences across groups: they are not exactly confident in their position. After all, it would be easy to show that intelligence polygenic scores between black and white are the same, if it was truly the case.
Does it mean the systemic oppression crowd is going to disappear? I don't think so, because there are plenty of people and institutions which are protected from the consequences of being woke. So sure, university students will keep being hysterically woke, Disney will produce a lot of woke stuff, and the social sciences and the humanities will keep being woke as well. But everywhere else, any woke offensive will eventually be followed by a quiet withdrawal.
To follow your analogy, people may go to the church and burn a witch or two to make the priests happy and because they somewhat believe it, but when the church requests start being too extravagant and contrary to common sense, they start grumbling, and quietly move away from it.
In the long run, the more the church is intrusive, the more it creates a backlash to its values, and eventually, you get the enlightenment.
But I do agree with you that to really end wokeness and all the discourse around systemic oppression, you need a serious and honest discussion about group differences. And as you said, this will probably happen because (1) those ideas are now mainstream in the far right and (2), and that's what's really important, you have serious academics like David Reich who say large group differences are possible (and who probably thinks much more in private). (2) is important because this is much more likely to convince mainstream people who would have doubted people like Lynn, who are sloppy and obviously prejudiced. In general, the research in behavioral genetics, and in human genetic history has made a lot of progress, and this is what will eventually change the tide.
I want to emphasize that this may happen much faster than you think.
Imagine some younger generation who are pissed off and worried by the worst excess of AA meeting the ideas of respectable and reasonable people like David Reich who are obviously nice and well intentioned but don't shy away from telling uncomfortable truth about the possible existence of group differences: that could easily lead to a large change in the ideological stance of new generations.
In any case, thank you for your article, and good luck with your legal battle.
I think medicine is a good industry to examine this.
Decades ago a lot of medicine was done in private practice. And a lot of the dollars being spent were private dollars. In such an environment, competence and incompetence show themselves quickly.
But medicine today has very little private practice. It's dominated by big hospitals and huge medical provider groups. Even individual doctors are just a cog in the machine of some big group.
And the dollars? It's a lot of Medicare/Medicaid/ACA money. And where it isn't its still insanely regulated employer group.
Medicine is just way way less free market than it used to be, and this is reflected in medicine moving further and further towards the left. When getting the bureaucracy to side with you is more important than healing people, you get a different kind of medical decision maker on top.
As to low performance, as long as all the big conglomerates perform poorly in the same statistical way it's fine. They aren't going to get penalized. It's a tragedy for the patients they fail but not a threat to the institutions.
This is what I think "institutionalized wokeness" means. It's all of our institutions performing worse equally but not being penalized for it. Yes, occasional scandals or ugly marxist struggle sessions will be suppressed, but the overall quality with just generally degrade and costs will skyrocket.
That makes a lot of sense. Indeed, reduction in competition favours ideological capture, since people are now insulated from the consequences.
However, even if this may explain waste under the form of useless DEI departments or programs, it still does not protect hospitals against malpractice from an AA admit to a reputable medical school. And this is where you can have massive scandals because consequences are both big and visible.
However, this will likely create more health inequalities: wealthy people, including liberal ones, will still be careful of receiving high quality care from competent doctors. But we can imagine hospitals deserving poor minorities areas being completely DEI controlled, because that's so aligned with the ideology of the local demographics (in the same way school districts in urban areas are often badly run).
To conclude, I do agree there will still be some DEI tax to pay anyway, but I am skeptical of a large-scale change. The only way I see this happen is if we have a large population change where, for instance, the share of African-American strongly increases. But this is not what we see in the US.
I will give you an example from my own life.
For my firstborn we went to a very posh UMC hospital. The OBGYN was a medical group that had one black doctor within it, which was assigned as our primary though they shared a lot of the burden.
My wife turned out to have a rare medical condition which would have caused a 50% chance of stillbirth in the third trimester and who knows what other health problems. She brought her conditions up with the black doctor but was ignored. She eventually went on the internet (because the pain was excruciating) and self diagnosed. Then brought it up to a white RN who spotted the problem and it was treated. I likely have a firstborn because of this.
