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.
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
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".
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.
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 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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I agree with much of your analysis, but I am confident of victory in the long-term. For the last century, the West has been threatened by many Totalitarian ideological movements and won decisively. The Woke are just the latest version. And they are far less competent than the Communists, Fascists and National Socialists, who embraced science, technology and industrialism.
In the end these utopian ideologies must always confront material reality. It does not matter how many people they persuade or intimidate. Their world view is so dysfunctional that it cannot change reality in the way they want it to, so they can never produce results that will satisfy their supporters.
Western societies are full of organizations that must compete relentlessly against each other for money in the marketplace. A key means to do so is to hire, fire and promote the best employees. The organizations that are the most Woke will only sabotage themselves. The least Woke will always have a competitive advantage and the most skilled employees will want to work there.
The only way to keep going is with massive government subsidies, but that eventually runs out as well. Plus nations are in competition with each other, so any nation that embraces Wokeness less than the others will gain a competitive advantage. This particularly true if that nation is the United Sates which has the most political, economic, military and digital technological power.
The Woke are guaranteed to fail because they are unwilling to embrace material reality. Indeed, their entire ideology is based on rejecting material reality. The only question is how many people that they will hurt before they fail.
One other point that I think is very important. Biomedical research is absolutely essential in the advancement of medicine. There is no way that medical research can move forward without confronting human biological diversity. The evidence will keep building, and more and more money will be at stake. This is a huge industry that will only be able to dance around the truth for so long.
In fact, I think part of the reason for the Woke irrationality is that 21st century genetic research keeps coming up with more evidence. The only way to deny the scientific findings is to deny material reality.
Hispanics and blacks moving away from the Dems will seriously undermine wokism by both embarrassing it and also because it despises disloyalty (like all illiberal ideologies)
The main mechanism behind "go woke, go broke" isn't boycotts, it's that going woke will fill one's company with low IQ incompetents who will ultimately destroy it.
Yes, and the employees will all have the incentive to fight against each other claiming that they are more oppressed than the others. Every hiring decision, every firing decision and every promotion decision will become a huge irrational fight within the organization that opens up the possibility of a lawsuit and government action. No matter what management does, they will be accused of discrimination. There are simply too many categories, and the number keeps getting bigger.
No organization can function on Woke principles., and the least Woke organizations will gain a competitive advantage.
Before believing that ''all people are born with the same bio-potential'' wokism believes, first and foremost, in social equality. Therefore, if woke ideology comes to accept that social inequalities between races are also influenced by biology, it will argue that these inequalities must be addressed not only through social reforms but also by altering human biology to equalize everyone’s capacities. Acceptance of race realism will lead to a transhumanist/eugenicist mutation of wokism, rather than its end.
Even if wokeness were eliminated right now, Gen Z would still take us into totalitarianism. They like surveillance, control and communitarism. If not woke, they'll use the climate, or mental health or some other pretext in order to make their world safer. That is their actual goal; woke equity is just a proxy they have identified and that they can control.
An improvement in their economic prospects might be the only way to get them more interested in personal freedom but, the way things are going and given their own poor education and work performance, I don't think that's in the cards.
Largely agree with your thinking on this topic, but a key way this might be wrong is that it’s too mechanistic in assessing how culture works. I don’t think wokeness can ever have the kind of total victory you describe, because cultural/political forces equilibrate. An example would be veganism. Everyone agrees that hurting animals is wrong, yet logically that should necessitate at minimum massive societal efforts to cut back animal farming and develop lab grown meat. There are many smart people who are woke (as in believe the equality thesis) yet decry key aspects of the wokeness movement, to the point of intellectual incoherence.
> Note that my account of wokism says nothing about gender ideology. The Great Awokening was a reaction to the persistence of race and (to a lesser extent) sex differences. It was the culmination of trends that began more than a century ago. Transgenderism more or less came out of left field circa 2015—previously it had been a fringe wing of the gay rights movement. Both ideologies reflect an inability to think biologically, and there’s a statistical correlation between wokery and gender confusion. But they are philosophically and historically separate phenomena.
No, they aren't. Gender ideology follows from feminism. If men and women are truly biologically equal, then all the traditional expressions of masculinity and femininity must be purely cultural. As such part of building a truly egalitarian society must involve a complete separation of gender expression from biology.
Frankly, I'm surprised by this blind spot of yours.
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
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.
That's great. I will now head off and read them. Thanks.
The Race FAQs are a great introduction: https://zerocontradictions.net/faqs/race
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.
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".
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.
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 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.
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
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!
Yes, the Woke will learn that reality always wins!
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.
