As one of your rationalist/EA readers, this essay perfectly encapsulates both what I respect and dislike about you. Your commitment to truth seeking and introspection are great; your commitment to defending your aesthetic preferences/instincts (which I am often personally repulsed by) unless faced with overwhelming counter-evidence is not.
Same reaction from a rationalist/EA reader. My instinctive feeling upon encountering your substack + twitter was sadness that "a good brain has been eaten by culture war"; this post gave me a high dose of the same admiration-grief. I would find it very difficult in your shoes to explain so openly why you have the stance you have – I'm too invested in coming off as having (and to a sadly lesser extent, in fact having) 'reasonable' preferences and causes. I admire your introspection, openness, and courage.
Personally, as someone who is dislikes wokeness but is in favor of a more androgynous society and sees nothing wrong with crossing gender lines in body/performance-space at will, it feels refreshing to read someone state openly that their objection comes from a disgust instinct. In a way it stops the debate I could in theory have with you about it, but it also feels good that we could "really talk about it" because we would not be lying about why we want the things we want.
There seem to be a lot of studies that have found links between conservatism and tendency to feel disgust. I am curious if other conservatives find this plausible - it seems to be somewhat supported by this essay.
I don't see this piece as explicitly against or for androgyny as a trend per se .. I think it is assumed that it is against pressure to learn to like something because you should. I have the same uncanny valley response to certain public officials in the Biden administration .. on the other hand I adore Divine and every other creature that emerged from the primordial swamp of John Water's imagination .. so maybe it's also the execution, not just the concept.
Or maybe not the execution .. maybe simply not pretending there is no joke to be in on ... New York Dolls, The Cramps (and for advanced study on really getting something versus virtue signaling .. reference "Garbage Man")
>maybe it's also the execution, not just the concept.
I suspect it might be entirely the execution, not the concept. I find the aesthetic preferences of some LGBT people disgusting but love Sufjan Stevens' music. See this clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVVhHjyC04k. I had a very minimal disgust response there, if it even existed at all.
I don't know if I would look up "Divine" myself, any more than I would want to dig any further into the life or childhood of the Egg Lady (another Jon Waters find) .. it is the side of him as captured by Jon Waters that I adore .. as Waters himself has more or less expressed .. that time and place of presenting previously unknown to the general public human "Found Art" (aka "freaks") to the general public for both shock value (and demonstrating, as much Found Art does, that the right lighting can bring out the charm of even human garbage) is long past.
Did not mean to imply you did, my analogy was too obscure. I meant that much "found art" could be considered as valueless as garbage until seen from the right perspective or through the lens of certain aesthetics.
But without "Pink Flamingos" and Divine it would have been harder for the later Klaus Nomi (by way of David Bowie) to later get it right as actual art. If there is one thing that differentiates all of those artists and freaks from todays tedious faux individualists is that not ONE of them would have been offended by someone else being offended by them. (To get a little nerdy here, it is a bit of the difference between the original Da Da-ists and todays post-modern artists .. the Da Da-ists could actually paint (and draw and sculpt), they CHOSE not to, to make a point (which was more-or-less that it was a vanity to create real art while there was a world war and genocide going on .. or something like that). But I digress. I will check out Sufjan Stevens..
I'm only here due to the ACX linkpost, but +1 - I am genuinely impressed by your self-awareness in identifying the actual sources of your beliefs and what your cruxes actually are; I am pretty appalled by your endorsement of e.g. potentially denying someone a job because you find them disgusting. (All kinds of things are or were often found disgusting! Interracial couples, people of certain ethnicities in general, people with some kinds of disabilities, people who don't happen to be pretty, etc. I think in basically all these cases people should basically ignore their disgust instinct when it comes to hiring for jobs that aren't about appearance; I don't know if you necessarily agree, but I would guess that you probably agree in at least *some* cases, which means that the disgust is at least not necessarily a sufficient reason.)
Well, what if I told you we exclude people from jobs and access to the public square for aesthetic reasons all the time? Like you’re not allowed to defecate in public. It’s not just a health reason, even if you clean up after yourself it doesn’t work. You can’t expose private parts on the job. Even a dress code at work is aesthetic. So one has to explain why people who don’t adhere to gender norms are different, if a majority of people do want to exclude them from living their lives in the way they see fit.
One also has to explain why (on your presumed view) people who don't adhere to gender norms are different from racial minorities, people with visible disabilities, people who are not conventionally attractive, etc.! (Perhaps you bite all those bullets but if so I hope it's clear why I find *that* appalling.)
I do agree that aesthetics can be a good reason to limit some kinds of freedom; the examples of covering up private parts on the job and not defecating in public are good ones. I don't know if I can articulate an entire theory of when I think aesthetic-based restrictions are and aren't okay, but a first stab is that it matters a lot to me whether a given restriction is primarily forbidding a type of *behavior* or a type of *person* - which I realize isn't the clearest cut line because you could say "well, everyone is allowed here, as long as they don't do gender-nonconforming things *here*", but to me this sounds kind of similar to "well, forbidding same-sex marriage isn't discriminatory, because everyone is allowed to get heterosexually married", in that both responses are ignoring that there seem to exist axes of human variation that look like "what gender(s) of person are you interested in marrying" and "what gender of person do you want to *be*", such that in practice if you restrict those choices you are primarily drawing a line between kinds of people. (And if you object to hiring someone who is privately kinky even if they never bring that into the workplace, that also seems like very clearly a "type of person" rather than "type of behavior" type of exclusion.)
(I am okay with excluding types of people from things sometimes, but generally I'd need a more important reason than aesthetics? Like, excluding known abusers from community functions is often a good idea because including them would expose others to risk; excluding atheists from being employed as Sunday school teachers is valid because they're missing a job qualification. I guess excluding e.g. non-black people from being hired to play MLK in a movie is a valid aesthetics-based kind-of-person exclusion, but I'm fine with that because it's an exclusion with limited scope, not a societywide one.)
(See also - campaigns to eliminate dress code norms that are significantly more onerous for women than men (e.g. requiring makeup or heels), or for black people than white people (e.g. requiring hairstyles that are difficult to do with Black hair textures); these kind of straddle the line between "type of behavior" and "type of person" rules, and I am generally in favor of making such rules more equitable to avoid that kind of significant differential impact. But also I am generally in favor of making dress codes less onerous in general (I work in a west coast tech company with a minimum level of dress code and whenever I'm reminded that some people have to wear suits to their office job I find this ridiculous), so I think we may also disagree some on how much weight aesthetics should be given in general.)
Here's an argument I'm playing around with. Some "disgusting" traits/behaviors automatically command attention in a way that cannot be overcome, like terrible odor, nudity outside the typical context, etc. We can deny people jobs based on those things because it is impossible for most people to avoid attending to them. In that way, they're analogous to being aggressively yelled at. We tend to think we have a right to avoid sensory inputs/ignore, which is why verbal harassment isn't allowed. That justification applies to poor smell and certain forms of nudity.
