That is all very interesting and true, but you could have rejected the woke ideology and its proponents simply by looking at the bizarre and disgusting manifestations that have been staring you in the face, which are the manifestations of totalitarianism instead of dwelling on the ideological basis for the totalitarian movement.
Having lived in a Communist country, I saw the signs coming here a mile away, and so have persons from North Korea, China, Romania, Vietnam, Poland, Russia and we have been screaming our heads off, literally and in print about what was going on, but we were ignored by what I call the media hivemind. Our objections were relegated to the contemporary samizdat.
I am referring, of course, to the widespread censorship in magazines, in the news, in comedy (aka, cancel culture) and, obviously, in academia. People have been afraid (in America!!) to speak freely. Then, there is the constant propaganda from the media hivemind. The numerous liberals that have called for censorship, including politicians and overrated celebrities, the very same people who have demanded that the US Constitution be trashed as being out of date, written by white old men. They have also attacked the Supreme Court. Liberals have also perverted the judicial system by persecuting their political opponents, big and small, with bogus charges in Show Trials. The violent Antifa thugs were their Blackshirts have burned piles of books (Bibles, Harry Potter books, Andy Ngo's book). They have insisted that anyone and everyone must believe, must participate in the promotion of their various ideologies (whether it is Pride or BLM or covid phobia. They have attacked, defiled and burnt Christian churches. Liberals have demonized anyone who disagrees with them in the slightest degree (parents at school meetings who have objected to the indoctrination of their children have been labeled "domestic terrorists."
Several politicians have called for establishing re-education camp for MAGA people after they achieve complete control. And, as Orwell pointed out, they have demanded that we reject the evidence of our eyes and ears.
Do I need to go on?
Incidentally, if memory serves, I submitted an article on this very topic to Skeptic but received no answer.
You forgot to mention the censorship, book banning white Christian nationalist in your one sided analysis of totalitarianism! Also forgot the criticisms of the media ,field experts, and higher education used by the want to be fascist of the MAGA movement and propagated by the right wing media, especially FOX News!
"the criticisms of the media, field experts, and higher education"? Oh, the horror! The horror! Such elites should never be criticized! We must worship them. We must believe them. We must obey them. Otherwise, we fall into fascism.
And book banning like Gender Queer and other LGBTLMAO which portray boys, with pictures no less, on the joys of fellatio? An outrage! An outrage, I say!
Communism isn’t the only historical analogy that one could foist onto wokeness. A supporter of wokeness could just as easily point out that the German Weimar government censored the Nazis (partly with hate speech laws) and banned Hitler, who eventually banned the Communist party after he came to power.
Let's say all of this is true. Why have you not also written about the flawed view of human nature by authoritarian populists who have just taken the White House, the Congress, and the Supreme Court? Trump has just appointed an an anti-vaccer as the secretary of Health and Human Services. What does that do to science and free inquiry? While your extensive intellect is geared toward what you perceive as a coming threat to democracy, it avoids the one that is already here. I don't get that.
Excellent question! It’s because he benefits from this right wing authoritarianism. He’s been captured by his audience. He knows that criticizing right wing authoritarianism will cause him problems, while criticizing “woke” has become his brand, ever since he went “intellectual dark web.”
Uh, sure. No chance that Shermer's political and moral views stayed constant, while the left lurched?
BTW, do you see authoritarianism manifest on the left? It might be hard to see for those with dedicated partisan views, but here's a hint: the left-wing version derives from, and is delivered by, the elite class, with their hands all over the security state, academia, media, and hybridized combinations--a dark web if there ever was one.
It’s not great of him to mislead his readers by portraying himself as some sort of “convert” from “wokeness.” It is, however, a common shtick among “intellectual dark web” types.🙄
This explanation is far too sophisticated and complex to account for why so many young people and supposedly educated people are drawn to woke and the speed at which wokeness spread. Egocentrism is a simpler explanation. We are all egocentric to a degree. We are born egocentric. Healthy maturation involves recognizing the limitations of the self. Wokeness indulges the self. Notice that woke policies ultimately are self-serving. “We should take from them and give it to the other. Now look at how moral I am.” Much of woke is manifest envy and vanity.
