"...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.
I do think there's a special kind of ambiguity that comes with loving something or someone, or identifying with something or someone, while suddenly realizing that it's also morally bad.
I once heard from a childhood development specialist that the reason a lot of adult fiction is inappropriate for children is because of moral ambiguity. She said classic fairy tales have all manner of terrifying things in them. But children aren't overly distressed by them because she said every character in a fairy tale is either good or bad. And that's how they need them to be.
This is a great article for recognizing that in fact that impulse may linger.
I also am a descendant from conquistadors. I have no problem recognizing how horrible they were. I don't have any particular pride in my Spanish surname for lots of reasons. So yeah in short, I don't get it.
I wouldn't be alive without them. The people I've loved most in the world were Spanish speakers. There is no me without the fucked up history of colonization
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?
Poncho, I agree. I think Will totally nails the way wokeness is viewed by downscale social conservatives, and even upscale economic conservatives with moderate education, but it's important to distinguish them from the anti-woke intellectuals who increasingly tend to distinguish themselves as "classical liberals" and are obviously serious thinkers.
And the best of them can help us distinguish between the health and sick forms--that is to say, liberal and illiberal--elements of woke progressive culture. Read McWhorter's review of DeAngelo's book--it's intellectually devastating. It strikes me that the best of the anti-woke are correctly criticizing deficiencies, not just in the rank and file activists, but in the intellectuals like giving them their marching orders. But at their worst, they tend to miss that the activists are responding to real problems that centrism, libertarianism, classical liberal politics tends to ignore, and is arguably inadequate to address (the same can be said for climate change).
Part of the problem is the coding. When a center-right classical liberal hears "systemic racism," they think that individuals are being called racist. But progressives are talking about systems, which is a higher level of abstraction made possible by a more complex mode of cognition (incidentally, this is something that Jonathan Haidt's model completely misses). Conservatives interpret this as denying the role of personal responsibility because, as Will notes, they have trouble with ambiguity. The worst of wokeism ignores the personal, the best of it sees both as causally relevant.
Put another way, the best of progressivism is classical liberalism "plus"; the worst of it is the the idea that classical liberalism is nothing but a cypher for white supremacy--it's classical liberalism "minus."
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?
It rings true to me. I have extended family that this describes reasonably well. Reminds me of one of them complaining on FB about how “so many people dislike the great things in our country” and wonders why they don’t move abroad. (What do “they” dislike? He lists things like the flag, the national anthem, Columbus Day, but also our judicial, healthcare, and tax systems. it’s a long list). Seems to me the same aversion to ambiguity and desire for it to be some kind of character flaw in the other side as Will is talking about.
I get it, I have a near relative who fits the profile Will draws very well. It's just that in no way would I equate that person's views to "anti-wokeness", which Will does in his article. I'm sure she is anti-woke, but that barely scratches the surface. Nor would I say that his profile is the profile of "conservatives" writ large. There are plenty of conservatives with nuanced, complex views. Actually, I'd say there is nothing about my near relative and her views that can be called "conservative" in any true sense of that word. I'm liberal, I appreciate that the US is now and has been gravely flawed, and I'm pretty sure I'm anti-woke.
Yeah but...Surely Will is not writing about twitter spitters? I thought he was writing about people who think about things and then write about them, like his good friend Bari Weiss.
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.
I do think there's a special kind of ambiguity that comes with loving something or someone, or identifying with something or someone, while suddenly realizing that it's also morally bad.
I once heard from a childhood development specialist that the reason a lot of adult fiction is inappropriate for children is because of moral ambiguity. She said classic fairy tales have all manner of terrifying things in them. But children aren't overly distressed by them because she said every character in a fairy tale is either good or bad. And that's how they need them to be.
This is a great article for recognizing that in fact that impulse may linger.
I also am a descendant from conquistadors. I have no problem recognizing how horrible they were. I don't have any particular pride in my Spanish surname for lots of reasons. So yeah in short, I don't get it.
Do you love and identify with those ancestors though? (Maybe you do.)
I wouldn't be alive without them. The people I've loved most in the world were Spanish speakers. There is no me without the fucked up history of colonization
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?
Poncho, I agree. I think Will totally nails the way wokeness is viewed by downscale social conservatives, and even upscale economic conservatives with moderate education, but it's important to distinguish them from the anti-woke intellectuals who increasingly tend to distinguish themselves as "classical liberals" and are obviously serious thinkers.
And the best of them can help us distinguish between the health and sick forms--that is to say, liberal and illiberal--elements of woke progressive culture. Read McWhorter's review of DeAngelo's book--it's intellectually devastating. It strikes me that the best of the anti-woke are correctly criticizing deficiencies, not just in the rank and file activists, but in the intellectuals like giving them their marching orders. But at their worst, they tend to miss that the activists are responding to real problems that centrism, libertarianism, classical liberal politics tends to ignore, and is arguably inadequate to address (the same can be said for climate change).
Part of the problem is the coding. When a center-right classical liberal hears "systemic racism," they think that individuals are being called racist. But progressives are talking about systems, which is a higher level of abstraction made possible by a more complex mode of cognition (incidentally, this is something that Jonathan Haidt's model completely misses). Conservatives interpret this as denying the role of personal responsibility because, as Will notes, they have trouble with ambiguity. The worst of wokeism ignores the personal, the best of it sees both as causally relevant.
Put another way, the best of progressivism is classical liberalism "plus"; the worst of it is the the idea that classical liberalism is nothing but a cypher for white supremacy--it's classical liberalism "minus."
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!]
Thanks, the typo spotting is very useful. My blogger's habit of reading for errors after publishing is idiotic for a newsletter.
You can console yourself that you'll never have as many as Matt Yglesias
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?
It rings true to me. I have extended family that this describes reasonably well. Reminds me of one of them complaining on FB about how “so many people dislike the great things in our country” and wonders why they don’t move abroad. (What do “they” dislike? He lists things like the flag, the national anthem, Columbus Day, but also our judicial, healthcare, and tax systems. it’s a long list). Seems to me the same aversion to ambiguity and desire for it to be some kind of character flaw in the other side as Will is talking about.
I get it, I have a near relative who fits the profile Will draws very well. It's just that in no way would I equate that person's views to "anti-wokeness", which Will does in his article. I'm sure she is anti-woke, but that barely scratches the surface. Nor would I say that his profile is the profile of "conservatives" writ large. There are plenty of conservatives with nuanced, complex views. Actually, I'd say there is nothing about my near relative and her views that can be called "conservative" in any true sense of that word. I'm liberal, I appreciate that the US is now and has been gravely flawed, and I'm pretty sure I'm anti-woke.
Yeah but...Surely Will is not writing about twitter spitters? I thought he was writing about people who think about things and then write about them, like his good friend Bari Weiss.
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.