I appreciate this thoughtful analysis (I just got a copy of an anthology about Darwin titled “A Most Interesting Problem,” edited by someone I respect, so have been interested in reading more about him). I find the whole woke/anti-woke discourse to be not something that’s very engage-able. It seems to be based on a concept of an amorphous “left” that is never defined, and always seems to be about winning arguments rather than opening ideas. A finite or zero-sum game, but then that’s also informed by my personal life experience. “The woke have come for Darwin” doesn’t seem to say anything except some version of “ha ha, gotcha,” and I’m not sure what the purpose is.
I read an interesting essay a while back about an unintended consequence that Darwin’s idea of humans’ not being in control of nature being that it feeds into climate denialism. How big ideas get misued is always interesting, like Adam Smith’s invisible hand being used as an argument for totally unfettered markets, which he didn’t agree with.
(I hope it was clear that what I meant was that “The woke have come for Darwin” is pointless to me, but asking “Did Darwin really say/mean that,” and asking an author publicly what they meant by particular words/passages/phrasings, is helpful.)
Yes, I understood that to be your meaning. But I'm not sure what people mean when they refer to Darwin's idea of "humans not being in control of nature." I hadn't especially associated that idea with him.
More about how Darwin's humility about humans inspired Huxley to come to incorrect conclusions about British fisheries. Less relevant than I'd remembered, but a good read.
I am no fan of terms like "woke" and "SJW" because I think they tend to immediately steer conversations into polarizing conflict that is bad for everyone involved. So, statements along the lines of “The woke have come for Darwin” *definitely* fall into my "less of this, please" category.
But I'm curious, when you say anti-woke statements like “The woke have come for Darwin” point to an amorphous and undefined "left", do you *really* not know what subset of the left the person is referring to? I find that hard to understand.
I really don’t. I’ve heard it lots, like from Sam Harris, and sometimes relating to a few specific people, and someone here helpfully linked to an article by Andrew Sullivan on critical race theory but none of that translates into something graspable as a “left.” I heard Jordan Peterson once talk about a “left” that seemed to imply something related to Stalinist groupthink but that didn’t mean much either. The best I’ve got was Jonathan Chait, who once defined a *very* small number of people at a *very* few liberal-leaning colleges.
I mean, I’m a very progressive/liberal in a very conservative-leaning area rife with white nationalists. Maybe it’s just that it means nothing to someone who doesn’t live in a more highly populated liberal-leaning area? I’ve lived in lots of cities but never met such narrow-thinking people as someone like Harris describes, for example.
How about “cancel culture?” (Another term I don’t love…) Is that a meaningful term to you?
I can understand (but can’t relate to) how people can support the cluster of ideas and behaviors that others label as “woke” or “cancel culture”.
And I can understand (and do relate to) how one might think they’re crappy terms because they’re only good for derailing conversations or preaching to the choir.
But I’m having trouble understanding how you don’t see what people who use the terms are talking about.
Maybe this is a signal vs corrective issue…. With each of us subscribing to non-overlapping narratives and dismissing different parts of the internet as insignificant.
“From the inside, when you subscribe to a narrative, when you believe in it, it feels like you’ve stripped away all irrelevant noise and only the essence, The Underlying Principle, is left — the signal, in the language of information theory. However, that noise you just dismissed as irrelevant has other signals in it and sometimes people will consider them stronger, truer and more important.”
And
“Our intuition has problems with the idea that the same set of facts can have different “signals” behind them and none is The Single Underlying Truth. In particular it’s hard to grasp that this allows multiple narratives to coexist, even if they appear to contradict each other. Why? Well, narratives contradicting each other means that they simplify and generalize in different ways and assign goodness and badness to things in opposite directions. While that might look like contradiction it isn’t, because generalizations and value judgments aren’t strictly facts about the world. As a consequence, the more abstracted and value-laden narratives get the more they can contradict each other without any of them being “wrong”.”
