"In 2024, my sense is that the protesters are limited to the fringe that supports the bad guys."
There is a sociological/psychological experiment I have been thinking about for some time now that I would like to see run. The term experiment is probably too generous a term. Take one of these encampments or a group that was marching after October 7th and put the body camera footage from October 7th on big screen TVs and play it in front of them. Would the group become more cohesive and deny reality being played in front of their eyes? Would you change the psychological distance of the activist attention seekers and only the true psychos would remain? A relevant thing of note is this would be a violation of IRB protocol. Just showing a video of reality.
This week's story of the Columbia protest leader who described his fantasies about killing "Zionists" (whatever he thinks that means, and I am guessing it is hardly so limited as you might think) was illustrative. Not because of him or any intrinsic interest there - the protesters do not idealize peace, as AK points out - but because *the White House* felt compelled to distance itself from him! He wasn't the fringe - he so represented the center that the confused young people who direct the administration (never mind Biden's essentially normie pro-Israel stance) understood themselves (however absurdly, not realizing it brought them closer to endorsement rather than farther away) to be compromised by the things this guy said!
Not all who idolize peace are like Gandi. I think one can do so yet have emotions that make one express and even commit violence. Either way, I think most protesters want an end to violence more than anything. Actually, peace is too strong a word. They'd surely lose interest if the violence level dropped to something much closer to before Oct 7.
Though I don't know much about the philosophy or origins of it, I believe there do exist genuine peace activists, or have in the past.
However, I think it is naive [edit: more than naive, disingenuous] to suppose that this eruption of activism is in any way connected with it, as it is explicitly pitched along Manichean lines: good people (in this context: black and brown people, Arabs, Muslims) and bad people (whites even before Jews, Jews also of course, "settler" Americans, Westerners).
Even were I not privy to anything they were saying, I would take this as given because of the "coincidence" of its entire connection with Israel, following on decades of UN censure of but *one* country.
As I said, "peace" is not really accurate. That said, I don't think it is at all naive to argue the number of deaths is the primary motivator. As for race, I think that misses the mark too. Oppressor-oppressed is much more relevant in the context that Israel has military power which allows them to impose far more control on Palestinians than what Israel has suffered from outside actions.
It seems worth noting there are a fair number of non-protesters who question whether the bombing, displacement, and invasion of Gaza is in Israel's best interest. In my opinion, any Israel supporter not constantly re-asking themselves this question is as wrong as the protesters.
Hopefully some few in Israel understand that the power lies the other direction, with those who have cleverly merged the oppression framework with a “demographic” strategy.
If not, they may be losing the will to exist. That wouldn’t be entirely surprising. But it is not for others to decide.
I don't like what Israel is doing but I don't feel I have any right to tell them what they should do. Maybe I would if I had some idea what would better meet their needs or be better for all parties involved but I'm not sure I would even then.
I think many want some sort of peace. And believe that both a necessary and sufficient condition for peace is "justice for the Palestinians". Which means the Israelis must be nicer to them. The Israelis must change. After all, they are the more powerful. This often shades into, "The Palestinians don't need to change." After all, they're the ones who are suffering now.
As the Palestinians continue to suffer, many protesters become radicalized. There is no way to have justice if the state of Israel continues to exist in its present borders with its present population. At a bare minimum, there must be a Palestinian state. Almost as necessary, Palestinians must be allowed back to land they occupied pre-1948 within the present Israeli borders. "Settler-colonialists" unjustly displaced Palestinians. It isn't much of a leap of logic to say they don't belong there. It is really Palestinian land. But since Israeli isn't going to change, the only way to true peace is through armed struggle against the invaders. Sure, Hamas does bad things but you can't make an omelet without breaking eggs.
If "Gaza" was an example of suffering which justifies - anything - then we are in for a world of hurt. Gaza would not, I believe, make it onto the fifty worst places to live by any stretch of the imagination.
I unquestioningly agree with your first paragraph. I agree with your second too but see spots we might not be completely right. Thx for stating it well.
I almost think this would better and less horrifying than the alternative of them accepting it is real and then rationalizing that the victims deserved it.
