A recent Wall Street Journal article puts forth the argument that social justice warriors are genuine and sincere in their belief sets and in the laundry-list/word-salad complaints and accusations they routinely lob at the rest of us. The author urges us to listen to all they have to say. Not to believe that a word of it is true, just to listen and to accept the earnestness of their alternate-universe belief set.
In thinking about my own take on it, I concluded that I never really doubted their sincerity. I also recalled C.S. Lewis’s observation:
Of all the tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under the omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber barons cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.
True believers are not a modern incarnation. They’ve always been around, and they are the most dangerous of all those who’d impose their will on others. Cynics have finite and personal motives, usually revolving around the accrual of power, and usually work within reality to get it. They also take a break from time to time.
Fanatics, on the other hand, can never compromise or be satisfied, and it’s obvious that social justice warriors are as fanatical as any extreme religious zealot stereotype. They can be more dangerous, too, because some religious zealots are content to live in their own zealotry, while the SJWs feel a burning obligation to remake society. And, they never “switch off.” Their outrage is perpetual.
They have been an incarnation of the useful idiots that have always populated the political landscape. Their counterparts, the people to whom they are useful, have traditionally reaped the rewards of their earnestness by exploiting it (and them) to gain political power.
Unfortunately for the power-wielders, this crop of “useful idiots” has taken over. They now control the political landscape of the Left, they dictate positions and policy, and they are writing the Democratic Party platform. The Party leaders have shown they are unable to control or channel the SJWs, and the Presidential hopefuls have found it necessary to hop on the bandwagon to stand any chance of gaining the nomination.
The “inmates are running the asylum,” and a handful of charismatic and clever manipulators of social media have turned the social justice movement from a fringe useful for expanding the Overton Window into the power-core of one of the nation’s two major political parties.
Meanwhile, it remains vital to remember that depth of sincerity conveys absolutely no additional validity to a belief or opinion, and that the average folks who have not been steeped in social-justice tea tend to recoil from their extreme and intuitively repellent world view. Their buzzwords and catchphrases are shocking and insulting (From the article, ‘white fragility,’ ‘pernicious ignorance,’ ‘epistemic exploitation,’ ‘white supremacy,’ ‘misogyny). They are meant to be. They are intended to bully and cow us into accepting the undeniable, truth-to-power correctness of their views, not to convince us via logic or explanation.
Where this will lead remains to be seen, but little good can come of it. The best a sane person can hope for is that the cynics manage to shove the fanatics back into the Pandora’s box, and reclaim control of the agenda. But, even if that comes to pass, we’re in for a world of hurt. Wrong ideas don’t lead to wise policy.
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Your points on fanaticism got me thinking. In our own way we are all fanatics. Again I come back to the role of religion or some other set of widely shared set of rules of social behavior in holding societies together over the centuries. You know my position on religion, my analytical position if you will, namely that it consists of two very distinct parts, a set of rules and a source of authority. What is important in this context is that religion or morality is taught through relentless repetition both in the home and in church every Sunday, at least for the Christian religion; and that its effects tend to be multi-generational because of the effect of the parental home transfer component.
In this context what’s important to note is how white Christians—immigrant Catholic Hispanics and blacks march to an entirely different drummer because of markedly different pasts—have been breaking up into two very distinct classes, one that has grown up with the traditional religious training and the other not. Arguably the one that you refer to as fanatic is the one without and the reason they display signs of the type of fanaticism that you wrote about is their search for a source of meaning other than religion. They are therefore easy prey for the cheap political exploiters and misguided teachers.
I don’t know if you’ve heard of or read this book:
Why We Believe in God(s): A Concise Guide to the Science of Faith
It was recommended by Penn Jillette, it’s short, and I found it to be transformative in my understanding of human behavior and the biological hard-wiring that informs all of it.
Its lessons are directly relevant to the understanding of why fanaticism exists.
Fanaticism itself isn’t a certain threat to social order – many fanatics can coexist with non-fanatics, provided the subject of their fanaticism does not mandate coercion of others. It’s the sort that does that is the big threat.
From the perspective of the model I presented before in your Whence Morality post my worry is that we are headed straight for some sort of a civil war or an autocracy or both. The glue that held us together for so long consisted of our Christian morality and the Constitution, which itself didn’t contain any real day-to-day rules for social behavior. Those were left to the states and religions. Unfortunately both components are fraying very badly and we don’t have anything to substitute them, especially the behavioral rules. We don’t even have the mechanisms to substitute for them except on a state by state basis.
We may still have a while but we have to get on with it but it will not be easy because of how it can’t even be discussed objectively without it turning emotional right away. I just tried with a daughter and granddaughter, both very smart, but I didn’t get anywhere. I think the tough part to get over is the fact that our current morality, or what remains of it, developed and was indoctrinated over many generations and while the home learning component is still alive in many homes, the church and school components are gone. The belief that it is deeply ingrained in us without any need for the almost daily repetition is too strong–but I just got the book you recommended for my Kindle :).
I also don’t know where it will end. The only thing that gives me any hope is the speed with which all this dissolution of normalcy has come on. That which appeared rapidly, can also disappear rapidly.
Is that likely? I don’t think so, but you never know.
Excellent analysis.
