> The point of using the terminology of “intersectionalism,” as Crenshaw said in her 2016 TED Talk, is that “where there’s no name for a problem, you can’t see a problem, and when you can’t see a problem, you pretty much can’t solve it.”
Ever notice how, every time a term for extreme-Left activists begins to gain traction among the general public, they begin militantly campaigning to discredit the term and anyone who uses it? "Politically correct." "Social Justice Warrior." "Woke." Same story every time.
Crenshaw offers a perfect explanation as to why this always happens.
If the implications of these things weren’t leading to negative outcomes, would people be campaigning against them? Many of these things start out with good intentions but generate serious unintended consequence that, when pointed out, are not met with engagement and debate but cancel culture. There appears to be zero mechanism of the progressive Left to litigate their own ideas.
But isn’t that part of the problem? Shouldn’t both matter?
In the abridged version of chapter 3, there’s an example of a student who becomes extremely upset with an email response from the dean. Most of us would probably read that email and agree that the dean didn’t intend harm - in fact, it seemed quite the opposite to me... I think the dean was trying to help- but clearly the student experienced negative feelings and didn’t find the response helpful. Should the dean’s intent not matter at all?
Seems like a healthy culture would value both the intent and the outcome, giving folks the benefit of the doubt until proven otherwise. We can acknowledge when there’s a mismatch between intent and outcome without labeling people victims or oppressors. In fact, it seems like this is a fertile place for growth.
> There appears to be zero mechanism of the progressive Left to litigate their own ideas.
No such mechanism exists within reality for resolving truth within the metaphysical realm as there is in the physical realm (science....which pretends to have coverage of the metaphysical, despite claiming it is outside their expertise but only if asked explicitly).
Developing such a thing would perhaps be a good idea, but it is rather difficult to get people interested in epistemology when Meme World is so fun and exciting, and pushed down our throats constantly.
I don’t think it’s impossible to develop that mechanism or explain the rational for its importance, but it goes hand in hand with a decrease in critical thinking skills being taught as a whole.
People have to see the value in it, but what they’re taught as critical evaluation is really quite soft. If you struggle to get people to be introspective and assess themselves, it’ll be harder to get a refined process to assess a system on a larger scale.
> but it goes hand in hand with a decrease in critical thinking skills being taught as a whole.
I would like to know how it was engineered such that philosophy is not taught in mainstream curriculum....no wonder people can't think straight, we deny them the very curriculum one needs to achieve it!
Good to see I'm not the only one noticing the intention/outcome dichotomy. I've been planning on writing an article about that for a while now, but life keeps getting in the way...
"...they begin militantly campaigning to discredit the term and anyone who uses it" Who is "they"?
And what credence do you, or do you not, assign to terms such as "White supremacist", Right-wing-extremist", or "Homophobe"? Do "they" accurately define and judiciously employ those terms?
There's a very important difference there. Those are slurs; they're not *our own terms.*
Leftists were calling themselves politically correct (and, more to the point, calling those they disagreed with politically incorrect) until people picked up on the term and started using it as a term of derision, at which point it was abandoned and discredited by the left. Same with "social justice warrior," and then "woke." Again and again we see them prefer to abandon their own terms for themselves over letting normal people use them as a *name,* a way to distinctly identify who they are and what they're doing.
> A few days later, a group of roughly 150 students appeared in the courtyard outside Christakis’s home (within Silliman College), writing statements in chalk, including “We know where you live.” Erika’s husband, Nicholas Christakis, was the master of Silliman (a title that has since been changed to “head of college”).
> ...
> The next day, the president of the university sent out an email acknowledging students’ pain and committing to “take actions that will make us better.” He did not mention any support for the Christakises until weeks after the courtyard incident, by which time attitudes against the couple were entrenched. Amid ongoing demands that they be fired, Erika resigned from her teaching position, Nicholas took a sabbatical from teaching for the rest of the year, and at the end of the school year, the pair resigned from their positions in the residential college. Erika later revealed that many professors were very supportive privately, but were unwilling to defend or support the Christakises publicly because they thought it was “too risky” and they feared retribution.
Abject cowardice on the part of the administration and the other professors. The appropriate response to such thuggery is to round up the 150 students in question, summarily expel every last one of them for making threats of violence on campus, and have police escort them off campus.
Why? Because when you don't, what you get is... well... the rest of this chapter!
I believe that economic conditions that are making it more difficult for young people to step into traditional adult rights of passage has supercharged this thinking on campus. If you believe you will never achieve the same upward trajectory that your parents enjoyed, that depressing realization is very fertile ground for the oppressor/oppressed mentality. This reductive thinking is mapped onto everything now with disastrous consequences.
It endlessly frustrates me that its opponents credit campus-student-brat and campus-admin-coward culture with more substance than it deserves. Yes this disease is extremely serious - even civilisation destroyingly so - but it is not really about anything like a new 'morality', certainly not a coherent 'philosophy', nor even 'ideology'. It is about a degenerate PSYCHOLOGY.......a shallow, degenerate, up-itself narcissism and self-absorption that has taken hold primarily amongst a well-healed middle class that gets-off on telling itself that it is on the side of 'the oppressed'. It has been brewing in academia (unoticed by most people) for at least half a century on an upward exponential curve and now it has reached critical mass. So people are finally taking notice..... when it's possibly too late to save our Western liberal culture. https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/how-diversity-narrows-the-mind
I always come back to Lenin’s “who, whom” formulation. It is simplistic yet contains multitudes. Insert whichever oppressor or victim class into the binary, and the ideology writes itself: feminism, CRT, etc.
An entire academic career can be built upon reformulating the same ideas in different terms ad nauseam, and there is no real need to have an original thought.