The liberal would argue [no actual liberal would, but let's be charitable] that androgyny isn't like that, because it's really not that hard to ignore. It's more like when someone's shoelaces are untied; perhaps sensorially irritating, but nothing an adult can't ignore. A man with long hair is the sort of thing that an adult should be able to ignore. A certain kind of liberal will go so far as to say that a man in a miniskirt falls into that category too.
As some have pointed out, there's psychological evidence that conservatives have stronger disgust reactions than liberals on average. Perhaps it's literally impossible for them to ignore androgyny, but I don't think so.
Potential counterargument: we aren't supposed to deny fat people jobs, but it can be psychologically impossible to filter out the disgust reaction from that stimulus. There's a good pragmatic argument for this, given how many fat people need jobs. Perhaps that can explain the apparent exception to the principle "it's acceptable to discriminate against people who impose negative sensory stimuli that cannot be ignored by a reasonable person."
He says he is a truth-seeker as well, which seemed hard to square with his explicit rejection of rationalism. Until I realised that you can be rational w.r.t. 'is' beliefs but not 'ought' beliefs. Which is understandable actually. I am the same way (but not with his specific moral feelings/views).
Of course. Rationalists and EAs are generally quite aware of how atypical we are. So yes, the burden is on us to argue for what we think is right, and we accept that. But Hanania has stated that even if he is persuaded by those arguments, his positions won’t change.
Hanania was clear that he was committed to defending his aesthetics, even when convinced it was bad for society:
“[Even if] someone proved to my satisfaction that, for example, encouraging children to explore their gender identities at a young age would somehow lead to a happier and healthier society, I would still oppose it.”
That’s not my reading of what he said. He seemed quite explicit that he cares more about his aesthetics and his ego than what even he might think is better for the world. This obviously warrants criticism, even while I applaud his honesty and introspection.
May 23, 2022·edited May 23, 2022Liked by Richard Hanania
I appreciate the honesty and transparency Dr. Hanania. In fact, I think that's why many of us come here. I'd be fascinated to see what the results of you taking the "Big Five" personality test might be. (I assume you're low in Agreeableness.)
I would raise two, small objections to things you wrote. 1) The banning of all personal-life talk from teachers as a mask for homophobia. That's probably true. But I can think of good reasons why heterosexual teachers should be banned from talking about it as well. In my 3rd grade class, my teacher got pregnant. Naturally, we asked how a woman can get pregnant and her (wise) response was, "Go ask your parents." I'm grateful she didn't go into detail about getting nailed by her husband.
2) I have an intense dislike for Claire Lehman, so (cards on the table) this might be my own bias against her--but, her point about Autism and high IQ doesn't disprove your notion about mental illness. (Many, highly intelligent people can still be crazy and unfit for high office).
I appreciate your candor and willingness to discuss these things, Dr. Hanania. Though, I share all your instinctual biases, so I suppose I just enjoy the comradery of being the same boat too.
And returning for a moment to the subject of schoolteachers and what they teach: One of the more depressing video clips of the week was a young male kindergarten teacher in Florida, a homosexual, telling MSNBC how distressed he was by this new law the state just passed.
I won't play the full clip for you, but here's a fifty-second sample:
[Clip.] Interviewer: Do you worry that you won't be able to talk about your own … Look at me: I have a child in kindergarten right now. I know exactly that my child has two teachers, one of which has a daughter at home, um, and is single, the other is married and has four children. I know everything about their lives because my kid tells me.
Teacher: Absolutely, abso- … You are one hundred percent correct. Um, that's what we do with educators: We build relationships with our kids. And in order to build relationships you talk about your home life, you talk about what you do on the weekends, and building community. It scares me that I'm not going to be able to have these conversations with my children. And they're going to ask me what I did on the weekend. I don't want to have to hide that my partner and I went paddle-boarding this weekend, because then they ask, "What does 'partner' mean, Mr Bernard?" and, you know, I'm worried, can I tell them what it means?
This is one of those things that makes me wonder if I was born and raised in a different Solar System. I never knew anything about my teachers' private lives. I wouldn't have wanted to, and my parents wouldn't have wanted me to.
Sure, I understand: There is more to education that just reading, writing, and arithmetic. Kids are being socialized. They're being socialized to accept and co-operate with each other, though, not to stick their noses into adult matters. To the degree that children need to know about adult matters, it's for their parents to guide them, not state employees.
What I am seeing when I watch clips like that is, I am seeing an effort to abolish childhood — to tear down the walls of that secret garden that is childhood.
I remember that secret garden. I cherish the memory of it, and I thank with all my heart the shades of those schoolteachers who let me play in it for so many years, undisturbed.
"While I'm sure a teacher probably mentioned something personal to me over my entire childhood, I certainly can't remember anything. I can't even remember "they said some personal thing and I forgot."
They certainly did, students ask all the time. I think you just overestimate how much students actually *care* about what their teachers do on the weekends (I taught kids 10-18 for 6 years), other than just kind of checking to make sure they're real people who don't sleep at the school and eat dry erase markers for dinner. For students, teachers can fall into the uncanny valley a bit, it can be good to make sure they're real every once in a while.
Appreciate this thread on how much a public school teacher can/should say about his/her personal life. As a spouse of a 1st grade teacher, I can tell you my picture sits on her desk. Occasionally, she will say "my husband" when talking to the students, when the context helps make a point. Said point can be purely academic, or along the lines of character development, such as need to compromise and find "win-win". Her school builds on the Covey 7 habits for character development. When our kids went to her school, needless to say all their peers knew of this relationship. Suffice it to say, keeping all personal information away from students would be a burden, or at least rather awkward. I can recall such level of information from my teachers as well. (I grew up in midwest US in the 70s, if that matters). I don' think it would be an issue, but the literal interpretation of some recent laws, such might be grounds for a violation.
Very good article. I've know for a long time that it was human nature for most of us to put more energy into trivial political issues instead of more impactful ones, but I've never really know why. This framework of two systems of morality is very clarifying.
Since I'm a 1-in-75 IQ guy instead of a 1-in-1000 one, I don't have much more to add. So I'll use a quote from a middlebrow writer making a sports metaphor that explains how I and so many others feel about the woke:
"As a 76ers fan, I hate Larry Bird. Not in the same way I hate Hitler, but more often".
One of the deeply valuable things that conformance to social standards, even (or even especially) arbitrary and silly standards does is signal a strong willingness to work with the group. Conversely, a ready defiance or challenge of social standards signals an unwillingness to work with the group, a feeling that the individual's needs and feelings are being prioritized over the group's.
When I go to meet with my child's teacher at school, I shave and replace my T-shirt with a nice shirt. When I go to court I put on a suit and tie, and I address the judge as "Your Honor." I may find any of these things deeply silly, or even mildly offensive. Like: how is it functional for me to be required to address a judge in 2022 as if I was a peasant addressin his feudal lord? Is that not probably corrosive of the ideal of equality before the law, of republican self-government, et cetera? I can easily make the argument that it is.j I don't like wearing ties, they seem silly and get in the way. Who decided this stupid fashion? Why am I as a man more constrained than a woman, who could choose a variety of styles of dress that suit her individual taste? Why can't I just wear something *I* think looks good on me, why must I conform to the silly standard that men should wear dark coats and dull colored strips of cloth tied elboratedly around their necks?
