"...but because I’m a human who has, like every human, experienced first-hand how my mind generates resistance to information that threatens my political and cultural identity." This is fascinating to me because I'm a Chicana, brown mestiza and there's very little in American mass media culture that I don't find threatening to my political and cultural identity. I mean, the L.A. Times had to apologize for decades of racist coverage of Mexican-Americans in their newspaper, my family has lived in L.A. for over a century - we've had to live with that this entire time
Anyway, I digress. I guess what I'm trying to say is that I find this need to expunge discomfort and ambiguity is totally foreign to me. I'd have to go hide under a literal rock if I didn't want to feel discomfort or escape ambiguity. My very identity is rooted in ambiguity. Anyway, great piece! I enjoyed reading it.
It’s crazy how much this hits home. I was dubbed the “80 y/o conservative curmudgeon” by my high school social studies teacher for arguing with every “PC liberal” in class. Instead of the chief of police, my dad was a well respected (moderately conservative) banker in my southern MN town. Instead of majoring in philosophy, I chose its cousin, physics at a liberal arts college. I married an artist. I campaigned for Ron Paul and joined the LP briefly and voted for Mike Gravel for the 2008 nomination. I desperately wanted the world to make sense and libertarianism offered F = m*a simple logic that seemed indisputable. Then I took Quantum Mechanics and that only made sense if you could get a handle on free will and consciousness. So I studied neuroscience, and discovered how irrational our brains are. The rational economic libertarian actor was fundamentally flawed. It all started falling apart. The world is a messy place. I couldn’t deny the gray shades any longer.
I generally agree with the psychology attributes of your article but find that its a response to a different topic. The anti-woke crowd, especially the prominent anti-woke crowd, tend to be mostly (all?) lefties, ethnically non-White (Blacks - Glenn Loury, John McWhorter, Kmele, Coleman Hughes, Thomas Chatterton Williams - and Jews etc) and even professors (Yascha Mounk), who is not American by birth. These are people you would expect to be exactly the opposite of what your article states: very comfortable with ambiguity and nuance and high on "Openness to Experience".
In fact, id venture to bet that in this case the roles are reversed: It is the woke types that find it the most difficult to deal with ambiguity and nuance. Try asking the woke crowd - or The Elect, to use the new term - to be philosophically consistent in their views. To give a reasoned defense of the boundaries of their views. Shit, to even debate their views. You will feel as if your talking to a bunch of conservatives from small towns who hate academic inquiry.
Anyway, your article is a nice aside, but I must ask, what does it have to do with the current champions of the anti-woke crowd?
So I'm coming around on this from the other end of the horseshoe. I was raised in California listening to by Deadheads who despised Reagan, and I really was assigned Howard Zinn in eleventh grade history. My politics ranged from Bill Bradley to Rage Against the Machine. And a lot of this makes sense, and even resonates. But I also feel the need to say: "'America, fuck yeah!' but seriously."
If anything, as I've gotten older the things that used to feel like uniquely American travesties and hypocrisies show up everywhere, and the things that make us exceptional seem even more amazing and rare.
More and more, I think that the opposing response to shame is the most important difference between Right and Left mindsets.
People on the Right viscerally need to expunge shame, as you explain well here.
By the same token, though, Leftists tend to crave shame, to wallow in it. Read a Greenwald article (don't) to see what I mean. They will conjure shameful acts on the part of their in-group even when it's not there.
I really don't know which is less healthy. On the one hand, being closed to critique means you learn nothing and tend toward the outgroup-demonising reflex that you talk about. On the other hand, I do suspect that pride - even pride that knows deep down it is a castle built on sand - makes you much happier than shame does.
A few typos I noticed by the way, in case it's of any use -
- Why is it so bothersome to admit that are shameful chapters of cruel injustice in our nation’s history?
- Nobody likes irritation. d to make the uneasiness go away.
- a tyrannical of hierarchy of intersectional grievance.