To conform is to thrive, and the gravy train keeps on rolling : )
This is good, but you know, the fundamental problem with Marcuse and Kendi is they deliberately violate the Golden Rule, treat others as you would be treated. Until you can move beyond resentment, you are never free.
Who are the right wing extremists you refer to? I am familiar with BLM, SJW's and Antifa, who are creating chaos through violence and destruction but who are these right wing groups that hate blacks, jews etc?
The great ethical challenge in contemporary communication
Prof. Alberto J. L. Carrillo Canán (acarrillo_mx@yahoo.com), presented on December the 10th, Royal Library, Riyadh.
In the West, social networks are the technological possibility of truly open, democratic communication, in which anyone can express himself about whatever, whenever, from wherever, and however he wants. So, technological optimism considered them the ultimate realization of democracy. Yet, social networks have led to "hate speech" expressing social anger as the political polarization characterizing public life in the West for some years now. Such polarization makes social agreement extremely difficult, increasingly eroding the universal value of social order. Consequently, the great contemporary ethical challenge in the Western communicative sphere is the elimination of "hate speech" in social networks. We offer the democratic solution to this problem.
1. "Digital literacy" and "content moderation"
One answer to the problem of "hate speech" in social networks is based on the innocent idea that, like all technology, social networks themselves are neutral, that they can be used correctly or incorrectly, and that "hate speech" would be an "incorrect use.” Yet, measures for “educating” the users of social networks have not yielded results, and political polarization diminishes not in the least. Without worrying about "media literacy," Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc., apply censorship dubbed "content moderation.” This censorship is a Sisyphean task because the diffuse and evolving judgement of "hate speech." No wonder, one author summons us to "understand that hate speech is here to stay" (Douglas).
2. Pugnacious animosity as "indignation" and "anger"
Approaching the problem of "hate speech" adequately needs a morphological analysis of the medium social networks. They are a case of the electric technological form, characterized by operating at "the instantaneous speed of electricity" (McLuhan). Telegraph was the first media of that form and already with it appeared the eruption of social animosity as psychic effect of events communicated in real time. Marshall McLuhan pointed out that the Crimean War was the first case in which "the electric," materialized as the real time telegraph, generated the duo of "pity and fury." Pity referring to "the weak and suffering," the “victims” in today’s parlance," and fury, now "indignation," referring to their "victimizers." The "fury" resulting from the telegraphic communication of certain events was the first manifestation of social animosity made possible by the electric instantaneity.
3. Pugnacious animosity: from telegraph to social networks
Thereafter came radio, telephone, and television, "electric media” (McLuhan) which, when they transmitted "outrageous" content, had the same pugnacious effect as the telegraph due to the structural form real time. However, all pre-digital was not interactive. In contrast, social networks allow for a) interactivity in b) open communication, in which it is b.1) the user, and b.2) any user, who provides the content made public. They operate in real time, that is, electrically, at "the instantaneous speed of electricity," and given the global connection, worldwide everything appearing as a "grievance" for certain "victims" of certain "victimizers" instantly generates compassion and indignation or fury, which are immediately viralized by the same social networks. With pre-digital electric media, indignation could only lead to explosions of anger offline. With social networks as electro-digital media the psychic reaction is online: their user channels his immediate outrage or rage reaction digitally in the social networks themselves.
4. Real time and unreflective emotionality
Any outrageous event communicated "electrically," that is, in real time, either pre-digitally or digitally, leads immediately, without any reflection, to the emotional duo of "compassion" with the "victims" and "indignation" or "anger" against the "victimizers.” Besides, the worldwide interactive electro-digital connection in the social networks exposes the user to a permanent overload of stimuli flowing on the screen of his digital device, which is always within reach of his gaze. The combination of a) real time with b) the uncontainable flow of stimuli impinging on his senses reorganizes the mind (Robb) of the user of the social networks, conditioning him to mere reacting oscillating between approval (likes) and disapproval (dislikes). Furthermore, in the permanent flow of contents, "outrageous" events appear again and again, converting the dual emotional reaction of "pity and fury" in a mental pattern (McLuhan) waiting for a "trigger" event (Robb). The user is conditioned to the reaction of unreflective "anger" or "indignation" to digital stimuli; it is anger in search of a recipient, in other words, a conditioning for pugnacity.
5. From the democratic equality to the antidemocratic equity
In the sphere of "the political" as that involving the polis because it is "offensive," "outrageous", triggering "anger," the West suffers a shake-up, the shift from the democratic idea of "equality" to the post-democratic idea of "equity." The technological form prior to the "electric" one was the "mechanical" (McLuhan), characterized by a mental pattern oriented to "homogeneity, continuity, repetitiveness, standardization" — like assembly line production. That is the psyche or mental set corresponding to democracy with its abstract individuals as homogeneous citizens with equal rights. Contrarily, the "electric form" conditions the mind for the "diverse," "discontinuous," "singular" (McLuhan). The advance of the "electrical" technological form displacing the "mechanical" one, with the consequent conditioning in compassion with "the weak and suffering," the "victims," has had the effect that any difference of individuals with respect to others that can be seen as a disadvantage in their social position, say, being woman, black, LGBT, migrant, disabled, etc., places those different as "victims" ("oppressed") of those not suffering that disadvantage, namely, the white heterosexual male, the "victimizer" ("oppressor" or "privileged"). Thus, activists for the groups of "victims" drive in the social networks permanent campaigns for compassion with the "victims" and for "indignation" against their "victimizers." The goal is not equality but "equity," attained by punishing the "privileged" antidemocratically subjecting them to some form of "positive discrimination" or to some "redressing" measure in favor of the "victims."