But I *do* them, nevertheless, because I am signalling that I acknowledge the group has spoke on these (perhaps trivial) markers, and by conforming to them I agree what the group has decided has weight and currency with me, that I do not necessarily assert my own interests and tastes come first, always. I'm OK with compromise, I see that other people have needs and interests, that may conflict with mine, and I am open to some kind of negotiation and compromise.
These are extremely valuable signals. In general, entropy and bad luck and our very high ambitions makes it darn hard to achieve general success. The only way we can all enjoy the pretty good life the hard work of our ancestors made possible for us is to work together, to cooperate, to be willing to acknowledge that sometimes we have to compromise our individual ideas and tastes for the sake of the group enterprise -- success at keeping the ship 'o' progress sailing along well, avoid the shoals and rocks of disunion, fratricide, misunderstanding, mistake, confusion.
So when I see other people who signal "Hey, I recognize I'm part of a group, and I issue these signals to let you know that I'm willing to work with the group, I do not insist on getting my way all the time, even at the cost of group success" that makes me happy and I trust them more.
When I see people who deliberately signal "Hey, I recognize the group feelings/decisions on these assorted matters, and I deliberately flout them, which is a signal to you that I consider my personal aims and tastes much more importan than the group goals, and I will probably insist on my personal goals even at the cost of group success" then, not surprisingly, I feel distrustful and hostile. This is not a person who will *ever* be of assistance to me, or to the group. This may very well be a social parasite, who will subtract from the group endeavour, dead weight that must be dragged along.
The pronoun debate reminds me curiously of the fact that new jarheads are trained to never use the personal pronoun at all -- they are required to refer to themselve as "this Marine" and aren't allowed to say "I". We can see why: by compelling a new language, they compel the new Marine to think constantly about his role in the larger endeavour. Is that I'm doing constructive for the group endeavour? We think, not unreasonably, that enforcing that kind of reflection (and group signaling) improves the ability of the group to get shit done. If I'm a fellow Marine, I trust the guy who speaks this way maybe a little more, because I feel like he's telling me if the situation goes pear-shaped he's *not* going to be thinking just about himself, there's a chance he'll think about me, and us, also. Conversely if the guy insisted on having his own special pronoun, I'd tend to think he would be likely to put his own welfare above mine, or anybody's, and my trust level would go down.
I wonder if you underestimate the general social cost of people constantly signaling their wish to put their individual narcissistic needs above the group goals. We look around and see gee, we seem more fratricidal, more tribal, less cooperative, more confrontational than before, and by gum these things have real and substantial costs. Should we not *connect* that to the unwillingness of the majority to judge (negatively) those individuals who insist on issuing signals that give the finger to the decisions and traditions of the majority -- even those which are silly and arbitrary?
I know this was posted quite some time ago, so this is a delayed reaction, but wow, you captured something true. For me, it goes past underestimating the social costs of woke. There has been a relaxation of the expectation that costs and benefits should be detailed, compared, and weighed as part of a decision-making or policy-creation process. We obviously saw this with Covid - c.f. children. Regarding wokeism, It’s not that the social cost is under estimated, it’s ignored completely. The idea that there is some mutuality of responsibilities between individuals and civil society is being washed away under the tide of, well, you know.
Interesting. Your “this Marine” story went a different way than I was expecting. To my eye it is very similar to the pronoun thing, and they are both about (uncharitably) mind control, or (charitably) signaling your participation in the narrative. The two narratives are very different, of course.
Interesting, yourself. You’re right, the Marines and pronoun comparison is so apt - they ARE the same picture. The Marines say it out loud - We are erasing your individual identity in order to create a shared identity, as we believe greater unit cohesiveness improves safety and effectiveness. I’d love to hear the genderists truthfully describe what they are doing and why. I could do it for them, but it’s late and it disgusts me to lay it out.
I fall into the ea camp and not into the conservative camp. This is a truly incredible article--one of the best I've read in years. While I hate genocide more than pronouns (by quite a lot), this was a remarkably clear look into your psychology and the psychology of other conservatives.
This post reflects my own thoughts on politics very closely. I’m probably a little bit more tolerant of differences, and have a lower disgust reaction, but otherwise very similar.
A minor quibble: if one has a 1 in 1,000 IQ (which mine is based on standardized tests), then I think a 1 in 10 or 1 in 100 level of nonconformity is sufficient to explain extreme anti-wokeness. A big motivator is just intellectual hygiene, which you mention in your article.
My belief is the a moderately above average IQ and a high level of non-conformity is the magic combination. I often wondered why I didn't get sucked into identity politics. I have completeled 2 university degrees, which probably helped, but my life-long commitment to the non-conformist (and probably quite judgemental) personality type aided my avoidance of wokedom immensely. I just don't think many people actually think very much. They know that what's normal and usual is somehow bad and to be railed-against, so they'll go along with whatever calls itself social justice, no matter how insane it becomes. Gender ideology might prove the be the breaking point, but who knows?
I actually think it's something different. There's a bunch of different ways of putting it, Internal vs. External Locus of Control, Internalizing vs. Externalizing personalities, etc. but what I think it does come down to, is if these ideas exist in a theoretical place or they exist in a place to be actualized.
For me, my Anti-Woke (And truth is, I'm actually very modernist, liberal and yes, even small-p progressive, but my issue is with that memeset) beliefs come from the point that I HAVE internalized and actualized them in the past, it's still something I struggle with, and yes, they've caused me an immense amount of self-harm. To the point where I don't think people are actually supposed to internalize/actualize them, at least not people within the in-group. I think people look at these ideas, think what they would actually mean directly applied to their life, and because of that, nope away from it. Where as people who are more externalizing/theoretical can keep it unapplied, or at least give some distance. It becomes more about having the right politics than it is your own individual behavior.
I think that's why it's such a strong thing for some people, is because it represents direct harm. And that makes no sense to people who simply can't understand how anybody could ever see it that way.
I consider myself to be progressive. I believe in the sensible redistribution of wealth through taxation, well funded public schools, hospitals and infrastructure and a social welfare net that is both broad and deep. I don't see why anyone needs to live in poverty in the rich countries of the West. But after that point my politics is decidedly laissez faire. If everyone has access to the basics there is no need for racist college admissions or hiring policies. This means that the politics of identity is a meaningless layer of misdirected social justice energy. The only identity worth considering is poverty. There are plenty of rich gay, black and female people, so they aren't an oppressed class, whereas the poorest correlate 100% with the oppressed class of poverty. Hence Wokeism is garbage ideology. It really is that simple. Postmodernism is great for non-linear and unreliable narrator story telling, but it's not fit for purpose as economic or social policy. I will die on this hill.
A 1 in 1000 IQ is three sigmas above median. A 1 in 50 IQ (what most grad students are working with) is two sigmas above. So if having two sigmas worth of extra neurons (or whatever) isn't enough to brake you from the woke spell, why does that third sigma matter?