I'm not sure if there had been a stillbirth there would have been any consequences. Each medical group has about the same number of incompetent black doctors, so I'm sure if you compared "best practices" the various institutions would have missed it in a statistically equal way.
America isn't getting more black but its getting more brown.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z5DHQ8W9k0Uhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z5DHQ8W9k0U
Arghh that's indeed very concerning :((
Happy your wife and kid could be properly cared for eventually.
Well, eventually, this is all speculative, and we will probably discover in a few decades. Let's hope for the best.
At the current rate, it's likely that modern civilization will collapse and destroy itself by the end of the century. https://zerocontradictions.net/civilization/wokism#revolution-feasibility-response
That currently seems to be the most likely way how wokism will "end", and it will be very devastating.
No, the Communists and National Socialists were a much bigger threat and a much more competent and rational enemy. We will win!
I'm sorry, but that is naive. I know that optimism bias may seem appealing, but we probably won't win. I wrote an entire essay about it: https://zerocontradictions.net/civilization/wokism
I also wrote an essay about how overpopulation is likely to occur by the end of the century: https://zerocontradictions.net/faqs/overpopulation
Wokism is only one of many problems that we're facing right now.
Really? You mean that you are more afraid of facing of the Woke than facing the Communists or National Socialists?
Please.
Name one time in human history when humanity was not facing multiple problems. The problems of the past always look much smaller in hindsight because today we know the solution that our ancestors invented.
Ultimately the Woke are based on mental disorders that have been in existence for hundreds of thousands of years. The Woke are just the latest manifestation of that problem. They never win in the long game.
You didn't read the Overpopulation FAQs (https://zerocontradictions.net/faqs/overpopulation). You don't understand the magnitude of the problems that we're facing today. Humanity's ability to solve past problems does not prove that it will solve future problems. You're not accounting for hindsight bias or the anthropic principle.
We don't live in the same world that our ancestors lived in. In the modern world, the greatest threat is ourselves.
If you believe that wokism is based on pre-existing mental disorders, then please defend your claim. I've written my explanation for why wokism exists: https://zerocontradictions.net/civilization/wokism
Here are two articles related to my claim that Woke ideology is based on mental disorders. I plan to write more in the future:
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/where-does-ideology-come-from
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/radical-ideologies-feast-on-mental
I am not interested in discussing over-population.
You edited your comment, so I'll respond to your edits:
> You mean that you are more afraid of facing of the Woke than facing the Communists or National Socialists?
These are different problems. Defeating the Nationalist Socialists was an easy problem because it was about fighting a war. Humanity has fought thousands of wars, so that was an easy problem to solve.
The Communists were also fought in wars, which is again, a similar problem to what humans have solved before. The Communists lost because they proposed an inefficient system.
Overpopulation is not a comparable problem to war, so you're making an equivocation fallacy here. There is no instance in human history where humans have ever managed to enforce population control on a society to prevent the society from starving and having to fight wars to survive. In the modern world, the only way we will solve overpopulation is if we impose population control on ourselves. We are running out of time, and we probably won't make it before it's too late.
Again, if you are truly serious and genuine about solving the problems that humanity is facing today, then you should read the Overpopulation FAQs (https://zerocontradictions.net/faqs/overpopulation). We can't solve the problems that we're facing if we don't understand them to begin with.
Stop changing the subject to over-population. It is not the topic of the article or my initial comment.
You are dodging my main point.
I am not the slightest bit interested in reading your thoughts on over-population at a time when fertility rates are crashing. The over-population theory was wrong 50 years ago, and it is even more wrong now.
Your pessimism seems to be extreme :-o
I don't think most of your claims are warranted. It's not clear we have a dysgenic trend right now in the West, for instance. It rather seems that richer and more educated people have more children than poorer one.
In any case, you don't adress my answer that people value efficiency more that affirmative action.