6. The political polarization in the West: the identitary attack on the conservatives
So, the West is unavoidably politically polarized between a) the "right" or "conservatives," that is, the "privileged" white heterosexual males and b) the "left" or "progressives," which are b.1) the "tribes" of "victimized minorities" and b.2) their "allies," white males who feel guilty about their "privilege." The goal of the progressives in attacking the “privileged” (the conservatives) is "restorative" "equity" not "equality," since already the mere idea of equality is an assault on diversity, a diversity of which each of the corresponding "minority" "tribes" claims it is its inalienable and distinctive "identity" of which it is "proud." The core of Western political polarization stems now from the antidemocratic goal of punishing the "privileged" to attain "equity" between essentially heterogeneous (“diverse”) groups weaponizing compassion and anger. All other issues, abortion, ecology, carrying weapons, homosexual marriage, immigration, etc., are either assimilated to the antidemocratic punishing fight for equity or are subordinated to it, since the antidemocratic goal of equity provides the unreachable horizon for permanent, all-embracing, and ineliminable pugnacity. The present "radicalized partisanship" is essentially radical "tribalism" since, as already in 2018 Fukuyama said, "the Democratic Party is becoming the party of minorities," and that means that the "identity issues" evolved to the core of American politics, and the "tribal" "diversity," potentiated by the social networks – "giving powerful voices to the weak and suffering" (McLuhan) – is the battlefield in which the activists of the "offended," "oppressed" "minorities" will always weaponize "pity and fury" against “conservatives."
7. "Hate speech" and freedom of speech.
The horizon of inexhaustible pugnacity is made possible by the combination of a) the differences inherent to a physically, socially, and psychologically heterogeneous population and b) the effect of online channeled compassion and anger generated by electro digital media that is, the social networks, c) that are democratically open. Under such conditions, the dominant "electric" social psyche, i.e., the "pity and fury" duo, automatically places the white heterosexual male as the "oppressor" or "victimizer," hence as the object of anger, simply because he appears to have advantages that others do not. Automatically being the object of the anger of the "progressive" "minorities" generates in turn defensive anger from white "conservatives." Both groups remain in the pugnacity channeled in social networks as "hate speech," which is not discursive — logical, argumentative – but a conglomerate of emotive and aggressive expressions flooding the social networks and posing the ethical challenge for contemporary, open, Western communication in the social networks, since such "hate speech" realizes the pugnacity that in the West erodes the universal value of social order.
Good to see t least some people are putting on their thinking caps!
Any idea if the professor has any contacts with deep pockets? Actually pulling off something substantial in this space would require some pretty substantial funding.
in fact, my main interest consists in disseminating my work on the triad of political instability consisting of 1) democracy itself, 2) a heterogeneous ("diverse") population, and 3) social networks. Any nation that brings together these three factors cannot have stability because it inevitably plunges into political polarization, as we see in the case of the USA. However, theoretically, there is a way out of the problem, and this research is what I want to disseminate and subject to criticism. To begin with, I would infinitely like Lukianoff and Haidt to know about her.
"If we want to create welcoming, inclusive communities, we should be doing everything we can to turn down the tribalism and turn up the sense of common humanity."
The problem is that once individuals in the West de-linked from Abrahamic culture (whatever the particular manifestation they followed), they lost the ground it provided for producing a common humanity, and tribalism became the go-to alternative/ground.
There needs to be a new ground, but with its hyper-focus on individuality, the self, and freedom, the West does not offer many options now besides tribalism, with the result that it becomes the ground for people's humanity--the similar expands its commission, and now becomes synonymous with the common.
Only by dethroning the self, and embracing of an understanding of identities as contingent/impermanent prisms through which a deeper/shared commonality finds expression can the situation we find ourselves in be remedied. The West only offers self-based solutions, and they have failed, and will continue to do so.
Can someone explain this to me. The Left is always portrayed as being in favor of rights for minorities but the laws in the late 60s passed only because the Republicans voted for them, when the Democrats for the most part voted against them. (Voting rights, equal rights, etc.) Why and how is this myth still given any credence? Now I've heard how supposedly the Democrats and Republicans somehow decided to change strategies in the 70s but I find this hard to believe. All of a sudden both parties decide to change their beliefs and political tactics 180 degrees at about he same time? Yea, not buying it.
I have a question about what seems to be a logical flaw (and also, of course, an ethical one) in the oppressor/oppressed ideology that I've never seen addressed anywhere. That is, what do those who believe in this theory of society expect will happen if they succeed? That is, once the oppressed have all thrown off their chains, vanquished the oppressors and taken over the power that all this is designed to bring them -- what happens to this societal structure then? Does it keep on working in this way or does it suddenly stop and switch to some other structure? For instance, let's say Hamas succeeds in destroying Israel, driving out or slaughtering its Jewish population, and taking power to create a new nation of Palestine, run by Palestinians. At some point, won't the Palestinians, who are now making all the laws, controlling the culture, and gathering all the wealth, then become the oppressors, and any surviving Jews become the oppressed? Or, by virtue of having once been oppressed, do the Palestinians maintain that stature forever, no matter how much power they may obtain or how long they exercise it? And will the Jews forever remain oppressors, even when there's only a handful left of them wandering homeless through the world, or none left at all, as Hamas would prefer, and regardless of how many centuries they were among the oppressed long before the nation of Israel was created?
This is a serious question. I would genuinely like to know if the scholars and politicians who put forward this view of the world have addressed this issue, and if so, what they say. If they seriously believe that all human worth and virtue is immutably determined by their identity group's political power or lack thereof at some particular point in time, then when is that point, and how does the binary ideology suddenly stop happening when the system works the way the theoreticians say it should, so that the oppressed shake off their oppressors? If, in their view, a former group of oppressors remains oppressors even after they have lost power and become impoverished, powerless and vulnerable -- how long does that continue? And if oppressed and oppressors never change places, so that once an oppressed group takes power they remain virtuous and immune to criticism and entitled to power forever -- hasn't the ideology shown its hand and revealed its true, entirely immoral purpose to grab power for certain groups and then hold it forever?