I'm not sure if I'm understanding those quotes correctly, but they seem to be defining the problem. If a term like "the left" or "woke" is never specified, it's very difficult, if not impossible, for someone not within the narrative to understand it, much less believe in it. I don't dismiss them as insignificant--my governor's loose use of those exact words to dismiss any progressive arguments for or against legislation has been extremely effective!--but have been trying for years to see some sort of shape around them that never coalesces. It often seems like they're more useful as murky ideas than as specifics. What is "the left"?! Unless it's Ezra Klein and The Nation and some other specific voices, I have no idea, and if it *is* those specific voices, then wouldn't it be more useful to name them individually?
"Cancel culture" I feel like I have a slightly better understanding of, but I'm not sure if it means what people imply it means. There are a lot of shifts in Western society that people are trying to start coming to terms with about what we value and what we care about, and, as often happens, people with louder voices tend to get heard first, and as also often happens, people with the power to react often do so in hamfisted ways, responding to their own fear of being judged rather than trying to think deeply about what their actions mean. That's always going to happen. The problem, as I see it, is the deeper one of what Robert has called cognitive empathy, and maybe what I call lack of imagination, not a specific left or right issue.
I try very hard not to accept large media narratives about what is going on in society, from any direction. It can be difficult to question, especially when it agrees with my own biases, but it's easier to see when media gets something I know well very wrong. Then I can more easily accept that they might also get things wrong that I don't know much about. (Isn't there a term for this? I feel like I heard it recently.)
Don't know if that really answered the question. A good comparison might be a dismissive catch-all term I'm more familiar with, which is "green decoy." Ryan Zinke started using this term to categorize certain conservation-oriented groups as basically fake (fake people, fake interests, fake activities) when they started speaking up against some of his actions when he was Interior Secretary. Backcountry Hunters & Anglers in particular, which has a lot of influence and supported his nomination but then didn't support a lot of his actions (I should caveat that I'm an active member of BHA). Someone coined "green decoy" to paint groups like that as fake (fake hunters, fake active outdoors-y people, etc.). It feels similar to me, a way to say "this thing/group/person is not real, or at least has no valid interest in the things we are talking about." An erasure.
Last time you said that you weren’t rambling either! This is actually very helpful. I guess I have met people like that but I think of them not as left or right but as controlling. An urge to control what people think or feel can take many forms.
Cool discussion in the comments. Thanks for bringing this up.
What’s been on my mind, and relates because I’m thinking and feeling about it — not justified in any way other than that — is the idea of somatic practices. Specifically somatic abolitionism, as presented by Resmaa Menakem.
I’m presently learning more about this idea, but in general somatic practices can be the shortcut from endless, “I think the reason bad thing X happened is Y” / “No, the reason bad thing happened is Z!” arguments (circle jerk, ouroboros — each a wonderful punk band or album, that’s what you meant, right Eric?) whatever-you-want-to-call-it.
Things like somatic abolitionism, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission or similar focus in is the idea of recognition of pain and suffering. Feeling. Being human.
That’s generally what I’m seeing in the world as late. There is such a strong drive to intellectualize and rationalize what’s happening rather than deal with it. Menakem uses the term “metabolize” which seems to fit. Whatever it is that moves people a smidge past cognitive empathy to felt empathy, compassion.
As you show in the article, I can imagine Darwin wasn’t fond of the harshness of nature because he was an empathetic soul. If that’s getting missed in favor of framing the actions he made in his time as mistakes in today’s context, that’s too bad.
I just finished listening to your interview with Agustin Fuentes and came away feeling like there's some real hope for dialogue and nuance in these conversations and issues. Fuentes is right, a podcast (or other long-form interviews) allows each side to question, clarify, and cede certain positions. Ultimately I think it can lead us to some really positive approaches to how we learn about and teach about these "great men of history" and their ideas, and I thought Fuentes did a great job explaining that it's better to learn more about these individuals, to see the flaws, so that we have a more complete picture. I also really appreciated his point of what a thorough scientist Darwin was with his process, nd how that can sometimes get lost in the attention paid to his results. Anyway, long way of saying excellent work Bob!