It may be charitable to ascribe and project good intentions onto the Left, but their behaviors are the result of our baser human flaws.
Imagine that you heard from a friend that they were having a rough time, so you took them out to dinner and paid for their meal. A cynic might argue that you just did that to indulge your own ego. And how would you prove them wrong? The cynic’s ideology is like magic: it allows them to recast your sacrifice as evidence you lack humility (unlike them, of course).
There are egotistical and humble people among the woke just as there are egotistical and humble people among the non-woke.
Education/inculcation into the glorification of victimhood.
The positive feedback loops and externalizing of validation created by social media.
The Internet has made confirmation bias *very* easy, and enables people to sort themselves into echo chambers and silos.
The lack of immediate interpersonal feedback in our social media interactions. Used to be, if you said something stupid, you could see it in others' faces, and feel immediate shame. If you said something mean, you could see it in others' faces, and feel immediate regret. Those served to temper and to teach.
If you are looking for innate root causes, don't forget tribal behavior. Once committed to a group, people will automatically align, promote, submit, and defend to defined tribal values and identities. No intellect required (or desired).
I think that there are a variety of definitions of "woke." One of them is just awareness of the deep problems that plague American society: climate change, inadequate healthcare, and the profound racism that demagogues like Trump exploit. I think you should acknowledge the diversity of woke opinion, and I also don't think that comparisons to communism are appropriate.
I am a 79 year old Black man, a US Navy, submarine, Vietnam era veteran and retired public school teacher. I have been woke most of my life and intend to remain so. Being Black living in the US, requires woke to be the highest level of my situational awareness. Woke is not merely an intellectual, academic word game.
The infiltration of what we label as WOKE is just a new word for Marxism and it has slowly infiltrated the West over the last number of decades. It has united and is greatly funded by the Islamists. The purpose is to tear down Western culture by creating a self loathing. We are colonizers, built on the backs of slavery, tear down the statues, teach white kids they are oppressors and black kids are oppressed, Capitalism is bad and so on.
They used our own values like equality, empathy for the less fortunate, freedom of speech and used it in way that resulted in the complete opposite.
Sowell was one of the earliest to see the contradictions and the negative outcomes and his books are an excellent read.
On the positive note, I think we are currently experiencing a big backlash. I also think Trumps win has much to do with that backlash.
As others have pointed out, American Marxism 1.0 was based on class conflict and division, as in other countries, and failed. But American Marxism 2.0 restructured around gender and race, and has had much greater success.
Pinker and Sowell are our two greatest (avant la lettre) anti-woke intellectuals. They are actually our two greatest thinkers without qualification. The scope of their intellects and that one is liberal and one conservative doesn't hinder them from sharing opposition to illiberal drivel. The books Shermer mentions always come to mind whenever these noxious ideas from left enter my purview.
So basically, most existing inequities between races are inherited and genetic rather than socially and historically created. Moreover, tribalism is ineradicable and any scheme to oppose it is utopian fantasy. Behind a lot of dogmatic but trendy new right straw man rhetoric, blatant racism and social Darwinism. Yuck.
I see woke and wokeness as an exercise of “presentism,” which is the tendency to interpret past events in terms of modern values and concepts. The African American community wants some acknowledgment of their suffering through slavery and thereafter for the contributions they made to this country. And that is perfectly understandable. The problem is that the morals of yesterday are not the same as today. The founders are criticized for being slave owners. Statues, schools and military bases named after Confederate leaders are “forced” to be taken down or be changed to some other “acceptable” person.
Similar actions have been taken by Native Americans with respect to the names of sports teams and other symbols of their customs that have been demeaned over the last 400 years.
Point being history can’t be undone. It is what it is. While teaching about the treatment of minority groups in our society in the past is a necessary part of our own education, it should be neutral in terms of passing a moral judgment. People, societies and cultures are different. They are not equal.
As Aristotle warned, “The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal.”
This is a straw-man of the entire "woke" argument. Even the term "woke" no longer means what it used to (as Shermer rightly says). Rather than trying to understand what the real argument behind social justice is, Shermer props up the straw man and implies that is what the progressive left is fighting for. This makes me sad because "Why people believe weird things" was a formative book for me.