I do really want to know if anyone who genuinely subscribes to this theory has offered an answer to this question -- what is the end game? Years ago, and long before all this nonsense entered our common public discourse, my mother and I used to talk sometimes about long-standing wars or ethnic hatreds. More than once, my mother sighed and shook her head and said, "The oppressed become the oppressors." Not long ago I quoted my mother's aphorism to a lefty acquaintance, and was startled when she suddenly became furious with me and demanded to know how I could say such a false and terrible thing. I begin to think that my mother was on to something, and that it hit a nerve with my lefty friend because she didn't want the true purpose to be spoken aloud.
I’m cautious to jump on an extreme left or extreme right bashing bandwagon because that takes me away from my higher value or living and thinking in nuance, paradox and the holding of the tension of the opposites. I will say that what is described here by Jonathan Haidt is very much prevalent in the mainline Protestant denominations, which have a high percentage of graduate level education in the clergy. Personally I’ve been a center left progressive both politically and philosophically for decades. The great value of older liberalism was a desire for dialogue, an openness to all voices. That seems to no longer be encouraged. I once heard an older Abbie Hoffman speak in the 1980s and he told this parable. “If you put three liberals in a room together for an hour, eventually two of them will gang up on the other claiming that one is not liberal enough.” I told that to my right of center brother once, and he responded, “the same is true on my y side.”
I enjoy your work & read your prior book. I greatly respect your expertise on the subject matter. However, it's apparent to me that you wrote this from the perspective of a left-leaning, academic.. For example, the explicit, derogatory judgement of white men in this statement:
"And it is among the most shocking aspects of our current age that some Americans (and Europeans), mostly young white men, have openly embraced neo-Nazi ideas and symbols. They and other white nationalist groups rally around a shared hatred of not just Jews, but also of blacks, feminists, and “SJWs” (social justice warriors). "
Right leaning, young white men are not who I see as the tip of the spear on college campuses. Quite the contrary, they are usually the recipients of the hatred & resentment. It's young women shouting administrators down and harassing anyone who disagrees. It appears to me that you treat these groups (not white male) with kid gloves. At times giving them the benefit of the doubt or empathizing with them.
The primary issue I see today is that our society has become overty feminized. It starts in our movies and TV with the message that masculinity is bad, femininity is good. Young girls are told they can be anything they want and are entitled to anything they want. The ubiquitous message of "female empowerment". Safety, empathy for 'victims', focus on inclusion (for the marginalized) is primary. Sounds like good goals when not taken to the extreme. Sadly, there is at best silence for boys & men or at worse contempt .
When these young women get to college they are primed for radicalization. You find the same emphasis on feminine characteristics in a more radical form. Women studies, black studies & queer studies complete the indoctrination of hate and resentment. Most often towards heterosexual white men or any authority figure who tells them "NO". Unfortunately, when they leave colleges they carry this entitlement and safety mindset to corporations. Creating division and a stressful work environment. Employees are walking around on egg shells hoping they don't offend someone higher on the victim hierarchy.
What is wrong with empathy being primary? In Buddhism, sympathetic empathy is one of the Four Sublime States (the other three are loving-kindness; compassion and equanimity). And there is no gender associated with any of these states--they are universal.
If people are more conscious about not causing harm through their actions, good on that. It is not an instance of walking on eggshells, but of reducing suffering.
I agree that anyone can engage in empathy. The problem is that not all people do, Also, I would argue that understanding/labelling empathy as a gendered act reduces the likelihood of its occurrence.
Were the Nazis oppressing the Jews in Germany in the 1930s and 1940s? Asked another way, were the Jews victimized by the Nazis in that time period? (Yes, of course.)Is that binary thinking, a cognitive distortion? Now, apply the same framework to what the Israelis are doing in Gaza. Are the Israelis oppressing the Palestinians? Are the Palestinians being victimized by the Israelis? (Yes, of course.....20,000 civilians killed, 70% of them are women and children). What Israel is doing is ethnic cleansing, a crime against humanity. Does it make me an antisemite to point this out? You can think so, if you like, but it only points to your own inconsistencies (because I am not😉).
It is the context and the exclusivity. if these mobs on campus were equally animated by the 7 million Yemeni children starving right now, the 300 thousand killed, in other words by a so-called brown perpetrator harming another brown perpetrator, or 500 thousand dead in Syria or by Putin's crimes, or the concentration camps for millions of Muslims in China, then we would be seeing this very differently. that it not what is happening. So it begs the question why vitriol only against white European enemies. This too is a delusion. Israel is half brown. Thus, the role of Al Jazeera here, China/tiktok, massive deflections of the gullible Left masses by authoritarian media outlets is also considerable and how this ends up as antisemitism. We should be focusing more on solution to this level of manipulation into tribalism. Common ethical standards used to be the most important methodology of adjudicating. mass manipulation through media has made that very very tough, but it is our only rational ethical choice. Students who berate, misquote and demonize, and harass are violating codes of conduct. It needs some process that while engaged and compassionate has to lead to disqualification from being on campus. These behaviors can be universally established regardless of one's political and ethical views.
referring to the case studies in the book, not to antiwar demonstrations on campus. But those too can be subject to standards. So can the demonstrations in downtown London. Our civilizations need common standards for any tribe right or left, as to what lands you in jail, with a record, publicly shamed etc.
> The point of using the terminology of “intersectionalism,” as Crenshaw said in her 2016 TED Talk, is that “where there’s no name for a problem, you can’t see a problem, and when you can’t see a problem, you pretty much can’t solve it.”
Ever notice how, every time a term for extreme-Left activists begins to gain traction among the general public, they begin militantly campaigning to discredit the term and anyone who uses it? "Politically correct." "Social Justice Warrior." "Woke." Same story every time.
