There was a really interesting conversation in the IRL group called the ‘Civility Zone’ put together by @ericboyd where we dove into the religion of ‘Woke-ism’ and why it’s so powerful today. It was a lively conversation with a ton of good insights. I will try to sum up my thoughts and what I would have expanded on if time would have permitted it.
I briefly explained a theory I went over in my latest podcast with @ReturnToReason (#12) where Dr. Jordan Peterson explains the how the political Left and Right build and tear down hierarchies. The Left has traditionally felt obligated to tear hierarchies down, and the Right feels obligated to keep them up. Hierarchies play an essential role in human behavior (and animal behavior more generally), but when they become rigid, they become corrupt. The modern-day Left has used their power in media and entertainment to completely tear down good and bad hierarchies alike resulting in a constant state of cancelling and callout culture, but haven’t realized in order to maintain this constant attack, they have created their own hierarchy. This forces the Right to jump into the ‘breaker of hierarchy’ role that they don’t fully understand how to fill. This results in a corrupt culture, imbalance between chaos and order, and volatile behavior we see today that is going almost completely unchecked.
The religion of Woke-ism uses the same mechanisms to dictate a new set of moral standards. The death of God left a vacuum to be filled with another ideology to serve as our moral compass and to create meaning in our lives. The Left mostly identifies as atheists, and the little-known secret about atheism is it is a religion in itself. In both cases of belief and knowing there is nothing to believe in, there is an affirmative assumption that there absolutely is, or absolutely isn’t a higher power. The true absence of religion is agnosticism. The point I’m trying to make here is not that we shouldn’t like atheists (I’m friends with many), but the religion of Woke-ism completely denies they are a religion while also tearing religion down.
To best understand why large corporations feel the need to agree and virtue signal with the beliefs of Woke-ism is because of a new form a social capital traded in that marketplace. Think of traditional social capital (the trade of trust, shared values, and social reciprocity) as the dollar. The dollar isn’t directly tied to the gold standard, but it has a much more easily defined value tied to purchasing power. Woke Capital is similar to cryptocurrency. Cryptocurrency doesn’t lack value, but it isn’t really tied to an easily defined value and is extremely volatile. Woke Capital has entered the social marketplace and it being valued very high by many producers and consumers, but it is extremely volatile. This is why a Woke idea of today is a racist idea of tomorrow, and conversely, how racist ideas from yesterday become the Woke ideas of today. There is no tangible value, but corporations and talking heads are buying… for now.
This religion breeds horrible and corrupt ideas much like a term @hopesicle brought up during the chat. This term is ‘anti-racism’ where we no longer try to ‘find racism,’ but rather we ‘attribute racism.’ This is how we create instability and start to really harm people. It starts by going after those who openly oppose the ideology, then moves to the people who don’t believe hard enough, and then finally comes for the revolutionaries themselves.
As described in Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago and George Orwell’s 1984, when the leader of the successful revolution ends his speech and it’s time to give your applause, don’t ever be the first to stop applauding.
I was listening to some news updates when I heard this CNN clip about the potentially hazardous water in East Palestine, and as soon as I heard her ask the question about whether or not her guest would drink the water, I IMMEDIATELY thought of this clip from South Park. Enjoy.
In this special episode of The Engineering Politics Podcast, Truman from Return To Reason is back for a new video and podcast series titled ‘Revisiting The Road To Serfdom’ where we review F.A. Hayek’s classic work, The Road To Serfdom. This episode covers ‘Chapter 15: The Prospects of International Order’.
This will be an ongoing series that covers the entire book. We put a ton of work into making this insightful and relevant, so we hope you enjoy watching/listening as much as we enjoyed reading and recording.
Become a subscriber of the Engineering Politics Locals Community to support this content. Also, consider joining the @ReturnToReason Locals Community to show Truman some support.
In this episode of The Engineering Politics Podcast, I team up with Truman from @ReturnToReason to interview one of the most intelligent and influential creators in the space of philosophy today. Stephen R.C. Hicks is a Professor of Philosophy at Rockford University, Executive Director of the Center for Ethics and Entrepreneurship, and Senior Scholar at The Atlas Society. He has written many books including Explaining Postmodernism and Nietzsche and the Nazis. We bring him on to talk about the social and political issues we are currently facing in America, and the West more broadly, and what the collectivist ideas of Jean-Jacques Rousseau might have to do with it.
Become a subscriber of the Engineering Politics Locals Community to support this content. Also, consider joining the @ReturnToReason Locals Community to show Truman some support.
In this special episode of The Engineering Politics Podcast, Truman from Return To Reason is back for a new video and podcast series titled ‘Revisiting The Road To Serfdom’ where we review F.A. Hayek’s classic work, The Road To Serfdom. This episode covers ‘Chapter 15: The Prospects of International Order’.
This will be an ongoing series that covers the entire book. We put a ton of work into making this insightful and relevant, so we hope you enjoy watching/listening as much as we enjoyed reading and recording.
Become a subscriber of the Engineering Politics Locals Community to support this content. Also, consider joining the @ReturnToReason Locals Community to show Truman some support.
In this episode of The Engineering Politics Podcast, I team up with Truman from @ReturnToReason to interview one of the most intelligent and influential creators in the space of philosophy today. Stephen R.C. Hicks is a Professor of Philosophy at Rockford University, Executive Director of the Center for Ethics and Entrepreneurship, and Senior Scholar at The Atlas Society. He has written many books including Explaining Postmodernism and Nietzsche and the Nazis. We bring him on to talk about the social and political issues we are currently facing in America, and the West more broadly, and what the collectivist ideas of Jean-Jacques Rousseau might have to do with it.
Become a subscriber of the Engineering Politics Locals Community to support this content. Also, consider joining the @ReturnToReason Locals Community to show Truman some support.
In this special episode of The Engineering Politics Podcast, Truman from @ReturnToReason is back for a new video and podcast series titled ‘Revisiting The Road To Serfdom’ where we review F.A. Hayek’s classic work, The Road To Serfdom. This episode covers ‘Chapter 14: Material Conditions and Ideal Ends’.
This will be an ongoing series that covers the entire book. We put a ton of work into making this insightful and relevant, so we hope you enjoy watching/listening as much as we enjoyed reading and recording.
Become a subscriber of the Engineering Politics Locals Community to support this content. Also, consider joining the @ReturnToReason Locals Community to show Truman some support.
Alright @Eng_Politics , what are your early predictions? I'll ask the same question on Truman's page.