I have never met someone on the progressive left who truly believes that we should strive as a society for equal outcomes. Rather, the goal is to mitigate the structural inequalities in our system that make it harder for a set of people to achieve the same as a different set of people.
It's ludicrous to think that outcomes deserve to be equal. I know of no serious thinker on the progressive left who believes this. This doesn't mean that no one believes this, but attacking this argument is not what a previously serious thinker such as Shermer should be doing.
Thank you for this thought-provoking article. While I appreciate the depth and historical context you provide, I think there are some areas that could benefit from a more nuanced perspective.
Diverse Roots of Woke Ideology: Your framing of "woke" as synonymous with the blank slate theory feels overly reductive. Social justice movements are far from monolithic, and many of their goals—such as addressing systemic inequities—don’t necessarily rely on a strict blank slate model. By focusing so narrowly on this theoretical framework, the article risks oversimplifying the motivations and strategies of those involved in these movements.
Equity vs. Equality: The analogy you critique from Kamala Harris touches on a nuanced debate about fairness, but the article presents equity as an unrealistic or undesirable pursuit. Equity isn’t about enforcing "equal outcomes" in a simplistic sense; it’s about recognizing and addressing barriers that prevent fair opportunities. This distinction deserves a more balanced exploration.
Structural Inequalities: While I understand your emphasis on biological and genetic factors, the role of systemic inequities—such as racism, sexism, and classism—cannot be dismissed. Outcomes in education, income, and health are profoundly shaped by these structural forces. Ignoring them risks framing inequality as inevitable rather than as something we can work to mitigate.
Framing of Activism: The term "woke illiberals" feels needlessly polarizing. Advocating for systemic change doesn’t inherently equate to authoritarianism. Many activists work within democratic frameworks, and reducing their efforts to "utopian dreaming" risks alienating readers who value progressive activism.
Human Nature and Social Progress: While I appreciate the discussion of constrained and unconstrained visions of human nature, a more integrative approach might be helpful. Human behavior is shaped by both biological and environmental factors. Recognizing this interplay allows for a more constructive dialogue about the potential for cultural and institutional change.
Historical Context of Successes: Wokeness is framed here as a modern failure, but it’s worth acknowledging the significant progress that past social justice movements—aligned with "woke" ideals—have achieved. Civil rights, women’s suffrage, and LGBTQ+ rights all stemmed from challenging societal norms. Recognizing these successes alongside the limitations of current activism would provide a more balanced perspective.
Your discussion of the "Realistic Vision" offers an interesting framework, but I wonder if it could be broadened to account for how societal structures influence behavior. Human nature may be constrained, but history shows that change is possible when systems evolve to promote fairness and inclusion.
Thank you again for sparking such an important conversation. I’d love to hear your thoughts on how we might bridge these perspectives to better address the complexities of human nature and social progress.
Half of the differences in abilities that lead to success are attributed to genetics? That still leaves the other 50% that are not. Anyone who denies that the long history of racism and Jim Crow has left African Americans in the US at a disadvantage just ain't dealing with reality. Claims that we live in a meritocracy where the peoples' abilities are the sole reason for their success are delusional.
And of course the question of how society should treat people of average ability or even those of low ability. Should they be mere peons forever licking the boots of their "betters"?
If you have seen this before just consider it my pamphlet. Thomas Paine printed a hundred thousand copies of his pamphlet Common Sense so many people could be aware of his wisdom. Consider my repeated posts just my way of spreading my wisdom. It would be unpatriotic to believe otherwise.
After the election the Democratic Party (my party) must rethink many of its policies as it ponders its future.
To be entrusted with power again Democrats must start listening to the concerns of the working class for a change. As a lifelong moderate Democrat I share their disdain for many of the insane positions advocated by my party. We are no longer the patriotic, sensible party of FDR and JFK.
Democrat politicians defy biology by believing that men can actually become women and belong in women’s sports, rest rooms, locker rooms and prisons and that children should be mutilated in pursuit of the impossible.