Crenshaw offers a perfect explanation as to why this always happens.
If the implications of these things weren’t leading to negative outcomes, would people be campaigning against them? Many of these things start out with good intentions but generate serious unintended consequence that, when pointed out, are not met with engagement and debate but cancel culture. There appears to be zero mechanism of the progressive Left to litigate their own ideas.
"One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results". Milton Friedman
But isn’t that part of the problem? Shouldn’t both matter?
In the abridged version of chapter 3, there’s an example of a student who becomes extremely upset with an email response from the dean. Most of us would probably read that email and agree that the dean didn’t intend harm - in fact, it seemed quite the opposite to me... I think the dean was trying to help- but clearly the student experienced negative feelings and didn’t find the response helpful. Should the dean’s intent not matter at all?
Seems like a healthy culture would value both the intent and the outcome, giving folks the benefit of the doubt until proven otherwise. We can acknowledge when there’s a mismatch between intent and outcome without labeling people victims or oppressors. In fact, it seems like this is a fertile place for growth.
Capitalism would be a good program to put under a microscope.
Absolutely.
> There appears to be zero mechanism of the progressive Left to litigate their own ideas.
No such mechanism exists within reality for resolving truth within the metaphysical realm as there is in the physical realm (science....which pretends to have coverage of the metaphysical, despite claiming it is outside their expertise but only if asked explicitly).
Developing such a thing would perhaps be a good idea, but it is rather difficult to get people interested in epistemology when Meme World is so fun and exciting, and pushed down our throats constantly.
I don’t think it’s impossible to develop that mechanism or explain the rational for its importance, but it goes hand in hand with a decrease in critical thinking skills being taught as a whole.
People have to see the value in it, but what they’re taught as critical evaluation is really quite soft. If you struggle to get people to be introspective and assess themselves, it’ll be harder to get a refined process to assess a system on a larger scale.
> but it goes hand in hand with a decrease in critical thinking skills being taught as a whole.
I would like to know how it was engineered such that philosophy is not taught in mainstream curriculum....no wonder people can't think straight, we deny them the very curriculum one needs to achieve it!
Good to see I'm not the only one noticing the intention/outcome dichotomy. I've been planning on writing an article about that for a while now, but life keeps getting in the way...
Hopefully some spare quiet moments over the holidays to put pen to paper. Best wishes.
The difference between "action ethics" and "agent ethics" is a major topic in moral philosophy, and has been for ages.
"...they begin militantly campaigning to discredit the term and anyone who uses it" Who is "they"?
And what credence do you, or do you not, assign to terms such as "White supremacist", Right-wing-extremist", or "Homophobe"? Do "they" accurately define and judiciously employ those terms?
There's a very important difference there. Those are slurs; they're not *our own terms.*
Leftists were calling themselves politically correct (and, more to the point, calling those they disagreed with politically incorrect) until people picked up on the term and started using it as a term of derision, at which point it was abandoned and discredited by the left. Same with "social justice warrior," and then "woke." Again and again we see them prefer to abandon their own terms for themselves over letting normal people use them as a *name,* a way to distinctly identify who they are and what they're doing.
That's the point I was trying to make. Thank you.
> A few days later, a group of roughly 150 students appeared in the courtyard outside Christakis’s home (within Silliman College), writing statements in chalk, including “We know where you live.” Erika’s husband, Nicholas Christakis, was the master of Silliman (a title that has since been changed to “head of college”).
> ...
> The next day, the president of the university sent out an email acknowledging students’ pain and committing to “take actions that will make us better.” He did not mention any support for the Christakises until weeks after the courtyard incident, by which time attitudes against the couple were entrenched. Amid ongoing demands that they be fired, Erika resigned from her teaching position, Nicholas took a sabbatical from teaching for the rest of the year, and at the end of the school year, the pair resigned from their positions in the residential college. Erika later revealed that many professors were very supportive privately, but were unwilling to defend or support the Christakises publicly because they thought it was “too risky” and they feared retribution.
Abject cowardice on the part of the administration and the other professors. The appropriate response to such thuggery is to round up the 150 students in question, summarily expel every last one of them for making threats of violence on campus, and have police escort them off campus.
Why? Because when you don't, what you get is... well... the rest of this chapter!
I believe that economic conditions that are making it more difficult for young people to step into traditional adult rights of passage has supercharged this thinking on campus. If you believe you will never achieve the same upward trajectory that your parents enjoyed, that depressing realization is very fertile ground for the oppressor/oppressed mentality. This reductive thinking is mapped onto everything now with disastrous consequences.
It endlessly frustrates me that its opponents credit campus-student-brat and campus-admin-coward culture with more substance than it deserves. Yes this disease is extremely serious - even civilisation destroyingly so - but it is not really about anything like a new 'morality', certainly not a coherent 'philosophy', nor even 'ideology'. It is about a degenerate PSYCHOLOGY.......a shallow, degenerate, up-itself narcissism and self-absorption that has taken hold primarily amongst a well-healed middle class that gets-off on telling itself that it is on the side of 'the oppressed'. It has been brewing in academia (unoticed by most people) for at least half a century on an upward exponential curve and now it has reached critical mass. So people are finally taking notice..... when it's possibly too late to save our Western liberal culture. https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/how-diversity-narrows-the-mind
> It endlessly frustrates me that its opponents credit campus-student-brat and campus-admin-coward culture with more substance than it deserves.
You have no means of knowing how much credit it gets, or how much it deserves.
I always come back to Lenin’s “who, whom” formulation. It is simplistic yet contains multitudes. Insert whichever oppressor or victim class into the binary, and the ideology writes itself: feminism, CRT, etc.
An entire academic career can be built upon reformulating the same ideas in different terms ad nauseam, and there is no real need to have an original thought.
