Right on point again, Steve! And great comments from the gang here, as usual.
I feel like we've made a multi-generational wrong turn (in the Anglophone world at least), and it saddens me. Today the neo-progressives have worked themselves way out an a limb of abstract and effete symbolism and virtue signaling with very little traction on…
Right on point again, Steve! And great comments from the gang here, as usual.
I feel like we've made a multi-generational wrong turn (in the Anglophone world at least), and it saddens me. Today the neo-progressives have worked themselves way out an a limb of abstract and effete symbolism and virtue signaling with very little traction on real world problems. They are so far gone that the only thing they can imagine to address their lack of progress is to double down on the same weak strategy, on purity of dogmatism, and on eviscerating liberal democracy. There is now a self-perpetuating machine for converting good will and positive intentions into tribalism and unproductive conflict, and it's extremely resistant to any reform.
I read something a while back asking people about their ideal future world. The folks we might label as "woke" spoke not about peace, harmony, cooperation, human fulfilment, and opportunities; their vision was primarily one of ongoing conflict where their side was continuing to win by uniting all the oppressed into permanent struggle. What that cued me into is that people can get so addicted to The Struggle itself that they don't spend much time or emotional energy on how they want people to live well together - instead investing their imaginations into struggling forever to overthrow and suppress the cishetropatriarchy of white males as their end goal, their ideal society.
Or in short, fighting oppression is more engaging then actually ending oppression would be. If the current oppressions were somehow banished, others need to be created to keep the war going.
And if they accidentally succeeded, their core skillsets would immediately be turned on defeating the other coalition partners, because their toolkit is weak on cooperation, reciprocal rights, collaborative governance, conflict de-escalation, and win/win orientation in general. All swords and no plowshares. Without the fantasy of a perpetual shared enemy, it collapses into betrayals and infighting. The skills and mindsets needed for tearing down are different than those for building up. Valorizing zealotry does not beget cooperation and collaboration.
And yet, at least currently, most neo-progressives are starting with very positive motives. They want diversity (except of viewpoint) and inclusion (_of only the right people, with vigorously exclusion of the rest_) and equity (of outcomes, no matter how much discrimination of opportunity is needed to achieve that).
A while back, it struck me that "diversity is strength" is nonsense in a conflict-centric world, where it's a huge and usually violent problem; diversity is only a strength within a structure of collaboration and cooperation, where there is trust and a shared commitment to integrating the best ideas from diverse sources for shared benefits.
Regarding the original observation about focusing on problems with "progressives", I think that one of the factors which makes many of the folks here focus so much on neo-progressives is the frustration of seeing a potentially positive source of energy for creating a better world get hijacked into dogmatic conformity to a strategy leading more towards collapse than betterment. Or in other words: IT DOESN'T NEED TO GO THAT WAY! We see people with initial values similar to ours get taken over by a mind virus that points them in a counterproductive direction in many cases. Compared to, say, a committed white supremacist, whose self-perceived needs and desires are so different that traditional liberal progressivism has no good responses. So we get bothered when we see folks whose psychology once would have inspired them to move towards the minimization of race as a factor, today be channeled into perpetual race consciousness and unending conflict as the path to liberation.
"There is now a self-perpetuating machine for converting good will and positive intentions into tribalism and unproductive conflict,"
Oof! That is a slam-dunk right there! Yes indeed, that's a perfect way to put it.
And while I said the "performance" is the whole game for too many people, the "struggle" is also the game for a whole bunch of others (although you could argue that the "struggle" is part of the performance. I've spoken to so many middle-class, well educated, privileged millennial who talks as if they're living through the Watts riots).
I have a conversation coming up soon that goes a little deeper on this point, but basically, some people have come to define themselves so totally by their "oppression" that they can't bear to let it go.
Right on point again, Steve! And great comments from the gang here, as usual.
I feel like we've made a multi-generational wrong turn (in the Anglophone world at least), and it saddens me. Today the neo-progressives have worked themselves way out an a limb of abstract and effete symbolism and virtue signaling with very little traction on real world problems. They are so far gone that the only thing they can imagine to address their lack of progress is to double down on the same weak strategy, on purity of dogmatism, and on eviscerating liberal democracy. There is now a self-perpetuating machine for converting good will and positive intentions into tribalism and unproductive conflict, and it's extremely resistant to any reform.
I read something a while back asking people about their ideal future world. The folks we might label as "woke" spoke not about peace, harmony, cooperation, human fulfilment, and opportunities; their vision was primarily one of ongoing conflict where their side was continuing to win by uniting all the oppressed into permanent struggle. What that cued me into is that people can get so addicted to The Struggle itself that they don't spend much time or emotional energy on how they want people to live well together - instead investing their imaginations into struggling forever to overthrow and suppress the cishetropatriarchy of white males as their end goal, their ideal society.
Or in short, fighting oppression is more engaging then actually ending oppression would be. If the current oppressions were somehow banished, others need to be created to keep the war going.
And if they accidentally succeeded, their core skillsets would immediately be turned on defeating the other coalition partners, because their toolkit is weak on cooperation, reciprocal rights, collaborative governance, conflict de-escalation, and win/win orientation in general. All swords and no plowshares. Without the fantasy of a perpetual shared enemy, it collapses into betrayals and infighting. The skills and mindsets needed for tearing down are different than those for building up. Valorizing zealotry does not beget cooperation and collaboration.
And yet, at least currently, most neo-progressives are starting with very positive motives. They want diversity (except of viewpoint) and inclusion (_of only the right people, with vigorously exclusion of the rest_) and equity (of outcomes, no matter how much discrimination of opportunity is needed to achieve that).
A while back, it struck me that "diversity is strength" is nonsense in a conflict-centric world, where it's a huge and usually violent problem; diversity is only a strength within a structure of collaboration and cooperation, where there is trust and a shared commitment to integrating the best ideas from diverse sources for shared benefits.
Regarding the original observation about focusing on problems with "progressives", I think that one of the factors which makes many of the folks here focus so much on neo-progressives is the frustration of seeing a potentially positive source of energy for creating a better world get hijacked into dogmatic conformity to a strategy leading more towards collapse than betterment. Or in other words: IT DOESN'T NEED TO GO THAT WAY! We see people with initial values similar to ours get taken over by a mind virus that points them in a counterproductive direction in many cases. Compared to, say, a committed white supremacist, whose self-perceived needs and desires are so different that traditional liberal progressivism has no good responses. So we get bothered when we see folks whose psychology once would have inspired them to move towards the minimization of race as a factor, today be channeled into perpetual race consciousness and unending conflict as the path to liberation.
"There is now a self-perpetuating machine for converting good will and positive intentions into tribalism and unproductive conflict,"
Oof! That is a slam-dunk right there! Yes indeed, that's a perfect way to put it.
And while I said the "performance" is the whole game for too many people, the "struggle" is also the game for a whole bunch of others (although you could argue that the "struggle" is part of the performance. I've spoken to so many middle-class, well educated, privileged millennial who talks as if they're living through the Watts riots).
I have a conversation coming up soon that goes a little deeper on this point, but basically, some people have come to define themselves so totally by their "oppression" that they can't bear to let it go.