I fail to see how that would make any difference. I think that is because we see the protesters' beliefs and intentions vey differently.
In my opinion, you are doing exactly the same thing as liberals who say conservatives who are against government social welfare programs don't care about the poor.
I think you greatly overestimate how many have watched the Hamas body cam videos, even among activists. I also don't pretend to know others true intentions or the alignment with what they tell themselves. This is why showing them unedited atrocities they have not seen could go a number of different ways and I don't pretend to know the outcome in advance. There are other possibilities I did not mention because I saw no need to exhaustively list them.
Sorry but your openness/neuroticism thesis - whether narrowly true or not - is largely beside the point. Anyone old enough to have been a teen in the Hippie 'era' should know that it shared its most salient socio-psychological characteristic by far with today's student antics....namely groupthink. The hard truth that Western liberalism so so struggles with is that those people who are 'liberal', free-thinking and open-minded are (and have always been) the exception, not the rule.
Moreover, neither in the 1960s nor today did the groupthink include realistic reflection on the possible consequences. "Peace" in Indochina gave full power to the murderous Vietnamese Communists and Pathet Lao, and the genocidal Khmer Rouge. "Peace" in Gaza in current circumstances would leave in place the genocidal Hamas.
Peace in Afghanistan gave us the Taliban. Peace in Iraq gave a similar mess.
But what’s the alternative? We were in Afghanistan for twenty years. Would another twenty matter? What is “realistic” about that?
Vietnam was already unpopular in 1968. You got years of Vietnamization. You dropped countless bombs. The executive was dragged out of Vietnam kicking and screaming being forced to by congress. How much longer would it have gone on?
We are always one more escalation away from “peace with honor”. Every single time, every single war.
At least Isreal has the reasonable defense that “we literally live here”. But America doesn’t literally live in Indochina or anywhere else. We were told we would lose the Cold War if we left Vietnam and it didn’t happen.
I had a Comp Lit professor at Brandeis in '69 who had imbibed deconstructionist theory from some radical French ideologue at Johns Hopkins. He actually had us reading selections from Mao's little red book about art and revolution! The rats were already gnawing at the timbers way back then. Although the text was unintelligible gobbledygook, I remember taking pride in how open-minded we all were.
Alongside of repressive tolerance, and perhaps even more intoxicating, was the notion of the power of "negative reason," the capacity to not merely see what is, but to also see what is not, i.e., all that could be. It gives you permission to take for granted all that has been achieved by past generations as your point of departure. Even worse, to critique all that we have been given, and to view it entirely in terms of its deficiencies. It's the secret formula for creating a generation of entitled, spoiled brats. I've been wanting to write an essay about this, if I can ever find a way to stop responding to interesting posts!
I got to Brandeis the year after Marcuse retired, but his presence on campus was still enormously felt. I had a full year sociology class based on his work, and I religiously attended his "valedictory" addresses which he continued to deliver annually to standing-room only crowds. Years later, I forgave myself somewhat for my adulation after reading a comment by Marty Peretz in The New Republic where he confessed that it took him many years to untangle his mind from Marcuse...
I think there's more in common between 1968 and today, both are marked by widespread campus protests organized and directed by a hardcore group of progressive, socialist, or communist leaders. It was SDS and a variety of regional organizations back then, and it's ANSWER, Open Society Foundation, and the Tides Foundation now.
And if you read Days of Rage (about the violent radical movements that were spawned in the late 60s), you'll see that the people in Weatherman and the radicals around them were extremely neurotic, almost exactly the same way as today's progressives, constantly fretting about their privilege and whiteness.
This is actually a really interesting insight, and fits exactly with the postmodern philosophy that has merged with progressive thought since the late 60s. They're playing with narratives about sexuality instead of actually having sex.
Not having been there, I don't know (but harbor a definite suspicion) that as regards their self-regard and their attitude toward women, the men of the midcentury left were *extremely* in the egotistical, non-self-doubting mode of your Mill, your Sartre, your Rousseau, your Edmund Wilson - basically all the cast of characters of Paul Johnson's "Intellectuals".