To conform is to thrive, and the gravy train keeps on rolling : )
This is good, but you know, the fundamental problem with Marcuse and Kendi is they deliberately violate the Golden Rule, treat others as you would be treated. Until you can move beyond resentment, you are never free.
Who are the right wing extremists you refer to? I am familiar with BLM, SJW's and Antifa, who are creating chaos through violence and destruction but who are these right wing groups that hate blacks, jews etc?
The great ethical challenge in contemporary communication
Prof. Alberto J. L. Carrillo Canán (acarrillo_mx@yahoo.com), presented on December the 10th, Royal Library, Riyadh.
In the West, social networks are the technological possibility of truly open, democratic communication, in which anyone can express himself about whatever, whenever, from wherever, and however he wants. So, technological optimism considered them the ultimate realization of democracy. Yet, social networks have led to "hate speech" expressing social anger as the political polarization characterizing public life in the West for some years now. Such polarization makes social agreement extremely difficult, increasingly eroding the universal value of social order. Consequently, the great contemporary ethical challenge in the Western communicative sphere is the elimination of "hate speech" in social networks. We offer the democratic solution to this problem.
1. "Digital literacy" and "content moderation"
One answer to the problem of "hate speech" in social networks is based on the innocent idea that, like all technology, social networks themselves are neutral, that they can be used correctly or incorrectly, and that "hate speech" would be an "incorrect use.” Yet, measures for “educating” the users of social networks have not yielded results, and political polarization diminishes not in the least. Without worrying about "media literacy," Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc., apply censorship dubbed "content moderation.” This censorship is a Sisyphean task because the diffuse and evolving judgement of "hate speech." No wonder, one author summons us to "understand that hate speech is here to stay" (Douglas).
2. Pugnacious animosity as "indignation" and "anger"
Approaching the problem of "hate speech" adequately needs a morphological analysis of the medium social networks. They are a case of the electric technological form, characterized by operating at "the instantaneous speed of electricity" (McLuhan). Telegraph was the first media of that form and already with it appeared the eruption of social animosity as psychic effect of events communicated in real time. Marshall McLuhan pointed out that the Crimean War was the first case in which "the electric," materialized as the real time telegraph, generated the duo of "pity and fury." Pity referring to "the weak and suffering," the “victims” in today’s parlance," and fury, now "indignation," referring to their "victimizers." The "fury" resulting from the telegraphic communication of certain events was the first manifestation of social animosity made possible by the electric instantaneity.
3. Pugnacious animosity: from telegraph to social networks
Thereafter came radio, telephone, and television, "electric media” (McLuhan) which, when they transmitted "outrageous" content, had the same pugnacious effect as the telegraph due to the structural form real time. However, all pre-digital was not interactive. In contrast, social networks allow for a) interactivity in b) open communication, in which it is b.1) the user, and b.2) any user, who provides the content made public. They operate in real time, that is, electrically, at "the instantaneous speed of electricity," and given the global connection, worldwide everything appearing as a "grievance" for certain "victims" of certain "victimizers" instantly generates compassion and indignation or fury, which are immediately viralized by the same social networks. With pre-digital electric media, indignation could only lead to explosions of anger offline. With social networks as electro-digital media the psychic reaction is online: their user channels his immediate outrage or rage reaction digitally in the social networks themselves.
4. Real time and unreflective emotionality
Any outrageous event communicated "electrically," that is, in real time, either pre-digitally or digitally, leads immediately, without any reflection, to the emotional duo of "compassion" with the "victims" and "indignation" or "anger" against the "victimizers.” Besides, the worldwide interactive electro-digital connection in the social networks exposes the user to a permanent overload of stimuli flowing on the screen of his digital device, which is always within reach of his gaze. The combination of a) real time with b) the uncontainable flow of stimuli impinging on his senses reorganizes the mind (Robb) of the user of the social networks, conditioning him to mere reacting oscillating between approval (likes) and disapproval (dislikes). Furthermore, in the permanent flow of contents, "outrageous" events appear again and again, converting the dual emotional reaction of "pity and fury" in a mental pattern (McLuhan) waiting for a "trigger" event (Robb). The user is conditioned to the reaction of unreflective "anger" or "indignation" to digital stimuli; it is anger in search of a recipient, in other words, a conditioning for pugnacity.
5. From the democratic equality to the antidemocratic equity
In the sphere of "the political" as that involving the polis because it is "offensive," "outrageous", triggering "anger," the West suffers a shake-up, the shift from the democratic idea of "equality" to the post-democratic idea of "equity." The technological form prior to the "electric" one was the "mechanical" (McLuhan), characterized by a mental pattern oriented to "homogeneity, continuity, repetitiveness, standardization" — like assembly line production. That is the psyche or mental set corresponding to democracy with its abstract individuals as homogeneous citizens with equal rights. Contrarily, the "electric form" conditions the mind for the "diverse," "discontinuous," "singular" (McLuhan). The advance of the "electrical" technological form displacing the "mechanical" one, with the consequent conditioning in compassion with "the weak and suffering," the "victims," has had the effect that any difference of individuals with respect to others that can be seen as a disadvantage in their social position, say, being woman, black, LGBT, migrant, disabled, etc., places those different as "victims" ("oppressed") of those not suffering that disadvantage, namely, the white heterosexual male, the "victimizer" ("oppressor" or "privileged"). Thus, activists for the groups of "victims" drive in the social networks permanent campaigns for compassion with the "victims" and for "indignation" against their "victimizers." The goal is not equality but "equity," attained by punishing the "privileged" antidemocratically subjecting them to some form of "positive discrimination" or to some "redressing" measure in favor of the "victims."
