Clementine Morrigan, of the "Fucking Cancelled" podcast speaks of people who blow up social groups, workplaces, professional organizations and the like over social-justice outrage. She calls them "wreckers", and I think she's dead-on. These folks know how to complain and how to cancel and how to shut things down, but they create nothing but trouble and build nothing except resentment.
I used to know a group of activists before I got canceled, and there were serious dark-triad traits in some of these people. They were often manipulative and dishonest, hypersensitive to criticism, and utterly without remorse or empathy. They carried the banner of social justice, but they inflicted an awful lot of cruelty.
Great article! I really liked the comparison between the uplifting civil rights actions of the Sixties and the divisive cruelty of the critical theory people currently.
It was bad for me. It also ended badly for the person who initiated it. Those who jumped on board had no knowledge of the details and many made up positions that they posted on yelp and google biz. It wasn't legal in the past, but now is illegal.
It seems to me that there might have been something accurate in the Puritan's concern over pagan witchcraft. The language of the Theory-trained feminists at the point of this woke movement seem almost like spells designed to stupefy the population and cause them to walk in a trance to their own destruction. Cancel culture is the mechanism to pull those that escape the fog of the woke mind virus back into the marching line.
I am not into burning witches at the stake, but I do think there needs to be some acknowledgement that we are dealing with some pagan ritualistic movement that isn't benevolent.
Don't forget that the Puritans were a religion also, and they were punitive, authoritarian assholes who had a lust for capital punishment and an inability to mind their own business. They came to the British American Colonies because they were being persecuted off and on in the British Isles. (They were in power there under Oliver Cromwell, but he made himself unpopular rather quickly). Once they were in North America they began taking as much control as they could over territory and people. They actively persecuted members of other religions and set up repressive theocratic governments in the colonies. They were in character very similar to the woke cultists rather than to their victims, even considering that many of the victims also had authoritarian belief systems brought from Europe to America.
All that being said, however, I share some of your reaction to the critical theory activists. During this past couple weeks of campus demonstrations and riots, I have seen video clips of activists marching and chanting in the dark, in loud well-synchronized voices. It was quite creepy, as it recalled fictional movies I have seen about devil worshippers calling up demons and casting spells.
Good comment. Yes, I get the strange dichotomy. That was the reason for my comment. The Puritans were the first authoritarians of the new world, but they were really quite pagan in their belief systems... almost primitive tribal voodoo.
I dislike the fact that I now see some utility in some level of tribal/cultural compliance pressure with respect to the out of control social and political chaos we see today. Thinking about human behavior from an evolutionary perspective, modernity is very young and yet here these kids are pushing post modernism and many of their ideas are as fanciful as is a belief in magic and spells.
This entire movement is being led by radical females... another weird connection to Salem witchcraft.
That's right, I recall now that Cotton Mather was into strange imaginings.
There is a lot of reason to assume that for our species enculturation depends a lot on internalization of the tribe or band's way of doing things. And then people have internal discipline structures that keep them in line, "superegos" as Freud termed them. It is interesting that a small percentage of people are resistant to external pressure to comply. I wonder if these people would have been more likely to be "selected out" (from the evolutionary pespective), or would have instead been more likely to become leaders, who need to be able to function with less consensual validation.
Another good comment. Yes, it would seem to me that in the mix of personality types and biological brain wiring we would have a percentage of society resistant to pressure to comply, and/or attracted to non-compliance. And I agree that some of these might be leaders, artists... creative types that make a difference.
Of course then it keeps going to be a sociopath... the dangerous level of non-compliance.
Young people tend to be idealistic and hormone filled and thus overly passionate. They are also historically very susceptible to ideological capture and lack life experience for the wisdom they would need to resist. Lastly, they are obsessed with securing peer group acceptance. Now add social media into this mix and it makes sense why we are seeing such numbers of them chanting the same anti-everything ideas.
But somewhere at the top... I think the witches are in charge. Along with Wall Street.
If you have access to Racket News, Taibbi and Kirn posted a long but excellent discussion on the creepy aspects of the student protests. ("America This Week, May 3, 2024: Gaza, Columbia, and More.") Taibbi described the synchronized chanting as "ritualized." Both of them also brought up Lord of the Flies and Invasion of the Body Snatchers,(as have others who have written on the subject of woke young people).
The Witches of Wall Street would make a good name for a movie, or a Punk band. Reminds me of Werewolves of London, one of my all time favorite songs.
Seriously, there are a lot of wealthy women in the U.S., many of whom got there by outliving their husbands. Many of them are Establishment Dems, but there is a fine line nowadays between the Dem Establishment and the Fringe.
If you know anything about the French revolution or the Chinese cultural revolution, you would recognize some of the things that happened then in what is happening with the cancel culture - the swarming and cancelling, the groups that turn on themselves, etc. Nothing new under the sun.