They believe borders should be open to millions of illegals which undermines workers’ wages and the affordability of housing when we can’t house our own citizens.
They discriminate against whites, Asians and men in a futile effort to counter past discrimination against others and undermine our economy by abandoning merit selection of students and employees.
Democratic mayors allow homelessness to destroy our beautiful cities because they won't say no to destructive behavior. No, you can’t camp in our city. No, you can’t shit in our streets. No, you can’t shoot up and leave your used needles everywhere. Many of our prosecutors will not take action against shoplifting unless a $1000 of goods are stolen leading to gangs destroying retail stores. They release criminals without bail to commit more crimes.
The average voter knows this is happening and outright reject our party. Enough.
They don't believe in open borders, stop listening to FOX news, they literally said under oath that they lie all the time! I lived in San Diego late 80s early 90s a republican was president. People came over by the boat load over the boarder.
James: I don’t watch Fox News. Biden opened the border and only acted to close it somewhat this year. That’s the truth. Try to stick to the truth because it’s killing us when Democrats lie like Trump. We can’t seem to get away with it like he does.
Liberal used to mean open minded. Now it seems to mean judging everyone who feels differently about anything as ignorant or malicious. It is sad that those who profess to be liberal have become among the least tolerant or open-minded among us.
Today, liberals have fixed beliefs, no ability to reconsider or re-evaluate those beliefs, and an inability to reconcile their fixed notions with reality. It's a failed and mendacious worldview.
That is all very interesting and true, but you could have rejected the woke ideology and its proponents simply by looking at the bizarre and disgusting manifestations that have been staring you in the face, which are the manifestations of totalitarianism instead of dwelling on the ideological basis for the totalitarian movement.
Having lived in a Communist country, I saw the signs coming here a mile away, and so have persons from North Korea, China, Romania, Vietnam, Poland, Russia and we have been screaming our heads off, literally and in print about what was going on, but we were ignored by what I call the media hivemind. Our objections were relegated to the contemporary samizdat.
I am referring, of course, to the widespread censorship in magazines, in the news, in comedy (aka, cancel culture) and, obviously, in academia. People have been afraid (in America!!) to speak freely. Then, there is the constant propaganda from the media hivemind. The numerous liberals that have called for censorship, including politicians and overrated celebrities, the very same people who have demanded that the US Constitution be trashed as being out of date, written by white old men. They have also attacked the Supreme Court. Liberals have also perverted the judicial system by persecuting their political opponents, big and small, with bogus charges in Show Trials. The violent Antifa thugs were their Blackshirts have burned piles of books (Bibles, Harry Potter books, Andy Ngo's book). They have insisted that anyone and everyone must believe, must participate in the promotion of their various ideologies (whether it is Pride or BLM or covid phobia. They have attacked, defiled and burnt Christian churches. Liberals have demonized anyone who disagrees with them in the slightest degree (parents at school meetings who have objected to the indoctrination of their children have been labeled "domestic terrorists."
Several politicians have called for establishing re-education camp for MAGA people after they achieve complete control. And, as Orwell pointed out, they have demanded that we reject the evidence of our eyes and ears.
Do I need to go on?
Incidentally, if memory serves, I submitted an article on this very topic to Skeptic but received no answer.
You forgot to mention the censorship, book banning white Christian nationalist in your one sided analysis of totalitarianism! Also forgot the criticisms of the media ,field experts, and higher education used by the want to be fascist of the MAGA movement and propagated by the right wing media, especially FOX News!
The only fascists today are the Woke fascists of the left.
"the criticisms of the media, field experts, and higher education"? Oh, the horror! The horror! Such elites should never be criticized! We must worship them. We must believe them. We must obey them. Otherwise, we fall into fascism.
And book banning like Gender Queer and other LGBTLMAO which portray boys, with pictures no less, on the joys of fellatio? An outrage! An outrage, I say!
Yes, we need kindergartners to learn about fellatio, lube, and butt-fucking. That's the liberal mindset of perversion and degradation.