6. The political polarization in the West: the identitary attack on the conservatives
So, the West is unavoidably politically polarized between a) the "right" or "conservatives," that is, the "privileged" white heterosexual males and b) the "left" or "progressives," which are b.1) the "tribes" of "victimized minorities" and b.2) their "allies," white males who feel guilty about their "privilege." The goal of the progressives in attacking the “privileged” (the conservatives) is "restorative" "equity" not "equality," since already the mere idea of equality is an assault on diversity, a diversity of which each of the corresponding "minority" "tribes" claims it is its inalienable and distinctive "identity" of which it is "proud." The core of Western political polarization stems now from the antidemocratic goal of punishing the "privileged" to attain "equity" between essentially heterogeneous (“diverse”) groups weaponizing compassion and anger. All other issues, abortion, ecology, carrying weapons, homosexual marriage, immigration, etc., are either assimilated to the antidemocratic punishing fight for equity or are subordinated to it, since the antidemocratic goal of equity provides the unreachable horizon for permanent, all-embracing, and ineliminable pugnacity. The present "radicalized partisanship" is essentially radical "tribalism" since, as already in 2018 Fukuyama said, "the Democratic Party is becoming the party of minorities," and that means that the "identity issues" evolved to the core of American politics, and the "tribal" "diversity," potentiated by the social networks – "giving powerful voices to the weak and suffering" (McLuhan) – is the battlefield in which the activists of the "offended," "oppressed" "minorities" will always weaponize "pity and fury" against “conservatives."
7. "Hate speech" and freedom of speech.
The horizon of inexhaustible pugnacity is made possible by the combination of a) the differences inherent to a physically, socially, and psychologically heterogeneous population and b) the effect of online channeled compassion and anger generated by electro digital media that is, the social networks, c) that are democratically open. Under such conditions, the dominant "electric" social psyche, i.e., the "pity and fury" duo, automatically places the white heterosexual male as the "oppressor" or "victimizer," hence as the object of anger, simply because he appears to have advantages that others do not. Automatically being the object of the anger of the "progressive" "minorities" generates in turn defensive anger from white "conservatives." Both groups remain in the pugnacity channeled in social networks as "hate speech," which is not discursive — logical, argumentative – but a conglomerate of emotive and aggressive expressions flooding the social networks and posing the ethical challenge for contemporary, open, Western communication in the social networks, since such "hate speech" realizes the pugnacity that in the West erodes the universal value of social order.
That is the half of the full text.
Good to see t least some people are putting on their thinking caps!
Any idea if the professor has any contacts with deep pockets? Actually pulling off something substantial in this space would require some pretty substantial funding.
Dear Johnny,
in fact, my main interest consists in disseminating my work on the triad of political instability consisting of 1) democracy itself, 2) a heterogeneous ("diverse") population, and 3) social networks. Any nation that brings together these three factors cannot have stability because it inevitably plunges into political polarization, as we see in the case of the USA. However, theoretically, there is a way out of the problem, and this research is what I want to disseminate and subject to criticism. To begin with, I would infinitely like Lukianoff and Haidt to know about her.
"If we want to create welcoming, inclusive communities, we should be doing everything we can to turn down the tribalism and turn up the sense of common humanity."
The problem is that once individuals in the West de-linked from Abrahamic culture (whatever the particular manifestation they followed), they lost the ground it provided for producing a common humanity, and tribalism became the go-to alternative/ground.
There needs to be a new ground, but with its hyper-focus on individuality, the self, and freedom, the West does not offer many options now besides tribalism, with the result that it becomes the ground for people's humanity--the similar expands its commission, and now becomes synonymous with the common.
Only by dethroning the self, and embracing of an understanding of identities as contingent/impermanent prisms through which a deeper/shared commonality finds expression can the situation we find ourselves in be remedied. The West only offers self-based solutions, and they have failed, and will continue to do so.
Can someone explain this to me. The Left is always portrayed as being in favor of rights for minorities but the laws in the late 60s passed only because the Republicans voted for them, when the Democrats for the most part voted against them. (Voting rights, equal rights, etc.) Why and how is this myth still given any credence? Now I've heard how supposedly the Democrats and Republicans somehow decided to change strategies in the 70s but I find this hard to believe. All of a sudden both parties decide to change their beliefs and political tactics 180 degrees at about he same time? Yea, not buying it.
I have a question about what seems to be a logical flaw (and also, of course, an ethical one) in the oppressor/oppressed ideology that I've never seen addressed anywhere. That is, what do those who believe in this theory of society expect will happen if they succeed? That is, once the oppressed have all thrown off their chains, vanquished the oppressors and taken over the power that all this is designed to bring them -- what happens to this societal structure then? Does it keep on working in this way or does it suddenly stop and switch to some other structure? For instance, let's say Hamas succeeds in destroying Israel, driving out or slaughtering its Jewish population, and taking power to create a new nation of Palestine, run by Palestinians. At some point, won't the Palestinians, who are now making all the laws, controlling the culture, and gathering all the wealth, then become the oppressors, and any surviving Jews become the oppressed? Or, by virtue of having once been oppressed, do the Palestinians maintain that stature forever, no matter how much power they may obtain or how long they exercise it? And will the Jews forever remain oppressors, even when there's only a handful left of them wandering homeless through the world, or none left at all, as Hamas would prefer, and regardless of how many centuries they were among the oppressed long before the nation of Israel was created?
This is a serious question. I would genuinely like to know if the scholars and politicians who put forward this view of the world have addressed this issue, and if so, what they say. If they seriously believe that all human worth and virtue is immutably determined by their identity group's political power or lack thereof at some particular point in time, then when is that point, and how does the binary ideology suddenly stop happening when the system works the way the theoreticians say it should, so that the oppressed shake off their oppressors? If, in their view, a former group of oppressors remains oppressors even after they have lost power and become impoverished, powerless and vulnerable -- how long does that continue? And if oppressed and oppressors never change places, so that once an oppressed group takes power they remain virtuous and immune to criticism and entitled to power forever -- hasn't the ideology shown its hand and revealed its true, entirely immoral purpose to grab power for certain groups and then hold it forever?