I'm a ~1 in 50 IQ with a high level of disagreeableness. I've been against ID politics since I first encountered them way back in college, though I didn't know much about it at the time. I have a younger brother who is closer to 1 in 1000 IQ and he can articulate very succinctly the inherent weakness of Woke doctrine, while I have to rely more on analogy.
I think IQ has diminishing returns at that level. My hypothesis is that the joint distribution of IQ and nonconformity implies that, given you have a high IQ, you don’t need to be all that non-conformist to be anti-woke.
Liberal EA anti-woke professor here. There’s a good System 2 reason for moral outrage at wokeness: it makes the liberal agenda, which I endorse, look silly and alienates potential allies. As far as androgyny you might do better to get in touch with your inner System 2 and try to suppress your instinctual disgust. The issue isn’t ‘hulking trans women’ or plus-size models on the cover of Sports Illustrated, but ordinary unattractive women like myself who lose out on professional opportunities where appearance isn’t a legitimate job-related requirement—and from time to time are ridiculed and humiliated just for the heck of it by people with their System 1 in gear.
"She said a man had molested a little girl, a judge gave him a light sentence, and society was outraged.
This made me wonder why something like that is never the Current Thing in America."
I'd say the Brock Turner saga was somewhat in that vein. That was in the transitory times between gender being the most important thing in the world to race being the most important thing and it had a bit of both.
It has been a few years since I read something that so accurate represents exactly how I feel about leftism. As a scientist and academic (about to leave) I feel the exact sentiments expressed in this piece, but don't have the ability to express my horror outwardly. Thank you for (probably) screaming uselessly into the wind, for those of who can't - but still want to.
I want to push back against one assertion -- that academics are an exception to the norm of professions policing themselves and holding their own members to high standards.
This doesn't strike me as the case. Indeed, it seems an aspect of almost every scandals is members of a profession protecting their own, whether it's the clergy, teachers, police officers, or any other profession. There is a tendency to circle the ranks, and profession as an identity has a stronger pull than something more abstract like "truth seeker" or "non-molester."
Now, many of these groups do enforce a high standard for entry. Think about boot camp, medical school, etc. But once you're in, you're in.
This is especially true if the criticisms originate from outside the profession. Maybe an internal audit would be justified. But if someone from outside starts lobbing criticisms, the ranks close pretty quickly.
As an academic I can tell you that much of academia loathes leftism.
The administrators, however, largely owe their own promotions and power to leftism and its repression of merit. The administrators push leftism 24/7.
And academics won't ever "fix" this problem.
Academics have invested 9+ years in college education and another 12-16 years before obtaining Full Professor status. And they were underpaid that entire time.
They don't have lots of money. They can't actually switch jobs very easily (as there are few of them). As a result, academics are monstrously risk adverse when it comes to their heavily invested careers. The woke administrators do just as they please.
This is a good point, though it seems like academia is particularly bad in terms of ingroup/outgroup thinking. For one there's the high level of time commitment it requires to get into a long term position (likely 8 or so years after graduating undergrad) as well as the highly limited number of tenure track positions, so unless you are at the very top of the research/grant pyramid you are simply thankful for the opportunity to have a rare permanent job in academia. This is basically the mindset too of colleagues and admins at most places, so there's strong pressure to conform until you get tenure as well and even for other promotions/opportunities afterward. I don't think that doctors, lawyers, cops, etc. have the same mix of high commitment requirements *and* few jobs (maybe artists/musicians would be more similar?).
You also can't escape the system and start your own firm, practice, company, etc.; wherever you go, you are forever bound to the academic hierarchy of deanlings and deanlets and endless meetings run by the profs from the X studies depts who want to show off their latest DEI buzzwords to everyone else. Sure there are independent scholars and think tankers, but those are very different lifestyles and relatively rare. There's just strikingly little variation anymore in academia--thanks to accreditation agencies and the kinds of federal regulations that Hanannia often writes about (plus, I suspect, increasingly intense filtering mechanisms in hiring), the degree of conformity in higher education seems to be rising so you can't even escape by going to a more conservative state/area. So you are likely to be stuck with a certain cast of colleagues for a very long period of time (one of the effects of the tenure system) who will be involved in making lots of decisions that will affect your quality of life. The social pressure for conformity and loyalty to academia is thus quite strong.
Finally, I can't overstate the degree to which graduate schools push students to think about themselves as unique, special creatures who are apart from/better than society. The internal dialogue that Hanannia posted here rings true, but it's in part due to what the faculty communicate to students. You have to show that you are uniquely committed to academia to get through grad school and get a job. If you have any real doubts, substantive critiques, or a perceived lack of commitment to the cause of academia, you will likely get filtered out at some point. Note that this commitment level is somewhat tangential too to actual competence at the job/intellectual insights, so the ultimate outcome is a lot of people who make it into academia are obsessively committed to academia but there's a wide range on the competency/insightfulness spectrum.
I would like to suggest another aspect to why objectively lesser offenses can generate more emotional heat than greater ones.
Let's say one has been arguing with one's wife over something small, such as forgetting to throw ones' dirty socks in the hamper. The man then forgets to pay the electric bill and the power gets shut off for a few hours. Which is the worse offense, failing to pay the bill or leaving dirty socks on the floor again? Clearly forgetting to pay the bill is objectively a bigger deal. But which of the two offenses is more likely to result in a big blow-up and a week in the doghouse? I submit that it is the one that the couple have been arguing about.
Pronouns are on the leading edge of the fight. Genocide is not. The genocide battle has largely been won, so when one comes into contact with a holocaust denier, one need not treat them very seriously. They are just the remnants of a lost cause and will inevitably fade into history. But pronoun deniers are still very much kicking and might yet win the war, hence it is worth expending one's energies and vitriol upon them.
> It is unhealthy that one of the most relevant cleavages in our politics is based on the style in which people present their ideas, regardless of quality. It would be better if more members of the governing class saw themselves as part of the truth-seeker tribe rather than that of “individuals with degrees who write a large number of grammatical sentences with references.”
Isn't this simply a matter of low-hanging fruit? Determing the "quality" of ideas (however we define it) is no easy feat - even if the question is truth-apt (and many aren't). Determining who has a degree and writes a large number of grammatical sentences with references, on the other hand, is child's play.
I think you're being too hard on yourself. It's simpler to say we live in an age where normative, evolutionarily derived behaviors are under attack. I'm willing to say that I will not oppose "puppy play" among consenting adults, but I will not recognize it as anything other than a fringe fetish that is far out of the norm. I'm so weary of having to celebrate every kink that raises its exotic head. The human race didn't suddenly re-invent itself.
"Intellectuals who become obsessively anti-woke care about truth"
I don't think that's a good description of James Lindsay. He'll fall for hoaxes that flatter his ideology, and not feel bad but instead say it proves how bad his opponents are that the hoax seems so plausible.
I’ve been reading you for a long time and this is one of the most mind-blowingly original things I’ve ever read.
As one of your rationalist/EA readers, this essay perfectly encapsulates both what I respect and dislike about you. Your commitment to truth seeking and introspection are great; your commitment to defending your aesthetic preferences/instincts (which I am often personally repulsed by) unless faced with overwhelming counter-evidence is not.