My pessimism is rational, not extreme. Yes, my claims are warranted. Yes, the West does have rising dysgenics. Rising dysgenics is a natural consequence of having nearly all humans live to adulthood and removing traditional selectionary pressures from the genome: https://zerocontradictions.net/faqs/eugenics
> It rather seems that richer and more educated people have more children than poorer one.
Yes, increasing a person's wealth tends to increase their fertility rates: https://zerocontradictions.net/faqs/overpopulation#stats-more-wealth-more-children
But no, it's not true that richer and more educated people have more children than poorer people. It's well-documented that there is a negative correlation between wealth and fertility rates. This well-known knowledge is even used to justify Demographic Transition Theory: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_and_fertility
Yes, we can predict that overpopulation is likely to occur on Earth by the end of the century: https://zerocontradictions.net/faqs/overpopulation
Yes, the Great Replacement is real and worsening: https://zerocontradictions.net/faqs/race#great-replacement
Yes, it's not sustainable for Western countries to have as much as debt as they do now. The national debts keep increasing, and there's no end in sight: https://zerocontradictions.net/#other-economics
And Yes, another major real estate bubble and recession are likely to occur soon, if not within the next couple of decades. https://zerocontradictions.net/civilization/georgism-crash-course#boom-bust-cycle
> you don't address my answer that people value efficiency more that affirmative action.
I don't like the term "affirmative action". What's the "action"? And what is being "affirmed"? A better term to use is: "demographic quotas", since it describes what AA actually is.
You're right that demographic quotas do conflict with efficiency and the reality on racial differences. The outcomes of demographic quotas could cause some inefficiency and cognitive dissonance that might make woke people reevaluate DQs, but my prediction is that that would only cause wokists to settle for more limited DQs, instead of ending them entirely. I also don't think it will be enough to end wokism, and I've written an essay explaining why: https://zerocontradictions.net/civilization/wokism
Well, let me qualify my claim about wealth and fertility: in rich countries, richer and more educated people have (slightly) more children. So it's not obvious dysgenics is happening (sorry for not providing sources, I am too lazy).
It's true poorer countries have higher fertilities, but it tends to crash as they develop.
And overall, fertility is crashing worldwide, so I am not as concerned as you by overpopulation, even though I agree that a catastrophic event affecting food production could lead to a disaster (but again, that's a pretty unlikely scenario).
> In rich countries, richer and more educated people have (slightly) more children.
It's only correct that increasing wealth can increase fertility. https://zerocontradictions.net/faqs/overpopulation#stats-more-wealth-more-children
By contrast, there's a negative correlation between education and fertility.
> it's not obvious dysgenics is happening.
Yeah, I guess it's not obvious to most people, but that's only because they haven't seen the evidence, and they don't have the biological knowledge to understand that it is increasing. Most people probably can't even define "dysgenics", since most people haven't thought about it. Regardless, my point stands that there is clear evidence that dysgenics is occurring and increasing around the world: https://zerocontradictions.net/faqs/eugenics#evidence-of-increasing-dysgenics
> And overall, fertility is crashing worldwide
That's not a good reason to dismiss overpopulation concerns, and the Overpopulation FAQs explain why: https://zerocontradictions.net/faqs/overpopulation#declining-birth-rates
I'll paste it here for convenience:
Overpopulation depends on much more than the number of people:
1. The population is still increasing, just more slowly.
2. The death rate has decreased because more people are living longer than ever.
3. Increasing the world’s living standards would increase the world’s birth rates.
4. Newer technologies may prolong human lifespans even further, further increasing the population.
5. As the developing world transitions towards more developed, first-world lifestyles, that will put further strain on the world’s resources, even if the world population were to stay the same and not grow at all.
6. Once evolution finishes selecting for people who don’t use contraception, the world’s fertility levels will continue to rise ever more.
7. Overpopulation can happen instantly and unpredictably.
> but again, that's a pretty unlikely scenario
Overpopulation is not an unlikely scenario. The FAQs explain that it is inevitable, without either mass death or sufficiently low birth rates (population control).
In any case, I do like your point that the effects of demographic quotas may cause some people to re-evaluate wokism.
