Links to Consider, 8/12

Matthew Crawford on the current state; Erik Torenberg on the current state; Razib Khan on African genetics; Rufo on Rufoism

Matthew Crawford writes,

a state-like entity that expands its dominion on two fronts: the “woke” revolution and the colonization of ordinary life by technical expertise.

These appear unrelated, but share an underlying logic. Both displace and delegitimize vernacular practices, as well as the understandings that support them. On both fronts, the legitimacy of the ruling entity rests on an anthropology that posits a particular kind of self— -- a vulnerable one, which the governing entity then positions itself to protect. Both developments expand the reach of managerial authority, generate new bureaucratic constituencies, and disqualify common sense as a guide to reality. On both fronts, the entity expands through claims of special knowledge.

Erik Torenberg writes,

In the same way that tech entrepreneurs take tech primitives like the iPhone and GPS and create Uber, moral entrepreneurs take moral primitives and create new movements. 

…One primitive is the knowledge principle which states that knowledge is subjective.

…Now combine the knowledge principle, that knowledge is subjective, with the power principle, that whoever controls power controls knowledge. You can think of post-modernism as both combining the knowledge principle and the power principle.

Now combine those two principles with what’s known as “critical theory”, which states that the world is (arbitrarily) segmented into oppressor/oppressed.

…Also add “Standpoint epistemology”, the primitive stating that the oppressed group has moral authority over the oppressor group, since they understand the perspective of both the oppressor and the oppressed, whereas the oppressor only understands their vantage point.

Boy, there sure are a lot of people who are bothered by Wokeism and want to talk about where it gets its strength. You’ve got James Lindsay, Christopher Rufo, N.S. Lyons, Lorenzo Warby, John McWhorter, . . .

The incomparable Razib Khan tells the story of Bantu expansion in Africa.

Over the millennium between 500 BC and 500 AD, the Bantu peoples exploded in number, re-sculpting Africa’s whole genomic, ethnolinguistic and ecological landscape.

…African individuals are much more genetically diverse than non-Africans, however very little of that diversity is differentiated across populations: a matter of uniform diversity, if you will. From 2000-1000 BC, the proto-Bantu ancestors of the Congolese, Angolans, Kenyans and South Africans were broadly the same people, a coalition of related tribes that spoke similar dialects and intermarried extensively. Only through migration, isolation and diversification, and in some cases admixture with distinct indigenous populations, did these peoples eventually diverge in a manner that allows for genetic investigation and mapping.

…the out-of-Africa event was undertaken by a population related to those tribes that later became African farmers. In other words, non-Africans are not just a branch of Africans, they’re a branch specifically of the ancestors of African agriculturalists.

Written with Razib’s usual flair.

Christopher Rufo writes,

Given current circumstances, with the Left’s seemingly wholesale capture of major institutions—public education, the universities, private-sector leadership, culture, and, increasingly, even the sciences—the current battlefield can appear overwhelming. But today’s Left has an Achilles heel: its power is, to a significant degree, a creature of the state, subsidized by patronage, loan schemes, bureaucratic employment, and civil rights regulations. These structures often appear permanent, but they can be reformed, redirected, or abolished through the democratic process.

You can also hear him on a podcast with Bryan Caplan. Or read Caplan’s recap.

I get that what Rufo believes he is fighting is a tyranny by a minority. That is, descendants of late-1960s radical movements have penetrated key institutions, and they have no scruples about suppressing other points of view.

The problem is that the faction that agrees with Rufo is also a minority. Most people, on the left and the right, simply do not see what he sees.

Suppose that the Rufo faction succeeds in capturing the Republican Party, and the Republican Party proceeds to win elections in Red states and manages to capture the Presidency. What will the country look like a few years later?

One scenario is that the Republicans will implement all of the institutional changes that the Rufo faction wants, and the Woke movement will quietly go away.

A more likely scenario, in my opinion, is that we will have a mess. There will be drawn-out court fights against the institutional changes. There will be mass demonstrations by people on the left. There will be solid blue states that refuse to go along with changes enacted at the Federal level. The country will be bitterly divided. Forced to choose, much of the persuadable left (think of Jonathan Rauch or Freddie deBoer) will land on the Blue side. The Woke will end up just as influential as they are today, or even more so.

The far left is willing to suppress anyone who wants to restore liberal values. I don’t want the right to become a mirror image, playing its own dominance game.

Instead of Rufoism, I would prefer to see a political approach for the anti-Woke that focuses on building a winning coalition and governing well. If it becomes fixed in everyone’s mind that the Woke faction is a loser, then they will lose influence.

Substacks referenced above:

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Bantu über alles: three millennia of unstoppable African farmers repeopling the vast continent

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New Rousseauism, Post-Modernism, and Moral Primitives

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Minoritarian moralism