Same reaction from a rationalist/EA reader. My instinctive feeling upon encountering your substack + twitter was sadness that "a good brain has been eaten by culture war"; this post gave me a high dose of the same admiration-grief. I would find it very difficult in your shoes to explain so openly why you have the stance you have – I'm too invested in coming off as having (and to a sadly lesser extent, in fact having) 'reasonable' preferences and causes. I admire your introspection, openness, and courage.
Personally, as someone who is dislikes wokeness but is in favor of a more androgynous society and sees nothing wrong with crossing gender lines in body/performance-space at will, it feels refreshing to read someone state openly that their objection comes from a disgust instinct. In a way it stops the debate I could in theory have with you about it, but it also feels good that we could "really talk about it" because we would not be lying about why we want the things we want.
There seem to be a lot of studies that have found links between conservatism and tendency to feel disgust. I am curious if other conservatives find this plausible - it seems to be somewhat supported by this essay.
I don't see this piece as explicitly against or for androgyny as a trend per se .. I think it is assumed that it is against pressure to learn to like something because you should. I have the same uncanny valley response to certain public officials in the Biden administration .. on the other hand I adore Divine and every other creature that emerged from the primordial swamp of John Water's imagination .. so maybe it's also the execution, not just the concept.
Or maybe not the execution .. maybe simply not pretending there is no joke to be in on ... New York Dolls, The Cramps (and for advanced study on really getting something versus virtue signaling .. reference "Garbage Man")
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AyoAt7r1omc And if one's ironic knowing itself becomes too precious .. there is William Shatner to remind you that from a high enough plane of existence all human expressions are just more animal noises https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_MkY_0OlE8
>maybe it's also the execution, not just the concept.
I suspect it might be entirely the execution, not the concept. I find the aesthetic preferences of some LGBT people disgusting but love Sufjan Stevens' music. See this clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVVhHjyC04k. I had a very minimal disgust response there, if it even existed at all.
I looked up "Divine" and was repulsed BTW.
I don't know if I would look up "Divine" myself, any more than I would want to dig any further into the life or childhood of the Egg Lady (another Jon Waters find) .. it is the side of him as captured by Jon Waters that I adore .. as Waters himself has more or less expressed .. that time and place of presenting previously unknown to the general public human "Found Art" (aka "freaks") to the general public for both shock value (and demonstrating, as much Found Art does, that the right lighting can bring out the charm of even human garbage) is long past.
I don't think he's "human garbage", just ugly. Big difference.
Did not mean to imply you did, my analogy was too obscure. I meant that much "found art" could be considered as valueless as garbage until seen from the right perspective or through the lens of certain aesthetics.
But without "Pink Flamingos" and Divine it would have been harder for the later Klaus Nomi (by way of David Bowie) to later get it right as actual art. If there is one thing that differentiates all of those artists and freaks from todays tedious faux individualists is that not ONE of them would have been offended by someone else being offended by them. (To get a little nerdy here, it is a bit of the difference between the original Da Da-ists and todays post-modern artists .. the Da Da-ists could actually paint (and draw and sculpt), they CHOSE not to, to make a point (which was more-or-less that it was a vanity to create real art while there was a world war and genocide going on .. or something like that). But I digress. I will check out Sufjan Stevens..
I'm only here due to the ACX linkpost, but +1 - I am genuinely impressed by your self-awareness in identifying the actual sources of your beliefs and what your cruxes actually are; I am pretty appalled by your endorsement of e.g. potentially denying someone a job because you find them disgusting. (All kinds of things are or were often found disgusting! Interracial couples, people of certain ethnicities in general, people with some kinds of disabilities, people who don't happen to be pretty, etc. I think in basically all these cases people should basically ignore their disgust instinct when it comes to hiring for jobs that aren't about appearance; I don't know if you necessarily agree, but I would guess that you probably agree in at least *some* cases, which means that the disgust is at least not necessarily a sufficient reason.)
Well, what if I told you we exclude people from jobs and access to the public square for aesthetic reasons all the time? Like you’re not allowed to defecate in public. It’s not just a health reason, even if you clean up after yourself it doesn’t work. You can’t expose private parts on the job. Even a dress code at work is aesthetic. So one has to explain why people who don’t adhere to gender norms are different, if a majority of people do want to exclude them from living their lives in the way they see fit.
One also has to explain why (on your presumed view) people who don't adhere to gender norms are different from racial minorities, people with visible disabilities, people who are not conventionally attractive, etc.! (Perhaps you bite all those bullets but if so I hope it's clear why I find *that* appalling.)
I do agree that aesthetics can be a good reason to limit some kinds of freedom; the examples of covering up private parts on the job and not defecating in public are good ones. I don't know if I can articulate an entire theory of when I think aesthetic-based restrictions are and aren't okay, but a first stab is that it matters a lot to me whether a given restriction is primarily forbidding a type of *behavior* or a type of *person* - which I realize isn't the clearest cut line because you could say "well, everyone is allowed here, as long as they don't do gender-nonconforming things *here*", but to me this sounds kind of similar to "well, forbidding same-sex marriage isn't discriminatory, because everyone is allowed to get heterosexually married", in that both responses are ignoring that there seem to exist axes of human variation that look like "what gender(s) of person are you interested in marrying" and "what gender of person do you want to *be*", such that in practice if you restrict those choices you are primarily drawing a line between kinds of people. (And if you object to hiring someone who is privately kinky even if they never bring that into the workplace, that also seems like very clearly a "type of person" rather than "type of behavior" type of exclusion.)
(I am okay with excluding types of people from things sometimes, but generally I'd need a more important reason than aesthetics? Like, excluding known abusers from community functions is often a good idea because including them would expose others to risk; excluding atheists from being employed as Sunday school teachers is valid because they're missing a job qualification. I guess excluding e.g. non-black people from being hired to play MLK in a movie is a valid aesthetics-based kind-of-person exclusion, but I'm fine with that because it's an exclusion with limited scope, not a societywide one.)
(See also - campaigns to eliminate dress code norms that are significantly more onerous for women than men (e.g. requiring makeup or heels), or for black people than white people (e.g. requiring hairstyles that are difficult to do with Black hair textures); these kind of straddle the line between "type of behavior" and "type of person" rules, and I am generally in favor of making such rules more equitable to avoid that kind of significant differential impact. But also I am generally in favor of making dress codes less onerous in general (I work in a west coast tech company with a minimum level of dress code and whenever I'm reminded that some people have to wear suits to their office job I find this ridiculous), so I think we may also disagree some on how much weight aesthetics should be given in general.)
Here's an argument I'm playing around with. Some "disgusting" traits/behaviors automatically command attention in a way that cannot be overcome, like terrible odor, nudity outside the typical context, etc. We can deny people jobs based on those things because it is impossible for most people to avoid attending to them. In that way, they're analogous to being aggressively yelled at. We tend to think we have a right to avoid sensory inputs/ignore, which is why verbal harassment isn't allowed. That justification applies to poor smell and certain forms of nudity.