> In rich countries, richer and more educated people have (slightly) more children.
It's only correct that increasing wealth can increase fertility. https://zerocontradictions.net/faqs/overpopulation#stats-more-wealth-more-children
By contrast, there's a negative correlation between education and fertility.
> it's not obvious dysgenics is happening.
Yeah, I guess it's not obvious to most people, but that's only because they haven't seen the evidence, and they don't have the biological knowledge to understand that it is increasing. Most people probably can't even define "dysgenics", since most people haven't thought about it. Regardless, my point stands that there is clear evidence that dysgenics is occurring and increasing around the world: https://zerocontradictions.net/faqs/eugenics#evidence-of-increasing-dysgenics
> And overall, fertility is crashing worldwide
That's not a good reason to dismiss overpopulation concerns, and the Overpopulation FAQs explain why: https://zerocontradictions.net/faqs/overpopulation#declining-birth-rates
I'll paste it here for convenience:
Overpopulation depends on much more than the number of people:
1. The population is still increasing, just more slowly.
2. The death rate has decreased because more people are living longer than ever.
3. Increasing the world’s living standards would increase the world’s birth rates.
4. Newer technologies may prolong human lifespans even further, further increasing the population.
5. As the developing world transitions towards more developed, first-world lifestyles, that will put further strain on the world’s resources, even if the world population were to stay the same and not grow at all.
6. Once evolution finishes selecting for people who don’t use contraception, the world’s fertility levels will continue to rise ever more.
7. Overpopulation can happen instantly and unpredictably.
> but again, that's a pretty unlikely scenario
Overpopulation is not an unlikely scenario. The FAQs explain that it is inevitable, without either mass death or sufficiently low birth rates (population control).
In any case, I do like your point that the effects of demographic quotas may cause some people to re-evaluate wokism.
I did get your point about overpopulation not depending only on fertility (which is why I talked about possible disaster).
To be frank, it's a bit late in my country, I am still working, and I don't really have the time to engage in a debate with you, but I will definitely check your blog (already started, to be fair).
""In any case, I do like your point that the effects of demographic quotas may cause some people to re-evaluate wokism.
""
=> Thanks!
I must say, this comment of yours partially changed my predictions for the future. It partially inspired a few recently added sections of my page: https://zerocontradictions.net/civilization/wokism#response-woke-dystopia
Thank you once again for writing it.
Yes, the Woke will learn that reality always wins!
You couldn't be more wrong about tech hiring, I say this from years of firsts hand experience.
This was a great read, and I mostly agree with it, but I'm going to expand my response page to you nonetheless. https://zerocontradictions.net/civilization/wokism
Love the detail. It’s not just political ideology imbalance in academia, it’s what that imbalance has published over 50 years. I find the greatest barrier to removing woke ideology (what I call Intelleftual), that also tracks with your 60s-90s timeline, is the sheer volume of academic literature in social justice ideology that did not exist 50yrs ago. It’s the new canon, building on itself, granted authority status by virtue of being written by phds. Creates a new default worldview.
Despite my best efforts in 1st year writing courses, the new generations I teach are immersed within it, norming it. Textbook and journal editors gatekeep article submissions as well as job postings (I’m applying to assistant professor positions in writing studies right now - diversity statements are on most postings and many require DEI research emphases).
Excellent reading
Great piece. I noticed you mentioned The Economist's attempts to prove that we've reached peak woke. I just wanted to add that The Economist is part of the problem. You also mentioned the James Damore episode. I wonder whether you've come across this appalling screed (https://web.archive.org/web/20180520063602/https://www.economist.com/international/2017/08/19/the-e-mail-larry-page-should-have-written-to-james-damore) they published after the fact of his firing, thereby appearing to endorse it; piling on, instead of criticising, cancel culture. The Economist has never cared too much about social issues, but I would say they became woke after the current editor ("first woman editor") Zanny Minton Beddoes took over.