The women on the other hand, that were prominent in whatever wave of feminism that was (I've never been able to care enough to learn those labels) - seem to have been "neurotic" as their most signal trait. Shulamith Firestone ... IQ and sexual openness and neuroticism often mark women that used to be called either bluestockings or bohemians.
I don't think it makes sense to deny people their natures, or judge them too harshly for being a little out of the usual run.
However, if they'd been just a little smarter, they'd have had the humility to perceive that a handful of neurotic women, did not and could never speak for the whole sex worldwide.
Once again we're back to the universalizing impulse, and the trouble it causes.
There will always be some distance bw a movement and the leaders of a movement, as leaders are usually better-educated, funded, organized and usually inhabit a higher spot on the pyramid called Hierarchy of Needs—but that being said, I don't think there was ever a bigger chasm than what existed between "average American women" and the leaders of second-wave feminism.
These supposed leaders were mostly clustered in universities and/or the Upper West Side of Manhattan, were often Jewish and/or some species of Leftist, and simply detested every aspect of the lives of average women: marriage, raising children, navigating men and their emotions (or lack thereof), the politics of the office and the home—the second-wave "theorist" class looked down on all these things with intense scorn and considered anyone living any type of traditional life as either a brainwashed slave or an incipient fascist in need of reprogramming.
Not to mention the other major difference/distance: most people are more or less sane, Firestone, Brownmiller, Dworkin et al were deranged.
The 60s hippies (and squares, for that matter) were maybe the last generation to have experienced genuinely different ways of living (what some people now travel to get) - the last where a majority would have spent time on a grandparent’s farm, for instance. David Brooks, obtuse, could give them no credit for the aesthetic and nature-related aspect of the movement, the “back to the land” and craft stuff. It’s easy to make fun of them, of course, and more: yes, I’ve got a copy of “Destructive Generation” around here somewhere! Hippies certainly did not invent environmental conservation, nor were responsible for its early ("second wave") successes. They were, curiously, receptive to their elders’ teaching in that: a definite kind of conservatism. They had perhaps read 1984 with its explicit urban/rural contrast (utterly forgotten by current invokers of the boot). But they were undoubtedly right that commercial culture alone, especially combined with urban and suburbanization that kept people at an ignorant remove from nature, was unsatisfying. Christopher Caldwell perceived this about them, conservatism and all, which is what actually made me sit up and take notice of him.
A local forum I used to read though I was not a commenting member, often defaulted to complaining about Boomers, in that smugly otiose meme-ing way.
As the people on that forum were a typically dense example of lefty/libertarian (depending on the day of the week) “market urbanists”, unaware that all of their hopes and opinions cancelled out, except for their most heartfelt one - “Die, Boomers” - I steadily came to have more of a retrospective fondness for hippies.
The fact that there turned out to be no upper limit on Americans’ materialism is not exactly disproving of that ‘60s inchoate sense of a loss elsewhere.
I am afraid there’s not so much to say about “the woke”.
Apologies for going down a side road but how is 1984 urban/rural? The closest I'm aware of is the couple going into a poor London neighborhood that reminded me of a somewhat lower density area with small buildings on small lots. It was still in London though. Where does rural come to play?
1. How did you develop your sense that the protesters are limited to the fringe that supports the bad guys, as defined earlier in your article? Where did you get this information from?
2. Your conclusion in the end might or might not be a result of wishful thinking. Regardless, why do you wish the protests to not gain further support?
Hippies had much better actual reasons to protest. Racism was actively hurting some people, the draft to go fight, maybe kill, maybe be killed in Vietnam was killing too many Americans and Vietnamese, and sexism was keeping competent women away from the career achievements they were ready and able to work for.
They were mostly successful, and most of the problems that could be reduced with little or no trade-offs were reduced to a level that required greater trade-offs to make further changes.
The moral superiority of MLK's "I have a Dream" remains unmatched.
But reality is such that treating folk as individuals, colorblind, means fewer Black or female Police Captains and fewer Black or female fire Chiefs. Tho plenty of NBA & NFL stars, and entertainment stars, are Black or female. (Not so many of the best guitar players.)