You might want to read this:
https://issuesinsights.com/2024/06/24/time-to-admit-it-the-democratic-party-is-the-party-of-sexual-perverts/
Communism isn’t the only historical analogy that one could foist onto wokeness. A supporter of wokeness could just as easily point out that the German Weimar government censored the Nazis (partly with hate speech laws) and banned Hitler, who eventually banned the Communist party after he came to power.
Let's say all of this is true. Why have you not also written about the flawed view of human nature by authoritarian populists who have just taken the White House, the Congress, and the Supreme Court? Trump has just appointed an an anti-vaccer as the secretary of Health and Human Services. What does that do to science and free inquiry? While your extensive intellect is geared toward what you perceive as a coming threat to democracy, it avoids the one that is already here. I don't get that.
Excellent question! It’s because he benefits from this right wing authoritarianism. He’s been captured by his audience. He knows that criticizing right wing authoritarianism will cause him problems, while criticizing “woke” has become his brand, ever since he went “intellectual dark web.”
Uh, sure. No chance that Shermer's political and moral views stayed constant, while the left lurched?
BTW, do you see authoritarianism manifest on the left? It might be hard to see for those with dedicated partisan views, but here's a hint: the left-wing version derives from, and is delivered by, the elite class, with their hands all over the security state, academia, media, and hybridized combinations--a dark web if there ever was one.
Hint: Shermer was *never* “woke,” his claims otherwise notwithstanding.
And that is somehow bad?
It’s not great of him to mislead his readers by portraying himself as some sort of “convert” from “wokeness.” It is, however, a common shtick among “intellectual dark web” types.🙄
The authoritarian left wants the resurrect communism.
This explanation is far too sophisticated and complex to account for why so many young people and supposedly educated people are drawn to woke and the speed at which wokeness spread. Egocentrism is a simpler explanation. We are all egocentric to a degree. We are born egocentric. Healthy maturation involves recognizing the limitations of the self. Wokeness indulges the self. Notice that woke policies ultimately are self-serving. “We should take from them and give it to the other. Now look at how moral I am.” Much of woke is manifest envy and vanity.
It may be charitable to ascribe and project good intentions onto the Left, but their behaviors are the result of our baser human flaws.
This is an oversimplified explanation.
Imagine that you heard from a friend that they were having a rough time, so you took them out to dinner and paid for their meal. A cynic might argue that you just did that to indulge your own ego. And how would you prove them wrong? The cynic’s ideology is like magic: it allows them to recast your sacrifice as evidence you lack humility (unlike them, of course).
There are egotistical and humble people among the woke just as there are egotistical and humble people among the non-woke.
A couple factors:
Education/inculcation into the glorification of victimhood.
The positive feedback loops and externalizing of validation created by social media.
The Internet has made confirmation bias *very* easy, and enables people to sort themselves into echo chambers and silos.
The lack of immediate interpersonal feedback in our social media interactions. Used to be, if you said something stupid, you could see it in others' faces, and feel immediate shame. If you said something mean, you could see it in others' faces, and feel immediate regret. Those served to temper and to teach.
If you are looking for innate root causes, don't forget tribal behavior. Once committed to a group, people will automatically align, promote, submit, and defend to defined tribal values and identities. No intellect required (or desired).
Very well said Mr Shermer, you are a true and courageous voice of reason
I think that there are a variety of definitions of "woke." One of them is just awareness of the deep problems that plague American society: climate change, inadequate healthcare, and the profound racism that demagogues like Trump exploit. I think you should acknowledge the diversity of woke opinion, and I also don't think that comparisons to communism are appropriate.
Also, your belief that twin studies prove that human traits are highly constrained by genes is becoming increasingly discredited among geneticists. Different techniques for measuring the effect of genes on psychological traits have not replicated the findings of twin studies, and it is likely that we are much less constrained by genes than they suggest. https://open.substack.com/pub/eclecticinquiries/p/the-evolution-of-imagination?r=4952v2&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
I am a 79 year old Black man, a US Navy, submarine, Vietnam era veteran and retired public school teacher. I have been woke most of my life and intend to remain so. Being Black living in the US, requires woke to be the highest level of my situational awareness. Woke is not merely an intellectual, academic word game.