Nathan, te felicito por el artículo, como lector de Perú y en castellano. De acuerdo con el razonamiento de que las políticas DEI no están en declive, sino que ya estarían incrustadas en las nuevas generaciones. Algo que lo explique, está en las políticas educativas globales insertadas en los colegios, por ejemplo en los colegios de bachillerato internacional que han aumentando mucho en los países del "sur global".
Por lo que veo, comunismo de la raza es más peor en la Hispanoesfera, y la Lusoesfera a también, que en la Angloesfera. La noción quel resto del mundo es "less woke" que los gringos es una fantasía de los anglofónos derechistos. Hay excepciones, como Milei y Bukele, y esos gentes son muy más admitable que ellos homólogos en los EE.UU. o el R.U., y es una posibilidad fuerte ellos victorias cambien el rumbo. Pero esos excepciones son incluso menos números quen la Angloesfera, y en mí experiencia, los generaciones jóvenes son más woke que ellos progenitores. Incluso una mujer conozco para Cuba, quién todavía cree en políticas izquierdas. ¿No cree me? Leer uno de los artículos muchos woke en Wikipedia en inglés, como el articulo sobre raza y la inteligencia. Hay leer eso artículo en español. Te garantizo el artículo estará igual o peor que lo es en inglés.
El grano de verdad es otros pueblos del mundo son mucho patrioterista que los gringos, pero eso no reducido ellos preferencias por las policias wokistas. Principamente odian a las mujeres y homosexuales, porque los chudos anglofónos son retardos quién prefieren el odio de las figuras apropiadas al policias beneficias. La constitución de Malasia tiene acción afirmativa escrita en eso. Creen la sobrerreprsentación de los Chinos Malasia en una amenanza existencial a su nación, y prefieren un aumento de pobreza a contraste de una inegalidad de representación. El ejemplo de Malasia no es único. India y Sudáfrica son aún peores. Los Singapures son excepciones a la regla.
There's a certain percentage of the woke who are driven by a psychological need to be in a battle against oppression and injustice. For this fraction of the woke nothing will convince them of the wrongness of the equality hypothesis so long as wokeness is the prevailing ideology. For them only a more compelling cause will stop their commitment to wokeness. But there is a much larger portion of the woke who are not driven by this psychological need but rather are going along with it because they have unquestioningly accepted the equality hypothesis and, like Nathan says, are acting accordingly and are trying to correct what seems to them to be an injustice. It is this portion that we can convince. If we convince enough of them then the equality hypothesis, will be replaced with the default, commonsense view that groups differ and the people pushing the equality hypothesis will once again stand out as desperate and insecure people who are trying to usurp a position of superior status by claiming to be more caring and nicer than everyone who is not equally committed to the cause.
THANK YOU!
I really needed that blast of simple reality.
The American liberal classes—by which I mean our writers, journalists, artists, actors, professors, administrators etc—have such nice, safe and prosperous lives that throughout the illiberal upsurge of the past decade they have responded by hiding their heads in the sand and engaging in various forms of denial. (Anything else would have been too risky for their careers and 401(k)s).
Just a quick list of things that were never happening: no such thing as cancel culture; no such thing as a turn away from free speech on campus; no one was teaching CRT to kids; no one was teaching Queer Theory to kids; parents in the Florida Panhandle were the real drivers of "book banning" not the censorious scolds who gave us "sensitivity readers" "stay in your lane" "own voices" or the rewriting of Dr Seuss and Roald Dahl etc.
And now they've topped them all by wheeling out the greatest cope of all: Woke is peaking and on its way out—brought to you by The Economist, another corporate house organ meant to calm the nerves of anxious investors. This reminds me of a guy who's too afraid to go outside to confront the prowler on his lawn, so he just closes the blinds (and his eyes) and tells himself that the prowler must have run off.
Social Justice has settled in the same way an invasion settles after the invading army has wiped out its opposition, captured the capital and all the high ground, and only stirs to engage in a few clean-up operations. The Cultural Revolution has been a smashing success and now owns just about every cultural and political institution throughout the Anglosphere as well as almost every educated brain under age 30ish (as our host points out).