The Woke are more rich, spoiled, and living in a US which is so much materially better, and even more secure against violent crime -- yet they protest as if there had been no progress on reducing problems. In fact, we had achieved almost the best meritocracy we were going to get -- but it was based on capitalism, and Christian values.
Those hating capitalism are using Woke slogans against selective group inequality, where avg group results are compared against an unrealistic ideal distribution. The TLP Oppressed-Oppressor axis has morphed into "Victims" into "less successful" into "any deviant with lesser results" such that the less successful deviants are seen by the Woke as morally superior than the more successful.
The superiority of inferiority.
Such obvious stupidity cannot continue, yet it can last a long time and twist & warp & destroy a lot, in ways that hippie ideals were not such threats to (tho the Weather Underground was bad news; and the Patty Hearst Symbionese Liberation Army was a bit of a joke, see Richard Prior).
The US is likely to see more Woke junk, maybe a lot more, before the next elections. And, as fewer folk watch sports, maybe the Olympics won't reduce the politics in the summer as they usually have been doing.
While I agree with the neuroticism characterization - I believe there is research supporting that - I think you need to be more careful distinguishing between support for Hamas and support for Palestinians.
I note we are in a creedal passion period, as we were in the sixties, when radical ideologies gain traction. So the present epidemic of radical ideas, and the rise of new religious/moral/political understandings is a normal feature that pops up every fifty years or so. No cause for alarm.
We are also in period of war fever, as we were in the sixties, and so we have opposition to wars, Israeli-Hamas on the left and Ukraine on the right, Vietnam during the last cycle, WW I in the cycle before that. So yeah this too has happened multiple times before.
One would expect the nature of the radicalization will reflect the environment. Students in the 1960's were economically secure as we were still living under the New Deal Order, while today they are not. Hence openness was a more rational response to the environment then, as neuroticism might be to the environment now.
Marriage is being delayed or not pursued, and fertility is down. People talk about civil war and decline. Times have changed from fifty years ago.
With the five personality traits, each should not be opposed to the others, but should have a healthy distribution of values. Extreme 'openness' is not healthy nor is the opposite of rigidity, but the ability to explore and the ability to be firm and consistent can both be good. The ability to anticipate negative outcomes and share concerns can be good, as can the ability to set aside concerns and fears, but carelessness and neuroticism are both unhealthy as well.
Maybe I misunderstand you but it seems you are mixing two issues in a way that is probably wrong. Haidt identified something very much like the neuroticism you mention starting in about 2012. Maybe I'm mistaken but the oppressor-oppressed view started long before that. Either way, the left has long protested against Israel's actions in Palestine. Most notable are protests against settlements in the West Bank. The primary difference this time is the number of Palestinians that have been killed. The concern being protested against is much bigger. It's not at all clear to me that these protests would be any smaller or different in the absence of the relatively recent increase in neuroticism. Maybe they would but that seems not to be the main driver, maybe even irrelevant.
"In 2024, my sense is that the protesters are limited to the fringe that supports the bad guys."
There is a sociological/psychological experiment I have been thinking about for some time now that I would like to see run. The term experiment is probably too generous a term. Take one of these encampments or a group that was marching after October 7th and put the body camera footage from October 7th on big screen TVs and play it in front of them. Would the group become more cohesive and deny reality being played in front of their eyes? Would you change the psychological distance of the activist attention seekers and only the true psychos would remain? A relevant thing of note is this would be a violation of IRB protocol. Just showing a video of reality.
This week's story of the Columbia protest leader who described his fantasies about killing "Zionists" (whatever he thinks that means, and I am guessing it is hardly so limited as you might think) was illustrative. Not because of him or any intrinsic interest there - the protesters do not idealize peace, as AK points out - but because *the White House* felt compelled to distance itself from him! He wasn't the fringe - he so represented the center that the confused young people who direct the administration (never mind Biden's essentially normie pro-Israel stance) understood themselves (however absurdly, not realizing it brought them closer to endorsement rather than farther away) to be compromised by the things this guy said!
