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This is an academic issue, ”a solution in search of a problem” as almost all the rest of academia is. As such, it never stops at a reasonable, meaningful equili

This is an academic issue, ”a solution in search of a problem” as almost all the rest of academia is. As such, it never stops at a reasonable, meaningful equilibrium; it has to be kept pacing, moving forward towards more and more ridiculous extremes. An academic, in order to stay relevant, needs to keep pushing the invisible and mostly inexistent boundaries that they perceive in whatever field they are involved in. If they’re faced with a set vocabulary today, then tomorrow they’ll have to come up with an ”aha! Found a new offensive word” to position themselves as a relevant, meaningful part of this strange, ethereal movement. It’ll never end, because the movement itself needs its members to keep also pacing forward and motivated in order for itself to remain existing. The exact same could be said of any academic movement; the difference is that, in most cases, it mostly does not spill into reality. Other than a bit of research funding money, meaningless academic ideas don’t hurt society much. In this case, however, the academic movement is dead set on spilling all over everything, using the most aggressive possible strategies of shaming and reputation murder in order to push down its opposition.

78124781 4y ago
It's not just academia, it's the modern "meritocracy" more broadly. When getting into a campus club at a top college requires four rounds of interviews, you look for easy ways to signal your eliteness and being hip to the new verbal trends is a great way for the well-heeled to extend their advantage over the less-enlightened. This also applies to jobs whose occupants need to justify their own existence, which they can do so be seeking to remake language in an organization and launch a few fun purges to boot. These new terms are basically a new form of arcane knowledge that allows those who chant these magical new incantations social and professional prestige in the modern meritocracy rat race.
- syntheweave 4y ago
  All social structures survive through their self-perpetuation...it's a general critique with a lot of explanatory power that I've had on my mind. Any kind of senseless decorum or self-defeating policy comes down to the intersection of self-perpetuating framings of reality with actors who either promote it out of self-interest, or take it upon themselves to become footsoldiers on faithful behalf of that idea, extending it to unreasonable, totalizing lengths in the process of protecting it like a child. And that can manifest as "my way is right behavior and that is wrong behavior", or "we are good because they are bad", or any number of other illogical defenses. It's just automatic once you decide some thought has to be defended, and when it forms a really persistent, robust structure you end up with a religion, national mythos, economic norm etc. The structure is looking out for itself first, and the current elites hold the most gravity in deciding whether to further perpetuate or not. But elites aren't immune to being true believers either - they have to be able to let go and examine what they want to accomplish, and if the belief they have is too firmly tied to their immediate self-interest, they can't do it. My reading here is derived somewhat from Heather Marsh's writings, but with different focus and phrasing.
nonethewiser 4y ago
> As such, it never stops at a reasonable, meaningful equilibrium; it has to be kept pacing, moving for In fact, proponents can’t even define this equilibrium, despite stating that it is the end goal. This proves that the goal is a lie. It’s pure power seeking, and that shouldn’t be a surprise, because that is precisely what they assert determines truth and shapew society. Not some natural order, but people who held power over others. They complain about it but if you watch, it’s exactly what they’re doing themselves. Pure projection.
bnralt 4y ago
I came to realize that this is the case with advocacy groups. These groups will never want to say, "Hey, things aren't that bad anymore. We're working on some small problems, but honestly, we solved most of the stuff we were concerned about." Everything always needs to be in perpetual crisis. Wikipedia always needs to be in danger of shutting down. Political enemies are always supposed to be one step away from destroying the country forever. That's what drives the donations and prestige that keeps these groups going. As groups become more successful, they're more likely to shift from reasonable goals to extreme goals.
- fidgewidge 4y ago
  Yeah. Over time this has killed my interest in charitable organizations, sad to say. I just don't trust them anymore because I think if I donate to an apparently well defined cause it'll actually just be embezzled and put to use hiring hard left activists who spend all their time harassing normal people in pursuit of their deranged ideology. The prevalence of dumb language purity guides amongst these organizations just reinforces that feeling. Nowadays I'm much now likely to donate to crowdfunders for the victims legal fees.
- worrycue 4y ago
  Organizations tend to be self-perpetuating. People whose power is derived from the organization and people who make money from the organization will want to keep the racket going.
jimbokun 4y ago
It’s important to remember, however annoying they are, their side is losing. Look at Dave Chappelle, who was the attempted target of cancellation and Netflix and people buying tickets to his shows completely ignored it. Or JK Rowling, who has been cancelled over and over again, but the latest video game based on her IP is incredibly popular. Twitter doesn’t reflect the real world.
- hn_go_brrrrr 4y ago
  On the other hand, I can't write "sanity check" without getting on HR's naughty list.
- fidgewidge 4y ago
