10 ms·

> It’s far beyond politics and more a religion than anything. I believe this is a result of the fact that Americans have turned away from organized religion in

> It’s far beyond politics and more a religion than anything. I believe this is a result of the fact that Americans have turned away from organized religion in recent years (note: I'm not religious myself). There seems to be something deep inside of most people that requires a shared spiritual experience. Wokism has emerged to fill that need.

aaronax 6y ago
This article really fleshes out what this thread is discussing: https://www.devever.net/~hl/newchurch https://www.devever.net/~hl/newchurch
- nemo44x 6y ago
  I think it has more cult dynamics than a church per-se. Seeing people end friendships and relationships with family members. “Unlearning” things, otherwise known as reprogramming. Seminars (that are expensive) and “required reading”. Obsessive recruitment of new people to initiate. And then of course if you question things you’ll be ostracized and exiled.
  - monoideism 6y ago
    I agree. It's more of a cult-type church than a mainstream church. That said, I think it's being driven by some of the same socio-spiritual needs.
  - ytwySXpMbS 6y ago
    I think this is painting a rather stereotyped view of people on the left. I share most of the views of the left, however don't end relationships with people over it, preach, or attend any seminars. I think you're seeing the vocal minority here, which is of course more outspoken as they care enough to talk about it. Apart from the most extreme people, I have had many productive conversations with people whose views were more left than mine and haven't been ostracised once.
    - nitrogen 6y ago
      You are of course right that most people aren't like this. This thread is about those few who are, and how they can end up dividing everyone else, unwillingly, into accolytes versus enemies. It's not safe to say "I am left/center/right/whatever but I don't think this is the way to go about it" around this type. It is a separate axis from left-right, and is maybe correlated with the authoritarian-libertarian axis.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- throwaway0a5e 6y ago
  One of the guys that article cites clearly has some less savory beliefs about race (that I disagree with, people are mostly the same the world over) but man did he do a good job predicting the ideological battles lines of 2020 for someone writing in 2012.
  - nemo44x 6y ago
    Read "Kindly Inquisitors" if you'd like a very thoughtful defense of Enlightenment ideas as it pertains to knowledge and speech. If you're impressed with someones prediction from 2012 then you'll be more amazed with someones analysis from 1995. This book is a classic and the author, Jonathan Rausch is highly respected. https://www.amazon.com/Kindly-Inquisitors-Attacks-Free-Thought/dp/0226705765 https://www.amazon.com/Kindly-Inquisitors-Attacks-Free-Thoug...
    - jackcosgrove 6y ago
      It wasn't so much a prediction as an observation of an incipient trend that went dormant and re-emerged. Post-modern attacks on Enlightenment ideals such as free thought and free speech were common on campuses in the late 1980s and early 1990s, then went dormant in the mid-90s, then re-emerged in the early 2010s.
      - blaser-waffle 6y ago
        Soviet Union collapsed and China started retooling for capitalism. Foreign propaganda dropped off. Meanwhile in the US the 90s boom was kicking off and the US was exploding into global hegemony. Why protest and fight the man when communism was collapsing and there was more to gain from getting on board the winning team. In other words, the trend dropped off externally and internally there were a lot of reasons to assume that history was in fact ending and to jump on board with MURICA and FREEDOM.
  - baobabKoodaa 6y ago
    What is this in reference to? I went through the citations in the article and did not find anything from 2012.
iratewizard 6y ago
The book Sapiens talks about this well. People have a limited number of relationships they can maintain in their head. The only way societies can form to be larger than that number is shared myth between people. University graduates are in large part taking on the role of clergy in this wokist cult. The cynical side of me sees it as America being transformed into an economic zone instead of a country. This is just what a religion looks like when you're binding people together in one large brutalistic finance zone.
nootropicat 6y ago
I think this article is going to interest you: https://gist.github.com/jart/b73868081a5e1a1c5cf0 https://gist.github.com/jart/b73868081a5e1a1c5cf0 >Finally, our parasite will employ a strategy of politicization, insisting that everyone in a society be involved in the contest for political power. Since our memetic parasite is already bound to one or more political factions, politicization leaves no one with the option to ignore it, and simply live their lives. Neutrality is not acceptable. All those who are not actively infected, and who do not openly endorse the parasite, are by definition its enemies. And they will be crushed. The safest thing is to play along, and raise your children in the faith - even if you don't really believe, they will. >At this point we've established, at least to my satisfaction, that >(a) there is such a thing as Universalism; >(b) Universalism is an educationally-transmitted tradition that works just like any theistic religion, and is best understood as a descendant of Christianity; >Universalism, again, is a mystery cult of power. Its supreme being is the State. And all of the Universalist mysteries - humanity, democracy, equality, and so on - cluster around the philosophy of collective action. Christianity has been a state religion since Constantine, of course, but it always also included magical and metaphysical mysteries, which the advance of science has rendered superfluous at best, embarrassing at worst. So Universalism, unlike its ancestors, is not concerned with the Trinity or transubstantiation or predestination.