Not all who idolize peace are like Gandi. I think one can do so yet have emotions that make one express and even commit violence. Either way, I think most protesters want an end to violence more than anything. Actually, peace is too strong a word. They'd surely lose interest if the violence level dropped to something much closer to before Oct 7.
Though I don't know much about the philosophy or origins of it, I believe there do exist genuine peace activists, or have in the past.
However, I think it is naive [edit: more than naive, disingenuous] to suppose that this eruption of activism is in any way connected with it, as it is explicitly pitched along Manichean lines: good people (in this context: black and brown people, Arabs, Muslims) and bad people (whites even before Jews, Jews also of course, "settler" Americans, Westerners).
Even were I not privy to anything they were saying, I would take this as given because of the "coincidence" of its entire connection with Israel, following on decades of UN censure of but *one* country.
As I said, "peace" is not really accurate. That said, I don't think it is at all naive to argue the number of deaths is the primary motivator. As for race, I think that misses the mark too. Oppressor-oppressed is much more relevant in the context that Israel has military power which allows them to impose far more control on Palestinians than what Israel has suffered from outside actions.
It seems worth noting there are a fair number of non-protesters who question whether the bombing, displacement, and invasion of Gaza is in Israel's best interest. In my opinion, any Israel supporter not constantly re-asking themselves this question is as wrong as the protesters.
Hopefully some few in Israel understand that the power lies the other direction, with those who have cleverly merged the oppression framework with a “demographic” strategy.
If not, they may be losing the will to exist. That wouldn’t be entirely surprising. But it is not for others to decide.
That said, the attention to the protesting from both directions (left and what passes for right) is a sign that our political scene is distorted.
The attention to Israel generally is almost always a proxy meant to distract from America's own issues.
I would hope it doesn't affect what Israel chooses or needs to do; beyond that I have no opinion about what's going on there.
I don't like what Israel is doing but I don't feel I have any right to tell them what they should do. Maybe I would if I had some idea what would better meet their needs or be better for all parties involved but I'm not sure I would even then.
I think many want some sort of peace. And believe that both a necessary and sufficient condition for peace is "justice for the Palestinians". Which means the Israelis must be nicer to them. The Israelis must change. After all, they are the more powerful. This often shades into, "The Palestinians don't need to change." After all, they're the ones who are suffering now.
As the Palestinians continue to suffer, many protesters become radicalized. There is no way to have justice if the state of Israel continues to exist in its present borders with its present population. At a bare minimum, there must be a Palestinian state. Almost as necessary, Palestinians must be allowed back to land they occupied pre-1948 within the present Israeli borders. "Settler-colonialists" unjustly displaced Palestinians. It isn't much of a leap of logic to say they don't belong there. It is really Palestinian land. But since Israeli isn't going to change, the only way to true peace is through armed struggle against the invaders. Sure, Hamas does bad things but you can't make an omelet without breaking eggs.
If "Gaza" was an example of suffering which justifies - anything - then we are in for a world of hurt. Gaza would not, I believe, make it onto the fifty worst places to live by any stretch of the imagination.
I unquestioningly agree with your first paragraph. I agree with your second too but see spots we might not be completely right. Thx for stating it well.
They would deny the footage was real- they would claim it was all faked by the Israelis.
I almost think this would better and less horrifying than the alternative of them accepting it is real and then rationalizing that the victims deserved it.
I fail to see how that would make any difference. I think that is because we see the protesters' beliefs and intentions vey differently.
In my opinion, you are doing exactly the same thing as liberals who say conservatives who are against government social welfare programs don't care about the poor.
I think you greatly overestimate how many have watched the Hamas body cam videos, even among activists. I also don't pretend to know others true intentions or the alignment with what they tell themselves. This is why showing them unedited atrocities they have not seen could go a number of different ways and I don't pretend to know the outcome in advance. There are other possibilities I did not mention because I saw no need to exhaustively list them.
They would interpret it as a sign of their desperation for which they bore no culpability. Full stop.