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‘Entrepreneurial capitalism takes more people out of poverty than aid.” ~Bono
Okay, Peter, I’ve read “Why We Believe in God(s): A Concise Guide to the Science of Faith.” It was fairly easy to read because it is exactly where I’m coming from. Recall that in my original comment to Whence Morality I wrote that “I am perfectly at ease” with the proposition that
“If we can agree that the laws of physics, the known and unknown ones, have been around since the ‘beginning,’ whatever that is, then why can’t we posit that God, even the God of the three major monotheistic religions, created the basic particles and forces along with the laws of physics, gave them a little push, and voila the universe including humans. Being Almighty He could have then made a few teaks along the way, first to create consciousness, then to save us from ourselves through his Son, and so on.”
More broadly I posited that to hang together societies need an anchor or guidepost that all can share and I saw the two parts of religion, a set of rules and a god to give them authority, as a part of the anchor (the other the Constitution) that has held the U.S. together.
In the context of the book and your original post, let me rephrase what I want to say. What I meant was that we all need a framework within which to think and operate. In the context of the chemicals in our brain what we need is an equation, formula or complex molecule that incorporates them in the right proportions. I was looking for that in “Why We Believe in God(s)” and couldn’t find it but I am not surprised. When we do what we might find is God ;).
What the WSJ article that you referenced was talking about, and you with your essay on fanaticism, I think are some form of that framework, equation, formula or molecule as an ALTERNATIVE to religion and even the other part of the framework, the Constitution. We all need one to simplify and process the immensely complex and varied signals we are constantly taking in. In my case that is what I call “my model,” of which I sent you a version that you rejected for your blog (I can try to rework it if you remind me what version precisely I sent you). It includes how I view religion and frameworks more broadly. Millions of people on the left, however, have been losing the framework of their parents and are desperately looking for a new meaningful alternative.
What we all have difficulty accepting, in your case as evidenced by your labelling what you wrote as fanaticism, is that we all have valid frameworks only some are more sophisticated and deeper than others. In my case I use the term “gullible” for the armies of believers, and struggle to understand how the politicians, “journalists” and talking heads can possibly believe the “trash” they disseminate. Many do believe it but obviously many don’t. On the other hand I’ve been observing that perhaps because of so much repetition and even ritual (chapter 8) some of the talking heads speak as if they have actually come to believe their own “trash.”
The bottom line is that whereas the book didn’t really add much to what I had already deduced on my own, this exchange is helping me clear up why so many people are so gullible and ready to accept what we hear as long as it validates our predispositions i.e. fits into our frameworks. And it happens to the “smartest.”
I didn’t reject your post – I just postponed it until we get the “about” section fixed. Sorry for any miscommunication.
I’ll read your post here later today 🙂
Where we *may* differ is here.
“In the context of the chemicals in our brain what we need is an equation, formula or complex molecule that incorporates them in the right proportions.”
My quibble, and it’s a tentative one, because it could be pure semantics, is that said “formula” already exists, and isn’t going to change: it’s the hard-wiring of our brains, developed through evolution. Societal things that “work,” work because they suit that hard-wiring. Religious belief is one. The mix of cooperation and competition that spawns capitalism is another. Collectivist structures that are small (i.e. tribe-size) and voluntary are yet another.
What doesn’t work is forced collectivism on a large scale. But, because it can work on a small and voluntary scale, people are prompted, via the “overdrive” stimulus that the book talks about, to believe it can, and to continue to believe despite all evidence to the contrary. Add in tribal wiring and you get what we have now.
I don’t know that a “structure” can be cogitated to ease all these troubles, given how they’re the spawn of hard-wiring. The best we might achieve is rechanneling them in a direction more attached to reality i.e. capitalism.
But we might be saying the same thing.
I don’t think there is any light between you and I. It is semantics and perhaps my grammar. You have to make allowances because English is not my first language, I watch a lot of Mexican news and am on in years. Because of that I now confuse words and sentence construction between the two languages more often.
Yes, of course there is already a formula for all of us with parts wired and parts that can still be changed by environmental factors including indoctrination. What I meant when I said I was looking for the formula was the impossible task of actually knowing that formula with constants and all, where the constants would be whatever is actually hard wired and variables would be the values for each of us, including environmental influences, i.e. brainwashing. If we get to picky we could say that even some of the constants could vary from person to person, for instance to determine IQ and to allow faster or slower change over time.
Anyway, it’s been ages since I played with formulas, both chemical and mathematical, and that is why I prefer structure, guideposts or anchor to reflect an increased rigidity over time. Part of that rigidity is because some parts of the structure or formula are hard wired but others because of the way it is taught or absorbed from the environment. Stuff we learn as little kids we are more likely to retain and keep alive if it is a result of constant repetition with language the most obvious. Language is treated differently by neuroscientists but I see it as just part of the same overall structure.
For the purposes of my model what’s important is how the structure or anchor reacts to change and how easily, or not, it changes itself. Thus the amount of repetition as a little kid and then throughout life, which in religions will be different for rural and city people, can be very important. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we actually knew the formula, and advances along those lines is what I always look for.
So yes, I think we are on the same page. And yes, some things can be changed more easily than others, and perhaps others not at all except through very long term evolutionary processes. What my model tries to do is to identify the process by which change takes place. My original approach was how to economic development but I soon realized what we have to deal with first is social change. Once I had that I realized that some of the key processes applied equally well to smaller groups and individuals.