  The fact that you can only name a handful of people who survived full frontal attacks (for now) indicates that this is more than merely annoying. The ranks of the cancelled far outnumber them and we should recognize the disturbing historical parallels too. This type of language editing was a key plot point in 1984 because it is the habit of extremely dangerous far left regimes. I feel like the west is in danger of experiencing a communist revolution at some point. Now a lot of readers will feel like that's absurd, extreme, maybe even trolling. But it was only a handful of years ago that I was posting here warning people that they should refuse to rename git master branches to main because accepting this for short term convenience or out of ideological sympathy would lead to an endless spiral of power games, used to purge anyone not on the far left. And here we are, not so long after, with lists of banned words so long nobody even bothers enumerating them all, any one of which can be used to build a case for getting rid of you. There's a clear pattern here in which people are repeatedly not taking wokeness seriously enough. This isn't a game and they spend every waking hour taking over every institution. A communist revolution doesn't require capturing the seat of government permanently, if you can capture every institution that surrounds it and essentially eliminate all ability for a non revolutionary government to operate. The fix is simple enough though: do a DHH and get rid of all woke people in your organisation. It's quite easy as given a hostile environment they tend to leave en masse and they weren't doing much work for the organisation anyway. What's good for the goose is good for the gander.
rippercushions 4y ago
This phenomenon is known as a purity spiral, and here's a great story about one tearing an online knitting community to shreds. In game theory terms, objecting to something was now always a dominant strategy, and rejecting an allegation of racism was always a losing strategy. Inevitably, a ratchet effect took hold in which those with the most strident vision of what ‘diversity’ meant were effectively handed the keys to the castle. That is — until someone with a more strident vision turned up behind them… https://unherd.com/2020/01/cast-out-how-knitting-fell-into-a-purity-spiral/ https://unherd.com/2020/01/cast-out-how-knitting-fell-into-a...
- techdragon 4y ago
  I’m going to start using this terminology. It’s good to have simple phrases for this. It’s so much easier to say “I’m not going to engage in perpetuating a purity spiral” or “your not helping anyone by continuing the purity spiral long past the point of helping anyone who was genuinely affected by this” It’s short and pithy, and it can sort of cover the core concept without needing deep academic understanding of the social dynamics involved.
  - Teever 4y ago
    It's also very googleable which means when you casually drop it into conversation they can just look it up without you having to explain it.
- low_tech_love 4y ago
  Nice, thanks for the link. ”Moral outbidding” is also a great term, very clear and expressive.
kergonath 4y ago
There is much wrong in this comment. > This is an academic issue, ”a solution in search of a problem” as almost all the rest of academia is. As such, it never stops at a reasonable, meaningful equilibrium; it has to be kept pacing, moving forward towards more and more ridiculous extremes. Not at all. Academia is about the pursuit of knowledge and enlightenment. What you are describing is happening in academia, but that is not its purpose or its main role. Academia is as much about the mating habits of the spotted fizzbuzz up in the Andes or the design of advanced composite materials or developing vaccines for malaria than the understanding of how humans behave in society. The ridiculous extremes are not confined to academia, this is just an anti-intellectual talking point. Nobody is running around panicking that the purpose of elections is to produce fascists. > An academic, in order to stay relevant, needs to keep pushing the invisible and mostly inexistent boundaries that they perceive in whatever field they are involved in. If they’re faced with a set vocabulary today, then tomorrow they’ll have to come up with an ”aha! Found a new offensive word” to position themselves as a relevant, meaningful part of this strange, ethereal movement. Again this weird focus on academia. Journalists, politicians, and random blokes on the internet do it. Most of academics don’t. The problem is humans in general, your scapegoat is meaningless. By ascribing your issues to an immaterial Other entity out to get you, you absolve the rest of society, which is really where the problem lies.
- low_tech_love 4y ago
  I will concede to you that I was too general in my comment. As an academic myself (with nearly a decade on the senior circles of higher education in a highly developed country), I absolutely agree with you that the main goal of academic work is the pursuit of knowledge. To be honest, I wanted to use the term "academic issue" more as a way to express that the issue is disconnected from the more practical issues of the real world, rather than to mean only the formal, academic world. I was inaccurate in that. You can pursue academic interests and discuss academic issues outside of the university; I think of it as an interchangeable term with "philosophical", for example. I also agree with you that these issues happen outside of academia. It just so happens that I perceive this specific problem as being academic. The fact that I argue that this is an academic problem does not imply that this only happens in academia (one example does not necessarily generalize to the whole). And yes, obviously, running towards extremes is not confined to academia; however, my point was that it is more-or-less ok to do it in academic work as long as you do not try to force your extreme views back down to the rest of society (which most academics don't, or if they do, fail). Actually, I'd argue that there is no better way to do it. Research often means pushing things to extreme, and most of its results die gracefully and are replaced with something else that is more reasonable for the current times (or simply gets forgotten). Don't take this wrong, as if I believe that research is useless. In the same way that a startup dies (and must die) if it cannot offer a feasible, interesting, useful product, research also dies (and must die) if its results make sense but are not applicable. No problem there. The problem begins when the academic issues (whether they are discussed in the university or not) which are being pushed to the extreme in order to test the waters are then being pushed down society's throat aggressively like this, without regards to whoever they trample over on the way. These academic issues are being forcefully, steadily introduced into public and private institutions that have a very real, concrete power over how many people act, behave, work, and communicate. These are (in one way or another) governing agencies that, while they are not the police so to speak, still have under their belt lots of different means and tools to enforce certain things over large groups of people. This is extremely irresponsible of those who think of themselves as drivers in this movement.