- Pils 6y ago
  Obviously the solution to workplace politicization is...dissolving the federal government and appointing Eric Schmidt the CEO of a newly founded business-state? > One day in March of this year, a Google engineer named Justine Tunney created a strange and ultimately doomed petition at the White House website. The petition proposed a three-point national referendum, as follows: 1. Retire all government employees with full pensions. 2. Transfer administrative authority to the tech industry. 3. Appoint [Google executive chairman] Eric Schmidt CEO of America. https://thebaffler.com/latest/mouthbreathing-machiavellis https://thebaffler.com/latest/mouthbreathing-machiavellis
- kazoomonger 6y ago
  TBH, that article doesn't really make any sense. Saying "because ideology A shares a few attributes with my favorite ideology, it's really just a subset of my ideology" doesn't really make sense. Also, I don't understand how he thinks that pacifism or communalism are unique to christianity. That's just a bizarre claim. It's also weird how he's aware of the oversimplification involved in classifying birds and bats in the same category, and then he immediately goes off and says the equivalent of "both a birds and planes have wings and a tail, therefore planes are a subset of birds". While that statement can be true from a certain point of view for certain uses ("can this thing fly?"), in the end it's just a bad analogy and bad reasoning. Which is all not to say that the point I think you're driving at from your selection in that article can't be correct. I would agree that post-religion, people will pick up causes to fight for and act in ways that are reminiscent of fundamentalist religions, but that doesn't mean the fundamental truth is that they're all variations of religion. The fundamental truth is some people just enjoy picking up causes that let them justify bad behavior. This used to include religion a lot more in the past, and now that humanity is moving beyond it, we're discovering new ways to justify the same old behavior that we've always had.
SavageBeast 6y ago
Thats a frightening and original idea Id never considered. Your observation makes lot of sense the more I think about it.
nitrogen 6y ago
I came to this realization when someone at a job was waving and thumping Cracking the Coding Interview like I remember people doing with the bible when I was growing up. I was a missionary in a "past life", non-religious non-believer now, and I know religion when I see it.
WJW 6y ago
There seems to be an obvious counterexample in the rest of the Western nations (ie Canada, Australia, most of western Europe) that have experienced a similar reduction in organized religion but have not seen a corresponding rise to political division. Certainly not to the degree that the USA has.
- 392c91e8165b 6y ago
  Good point. My explanation for the discrepancy is that Canada, Australia and western Europe are more homogenous racially and ethnically than the US is, which makes them less vulnerable to the excesses of an ideology or religion-substitute that revolves around race and ethnicity. On some of the troop carriers going to Vietnam, soldiers starting fighting each other along racial lines; in response, the US military started a major initiative to promote racial tolerance in their training of soldiers and in their personnel policies. Similarly, according to my theory, the leaders of the other major institutions of the US realize that the performance of their institution depends on the different races getting along or at least not openly fighting each other, so they will exhibit a weaker tendency to push against a radical belief system that prioritizes racial tolerance than their counterparts in more homogenous countries will. Also, starting with the Puritans of England, the western Europeans that chose to emigrate to the US were on average more religious than those who chose to remain in western Europe.
  - Khaine 6y ago
    Your assumption would be wrong. Australia is highly diverse. One in four of Australia’s 22 million people were born overseas; 46 per cent have at least one parent who was born overseas; and nearly 20 per cent of Australians speak a language other than English at home[1] I think the key differentiator, is Australia, Canada and Britain have parliamentary democracies. [1] https://humanrights.gov.au/our-work/education/face-facts-cultural-diversity https://humanrights.gov.au/our-work/education/face-facts-cul...
    - blaser-waffle 6y ago
      "Overseas" is kind of useless as a descriptor. When I was living in Melbourne, I knew a lot of kids with German, Italian, Macedonian, and Serbian backgrounds, most spoke their respective languages. But on the street they were just generic white christian Aussies who were out to slam a few beers and grab a chick parm. Not generic Anglo, but still very white and very western.