Sorry but your openness/neuroticism thesis - whether narrowly true or not - is largely beside the point. Anyone old enough to have been a teen in the Hippie 'era' should know that it shared its most salient socio-psychological characteristic by far with today's student antics....namely groupthink. The hard truth that Western liberalism so so struggles with is that those people who are 'liberal', free-thinking and open-minded are (and have always been) the exception, not the rule.
Moreover, neither in the 1960s nor today did the groupthink include realistic reflection on the possible consequences. "Peace" in Indochina gave full power to the murderous Vietnamese Communists and Pathet Lao, and the genocidal Khmer Rouge. "Peace" in Gaza in current circumstances would leave in place the genocidal Hamas.
Peace in Afghanistan gave us the Taliban. Peace in Iraq gave a similar mess.
But what’s the alternative? We were in Afghanistan for twenty years. Would another twenty matter? What is “realistic” about that?
Vietnam was already unpopular in 1968. You got years of Vietnamization. You dropped countless bombs. The executive was dragged out of Vietnam kicking and screaming being forced to by congress. How much longer would it have gone on?
We are always one more escalation away from “peace with honor”. Every single time, every single war.
At least Isreal has the reasonable defense that “we literally live here”. But America doesn’t literally live in Indochina or anywhere else. We were told we would lose the Cold War if we left Vietnam and it didn’t happen.
When I was at an English university in the early 70s, the fashionable thing to be amongst the self-styled hip undergraduates was a Maoist.
I had a Comp Lit professor at Brandeis in '69 who had imbibed deconstructionist theory from some radical French ideologue at Johns Hopkins. He actually had us reading selections from Mao's little red book about art and revolution! The rats were already gnawing at the timbers way back then. Although the text was unintelligible gobbledygook, I remember taking pride in how open-minded we all were.
"I remember taking pride in how open-minded we all were."...... such haunting words. Should perhaps be inscribed on Western Liberalism's tombstone.
I remember thinking how devilish clever it was to be one of the sophisticates who knew about Marcus's theory of 'repressive tolerance'.
Alongside of repressive tolerance, and perhaps even more intoxicating, was the notion of the power of "negative reason," the capacity to not merely see what is, but to also see what is not, i.e., all that could be. It gives you permission to take for granted all that has been achieved by past generations as your point of departure. Even worse, to critique all that we have been given, and to view it entirely in terms of its deficiencies. It's the secret formula for creating a generation of entitled, spoiled brats. I've been wanting to write an essay about this, if I can ever find a way to stop responding to interesting posts!
I do hope you will... and would be interested to see the result. Many of my own essays touch on similar themes but this one in particular you might find interesting: https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/deconstructing-deconstructivism
I got to Brandeis the year after Marcuse retired, but his presence on campus was still enormously felt. I had a full year sociology class based on his work, and I religiously attended his "valedictory" addresses which he continued to deliver annually to standing-room only crowds. Years later, I forgave myself somewhat for my adulation after reading a comment by Marty Peretz in The New Republic where he confessed that it took him many years to untangle his mind from Marcuse...
Untangling one's mind....another good phrase.
The hippies who didn't join the mainstream became college professors who created today's woke students.
This was an interesting discussion. Thanks.
I think there's more in common between 1968 and today, both are marked by widespread campus protests organized and directed by a hardcore group of progressive, socialist, or communist leaders. It was SDS and a variety of regional organizations back then, and it's ANSWER, Open Society Foundation, and the Tides Foundation now.
And if you read Days of Rage (about the violent radical movements that were spawned in the late 60s), you'll see that the people in Weatherman and the radicals around them were extremely neurotic, almost exactly the same way as today's progressives, constantly fretting about their privilege and whiteness.
I don't know. Didn't the weathermen experiment sexually? I see a neurotic sexless generation now.
This is actually a really interesting insight, and fits exactly with the postmodern philosophy that has merged with progressive thought since the late 60s. They're playing with narratives about sexuality instead of actually having sex.
The far left is a totalitarian cult.