America slept while the Trojan Horse called Critical Theory was wheeled inside its gates. The time for fighting back was a generation ago, now's the time for secret bunkers, cabins in the woods, and samizdat.
Nathan, I recently read Christopher Boehm's 'Hierarchy in the Forest: The Evolution of Egalitarian Behavior' and found it insightful. Are you familiar with the book? I think it provides valuable context on the equality thesis and its evolutionary roots, which may offer a useful perspective for considering your argument.
Your main premise asserts that the equality thesis underpins support for wokism, and you argue that dismantling wokism would require dismantling the equality thesis itself. However, might it be more accurate to reframe the equality thesis as an anti-hierarchy thesis—a related but distinct concept? The left often views hierarchies with suspicion (sometimes hypocritically), as those with high status tend to wield greater power to dominate others. If power at the top of a hierarchy could be prudently regulated to prevent perceived harm to those at the bottom, the left, in theory, might be satisfied. Hierarchy handicapping could potentially facilitate the acceptance of differences among human groups, whether innate or otherwise.
I've used Boehm's thesis to help explain the rise of liberalism: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11098-019-01365-2
Wokism follows from an empirical theory (the equality thesis) *and moral values*, including values related to equality that first manifested in the Pleistocene.
We already regulate the behavior of powerful people to prevent harm to those at the bottom (though you refer to "perceived harm," which may be a different concept). As long as people perceive differences in outcome among groups to be proof of "harm," I don't see how you can get leftists to accept large disparities.
Cofnas is very good at identifying the causes and logic of Wokeness, but the proposed solution - rally behind Trump/MAGA - leaves much to be desired.
First, there's the assumption throughout that Trump/MAGA champion free speech, in contrast to "cackling" Kamala. This idea is absurd. Trump openly fantasizes about locking up people who defy him. Just a few days ago, he said that critics of the judges he appointed who overturned Roe vs. Wade should go to jail. Vance has just stated that it is legitimate to ban flag burnings. (Trump of course has expressed similar sentiments). The idea that MAGA, one of the dumbest, most criminalized, and most authoritarian political movements in American history, are the principled free speech absolutists of their propaganda is incredible a priori, given that free speech is a high IQ value. But it happens to be directly refuted by their own words. There is no credibly consistent freedom of speech constituency in the US apart from libertarians. There is no such constituency in the UK, period.
Second, it is likewise amusing to think that Trump - a self-absorbed narcissist who has backstabbed near everyone whom he ever worked with, to the point that half his former Cabinet refuses to endorse him - will move anti-Wokeness forwards, as if he cares in the least about such issues. The far likelier scenario is that Wokeness will spike up again in response to the stupidity and legal nihilism that a second Trump administration will unleash, just as it did during the 2016-2020 period. Watching HBDists enthusiastically embrace MAGA in 2024 truly makes me appreciate Dubya's great wisdom as a philosopher: "Fool me twice - can't get fooled again."
Now in principle, I understand the logic of electing Trump to combat Wokeness; that was my logic for enthusiastically supporting him in 2016, to the point of marching around in a MAGA cap through the streets of Berkeley, and even tepidly supporting him again in 2020, against the background of BLM extremism. But to support him now in 2024 in light of everything we know about him, how he sullies any cause or vision he comes into contact with, strikes me as insane. And that is why I am endorsing Kamala in the swing states, and Chase Oliver everywhere else.
I don't see where you get that my "proposed solution [is to] rally behind Trump/MAGA," or that I think MAGA "are...principled free speech absolutists." My solution to wokism is an information campaign about group differences. With regard to Trump, I wrote:
"A Trump win would be better, but unless it’s combined with a hereditarian revolution, it won’t make a difference in the long run. Trump can reverse the Biden administration’s most noxious DEI policies, appoint conservative judges, and tighten the borders. But nothing he does will make liberals give up their conviction that the meaning of life is to wage jihad against the mystical forces of bigotry that lead to racial disparities. If anything, Trump winning the election will reinforce young and educated people’s identity as leftists and Democrats."