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.
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.
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.
I agree with much of your analysis, but I am confident of victory in the long-term. For the last century, the West has been threatened by many Totalitarian ideological movements and won decisively. The Woke are just the latest version. And they are far less competent than the Communists, Fascists and National Socialists, who embraced science, technology and industrialism.
In the end these utopian ideologies must always confront material reality. It does not matter how many people they persuade or intimidate. Their world view is so dysfunctional that it cannot change reality in the way they want it to, so they can never produce results that will satisfy their supporters.
Western societies are full of organizations that must compete relentlessly against each other for money in the marketplace. A key means to do so is to hire, fire and promote the best employees. The organizations that are the most Woke will only sabotage themselves. The least Woke will always have a competitive advantage and the most skilled employees will want to work there.
The only way to keep going is with massive government subsidies, but that eventually runs out as well. Plus nations are in competition with each other, so any nation that embraces Wokeness less than the others will gain a competitive advantage. This particularly true if that nation is the United Sates which has the most political, economic, military and digital technological power.
The Woke are guaranteed to fail because they are unwilling to embrace material reality. Indeed, their entire ideology is based on rejecting material reality. The only question is how many people that they will hurt before they fail.
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/why-ideologies-fail
One other point that I think is very important. Biomedical research is absolutely essential in the advancement of medicine. There is no way that medical research can move forward without confronting human biological diversity. The evidence will keep building, and more and more money will be at stake. This is a huge industry that will only be able to dance around the truth for so long.
In fact, I think part of the reason for the Woke irrationality is that 21st century genetic research keeps coming up with more evidence. The only way to deny the scientific findings is to deny material reality.
Hispanics and blacks moving away from the Dems will seriously undermine wokism by both embarrassing it and also because it despises disloyalty (like all illiberal ideologies)
The main mechanism behind "go woke, go broke" isn't boycotts, it's that going woke will fill one's company with low IQ incompetents who will ultimately destroy it.
Yes, and the employees will all have the incentive to fight against each other claiming that they are more oppressed than the others. Every hiring decision, every firing decision and every promotion decision will become a huge irrational fight within the organization that opens up the possibility of a lawsuit and government action. No matter what management does, they will be accused of discrimination. There are simply too many categories, and the number keeps getting bigger.
No organization can function on Woke principles., and the least Woke organizations will gain a competitive advantage.
Before believing that ''all people are born with the same bio-potential'' wokism believes, first and foremost, in social equality. Therefore, if woke ideology comes to accept that social inequalities between races are also influenced by biology, it will argue that these inequalities must be addressed not only through social reforms but also by altering human biology to equalize everyone’s capacities. Acceptance of race realism will lead to a transhumanist/eugenicist mutation of wokism, rather than its end.
Yes. Not at first, but in the long-run that will likely occur; once they have exhausted all other options.
Yes, the current phase is just a combination of remoralization, consolidation, and LLMs replacing unnecessary DEI/HR positions.
Good stuff, You should join Aporia
Even if wokeness were eliminated right now, Gen Z would still take us into totalitarianism. They like surveillance, control and communitarism. If not woke, they'll use the climate, or mental health or some other pretext in order to make their world safer. That is their actual goal; woke equity is just a proxy they have identified and that they can control.
An improvement in their economic prospects might be the only way to get them more interested in personal freedom but, the way things are going and given their own poor education and work performance, I don't think that's in the cards.
Largely agree with your thinking on this topic, but a key way this might be wrong is that it’s too mechanistic in assessing how culture works. I don’t think wokeness can ever have the kind of total victory you describe, because cultural/political forces equilibrate. An example would be veganism. Everyone agrees that hurting animals is wrong, yet logically that should necessitate at minimum massive societal efforts to cut back animal farming and develop lab grown meat. There are many smart people who are woke (as in believe the equality thesis) yet decry key aspects of the wokeness movement, to the point of intellectual incoherence.
> Note that my account of wokism says nothing about gender ideology. The Great Awokening was a reaction to the persistence of race and (to a lesser extent) sex differences. It was the culmination of trends that began more than a century ago. Transgenderism more or less came out of left field circa 2015—previously it had been a fringe wing of the gay rights movement. Both ideologies reflect an inability to think biologically, and there’s a statistical correlation between wokery and gender confusion. But they are philosophically and historically separate phenomena.
No, they aren't. Gender ideology follows from feminism. If men and women are truly biologically equal, then all the traditional expressions of masculinity and femininity must be purely cultural. As such part of building a truly egalitarian society must involve a complete separation of gender expression from biology.
Frankly, I'm surprised by this blind spot of yours.