The infiltration of what we label as WOKE is just a new word for Marxism and it has slowly infiltrated the West over the last number of decades. It has united and is greatly funded by the Islamists. The purpose is to tear down Western culture by creating a self loathing. We are colonizers, built on the backs of slavery, tear down the statues, teach white kids they are oppressors and black kids are oppressed, Capitalism is bad and so on.
They used our own values like equality, empathy for the less fortunate, freedom of speech and used it in way that resulted in the complete opposite.
Sowell was one of the earliest to see the contradictions and the negative outcomes and his books are an excellent read.
On the positive note, I think we are currently experiencing a big backlash. I also think Trumps win has much to do with that backlash.
papa j
As others have pointed out, American Marxism 1.0 was based on class conflict and division, as in other countries, and failed. But American Marxism 2.0 restructured around gender and race, and has had much greater success.
Pinker and Sowell are our two greatest (avant la lettre) anti-woke intellectuals. They are actually our two greatest thinkers without qualification. The scope of their intellects and that one is liberal and one conservative doesn't hinder them from sharing opposition to illiberal drivel. The books Shermer mentions always come to mind whenever these noxious ideas from left enter my purview.
So basically, most existing inequities between races are inherited and genetic rather than socially and historically created. Moreover, tribalism is ineradicable and any scheme to oppose it is utopian fantasy. Behind a lot of dogmatic but trendy new right straw man rhetoric, blatant racism and social Darwinism. Yuck.
I see woke and wokeness as an exercise of “presentism,” which is the tendency to interpret past events in terms of modern values and concepts. The African American community wants some acknowledgment of their suffering through slavery and thereafter for the contributions they made to this country. And that is perfectly understandable. The problem is that the morals of yesterday are not the same as today. The founders are criticized for being slave owners. Statues, schools and military bases named after Confederate leaders are “forced” to be taken down or be changed to some other “acceptable” person.
Similar actions have been taken by Native Americans with respect to the names of sports teams and other symbols of their customs that have been demeaned over the last 400 years.
Point being history can’t be undone. It is what it is. While teaching about the treatment of minority groups in our society in the past is a necessary part of our own education, it should be neutral in terms of passing a moral judgment. People, societies and cultures are different. They are not equal.
As Aristotle warned, “The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal.”
And then there are the women. . .
Yeah, presentism is part of Woke. When Woke look at history, it is always to pull some bullshit about the evils of the US.
This is a straw-man of the entire "woke" argument. Even the term "woke" no longer means what it used to (as Shermer rightly says). Rather than trying to understand what the real argument behind social justice is, Shermer props up the straw man and implies that is what the progressive left is fighting for. This makes me sad because "Why people believe weird things" was a formative book for me.
I have never met someone on the progressive left who truly believes that we should strive as a society for equal outcomes. Rather, the goal is to mitigate the structural inequalities in our system that make it harder for a set of people to achieve the same as a different set of people.
It's ludicrous to think that outcomes deserve to be equal. I know of no serious thinker on the progressive left who believes this. This doesn't mean that no one believes this, but attacking this argument is not what a previously serious thinker such as Shermer should be doing.
Thank you for this thought-provoking article. While I appreciate the depth and historical context you provide, I think there are some areas that could benefit from a more nuanced perspective.
Diverse Roots of Woke Ideology: Your framing of "woke" as synonymous with the blank slate theory feels overly reductive. Social justice movements are far from monolithic, and many of their goals—such as addressing systemic inequities—don’t necessarily rely on a strict blank slate model. By focusing so narrowly on this theoretical framework, the article risks oversimplifying the motivations and strategies of those involved in these movements.
Equity vs. Equality: The analogy you critique from Kamala Harris touches on a nuanced debate about fairness, but the article presents equity as an unrealistic or undesirable pursuit. Equity isn’t about enforcing "equal outcomes" in a simplistic sense; it’s about recognizing and addressing barriers that prevent fair opportunities. This distinction deserves a more balanced exploration.
Structural Inequalities: While I understand your emphasis on biological and genetic factors, the role of systemic inequities—such as racism, sexism, and classism—cannot be dismissed. Outcomes in education, income, and health are profoundly shaped by these structural forces. Ignoring them risks framing inequality as inevitable rather than as something we can work to mitigate.