;
Not having been there, I don't know (but harbor a definite suspicion) that as regards their self-regard and their attitude toward women, the men of the midcentury left were *extremely* in the egotistical, non-self-doubting mode of your Mill, your Sartre, your Rousseau, your Edmund Wilson - basically all the cast of characters of Paul Johnson's "Intellectuals".
The women on the other hand, that were prominent in whatever wave of feminism that was (I've never been able to care enough to learn those labels) - seem to have been "neurotic" as their most signal trait. Shulamith Firestone ... IQ and sexual openness and neuroticism often mark women that used to be called either bluestockings or bohemians.
I don't think it makes sense to deny people their natures, or judge them too harshly for being a little out of the usual run.
However, if they'd been just a little smarter, they'd have had the humility to perceive that a handful of neurotic women, did not and could never speak for the whole sex worldwide.
Once again we're back to the universalizing impulse, and the trouble it causes.
There will always be some distance bw a movement and the leaders of a movement, as leaders are usually better-educated, funded, organized and usually inhabit a higher spot on the pyramid called Hierarchy of Needs—but that being said, I don't think there was ever a bigger chasm than what existed between "average American women" and the leaders of second-wave feminism.
These supposed leaders were mostly clustered in universities and/or the Upper West Side of Manhattan, were often Jewish and/or some species of Leftist, and simply detested every aspect of the lives of average women: marriage, raising children, navigating men and their emotions (or lack thereof), the politics of the office and the home—the second-wave "theorist" class looked down on all these things with intense scorn and considered anyone living any type of traditional life as either a brainwashed slave or an incipient fascist in need of reprogramming.
Not to mention the other major difference/distance: most people are more or less sane, Firestone, Brownmiller, Dworkin et al were deranged.
The 60s hippies (and squares, for that matter) were maybe the last generation to have experienced genuinely different ways of living (what some people now travel to get) - the last where a majority would have spent time on a grandparent’s farm, for instance. David Brooks, obtuse, could give them no credit for the aesthetic and nature-related aspect of the movement, the “back to the land” and craft stuff. It’s easy to make fun of them, of course, and more: yes, I’ve got a copy of “Destructive Generation” around here somewhere! Hippies certainly did not invent environmental conservation, nor were responsible for its early ("second wave") successes. They were, curiously, receptive to their elders’ teaching in that: a definite kind of conservatism. They had perhaps read 1984 with its explicit urban/rural contrast (utterly forgotten by current invokers of the boot). But they were undoubtedly right that commercial culture alone, especially combined with urban and suburbanization that kept people at an ignorant remove from nature, was unsatisfying. Christopher Caldwell perceived this about them, conservatism and all, which is what actually made me sit up and take notice of him.
A local forum I used to read though I was not a commenting member, often defaulted to complaining about Boomers, in that smugly otiose meme-ing way.
As the people on that forum were a typically dense example of lefty/libertarian (depending on the day of the week) “market urbanists”, unaware that all of their hopes and opinions cancelled out, except for their most heartfelt one - “Die, Boomers” - I steadily came to have more of a retrospective fondness for hippies.
The fact that there turned out to be no upper limit on Americans’ materialism is not exactly disproving of that ‘60s inchoate sense of a loss elsewhere.
I am afraid there’s not so much to say about “the woke”.
Apologies for going down a side road but how is 1984 urban/rural? The closest I'm aware of is the couple going into a poor London neighborhood that reminded me of a somewhat lower density area with small buildings on small lots. It was still in London though. Where does rural come to play?
Only in the most important scene in the book.
Hi Arnold, I have two questions:
1. How did you develop your sense that the protesters are limited to the fringe that supports the bad guys, as defined earlier in your article? Where did you get this information from?
2. Your conclusion in the end might or might not be a result of wishful thinking. Regardless, why do you wish the protests to not gain further support?
Hippies had much better actual reasons to protest. Racism was actively hurting some people, the draft to go fight, maybe kill, maybe be killed in Vietnam was killing too many Americans and Vietnamese, and sexism was keeping competent women away from the career achievements they were ready and able to work for.
They were mostly successful, and most of the problems that could be reduced with little or no trade-offs were reduced to a level that required greater trade-offs to make further changes.