- I was Jack Kemp/Pete DuPont man [unless that is an actual type of man, like Tepexpan man!]
I have read a number of anti-woke articles by various people. None of their writings on that subject or anything else bear any resemblance at all to the sneering, contemptuous description you give of them. Their views of this country and its history have nothing in common with your cartoonish portrayal of them. Your anti-woke conservative is a caricature. Did you go hunting for this character in the alt-right depths? Who are these people you write about?
I appreciate this narrative a lot. I've come to accept that thinking about race in America will always be an exercise in sustained heartbreak for me (white CIS guy with a good job), but it's something that I will always need to do. It helps that I'm not directly threatened by change, and I was raised in an academic environment where realistic narratives about race were acceptable.
However, I am truly worried about how white people in precarious situations will react, and have reacted. What is an 18-year-old white kid in rural Pennsylvania supposed to do with this information? I genuinely don't know. I'd like to say, "get comfortable with your identity as a member of a multicultural nation" but I don't know specifically how he should do that. Maybe I need to trust kids' judgment more than I do. Truly curious if others have similar worries.
The unwillingness of some to hear an "America is bad" message is matched by the eagerness of others. And those others include historians you revere. Consider this quote from the link that you provided: "Speaking for myself, for three decades now I have emphasized in my U.S. survey class that the African American experience *must* be considered central to *every* aspect of American history. You cannot understand *anything* about the latter, I inform my students, unless you incorporate the former into the narrative. (stars added)" That cannot *possibly* be true, and, what is more, it's completely unnecessary since a more moderate version of that position would surely be correct and would also serve this historian's purposes (or so I presume). And yet he opts for absurdity. So who, then, is engaged in motivated reasoning? Whose beliefs are being driven by desire?
This isn’t unique to America. As an Irishman of a similar generation to Will this tracks pretty well with my own experiences growing in a much more conservative generation and my/our initial unwillingness to confront and accept our country’s pretty horrific record on clerical abuse, the institutionalised cruelty in residential institutions, abortion rights, LGBT etc.
"...but because I’m a human who has, like every human, experienced first-hand how my mind generates resistance to information that threatens my political and cultural identity." This is fascinating to me because I'm a Chicana, brown mestiza and there's very little in American mass media culture that I don't find threatening to my political and cultural identity. I mean, the L.A. Times had to apologize for decades of racist coverage of Mexican-Americans in their newspaper, my family has lived in L.A. for over a century - we've had to live with that this entire time
Anyway, I digress. I guess what I'm trying to say is that I find this need to expunge discomfort and ambiguity is totally foreign to me. I'd have to go hide under a literal rock if I didn't want to feel discomfort or escape ambiguity. My very identity is rooted in ambiguity. Anyway, great piece! I enjoyed reading it.
It’s crazy how much this hits home. I was dubbed the “80 y/o conservative curmudgeon” by my high school social studies teacher for arguing with every “PC liberal” in class. Instead of the chief of police, my dad was a well respected (moderately conservative) banker in my southern MN town. Instead of majoring in philosophy, I chose its cousin, physics at a liberal arts college. I married an artist. I campaigned for Ron Paul and joined the LP briefly and voted for Mike Gravel for the 2008 nomination. I desperately wanted the world to make sense and libertarianism offered F = m*a simple logic that seemed indisputable. Then I took Quantum Mechanics and that only made sense if you could get a handle on free will and consciousness. So I studied neuroscience, and discovered how irrational our brains are. The rational economic libertarian actor was fundamentally flawed. It all started falling apart. The world is a messy place. I couldn’t deny the gray shades any longer.
I generally agree with the psychology attributes of your article but find that its a response to a different topic. The anti-woke crowd, especially the prominent anti-woke crowd, tend to be mostly (all?) lefties, ethnically non-White (Blacks - Glenn Loury, John McWhorter, Kmele, Coleman Hughes, Thomas Chatterton Williams - and Jews etc) and even professors (Yascha Mounk), who is not American by birth. These are people you would expect to be exactly the opposite of what your article states: very comfortable with ambiguity and nuance and high on "Openness to Experience".