Clementine Morrigan, of the "Fucking Cancelled" podcast speaks of people who blow up social groups, workplaces, professional organizations and the like over social-justice outrage. She calls them "wreckers", and I think she's dead-on. These folks know how to complain and how to cancel and how to shut things down, but they create nothing but trouble and build nothing except resentment.
I used to know a group of activists before I got canceled, and there were serious dark-triad traits in some of these people. They were often manipulative and dishonest, hypersensitive to criticism, and utterly without remorse or empathy. They carried the banner of social justice, but they inflicted an awful lot of cruelty.
Great article! I really liked the comparison between the uplifting civil rights actions of the Sixties and the divisive cruelty of the critical theory people currently.
Have personally experienced it.
It was bad for me. It also ended badly for the person who initiated it. Those who jumped on board had no knowledge of the details and many made up positions that they posted on yelp and google biz. It wasn't legal in the past, but now is illegal.
It seems to me that there might have been something accurate in the Puritan's concern over pagan witchcraft. The language of the Theory-trained feminists at the point of this woke movement seem almost like spells designed to stupefy the population and cause them to walk in a trance to their own destruction. Cancel culture is the mechanism to pull those that escape the fog of the woke mind virus back into the marching line.
I am not into burning witches at the stake, but I do think there needs to be some acknowledgement that we are dealing with some pagan ritualistic movement that isn't benevolent.
Don't forget that the Puritans were a religion also, and they were punitive, authoritarian assholes who had a lust for capital punishment and an inability to mind their own business. They came to the British American Colonies because they were being persecuted off and on in the British Isles. (They were in power there under Oliver Cromwell, but he made himself unpopular rather quickly). Once they were in North America they began taking as much control as they could over territory and people. They actively persecuted members of other religions and set up repressive theocratic governments in the colonies. They were in character very similar to the woke cultists rather than to their victims, even considering that many of the victims also had authoritarian belief systems brought from Europe to America.
All that being said, however, I share some of your reaction to the critical theory activists. During this past couple weeks of campus demonstrations and riots, I have seen video clips of activists marching and chanting in the dark, in loud well-synchronized voices. It was quite creepy, as it recalled fictional movies I have seen about devil worshippers calling up demons and casting spells.
Good comment. Yes, I get the strange dichotomy. That was the reason for my comment. The Puritans were the first authoritarians of the new world, but they were really quite pagan in their belief systems... almost primitive tribal voodoo.
I dislike the fact that I now see some utility in some level of tribal/cultural compliance pressure with respect to the out of control social and political chaos we see today. Thinking about human behavior from an evolutionary perspective, modernity is very young and yet here these kids are pushing post modernism and many of their ideas are as fanciful as is a belief in magic and spells.
This entire movement is being led by radical females... another weird connection to Salem witchcraft.
That's right, I recall now that Cotton Mather was into strange imaginings.
There is a lot of reason to assume that for our species enculturation depends a lot on internalization of the tribe or band's way of doing things. And then people have internal discipline structures that keep them in line, "superegos" as Freud termed them. It is interesting that a small percentage of people are resistant to external pressure to comply. I wonder if these people would have been more likely to be "selected out" (from the evolutionary pespective), or would have instead been more likely to become leaders, who need to be able to function with less consensual validation.
Another good comment. Yes, it would seem to me that in the mix of personality types and biological brain wiring we would have a percentage of society resistant to pressure to comply, and/or attracted to non-compliance. And I agree that some of these might be leaders, artists... creative types that make a difference.
Of course then it keeps going to be a sociopath... the dangerous level of non-compliance.
Young people tend to be idealistic and hormone filled and thus overly passionate. They are also historically very susceptible to ideological capture and lack life experience for the wisdom they would need to resist. Lastly, they are obsessed with securing peer group acceptance. Now add social media into this mix and it makes sense why we are seeing such numbers of them chanting the same anti-everything ideas.
But somewhere at the top... I think the witches are in charge. Along with Wall Street.
If you have access to Racket News, Taibbi and Kirn posted a long but excellent discussion on the creepy aspects of the student protests. ("America This Week, May 3, 2024: Gaza, Columbia, and More.") Taibbi described the synchronized chanting as "ritualized." Both of them also brought up Lord of the Flies and Invasion of the Body Snatchers,(as have others who have written on the subject of woke young people).
The Witches of Wall Street would make a good name for a movie, or a Punk band. Reminds me of Werewolves of London, one of my all time favorite songs.
Seriously, there are a lot of wealthy women in the U.S., many of whom got there by outliving their husbands. Many of them are Establishment Dems, but there is a fine line nowadays between the Dem Establishment and the Fringe.
Hence, the title of Andrew Doyle's book The NEW Puritans.
I purchased that book but have not yet read it.
If you know anything about the French revolution or the Chinese cultural revolution, you would recognize some of the things that happened then in what is happening with the cancel culture - the swarming and cancelling, the groups that turn on themselves, etc. Nothing new under the sun.