As a descendant of Mormons, let me say that you tend to forgot how much intra-Christian intolerance there has been in US history, and not just toward Mormons. Much of the intolerance of the woke pales in comparison to how Christian Americans have treated other Christian Americans in the past. You underestimate how much liberal practices and norms still govern the lives of the woke and how far so many are from the intolerances of yore. You also overestimate the resiliency of the woke -- this is where comparisons to religion go wrong. It has no effective structuring rituals, no way to reinforce the kind of quiet, everyday commitment of the religious, no truly inspiring acts or people to emulate. What counts as "inspiring" for extreme wokery changes frequently and incentives for constant infighting abound.
You also overestimate how much wokery is discontinuous with liberal traditions and values and how much of a spectrum there is among young people in allegiance to its more extreme and misguided elements. I am more hopeful that as people age they will realize and work out the contradictions of the better sides of the liberal norms and practices they have been socialized into with the genuinely conflicting aspects of wokery in favor of the former. Liberal institutions, practices, norms, etc. have never been established as a result of straightforward and flawless reasoning from first principles and never will be. They've survived worse social rumble tumble and so we have good reason to hope for their persistence, even improvement, through more.
> You also overestimate how much wokery is discontinuous with liberal traditions and values
This looks like it shares in the traditional American conflation of "liberal" with "centre-left". In which case, your case for continuity is in no way comforting.
You are saying it is continuous with a tradition that has always placed the projects of central power over individual rights and constitutional restrains. We know this already.
Within a generation (25 years tops), we all will notice the inability to keep the modern infrastructure running. We already can bear witness to the inability to build it in any reasonable time or cost frame.
When Hurricane Irene hit Connecticut, my neighbors and I set up coffee/food stands to feed the people repairing the electrical power lines/poles that had been destroyed. I noted at the time that those workers were literally all white, all male, and almost all of them were at least as old as I was at the time (I was 45 in September 2011). I think that the workers that keep the power on, the water running, and the communications hardware working are dying off/retiring, and are not being replaced in the US.
Civil engineer here. Retired recently but I was, for many years, a partner in a very large, multinational consulting firm. Your observations of our modern infrastructure are quite correct.
Mises, Rand, Rothbard, and Milton Friedman are all New Yorkers or foreign born that settled in NY. You may be disagreeable by personality/temperament, but often come across as having a charitably polite Midwestern temperament towards those you disagree with.
Thank you, Arnold, for bringing out important facts and trends in US society. As a member of the fact preferring social grouping, I very much appreciate your efforts.
One thing you are uniquely suited toward, but have not fully embraced, is the concept of frequency dependent selection at multiple simultaneous scales. Some things are suited to enable group success only when dominant within a group, some are best at low frequencies but dangerous at high; and different groups are required to benefit the group of groups.
As usual, lots of great links and thoughts to think about - but like most Libertarians, I'll spend more time on the disagreements/ suggestions for improvements.
Today "Christian Nationalism" is a growing trend, as well as a book by Andrew Torba:
Torba is also the founder of Gab.com, and writes a frequent email newsletter - but it's not yet as interesting as Twitter nor Facebook, tho I see Babylon Bee there when I go on.
He's building a non-Big Tech / non-Big Bank Christian Nationalist parallel economy. Slowly, and likely not making a ton of money yet. His account was recently raided by PayPal, so now there is GabPay. (in the US only, not yet Slovakia).
Christian Nationalists are the most likely group to be able to create any new type of networked society a-la-Balaji Srinivasan, because of their willingness to sacrifice something for their beliefs.
With a new Italian PM who is more Christian Nationalist than fascist, as is also Hungary's Victor Orban, it is becoming clear that the effective opposition to globalist authoritarian elites will come far more from Christians than by "liberals" (could Tyler or Joel define them today?) or Libertarians. Rod Dreher as been writing of real resistance for years.
It is the growing Christian based resistance to Woke excess and especially Woke lies that will stop the Woke trends from future domination.
I am more optimistic than Arnold appears to be, and focus on a selection of his comments excerpted below:
"... I marvel at the high numbers of those who self-report as non-binary. Until very recently, across many different societies—urban/rural, temperate latitudes/cold/hot, advanced/primitive—I think it is fair to say that over 90 percent of adults have been heterosexual, with the remainder mostly L or G, as opposed to any of the other letters. ...[T]hose children are in the throes of a vogue mania. ...[T]he mania is unsustainable...
I believe, or at least hope, that the current politics on campus and at major newspapers is a mania that will pass. History might not have repeated itself, but it has rhymed. I remember the late '60s and early '70s when the older generation thought that we kids were bonkers wearing our torn-up bell-bottomed jeans, protest t-shirts, with boys and young men wearing long hair, young men wearing full beards, and listening to that new-fangled rock & roll music. The older generation couldn't understand our reveling in cultural and political freedom, but here we are in our middle age and retirement looking fairly conventional by traditional standards, and downright like sticks in the mud to the new generation.
Actually this analysis only implies that the future belongs to countries other than America.
There are no strong contenders for non-idiot polities out there. So it might just be that idiocy will rule the 21st century. But Wokism will only be one quaint parochial species of idiocy.