78124781 4y ago

It's not just academia, it's the modern "meritocracy" more broadly. When getting into a campus club at a top college requires four rounds of interviews, you look for easy ways to signal your eliteness and being hip to the new verbal trends is a great way for the well-heeled to extend their advantage over the less-enlightened. This also applies to jobs whose occupants need to justify their own existence, which they can do so be seeking to remake language in an organization and launch a few fun purges to boot. These new terms are basically a new form of arcane knowledge that allows those who chant these magical new incantations social and professional prestige in the modern meritocracy rat race.

syntheweave 4y ago
All social structures survive through their self-perpetuation...it's a general critique with a lot of explanatory power that I've had on my mind. Any kind of senseless decorum or self-defeating policy comes down to the intersection of self-perpetuating framings of reality with actors who either promote it out of self-interest, or take it upon themselves to become footsoldiers on faithful behalf of that idea, extending it to unreasonable, totalizing lengths in the process of protecting it like a child. And that can manifest as "my way is right behavior and that is wrong behavior", or "we are good because they are bad", or any number of other illogical defenses. It's just automatic once you decide some thought has to be defended, and when it forms a really persistent, robust structure you end up with a religion, national mythos, economic norm etc. The structure is looking out for itself first, and the current elites hold the most gravity in deciding whether to further perpetuate or not. But elites aren't immune to being true believers either - they have to be able to let go and examine what they want to accomplish, and if the belief they have is too firmly tied to their immediate self-interest, they can't do it. My reading here is derived somewhat from Heather Marsh's writings, but with different focus and phrasing.