In fact, id venture to bet that in this case the roles are reversed: It is the woke types that find it the most difficult to deal with ambiguity and nuance. Try asking the woke crowd - or The Elect, to use the new term - to be philosophically consistent in their views. To give a reasoned defense of the boundaries of their views. Shit, to even debate their views. You will feel as if your talking to a bunch of conservatives from small towns who hate academic inquiry.
Anyway, your article is a nice aside, but I must ask, what does it have to do with the current champions of the anti-woke crowd?
So I'm coming around on this from the other end of the horseshoe. I was raised in California listening to by Deadheads who despised Reagan, and I really was assigned Howard Zinn in eleventh grade history. My politics ranged from Bill Bradley to Rage Against the Machine. And a lot of this makes sense, and even resonates. But I also feel the need to say: "'America, fuck yeah!' but seriously."
If anything, as I've gotten older the things that used to feel like uniquely American travesties and hypocrisies show up everywhere, and the things that make us exceptional seem even more amazing and rare.
More and more, I think that the opposing response to shame is the most important difference between Right and Left mindsets.
People on the Right viscerally need to expunge shame, as you explain well here.
By the same token, though, Leftists tend to crave shame, to wallow in it. Read a Greenwald article (don't) to see what I mean. They will conjure shameful acts on the part of their in-group even when it's not there.
I really don't know which is less healthy. On the one hand, being closed to critique means you learn nothing and tend toward the outgroup-demonising reflex that you talk about. On the other hand, I do suspect that pride - even pride that knows deep down it is a castle built on sand - makes you much happier than shame does.
A few typos I noticed by the way, in case it's of any use -
- Why is it so bothersome to admit that are shameful chapters of cruel injustice in our nation’s history?
- Nobody likes irritation. d to make the uneasiness go away.
- a tyrannical of hierarchy of intersectional grievance.
- I was Jack Kemp/Pete DuPont man [unless that is an actual type of man, like Tepexpan man!]
I have read a number of anti-woke articles by various people. None of their writings on that subject or anything else bear any resemblance at all to the sneering, contemptuous description you give of them. Their views of this country and its history have nothing in common with your cartoonish portrayal of them. Your anti-woke conservative is a caricature. Did you go hunting for this character in the alt-right depths? Who are these people you write about?
I appreciate this narrative a lot. I've come to accept that thinking about race in America will always be an exercise in sustained heartbreak for me (white CIS guy with a good job), but it's something that I will always need to do. It helps that I'm not directly threatened by change, and I was raised in an academic environment where realistic narratives about race were acceptable.
However, I am truly worried about how white people in precarious situations will react, and have reacted. What is an 18-year-old white kid in rural Pennsylvania supposed to do with this information? I genuinely don't know. I'd like to say, "get comfortable with your identity as a member of a multicultural nation" but I don't know specifically how he should do that. Maybe I need to trust kids' judgment more than I do. Truly curious if others have similar worries.
The unwillingness of some to hear an "America is bad" message is matched by the eagerness of others. And those others include historians you revere. Consider this quote from the link that you provided: "Speaking for myself, for three decades now I have emphasized in my U.S. survey class that the African American experience *must* be considered central to *every* aspect of American history. You cannot understand *anything* about the latter, I inform my students, unless you incorporate the former into the narrative. (stars added)" That cannot *possibly* be true, and, what is more, it's completely unnecessary since a more moderate version of that position would surely be correct and would also serve this historian's purposes (or so I presume). And yet he opts for absurdity. So who, then, is engaged in motivated reasoning? Whose beliefs are being driven by desire?
This isn’t unique to America. As an Irishman of a similar generation to Will this tracks pretty well with my own experiences growing in a much more conservative generation and my/our initial unwillingness to confront and accept our country’s pretty horrific record on clerical abuse, the institutionalised cruelty in residential institutions, abortion rights, LGBT etc.