As a descendant of Mormons, let me say that you tend to forgot how much intra-Christian intolerance there has been in US history, and not just toward Mormons. Much of the intolerance of the woke pales in comparison to how Christian Americans have treated other Christian Americans in the past. You underestimate how much liberal practices and norms still govern the lives of the woke and how far so many are from the intolerances of yore. You also overestimate the resiliency of the woke -- this is where comparisons to religion go wrong. It has no effective structuring rituals, no way to reinforce the kind of quiet, everyday commitment of the religious, no truly inspiring acts or people to emulate. What counts as "inspiring" for extreme wokery changes frequently and incentives for constant infighting abound.
You also overestimate how much wokery is discontinuous with liberal traditions and values and how much of a spectrum there is among young people in allegiance to its more extreme and misguided elements. I am more hopeful that as people age they will realize and work out the contradictions of the better sides of the liberal norms and practices they have been socialized into with the genuinely conflicting aspects of wokery in favor of the former. Liberal institutions, practices, norms, etc. have never been established as a result of straightforward and flawless reasoning from first principles and never will be. They've survived worse social rumble tumble and so we have good reason to hope for their persistence, even improvement, through more.
> You also overestimate how much wokery is discontinuous with liberal traditions and values
This looks like it shares in the traditional American conflation of "liberal" with "centre-left". In which case, your case for continuity is in no way comforting.
You are saying it is continuous with a tradition that has always placed the projects of central power over individual rights and constitutional restrains. We know this already.
Within a generation (25 years tops), we all will notice the inability to keep the modern infrastructure running. We already can bear witness to the inability to build it in any reasonable time or cost frame.
When Hurricane Irene hit Connecticut, my neighbors and I set up coffee/food stands to feed the people repairing the electrical power lines/poles that had been destroyed. I noted at the time that those workers were literally all white, all male, and almost all of them were at least as old as I was at the time (I was 45 in September 2011). I think that the workers that keep the power on, the water running, and the communications hardware working are dying off/retiring, and are not being replaced in the US.
Civil engineer here. Retired recently but I was, for many years, a partner in a very large, multinational consulting firm. Your observations of our modern infrastructure are quite correct.
Mises, Rand, Rothbard, and Milton Friedman are all New Yorkers or foreign born that settled in NY. You may be disagreeable by personality/temperament, but often come across as having a charitably polite Midwestern temperament towards those you disagree with.
Thank you, Arnold, for bringing out important facts and trends in US society. As a member of the fact preferring social grouping, I very much appreciate your efforts.
Arnold;
One thing you are uniquely suited toward, but have not fully embraced, is the concept of frequency dependent selection at multiple simultaneous scales. Some things are suited to enable group success only when dominant within a group, some are best at low frequencies but dangerous at high; and different groups are required to benefit the group of groups.
As usual, lots of great links and thoughts to think about - but like most Libertarians, I'll spend more time on the disagreements/ suggestions for improvements.
Today "Christian Nationalism" is a growing trend, as well as a book by Andrew Torba:
https://www.amazon.com/Christian-Nationalism-Biblical-Dominion-Discipling-ebook/dp/B0BCV58B4K
Torba is also the founder of Gab.com, and writes a frequent email newsletter - but it's not yet as interesting as Twitter nor Facebook, tho I see Babylon Bee there when I go on.
He's building a non-Big Tech / non-Big Bank Christian Nationalist parallel economy. Slowly, and likely not making a ton of money yet. His account was recently raided by PayPal, so now there is GabPay. (in the US only, not yet Slovakia).
https://www.gabpay.com/
Christian Nationalists are the most likely group to be able to create any new type of networked society a-la-Balaji Srinivasan, because of their willingness to sacrifice something for their beliefs.
With a new Italian PM who is more Christian Nationalist than fascist, as is also Hungary's Victor Orban, it is becoming clear that the effective opposition to globalist authoritarian elites will come far more from Christians than by "liberals" (could Tyler or Joel define them today?) or Libertarians. Rod Dreher as been writing of real resistance for years.
It is the growing Christian based resistance to Woke excess and especially Woke lies that will stop the Woke trends from future domination.
With regard to your cancel-bait piece. I just read a line in a short story by John Cheever:
"... (a) passion that Ethel shares with some other women - an inability to refuse any cry for help, to refuse any voice that sounds pitiable."
I am more optimistic than Arnold appears to be, and focus on a selection of his comments excerpted below:
"... I marvel at the high numbers of those who self-report as non-binary. Until very recently, across many different societies—urban/rural, temperate latitudes/cold/hot, advanced/primitive—I think it is fair to say that over 90 percent of adults have been heterosexual, with the remainder mostly L or G, as opposed to any of the other letters. ...[T]hose children are in the throes of a vogue mania. ...[T]he mania is unsustainable...
I believe, or at least hope, that the current politics on campus and at major newspapers is a mania that will pass. History might not have repeated itself, but it has rhymed. I remember the late '60s and early '70s when the older generation thought that we kids were bonkers wearing our torn-up bell-bottomed jeans, protest t-shirts, with boys and young men wearing long hair, young men wearing full beards, and listening to that new-fangled rock & roll music. The older generation couldn't understand our reveling in cultural and political freedom, but here we are in our middle age and retirement looking fairly conventional by traditional standards, and downright like sticks in the mud to the new generation.
I wonder how this column will age after Nov 8.
Actually this analysis only implies that the future belongs to countries other than America.
There are no strong contenders for non-idiot polities out there. So it might just be that idiocy will rule the 21st century. But Wokism will only be one quaint parochial species of idiocy.