aaronax 6y ago

This article really fleshes out what this thread is discussing: https://www.devever.net/~hl/newchurch https://www.devever.net/~hl/newchurch

nemo44x 6y ago
I think it has more cult dynamics than a church per-se. Seeing people end friendships and relationships with family members. “Unlearning” things, otherwise known as reprogramming. Seminars (that are expensive) and “required reading”. Obsessive recruitment of new people to initiate. And then of course if you question things you’ll be ostracized and exiled.
- monoideism 6y ago
  I agree. It's more of a cult-type church than a mainstream church. That said, I think it's being driven by some of the same socio-spiritual needs.
- ytwySXpMbS 6y ago
  I think this is painting a rather stereotyped view of people on the left. I share most of the views of the left, however don't end relationships with people over it, preach, or attend any seminars. I think you're seeing the vocal minority here, which is of course more outspoken as they care enough to talk about it. Apart from the most extreme people, I have had many productive conversations with people whose views were more left than mine and haven't been ostracised once.
  - nitrogen 6y ago
    You are of course right that most people aren't like this. This thread is about those few who are, and how they can end up dividing everyone else, unwillingly, into accolytes versus enemies. It's not safe to say "I am left/center/right/whatever but I don't think this is the way to go about it" around this type. It is a separate axis from left-right, and is maybe correlated with the authoritarian-libertarian axis.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
throwaway0a5e 6y ago
One of the guys that article cites clearly has some less savory beliefs about race (that I disagree with, people are mostly the same the world over) but man did he do a good job predicting the ideological battles lines of 2020 for someone writing in 2012.
- nemo44x 6y ago
  Read "Kindly Inquisitors" if you'd like a very thoughtful defense of Enlightenment ideas as it pertains to knowledge and speech. If you're impressed with someones prediction from 2012 then you'll be more amazed with someones analysis from 1995. This book is a classic and the author, Jonathan Rausch is highly respected. https://www.amazon.com/Kindly-Inquisitors-Attacks-Free-Thought/dp/0226705765 https://www.amazon.com/Kindly-Inquisitors-Attacks-Free-Thoug...
  - jackcosgrove 6y ago
    It wasn't so much a prediction as an observation of an incipient trend that went dormant and re-emerged. Post-modern attacks on Enlightenment ideals such as free thought and free speech were common on campuses in the late 1980s and early 1990s, then went dormant in the mid-90s, then re-emerged in the early 2010s.
    - blaser-waffle 6y ago
      Soviet Union collapsed and China started retooling for capitalism. Foreign propaganda dropped off. Meanwhile in the US the 90s boom was kicking off and the US was exploding into global hegemony. Why protest and fight the man when communism was collapsing and there was more to gain from getting on board the winning team. In other words, the trend dropped off externally and internally there were a lot of reasons to assume that history was in fact ending and to jump on board with MURICA and FREEDOM.
- baobabKoodaa 6y ago
  What is this in reference to? I went through the citations in the article and did not find anything from 2012.

iratewizard 6y ago

The book Sapiens talks about this well. People have a limited number of relationships they can maintain in their head. The only way societies can form to be larger than that number is shared myth between people. University graduates are in large part taking on the role of clergy in this wokist cult. The cynical side of me sees it as America being transformed into an economic zone instead of a country. This is just what a religion looks like when you're binding people together in one large brutalistic finance zone.

nootropicat 6y ago

I think this article is going to interest you: https://gist.github.com/jart/b73868081a5e1a1c5cf0 https://gist.github.com/jart/b73868081a5e1a1c5cf0 >Finally, our parasite will employ a strategy of politicization, insisting that everyone in a society be involved in the contest for political power. Since our memetic parasite is already bound to one or more political factions, politicization leaves no one with the option to ignore it, and simply live their lives. Neutrality is not acceptable. All those who are not actively infected, and who do not openly endorse the parasite, are by definition its enemies. And they will be crushed. The safest thing is to play along, and raise your children in the faith - even if you don't really believe, they will. >At this point we've established, at least to my satisfaction, that >(a) there is such a thing as Universalism; >(b) Universalism is an educationally-transmitted tradition that works just like any theistic religion, and is best understood as a descendant of Christianity; >Universalism, again, is a mystery cult of power. Its supreme being is the State. And all of the Universalist mysteries - humanity, democracy, equality, and so on - cluster around the philosophy of collective action. Christianity has been a state religion since Constantine, of course, but it always also included magical and metaphysical mysteries, which the advance of science has rendered superfluous at best, embarrassing at worst. So Universalism, unlike its ancestors, is not concerned with the Trinity or transubstantiation or predestination.