nonethewiser 4y ago

> As such, it never stops at a reasonable, meaningful equilibrium; it has to be kept pacing, moving for In fact, proponents can’t even define this equilibrium, despite stating that it is the end goal. This proves that the goal is a lie. It’s pure power seeking, and that shouldn’t be a surprise, because that is precisely what they assert determines truth and shapew society. Not some natural order, but people who held power over others. They complain about it but if you watch, it’s exactly what they’re doing themselves. Pure projection.

bnralt 4y ago

I came to realize that this is the case with advocacy groups. These groups will never want to say, "Hey, things aren't that bad anymore. We're working on some small problems, but honestly, we solved most of the stuff we were concerned about." Everything always needs to be in perpetual crisis. Wikipedia always needs to be in danger of shutting down. Political enemies are always supposed to be one step away from destroying the country forever. That's what drives the donations and prestige that keeps these groups going. As groups become more successful, they're more likely to shift from reasonable goals to extreme goals.

fidgewidge 4y ago
Yeah. Over time this has killed my interest in charitable organizations, sad to say. I just don't trust them anymore because I think if I donate to an apparently well defined cause it'll actually just be embezzled and put to use hiring hard left activists who spend all their time harassing normal people in pursuit of their deranged ideology. The prevalence of dumb language purity guides amongst these organizations just reinforces that feeling. Nowadays I'm much now likely to donate to crowdfunders for the victims legal fees.
worrycue 4y ago
Organizations tend to be self-perpetuating. People whose power is derived from the organization and people who make money from the organization will want to keep the racket going.

jimbokun 4y ago

It’s important to remember, however annoying they are, their side is losing. Look at Dave Chappelle, who was the attempted target of cancellation and Netflix and people buying tickets to his shows completely ignored it. Or JK Rowling, who has been cancelled over and over again, but the latest video game based on her IP is incredibly popular. Twitter doesn’t reflect the real world.

hn_go_brrrrr 4y ago
On the other hand, I can't write "sanity check" without getting on HR's naughty list.
fidgewidge 4y ago
The fact that you can only name a handful of people who survived full frontal attacks (for now) indicates that this is more than merely annoying. The ranks of the cancelled far outnumber them and we should recognize the disturbing historical parallels too. This type of language editing was a key plot point in 1984 because it is the habit of extremely dangerous far left regimes. I feel like the west is in danger of experiencing a communist revolution at some point. Now a lot of readers will feel like that's absurd, extreme, maybe even trolling. But it was only a handful of years ago that I was posting here warning people that they should refuse to rename git master branches to main because accepting this for short term convenience or out of ideological sympathy would lead to an endless spiral of power games, used to purge anyone not on the far left. And here we are, not so long after, with lists of banned words so long nobody even bothers enumerating them all, any one of which can be used to build a case for getting rid of you. There's a clear pattern here in which people are repeatedly not taking wokeness seriously enough. This isn't a game and they spend every waking hour taking over every institution. A communist revolution doesn't require capturing the seat of government permanently, if you can capture every institution that surrounds it and essentially eliminate all ability for a non revolutionary government to operate. The fix is simple enough though: do a DHH and get rid of all woke people in your organisation. It's quite easy as given a hostile environment they tend to leave en masse and they weren't doing much work for the organisation anyway. What's good for the goose is good for the gander.

rippercushions 4y ago

This phenomenon is known as a purity spiral, and here's a great story about one tearing an online knitting community to shreds. In game theory terms, objecting to something was now always a dominant strategy, and rejecting an allegation of racism was always a losing strategy. Inevitably, a ratchet effect took hold in which those with the most strident vision of what ‘diversity’ meant were effectively handed the keys to the castle. That is — until someone with a more strident vision turned up behind them… https://unherd.com/2020/01/cast-out-how-knitting-fell-into-a-purity-spiral/ https://unherd.com/2020/01/cast-out-how-knitting-fell-into-a...