I do really want to know if anyone who genuinely subscribes to this theory has offered an answer to this question -- what is the end game? Years ago, and long before all this nonsense entered our common public discourse, my mother and I used to talk sometimes about long-standing wars or ethnic hatreds. More than once, my mother sighed and shook her head and said, "The oppressed become the oppressors." Not long ago I quoted my mother's aphorism to a lefty acquaintance, and was startled when she suddenly became furious with me and demanded to know how I could say such a false and terrible thing. I begin to think that my mother was on to something, and that it hit a nerve with my lefty friend because she didn't want the true purpose to be spoken aloud.
I’m cautious to jump on an extreme left or extreme right bashing bandwagon because that takes me away from my higher value or living and thinking in nuance, paradox and the holding of the tension of the opposites. I will say that what is described here by Jonathan Haidt is very much prevalent in the mainline Protestant denominations, which have a high percentage of graduate level education in the clergy. Personally I’ve been a center left progressive both politically and philosophically for decades. The great value of older liberalism was a desire for dialogue, an openness to all voices. That seems to no longer be encouraged. I once heard an older Abbie Hoffman speak in the 1980s and he told this parable. “If you put three liberals in a room together for an hour, eventually two of them will gang up on the other claiming that one is not liberal enough.” I told that to my right of center brother once, and he responded, “the same is true on my y side.”
Sigh.
I enjoy your work & read your prior book. I greatly respect your expertise on the subject matter. However, it's apparent to me that you wrote this from the perspective of a left-leaning, academic.. For example, the explicit, derogatory judgement of white men in this statement:
"And it is among the most shocking aspects of our current age that some Americans (and Europeans), mostly young white men, have openly embraced neo-Nazi ideas and symbols. They and other white nationalist groups rally around a shared hatred of not just Jews, but also of blacks, feminists, and “SJWs” (social justice warriors). "
Right leaning, young white men are not who I see as the tip of the spear on college campuses. Quite the contrary, they are usually the recipients of the hatred & resentment. It's young women shouting administrators down and harassing anyone who disagrees. It appears to me that you treat these groups (not white male) with kid gloves. At times giving them the benefit of the doubt or empathizing with them.
The primary issue I see today is that our society has become overty feminized. It starts in our movies and TV with the message that masculinity is bad, femininity is good. Young girls are told they can be anything they want and are entitled to anything they want. The ubiquitous message of "female empowerment". Safety, empathy for 'victims', focus on inclusion (for the marginalized) is primary. Sounds like good goals when not taken to the extreme. Sadly, there is at best silence for boys & men or at worse contempt .
When these young women get to college they are primed for radicalization. You find the same emphasis on feminine characteristics in a more radical form. Women studies, black studies & queer studies complete the indoctrination of hate and resentment. Most often towards heterosexual white men or any authority figure who tells them "NO". Unfortunately, when they leave colleges they carry this entitlement and safety mindset to corporations. Creating division and a stressful work environment. Employees are walking around on egg shells hoping they don't offend someone higher on the victim hierarchy.
What is wrong with empathy being primary? In Buddhism, sympathetic empathy is one of the Four Sublime States (the other three are loving-kindness; compassion and equanimity). And there is no gender associated with any of these states--they are universal.
If people are more conscious about not causing harm through their actions, good on that. It is not an instance of walking on eggshells, but of reducing suffering.
I agree that anyone can engage in empathy. The problem is that not all people do, Also, I would argue that understanding/labelling empathy as a gendered act reduces the likelihood of its occurrence.
Were the Nazis oppressing the Jews in Germany in the 1930s and 1940s? Asked another way, were the Jews victimized by the Nazis in that time period? (Yes, of course.)Is that binary thinking, a cognitive distortion? Now, apply the same framework to what the Israelis are doing in Gaza. Are the Israelis oppressing the Palestinians? Are the Palestinians being victimized by the Israelis? (Yes, of course.....20,000 civilians killed, 70% of them are women and children). What Israel is doing is ethnic cleansing, a crime against humanity. Does it make me an antisemite to point this out? You can think so, if you like, but it only points to your own inconsistencies (because I am not😉).
It is the context and the exclusivity. if these mobs on campus were equally animated by the 7 million Yemeni children starving right now, the 300 thousand killed, in other words by a so-called brown perpetrator harming another brown perpetrator, or 500 thousand dead in Syria or by Putin's crimes, or the concentration camps for millions of Muslims in China, then we would be seeing this very differently. that it not what is happening. So it begs the question why vitriol only against white European enemies. This too is a delusion. Israel is half brown. Thus, the role of Al Jazeera here, China/tiktok, massive deflections of the gullible Left masses by authoritarian media outlets is also considerable and how this ends up as antisemitism. We should be focusing more on solution to this level of manipulation into tribalism. Common ethical standards used to be the most important methodology of adjudicating. mass manipulation through media has made that very very tough, but it is our only rational ethical choice. Students who berate, misquote and demonize, and harass are violating codes of conduct. It needs some process that while engaged and compassionate has to lead to disqualification from being on campus. These behaviors can be universally established regardless of one's political and ethical views.
referring to the case studies in the book, not to antiwar demonstrations on campus. But those too can be subject to standards. So can the demonstrations in downtown London. Our civilizations need common standards for any tribe right or left, as to what lands you in jail, with a record, publicly shamed etc.
Investigate 10/7!
https://anthonyjhall.substack.com/p/when-the-occupier-plays-the-victim
When we sever our connection with Mother Nature, we pity ourselves, and our souls become easily oppressed.