Pils 6y ago
Obviously the solution to workplace politicization is...dissolving the federal government and appointing Eric Schmidt the CEO of a newly founded business-state? > One day in March of this year, a Google engineer named Justine Tunney created a strange and ultimately doomed petition at the White House website. The petition proposed a three-point national referendum, as follows: 1. Retire all government employees with full pensions. 2. Transfer administrative authority to the tech industry. 3. Appoint [Google executive chairman] Eric Schmidt CEO of America. https://thebaffler.com/latest/mouthbreathing-machiavellis https://thebaffler.com/latest/mouthbreathing-machiavellis
kazoomonger 6y ago
TBH, that article doesn't really make any sense. Saying "because ideology A shares a few attributes with my favorite ideology, it's really just a subset of my ideology" doesn't really make sense. Also, I don't understand how he thinks that pacifism or communalism are unique to christianity. That's just a bizarre claim. It's also weird how he's aware of the oversimplification involved in classifying birds and bats in the same category, and then he immediately goes off and says the equivalent of "both a birds and planes have wings and a tail, therefore planes are a subset of birds". While that statement can be true from a certain point of view for certain uses ("can this thing fly?"), in the end it's just a bad analogy and bad reasoning. Which is all not to say that the point I think you're driving at from your selection in that article can't be correct. I would agree that post-religion, people will pick up causes to fight for and act in ways that are reminiscent of fundamentalist religions, but that doesn't mean the fundamental truth is that they're all variations of religion. The fundamental truth is some people just enjoy picking up causes that let them justify bad behavior. This used to include religion a lot more in the past, and now that humanity is moving beyond it, we're discovering new ways to justify the same old behavior that we've always had.

SavageBeast 6y ago

Thats a frightening and original idea Id never considered. Your observation makes lot of sense the more I think about it.

nitrogen 6y ago

I came to this realization when someone at a job was waving and thumping Cracking the Coding Interview like I remember people doing with the bible when I was growing up. I was a missionary in a "past life", non-religious non-believer now, and I know religion when I see it.

WJW 6y ago

There seems to be an obvious counterexample in the rest of the Western nations (ie Canada, Australia, most of western Europe) that have experienced a similar reduction in organized religion but have not seen a corresponding rise to political division. Certainly not to the degree that the USA has.

392c91e8165b 6y ago
Good point. My explanation for the discrepancy is that Canada, Australia and western Europe are more homogenous racially and ethnically than the US is, which makes them less vulnerable to the excesses of an ideology or religion-substitute that revolves around race and ethnicity. On some of the troop carriers going to Vietnam, soldiers starting fighting each other along racial lines; in response, the US military started a major initiative to promote racial tolerance in their training of soldiers and in their personnel policies. Similarly, according to my theory, the leaders of the other major institutions of the US realize that the performance of their institution depends on the different races getting along or at least not openly fighting each other, so they will exhibit a weaker tendency to push against a radical belief system that prioritizes racial tolerance than their counterparts in more homogenous countries will. Also, starting with the Puritans of England, the western Europeans that chose to emigrate to the US were on average more religious than those who chose to remain in western Europe.
- Khaine 6y ago
  Your assumption would be wrong. Australia is highly diverse. One in four of Australia’s 22 million people were born overseas; 46 per cent have at least one parent who was born overseas; and nearly 20 per cent of Australians speak a language other than English at home[1] I think the key differentiator, is Australia, Canada and Britain have parliamentary democracies. [1] https://humanrights.gov.au/our-work/education/face-facts-cultural-diversity https://humanrights.gov.au/our-work/education/face-facts-cul...
  - blaser-waffle 6y ago
    "Overseas" is kind of useless as a descriptor. When I was living in Melbourne, I knew a lot of kids with German, Italian, Macedonian, and Serbian backgrounds, most spoke their respective languages. But on the street they were just generic white christian Aussies who were out to slam a few beers and grab a chick parm. Not generic Anglo, but still very white and very western.