Trump would be *better* than Harris. I say that not because I have faith in his intelligence or noble character, but because he won't actively support the woke agenda in the same way as Harris, and he might create a more favorable legal environment that will buy us a few more years. Also, he isn't going to be running the government any more than Joe Biden. But his administration will include people like Chris Rufo, Ron DeSantis, and Stephen Miller who aren't narcissistic morons, and can help make real progress.
This is an excellent, if inadvertent, illustration of my point that the surest path to a new round of Woke histrionics is to elect Trump. Regarding these individuals: Chris Rufo recently engaged in blood libel against Haitians. DeSantis is an anti-abortion absolutist who banned artificial meat in Florida. I don't use the term lightly, but Miller comes off as an actual fascist. It's hard to think of a team more optimized to creep out normie zoomers and millennials - not even particularly Woke or progressive ones at that.
Bro they've spent eight years demonizing Trump and calling him Hitler and he's going to win. Everyone is tired of "Trump made us do it" as an excuse for woke bullshit. Elon isn't buying it. Bezos isn't buying it. The American public isn't buying it. You tried this shit in 2020 and everyone got a look at what things are like with Trump gone. They aren't fooled again.
You beat woke by beating woke, not surrendering.
Haiti is a dump. Florida is one of the fastest growing states in the union and DeSantis got 60% of the vote.
Where does the "you" come from? I said I supported Trump in 2016 and 2020, enthusiastically and tepidly, respectively. I wrote of BLM as a "negrolatry" religion at the height of BLM fever, under my own name. In all likelihood, I have done vastly more to combat Wokeness than an anon poster with an email for a handle.
Miami is nice enough (it votes Dem like all civilized places) but Florida is still a cultural and scientific backwater relative to the NE and California.
So you promote a little of this, and a little of that, and have tangled pseudo-intellectual explanations for all of it.... mmmmmm, sounds to me like you're just a troll, attempting, like trolls always do, to sow confusion in a venue you secretly despise and are dedicated to destroying.
Or maybe, unbeknownst to yourself, you've just been marinated in postmodernist nonsense. You can slide, glide, and elide over topics, morphing the definitions of words, adding or subtracting assertions pretending to be facts, merrily reframing and recontextualizing from one comment to the next in a situation ethics, contrarian stream of consciousness.
Or whatever. Regardless, good luck with all that.
Anatoly has about as much experience with the chudosphere as anybody who posts here. The fact that said experience totally broke his faith in their ability to accomplish anything positive should serve as a warning to those of us in the HBD-pilled sect. The retard brigade are firmly in the drivers's seat, and there's no reason to believe they'll necessarily be easier to dislodge than it'll be to HBD-pill the leftoid élite.
That said, I doubt that'll happen with Kamala. For all the jokes about her ideological flexibility, that NYT profile made it clear that DEI is by far her most genuine belief. The question of who to vote for, at least for hereditarians, is thus based on whether one thinks handing the reins to a true-believer will be more damaging than to tie our movement to the very people who most of our current and future élites hate and despise, and see as their principle impediment to a better world. Both options will bring trouble for us ahead, and it's genuinely a tough call to pick the most endurable poison.
But hopefully you are not going to argue that voting Kamala or a democrat state governor is going to expand the « elite human capital » territory and usher a wave of technological progress right? That the causation is vote democrat—-> « civilized » place?
I think this is obviously false and could actually be settled via bet. I would be willing to bet maybe a few grand that commonly used measures of wokeness are below trend in 2028. Are you open to this?
Bro you are as emotional as a woman.
Elon Musk saved Ukraine with Starlink when Russia hacked all their communications on day one, so you decided to go total globohomo faggot overnight.
Now Elon Musk is MAGA and hates Ukraine war. Bezos and the rest of Elite Human Capital won't even endorse Kamala, but you can't quite decide to do yet another 180. Maybe in eight days your attitude will change again.
Get a girl, have some kids, move to TX/FL. You'll have something to do beside flutter in the wind with the latest vibe.