The liberal would argue [no actual liberal would, but let's be charitable] that androgyny isn't like that, because it's really not that hard to ignore. It's more like when someone's shoelaces are untied; perhaps sensorially irritating, but nothing an adult can't ignore. A man with long hair is the sort of thing that an adult should be able to ignore. A certain kind of liberal will go so far as to say that a man in a miniskirt falls into that category too.
As some have pointed out, there's psychological evidence that conservatives have stronger disgust reactions than liberals on average. Perhaps it's literally impossible for them to ignore androgyny, but I don't think so.
Potential counterargument: we aren't supposed to deny fat people jobs, but it can be psychologically impossible to filter out the disgust reaction from that stimulus. There's a good pragmatic argument for this, given how many fat people need jobs. Perhaps that can explain the apparent exception to the principle "it's acceptable to discriminate against people who impose negative sensory stimuli that cannot be ignored by a reasonable person."
He says he is a truth-seeker as well, which seemed hard to square with his explicit rejection of rationalism. Until I realised that you can be rational w.r.t. 'is' beliefs but not 'ought' beliefs. Which is understandable actually. I am the same way (but not with his specific moral feelings/views).
Of course. Rationalists and EAs are generally quite aware of how atypical we are. So yes, the burden is on us to argue for what we think is right, and we accept that. But Hanania has stated that even if he is persuaded by those arguments, his positions won’t change.
Hanania was clear that he was committed to defending his aesthetics, even when convinced it was bad for society:
“[Even if] someone proved to my satisfaction that, for example, encouraging children to explore their gender identities at a young age would somehow lead to a happier and healthier society, I would still oppose it.”
That’s not my reading of what he said. He seemed quite explicit that he cares more about his aesthetics and his ego than what even he might think is better for the world. This obviously warrants criticism, even while I applaud his honesty and introspection.
I appreciate the honesty and transparency Dr. Hanania. In fact, I think that's why many of us come here. I'd be fascinated to see what the results of you taking the "Big Five" personality test might be. (I assume you're low in Agreeableness.)
I would raise two, small objections to things you wrote. 1) The banning of all personal-life talk from teachers as a mask for homophobia. That's probably true. But I can think of good reasons why heterosexual teachers should be banned from talking about it as well. In my 3rd grade class, my teacher got pregnant. Naturally, we asked how a woman can get pregnant and her (wise) response was, "Go ask your parents." I'm grateful she didn't go into detail about getting nailed by her husband.
2) I have an intense dislike for Claire Lehman, so (cards on the table) this might be my own bias against her--but, her point about Autism and high IQ doesn't disprove your notion about mental illness. (Many, highly intelligent people can still be crazy and unfit for high office).
I appreciate your candor and willingness to discuss these things, Dr. Hanania. Though, I share all your instinctual biases, so I suppose I just enjoy the comradery of being the same boat too.
On (1), a relevant excerpt from Radio Derb (https://www.johnderbyshire.com/Opinions/RadioDerb/2022-04-01.html):
And returning for a moment to the subject of schoolteachers and what they teach: One of the more depressing video clips of the week was a young male kindergarten teacher in Florida, a homosexual, telling MSNBC how distressed he was by this new law the state just passed.
I won't play the full clip for you, but here's a fifty-second sample:
[Clip.] Interviewer: Do you worry that you won't be able to talk about your own … Look at me: I have a child in kindergarten right now. I know exactly that my child has two teachers, one of which has a daughter at home, um, and is single, the other is married and has four children. I know everything about their lives because my kid tells me.
Teacher: Absolutely, abso- … You are one hundred percent correct. Um, that's what we do with educators: We build relationships with our kids. And in order to build relationships you talk about your home life, you talk about what you do on the weekends, and building community. It scares me that I'm not going to be able to have these conversations with my children. And they're going to ask me what I did on the weekend. I don't want to have to hide that my partner and I went paddle-boarding this weekend, because then they ask, "What does 'partner' mean, Mr Bernard?" and, you know, I'm worried, can I tell them what it means?
This is one of those things that makes me wonder if I was born and raised in a different Solar System. I never knew anything about my teachers' private lives. I wouldn't have wanted to, and my parents wouldn't have wanted me to.
Sure, I understand: There is more to education that just reading, writing, and arithmetic. Kids are being socialized. They're being socialized to accept and co-operate with each other, though, not to stick their noses into adult matters. To the degree that children need to know about adult matters, it's for their parents to guide them, not state employees.
What I am seeing when I watch clips like that is, I am seeing an effort to abolish childhood — to tear down the walls of that secret garden that is childhood.
I remember that secret garden. I cherish the memory of it, and I thank with all my heart the shades of those schoolteachers who let me play in it for so many years, undisturbed.
"While I'm sure a teacher probably mentioned something personal to me over my entire childhood, I certainly can't remember anything. I can't even remember "they said some personal thing and I forgot."
They certainly did, students ask all the time. I think you just overestimate how much students actually *care* about what their teachers do on the weekends (I taught kids 10-18 for 6 years), other than just kind of checking to make sure they're real people who don't sleep at the school and eat dry erase markers for dinner. For students, teachers can fall into the uncanny valley a bit, it can be good to make sure they're real every once in a while.
Appreciate this thread on how much a public school teacher can/should say about his/her personal life. As a spouse of a 1st grade teacher, I can tell you my picture sits on her desk. Occasionally, she will say "my husband" when talking to the students, when the context helps make a point. Said point can be purely academic, or along the lines of character development, such as need to compromise and find "win-win". Her school builds on the Covey 7 habits for character development. When our kids went to her school, needless to say all their peers knew of this relationship. Suffice it to say, keeping all personal information away from students would be a burden, or at least rather awkward. I can recall such level of information from my teachers as well. (I grew up in midwest US in the 70s, if that matters). I don' think it would be an issue, but the literal interpretation of some recent laws, such might be grounds for a violation.
Very good article. I've know for a long time that it was human nature for most of us to put more energy into trivial political issues instead of more impactful ones, but I've never really know why. This framework of two systems of morality is very clarifying.
Since I'm a 1-in-75 IQ guy instead of a 1-in-1000 one, I don't have much more to add. So I'll use a quote from a middlebrow writer making a sports metaphor that explains how I and so many others feel about the woke:
"As a 76ers fan, I hate Larry Bird. Not in the same way I hate Hitler, but more often".
--Dave Barry
Fantastic quote
Great article, Richard. I felt like I was reading early Slate Star Codex from a right-wing perspective.
Now that’s a compliment! Thanks.
One of the deeply valuable things that conformance to social standards, even (or even especially) arbitrary and silly standards does is signal a strong willingness to work with the group. Conversely, a ready defiance or challenge of social standards signals an unwillingness to work with the group, a feeling that the individual's needs and feelings are being prioritized over the group's.
When I go to meet with my child's teacher at school, I shave and replace my T-shirt with a nice shirt. When I go to court I put on a suit and tie, and I address the judge as "Your Honor." I may find any of these things deeply silly, or even mildly offensive. Like: how is it functional for me to be required to address a judge in 2022 as if I was a peasant addressin his feudal lord? Is that not probably corrosive of the ideal of equality before the law, of republican self-government, et cetera? I can easily make the argument that it is.j I don't like wearing ties, they seem silly and get in the way. Who decided this stupid fashion? Why am I as a man more constrained than a woman, who could choose a variety of styles of dress that suit her individual taste? Why can't I just wear something *I* think looks good on me, why must I conform to the silly standard that men should wear dark coats and dull colored strips of cloth tied elboratedly around their necks?