techdragon 4y ago
I’m going to start using this terminology. It’s good to have simple phrases for this. It’s so much easier to say “I’m not going to engage in perpetuating a purity spiral” or “your not helping anyone by continuing the purity spiral long past the point of helping anyone who was genuinely affected by this” It’s short and pithy, and it can sort of cover the core concept without needing deep academic understanding of the social dynamics involved.
- Teever 4y ago
  It's also very googleable which means when you casually drop it into conversation they can just look it up without you having to explain it.
low_tech_love 4y ago
Nice, thanks for the link. ”Moral outbidding” is also a great term, very clear and expressive.

kergonath 4y ago

There is much wrong in this comment. > This is an academic issue, ”a solution in search of a problem” as almost all the rest of academia is. As such, it never stops at a reasonable, meaningful equilibrium; it has to be kept pacing, moving forward towards more and more ridiculous extremes. Not at all. Academia is about the pursuit of knowledge and enlightenment. What you are describing is happening in academia, but that is not its purpose or its main role. Academia is as much about the mating habits of the spotted fizzbuzz up in the Andes or the design of advanced composite materials or developing vaccines for malaria than the understanding of how humans behave in society. The ridiculous extremes are not confined to academia, this is just an anti-intellectual talking point. Nobody is running around panicking that the purpose of elections is to produce fascists. > An academic, in order to stay relevant, needs to keep pushing the invisible and mostly inexistent boundaries that they perceive in whatever field they are involved in. If they’re faced with a set vocabulary today, then tomorrow they’ll have to come up with an ”aha! Found a new offensive word” to position themselves as a relevant, meaningful part of this strange, ethereal movement. Again this weird focus on academia. Journalists, politicians, and random blokes on the internet do it. Most of academics don’t. The problem is humans in general, your scapegoat is meaningless. By ascribing your issues to an immaterial Other entity out to get you, you absolve the rest of society, which is really where the problem lies.

low_tech_love 4y ago
I will concede to you that I was too general in my comment. As an academic myself (with nearly a decade on the senior circles of higher education in a highly developed country), I absolutely agree with you that the main goal of academic work is the pursuit of knowledge. To be honest, I wanted to use the term "academic issue" more as a way to express that the issue is disconnected from the more practical issues of the real world, rather than to mean only the formal, academic world. I was inaccurate in that. You can pursue academic interests and discuss academic issues outside of the university; I think of it as an interchangeable term with "philosophical", for example. I also agree with you that these issues happen outside of academia. It just so happens that I perceive this specific problem as being academic. The fact that I argue that this is an academic problem does not imply that this only happens in academia (one example does not necessarily generalize to the whole). And yes, obviously, running towards extremes is not confined to academia; however, my point was that it is more-or-less ok to do it in academic work as long as you do not try to force your extreme views back down to the rest of society (which most academics don't, or if they do, fail). Actually, I'd argue that there is no better way to do it. Research often means pushing things to extreme, and most of its results die gracefully and are replaced with something else that is more reasonable for the current times (or simply gets forgotten). Don't take this wrong, as if I believe that research is useless. In the same way that a startup dies (and must die) if it cannot offer a feasible, interesting, useful product, research also dies (and must die) if its results make sense but are not applicable. No problem there. The problem begins when the academic issues (whether they are discussed in the university or not) which are being pushed to the extreme in order to test the waters are then being pushed down society's throat aggressively like this, without regards to whoever they trample over on the way. These academic issues are being forcefully, steadily introduced into public and private institutions that have a very real, concrete power over how many people act, behave, work, and communicate. These are (in one way or another) governing agencies that, while they are not the police so to speak, still have under their belt lots of different means and tools to enforce certain things over large groups of people. This is extremely irresponsible of those who think of themselves as drivers in this movement.