No, the failure of Putinism just made me finally realize that jail is programmed for all rightoids. No exceptions, bucko!
You likely have BPD
I am averse to groupthink and going with the rabid crowd.
I'm a little more optimistic about path 2 can play a role--that people will become less concerned about solving inequality, regardless of what they view as the source. No one cares about generational poverty among whites, which would imply that inequality as such is not the core motivation for woke ideology. The earlier efforts to address group inequality also took place in a context of society that had aspirations of cohesion, which is less true today. You could argue that well-meaning midcentury liberals of the center-right viewed people across class and racial boundaries as part of a single in-group of Americans.
But as trust and respect erodes across the political spectrum, there is less reason to care about the material well-being of people you do not view as part of your in-group. Wokism partially rests on the premise that once those redneck Christians are out of the way, Democrats will maintain total control as a coalition of liberal whites and virtually all minorities. But the demographic shifts underway that may propel Trump to victory suggest that such a coalition may not form. If some subset of minorities become right-coded, that spells the end of liberal sympathy for them.
I tend to be a little more cynical than you regarding this topic, though I think I'm close to your position today than before I started reading your work. I tend to think that the more significant motivation for wokism is less well-intentioned ignorance, and more self-interested rent-seeking by people who are wealthy enough to earn a college degree but not intelligent enough to put it to proper use. A few generations ago, these types would end up in the leadership of trade unions, but after de-industrialization they had to find a different grift
Bang on! “No one cares about generational poverty among whites…”
Wokeism is about power and status, not about equality. If it were actually about equality, ALL inequities would be “on the table”, which they aren’t.
DEI/Woke has become institutionalized (structural racIALism, if you will), which allows it to continue quietly, behind the scenes (where it’s less likely to be challenged, legally or socially). We’ve been subjected to a quiet revolution, and it’ll take some type of revolution to get out of this (if that’s even possible). Otherwise, we’re looking at Orwell’s prophecy of a boot stomping on a human face, forever.
No one cares about generational poverty among whites because whites are noticeably less poor and violent than blacks, red indians, and mestizos. Appalacia's pretty fucked up, but it's downright livable compared to O'Block or Fishkorn, let alone Kingston or Mogadishu.
As long as these gaps exist, they have to be addressed. The hereditarians are the only ones who have an answer that's actually right, and whose acceptance can hope to break the race-communist deathgrip on our society's right-of-the-Bell-Curve class.
Nathan, there will be no hope of HBD being anything other than an undercurrent among the right wing as long as academia STAUNCHLY refuses to approach the subject honestly. As Hanania says, HBD will never be accepted because “the left has a million more experts than you do”.
People like Rutherford and Sasha Gusev who ought to know better will always have the final say because of their credentials. The kinds of people who go into academia but ESPECIALLY the fields that deal with genetics and anthropology are firmly in the bag for wokism.
It’s not enough for Twitter anons to have endless, fruitless debates with Gusev types about GWAS or the heritability of IQ. These do nothing but confuse people. The only way forward is to infiltrate academia, especially the relevant fields, and advocate for these ideas.
The first thing Kirkegaard and Winegard should have done if they wanted to approach HBD seriously is get a formal education in those fields of study(genetics/anthro/evobiology). But they didn’t.
> As Hamada’s says, HBD will never be accepted because “the left has a million more experts than you do”.
If that logic worked, we'd still believe the sun goes around the earth.
Nah. I live and work deep in the heart of Blue America, and in this subject area there is no comparison now to a few years ago. DEI and other woke concepts are now roughly as salient at ground level as a dozen other social/political topics. It's still on the list I guess but no more.
Good stuff, You should join Aporia
Nice to get my prior intuitions on this confirmed with data-led evidence. The only part where I depart is in the suggestion that a Trump win would be 'better'. My hunch is the opposite. The resulting hysteria would provide even more energy for the jihad, is my intuition here.
The president of Harvard had to resign because she protected free speech and a lot of right wing wokesters who otherwise pretend to be pro free speech suddenly wanted a safe zone where the poor Jewish students were protected from hateful speech, very funny .