But I *do* them, nevertheless, because I am signalling that I acknowledge the group has spoke on these (perhaps trivial) markers, and by conforming to them I agree what the group has decided has weight and currency with me, that I do not necessarily assert my own interests and tastes come first, always. I'm OK with compromise, I see that other people have needs and interests, that may conflict with mine, and I am open to some kind of negotiation and compromise.
These are extremely valuable signals. In general, entropy and bad luck and our very high ambitions makes it darn hard to achieve general success. The only way we can all enjoy the pretty good life the hard work of our ancestors made possible for us is to work together, to cooperate, to be willing to acknowledge that sometimes we have to compromise our individual ideas and tastes for the sake of the group enterprise -- success at keeping the ship 'o' progress sailing along well, avoid the shoals and rocks of disunion, fratricide, misunderstanding, mistake, confusion.
So when I see other people who signal "Hey, I recognize I'm part of a group, and I issue these signals to let you know that I'm willing to work with the group, I do not insist on getting my way all the time, even at the cost of group success" that makes me happy and I trust them more.
When I see people who deliberately signal "Hey, I recognize the group feelings/decisions on these assorted matters, and I deliberately flout them, which is a signal to you that I consider my personal aims and tastes much more importan than the group goals, and I will probably insist on my personal goals even at the cost of group success" then, not surprisingly, I feel distrustful and hostile. This is not a person who will *ever* be of assistance to me, or to the group. This may very well be a social parasite, who will subtract from the group endeavour, dead weight that must be dragged along.
The pronoun debate reminds me curiously of the fact that new jarheads are trained to never use the personal pronoun at all -- they are required to refer to themselve as "this Marine" and aren't allowed to say "I". We can see why: by compelling a new language, they compel the new Marine to think constantly about his role in the larger endeavour. Is that I'm doing constructive for the group endeavour? We think, not unreasonably, that enforcing that kind of reflection (and group signaling) improves the ability of the group to get shit done. If I'm a fellow Marine, I trust the guy who speaks this way maybe a little more, because I feel like he's telling me if the situation goes pear-shaped he's *not* going to be thinking just about himself, there's a chance he'll think about me, and us, also. Conversely if the guy insisted on having his own special pronoun, I'd tend to think he would be likely to put his own welfare above mine, or anybody's, and my trust level would go down.
I wonder if you underestimate the general social cost of people constantly signaling their wish to put their individual narcissistic needs above the group goals. We look around and see gee, we seem more fratricidal, more tribal, less cooperative, more confrontational than before, and by gum these things have real and substantial costs. Should we not *connect* that to the unwillingness of the majority to judge (negatively) those individuals who insist on issuing signals that give the finger to the decisions and traditions of the majority -- even those which are silly and arbitrary?
I know this was posted quite some time ago, so this is a delayed reaction, but wow, you captured something true. For me, it goes past underestimating the social costs of woke. There has been a relaxation of the expectation that costs and benefits should be detailed, compared, and weighed as part of a decision-making or policy-creation process. We obviously saw this with Covid - c.f. children. Regarding wokeism, It’s not that the social cost is under estimated, it’s ignored completely. The idea that there is some mutuality of responsibilities between individuals and civil society is being washed away under the tide of, well, you know.
Interesting. Your “this Marine” story went a different way than I was expecting. To my eye it is very similar to the pronoun thing, and they are both about (uncharitably) mind control, or (charitably) signaling your participation in the narrative. The two narratives are very different, of course.
Interesting, yourself. You’re right, the Marines and pronoun comparison is so apt - they ARE the same picture. The Marines say it out loud - We are erasing your individual identity in order to create a shared identity, as we believe greater unit cohesiveness improves safety and effectiveness. I’d love to hear the genderists truthfully describe what they are doing and why. I could do it for them, but it’s late and it disgusts me to lay it out.
I fall into the ea camp and not into the conservative camp. This is a truly incredible article--one of the best I've read in years. While I hate genocide more than pronouns (by quite a lot), this was a remarkably clear look into your psychology and the psychology of other conservatives.
This post reflects my own thoughts on politics very closely. I’m probably a little bit more tolerant of differences, and have a lower disgust reaction, but otherwise very similar.
A minor quibble: if one has a 1 in 1,000 IQ (which mine is based on standardized tests), then I think a 1 in 10 or 1 in 100 level of nonconformity is sufficient to explain extreme anti-wokeness. A big motivator is just intellectual hygiene, which you mention in your article.
My belief is the a moderately above average IQ and a high level of non-conformity is the magic combination. I often wondered why I didn't get sucked into identity politics. I have completeled 2 university degrees, which probably helped, but my life-long commitment to the non-conformist (and probably quite judgemental) personality type aided my avoidance of wokedom immensely. I just don't think many people actually think very much. They know that what's normal and usual is somehow bad and to be railed-against, so they'll go along with whatever calls itself social justice, no matter how insane it becomes. Gender ideology might prove the be the breaking point, but who knows?
I actually think it's something different. There's a bunch of different ways of putting it, Internal vs. External Locus of Control, Internalizing vs. Externalizing personalities, etc. but what I think it does come down to, is if these ideas exist in a theoretical place or they exist in a place to be actualized.
For me, my Anti-Woke (And truth is, I'm actually very modernist, liberal and yes, even small-p progressive, but my issue is with that memeset) beliefs come from the point that I HAVE internalized and actualized them in the past, it's still something I struggle with, and yes, they've caused me an immense amount of self-harm. To the point where I don't think people are actually supposed to internalize/actualize them, at least not people within the in-group. I think people look at these ideas, think what they would actually mean directly applied to their life, and because of that, nope away from it. Where as people who are more externalizing/theoretical can keep it unapplied, or at least give some distance. It becomes more about having the right politics than it is your own individual behavior.
I think that's why it's such a strong thing for some people, is because it represents direct harm. And that makes no sense to people who simply can't understand how anybody could ever see it that way.
I consider myself to be progressive. I believe in the sensible redistribution of wealth through taxation, well funded public schools, hospitals and infrastructure and a social welfare net that is both broad and deep. I don't see why anyone needs to live in poverty in the rich countries of the West. But after that point my politics is decidedly laissez faire. If everyone has access to the basics there is no need for racist college admissions or hiring policies. This means that the politics of identity is a meaningless layer of misdirected social justice energy. The only identity worth considering is poverty. There are plenty of rich gay, black and female people, so they aren't an oppressed class, whereas the poorest correlate 100% with the oppressed class of poverty. Hence Wokeism is garbage ideology. It really is that simple. Postmodernism is great for non-linear and unreliable narrator story telling, but it's not fit for purpose as economic or social policy. I will die on this hill.
A 1 in 1000 IQ is three sigmas above median. A 1 in 50 IQ (what most grad students are working with) is two sigmas above. So if having two sigmas worth of extra neurons (or whatever) isn't enough to brake you from the woke spell, why does that third sigma matter?