The moral superiority of MLK's "I have a Dream" remains unmatched.
But reality is such that treating folk as individuals, colorblind, means fewer Black or female Police Captains and fewer Black or female fire Chiefs. Tho plenty of NBA & NFL stars, and entertainment stars, are Black or female. (Not so many of the best guitar players.)
The Woke are more rich, spoiled, and living in a US which is so much materially better, and even more secure against violent crime -- yet they protest as if there had been no progress on reducing problems. In fact, we had achieved almost the best meritocracy we were going to get -- but it was based on capitalism, and Christian values.
Those hating capitalism are using Woke slogans against selective group inequality, where avg group results are compared against an unrealistic ideal distribution. The TLP Oppressed-Oppressor axis has morphed into "Victims" into "less successful" into "any deviant with lesser results" such that the less successful deviants are seen by the Woke as morally superior than the more successful.
The superiority of inferiority.
Such obvious stupidity cannot continue, yet it can last a long time and twist & warp & destroy a lot, in ways that hippie ideals were not such threats to (tho the Weather Underground was bad news; and the Patty Hearst Symbionese Liberation Army was a bit of a joke, see Richard Prior).
The US is likely to see more Woke junk, maybe a lot more, before the next elections. And, as fewer folk watch sports, maybe the Olympics won't reduce the politics in the summer as they usually have been doing.
While I agree with the neuroticism characterization - I believe there is research supporting that - I think you need to be more careful distinguishing between support for Hamas and support for Palestinians.
Of course, if you want a good life for Palestinians, you can't support Hamas. It's like saying justice for North Korea and supporting the Kim dynasty.
Jews: Give us what we want or we will destroy you.
Also Jews: We are always the victims, never the perpetrators.
I think it's wishful thinking on your part. See my post on I am Jewish so maybe you hate me
I note we are in a creedal passion period, as we were in the sixties, when radical ideologies gain traction. So the present epidemic of radical ideas, and the rise of new religious/moral/political understandings is a normal feature that pops up every fifty years or so. No cause for alarm.
https://mikealexander.substack.com/p/cycles-of-radicalization
We are also in period of war fever, as we were in the sixties, and so we have opposition to wars, Israeli-Hamas on the left and Ukraine on the right, Vietnam during the last cycle, WW I in the cycle before that. So yeah this too has happened multiple times before.
https://mikealexander.substack.com/p/war-cycles
One would expect the nature of the radicalization will reflect the environment. Students in the 1960's were economically secure as we were still living under the New Deal Order, while today they are not. Hence openness was a more rational response to the environment then, as neuroticism might be to the environment now.
Marriage is being delayed or not pursued, and fertility is down. People talk about civil war and decline. Times have changed from fifty years ago.
https://mikealexander.substack.com/p/two-visions-of-america-bedford-falls
As for why, this too has happened before, many times.
https://mikealexander.substack.com/p/the-american-secular-cycles
With the five personality traits, each should not be opposed to the others, but should have a healthy distribution of values. Extreme 'openness' is not healthy nor is the opposite of rigidity, but the ability to explore and the ability to be firm and consistent can both be good. The ability to anticipate negative outcomes and share concerns can be good, as can the ability to set aside concerns and fears, but carelessness and neuroticism are both unhealthy as well.
Maybe I misunderstand you but it seems you are mixing two issues in a way that is probably wrong. Haidt identified something very much like the neuroticism you mention starting in about 2012. Maybe I'm mistaken but the oppressor-oppressed view started long before that. Either way, the left has long protested against Israel's actions in Palestine. Most notable are protests against settlements in the West Bank. The primary difference this time is the number of Palestinians that have been killed. The concern being protested against is much bigger. It's not at all clear to me that these protests would be any smaller or different in the absence of the relatively recent increase in neuroticism. Maybe they would but that seems not to be the main driver, maybe even irrelevant.
"In 2024, my sense is that the protesters are limited to the fringe that supports the bad guys."
I don't think this is true. I'm not sure any of them support the bad guys (Hamas) but I'm sure many do not.