Framing of Activism: The term "woke illiberals" feels needlessly polarizing. Advocating for systemic change doesn’t inherently equate to authoritarianism. Many activists work within democratic frameworks, and reducing their efforts to "utopian dreaming" risks alienating readers who value progressive activism.
Human Nature and Social Progress: While I appreciate the discussion of constrained and unconstrained visions of human nature, a more integrative approach might be helpful. Human behavior is shaped by both biological and environmental factors. Recognizing this interplay allows for a more constructive dialogue about the potential for cultural and institutional change.
Historical Context of Successes: Wokeness is framed here as a modern failure, but it’s worth acknowledging the significant progress that past social justice movements—aligned with "woke" ideals—have achieved. Civil rights, women’s suffrage, and LGBTQ+ rights all stemmed from challenging societal norms. Recognizing these successes alongside the limitations of current activism would provide a more balanced perspective.
Your discussion of the "Realistic Vision" offers an interesting framework, but I wonder if it could be broadened to account for how societal structures influence behavior. Human nature may be constrained, but history shows that change is possible when systems evolve to promote fairness and inclusion.
Thank you again for sparking such an important conversation. I’d love to hear your thoughts on how we might bridge these perspectives to better address the complexities of human nature and social progress.
Half of the differences in abilities that lead to success are attributed to genetics? That still leaves the other 50% that are not. Anyone who denies that the long history of racism and Jim Crow has left African Americans in the US at a disadvantage just ain't dealing with reality. Claims that we live in a meritocracy where the peoples' abilities are the sole reason for their success are delusional.
And of course the question of how society should treat people of average ability or even those of low ability. Should they be mere peons forever licking the boots of their "betters"?
What exactly is woke?
As Eric Hoffer noted, every great cause morphs from movement to business to racket. Woke is no exception.
If you have seen this before just consider it my pamphlet. Thomas Paine printed a hundred thousand copies of his pamphlet Common Sense so many people could be aware of his wisdom. Consider my repeated posts just my way of spreading my wisdom. It would be unpatriotic to believe otherwise.
After the election the Democratic Party (my party) must rethink many of its policies as it ponders its future.
To be entrusted with power again Democrats must start listening to the concerns of the working class for a change. As a lifelong moderate Democrat I share their disdain for many of the insane positions advocated by my party. We are no longer the patriotic, sensible party of FDR and JFK.
Democrat politicians defy biology by believing that men can actually become women and belong in women’s sports, rest rooms, locker rooms and prisons and that children should be mutilated in pursuit of the impossible.
They believe borders should be open to millions of illegals which undermines workers’ wages and the affordability of housing when we can’t house our own citizens.
They discriminate against whites, Asians and men in a futile effort to counter past discrimination against others and undermine our economy by abandoning merit selection of students and employees.
Democratic mayors allow homelessness to destroy our beautiful cities because they won't say no to destructive behavior. No, you can’t camp in our city. No, you can’t shit in our streets. No, you can’t shoot up and leave your used needles everywhere. Many of our prosecutors will not take action against shoplifting unless a $1000 of goods are stolen leading to gangs destroying retail stores. They release criminals without bail to commit more crimes.
The average voter knows this is happening and outright reject our party. Enough.
They don't believe in open borders, stop listening to FOX news, they literally said under oath that they lie all the time! I lived in San Diego late 80s early 90s a republican was president. People came over by the boat load over the boarder.
James: I don’t watch Fox News. Biden opened the border and only acted to close it somewhat this year. That’s the truth. Try to stick to the truth because it’s killing us when Democrats lie like Trump. We can’t seem to get away with it like he does.
Geezus, 4 years of illegals burning women on subways, and morons like you still say stupid shit like this.
Liberal used to mean open minded. Now it seems to mean judging everyone who feels differently about anything as ignorant or malicious. It is sad that those who profess to be liberal have become among the least tolerant or open-minded among us.
Today, liberals have fixed beliefs, no ability to reconsider or re-evaluate those beliefs, and an inability to reconcile their fixed notions with reality. It's a failed and mendacious worldview.