I'm a ~1 in 50 IQ with a high level of disagreeableness. I've been against ID politics since I first encountered them way back in college, though I didn't know much about it at the time. I have a younger brother who is closer to 1 in 1000 IQ and he can articulate very succinctly the inherent weakness of Woke doctrine, while I have to rely more on analogy.
I think IQ has diminishing returns at that level. My hypothesis is that the joint distribution of IQ and nonconformity implies that, given you have a high IQ, you don’t need to be all that non-conformist to be anti-woke.
Liberal EA anti-woke professor here. There’s a good System 2 reason for moral outrage at wokeness: it makes the liberal agenda, which I endorse, look silly and alienates potential allies. As far as androgyny you might do better to get in touch with your inner System 2 and try to suppress your instinctual disgust. The issue isn’t ‘hulking trans women’ or plus-size models on the cover of Sports Illustrated, but ordinary unattractive women like myself who lose out on professional opportunities where appearance isn’t a legitimate job-related requirement—and from time to time are ridiculed and humiliated just for the heck of it by people with their System 1 in gear.
"She said a man had molested a little girl, a judge gave him a light sentence, and society was outraged.
This made me wonder why something like that is never the Current Thing in America."
I'd say the Brock Turner saga was somewhat in that vein. That was in the transitory times between gender being the most important thing in the world to race being the most important thing and it had a bit of both.
The exception that proves the rule.
I'm pretty plugged in and this is the first I've heard of the case OR of Brock Turner .. so maybe a Current Thing in California?
It has been a few years since I read something that so accurate represents exactly how I feel about leftism. As a scientist and academic (about to leave) I feel the exact sentiments expressed in this piece, but don't have the ability to express my horror outwardly. Thank you for (probably) screaming uselessly into the wind, for those of who can't - but still want to.
I want to push back against one assertion -- that academics are an exception to the norm of professions policing themselves and holding their own members to high standards.
This doesn't strike me as the case. Indeed, it seems an aspect of almost every scandals is members of a profession protecting their own, whether it's the clergy, teachers, police officers, or any other profession. There is a tendency to circle the ranks, and profession as an identity has a stronger pull than something more abstract like "truth seeker" or "non-molester."
Now, many of these groups do enforce a high standard for entry. Think about boot camp, medical school, etc. But once you're in, you're in.
This is especially true if the criticisms originate from outside the profession. Maybe an internal audit would be justified. But if someone from outside starts lobbing criticisms, the ranks close pretty quickly.
As an academic I can tell you that much of academia loathes leftism.
The administrators, however, largely owe their own promotions and power to leftism and its repression of merit. The administrators push leftism 24/7.
And academics won't ever "fix" this problem.
Academics have invested 9+ years in college education and another 12-16 years before obtaining Full Professor status. And they were underpaid that entire time.
They don't have lots of money. They can't actually switch jobs very easily (as there are few of them). As a result, academics are monstrously risk adverse when it comes to their heavily invested careers. The woke administrators do just as they please.
This is a good point, though it seems like academia is particularly bad in terms of ingroup/outgroup thinking. For one there's the high level of time commitment it requires to get into a long term position (likely 8 or so years after graduating undergrad) as well as the highly limited number of tenure track positions, so unless you are at the very top of the research/grant pyramid you are simply thankful for the opportunity to have a rare permanent job in academia. This is basically the mindset too of colleagues and admins at most places, so there's strong pressure to conform until you get tenure as well and even for other promotions/opportunities afterward. I don't think that doctors, lawyers, cops, etc. have the same mix of high commitment requirements *and* few jobs (maybe artists/musicians would be more similar?).
You also can't escape the system and start your own firm, practice, company, etc.; wherever you go, you are forever bound to the academic hierarchy of deanlings and deanlets and endless meetings run by the profs from the X studies depts who want to show off their latest DEI buzzwords to everyone else. Sure there are independent scholars and think tankers, but those are very different lifestyles and relatively rare. There's just strikingly little variation anymore in academia--thanks to accreditation agencies and the kinds of federal regulations that Hanannia often writes about (plus, I suspect, increasingly intense filtering mechanisms in hiring), the degree of conformity in higher education seems to be rising so you can't even escape by going to a more conservative state/area. So you are likely to be stuck with a certain cast of colleagues for a very long period of time (one of the effects of the tenure system) who will be involved in making lots of decisions that will affect your quality of life. The social pressure for conformity and loyalty to academia is thus quite strong.
Finally, I can't overstate the degree to which graduate schools push students to think about themselves as unique, special creatures who are apart from/better than society. The internal dialogue that Hanannia posted here rings true, but it's in part due to what the faculty communicate to students. You have to show that you are uniquely committed to academia to get through grad school and get a job. If you have any real doubts, substantive critiques, or a perceived lack of commitment to the cause of academia, you will likely get filtered out at some point. Note that this commitment level is somewhat tangential too to actual competence at the job/intellectual insights, so the ultimate outcome is a lot of people who make it into academia are obsessively committed to academia but there's a wide range on the competency/insightfulness spectrum.
I would like to suggest another aspect to why objectively lesser offenses can generate more emotional heat than greater ones.
Let's say one has been arguing with one's wife over something small, such as forgetting to throw ones' dirty socks in the hamper. The man then forgets to pay the electric bill and the power gets shut off for a few hours. Which is the worse offense, failing to pay the bill or leaving dirty socks on the floor again? Clearly forgetting to pay the bill is objectively a bigger deal. But which of the two offenses is more likely to result in a big blow-up and a week in the doghouse? I submit that it is the one that the couple have been arguing about.
Pronouns are on the leading edge of the fight. Genocide is not. The genocide battle has largely been won, so when one comes into contact with a holocaust denier, one need not treat them very seriously. They are just the remnants of a lost cause and will inevitably fade into history. But pronoun deniers are still very much kicking and might yet win the war, hence it is worth expending one's energies and vitriol upon them.
> It is unhealthy that one of the most relevant cleavages in our politics is based on the style in which people present their ideas, regardless of quality. It would be better if more members of the governing class saw themselves as part of the truth-seeker tribe rather than that of “individuals with degrees who write a large number of grammatical sentences with references.”
Isn't this simply a matter of low-hanging fruit? Determing the "quality" of ideas (however we define it) is no easy feat - even if the question is truth-apt (and many aren't). Determining who has a degree and writes a large number of grammatical sentences with references, on the other hand, is child's play.
I think you're being too hard on yourself. It's simpler to say we live in an age where normative, evolutionarily derived behaviors are under attack. I'm willing to say that I will not oppose "puppy play" among consenting adults, but I will not recognize it as anything other than a fringe fetish that is far out of the norm. I'm so weary of having to celebrate every kink that raises its exotic head. The human race didn't suddenly re-invent itself.
"Intellectuals who become obsessively anti-woke care about truth"
I don't think that's a good description of James Lindsay. He'll fall for hoaxes that flatter his ideology, and not feel bad but instead say it proves how bad his opponents are that the hoax seems so plausible.
He fell into conspiracy thinking and can't get up