Another wonderful defense of cognitive empathy from Bob, which I believe is as important to avoiding the "A" word as any other efforts. Intellectual honesty is worth fighting for in an era when "spin" and media manipulation are reaching a new zenith. If we lose Enlightenment values, we will enter a whole new Dark Ages where technology will enable witch hunts that will make the Inquisition and Salem Trials look like a dress rehearsal.
Bookmarked for watching, hopefully sometime this week.
Ouroboros has been used in so many mythologies I'm not sure it's fair to use it to describe this phenomenon, or to compare it, to, um, the other :)
This kind of thing has happened so many times, though, in so many iterations. I really think it's part of something deeper, wrapped up with a willingness to dehumanize an "other" in order to make simple, reactive narratives easily swallowable. While some will try to excavate fuller history in good faith, others will try to use that excavation to create their own narratives. I don't think that should stop the excavation, but spotting simplifications is something that I appreciate people like this group for!
I find that simple factual observational commentary gets conflated with justification. It's very frustrating. Thanks for the article
I appreciate this thoughtful analysis (I just got a copy of an anthology about Darwin titled “A Most Interesting Problem,” edited by someone I respect, so have been interested in reading more about him). I find the whole woke/anti-woke discourse to be not something that’s very engage-able. It seems to be based on a concept of an amorphous “left” that is never defined, and always seems to be about winning arguments rather than opening ideas. A finite or zero-sum game, but then that’s also informed by my personal life experience. “The woke have come for Darwin” doesn’t seem to say anything except some version of “ha ha, gotcha,” and I’m not sure what the purpose is.
I read an interesting essay a while back about an unintended consequence that Darwin’s idea of humans’ not being in control of nature being that it feeds into climate denialism. How big ideas get misued is always interesting, like Adam Smith’s invisible hand being used as an argument for totally unfettered markets, which he didn’t agree with.
(I hope it was clear that what I meant was that “The woke have come for Darwin” is pointless to me, but asking “Did Darwin really say/mean that,” and asking an author publicly what they meant by particular words/passages/phrasings, is helpful.)
Yes, I understood that to be your meaning. But I'm not sure what people mean when they refer to Darwin's idea of "humans not being in control of nature." I hadn't especially associated that idea with him.
I’d have to find the essay. I think the point was that he respected nature/evolution as more powerful than humans but that respect got misused.
Here it is, in Nautilus: https://nautil.us/issue/90/something-green/the-human-error-darwin-inspired
More about how Darwin's humility about humans inspired Huxley to come to incorrect conclusions about British fisheries. Less relevant than I'd remembered, but a good read.
I am no fan of terms like "woke" and "SJW" because I think they tend to immediately steer conversations into polarizing conflict that is bad for everyone involved. So, statements along the lines of “The woke have come for Darwin” *definitely* fall into my "less of this, please" category.
But I'm curious, when you say anti-woke statements like “The woke have come for Darwin” point to an amorphous and undefined "left", do you *really* not know what subset of the left the person is referring to? I find that hard to understand.
I really don’t. I’ve heard it lots, like from Sam Harris, and sometimes relating to a few specific people, and someone here helpfully linked to an article by Andrew Sullivan on critical race theory but none of that translates into something graspable as a “left.” I heard Jordan Peterson once talk about a “left” that seemed to imply something related to Stalinist groupthink but that didn’t mean much either. The best I’ve got was Jonathan Chait, who once defined a *very* small number of people at a *very* few liberal-leaning colleges.
I mean, I’m a very progressive/liberal in a very conservative-leaning area rife with white nationalists. Maybe it’s just that it means nothing to someone who doesn’t live in a more highly populated liberal-leaning area? I’ve lived in lots of cities but never met such narrow-thinking people as someone like Harris describes, for example.
How about “cancel culture?” (Another term I don’t love…) Is that a meaningful term to you?
I can understand (but can’t relate to) how people can support the cluster of ideas and behaviors that others label as “woke” or “cancel culture”.
And I can understand (and do relate to) how one might think they’re crappy terms because they’re only good for derailing conversations or preaching to the choir.
But I’m having trouble understanding how you don’t see what people who use the terms are talking about.
Maybe this is a signal vs corrective issue…. With each of us subscribing to non-overlapping narratives and dismissing different parts of the internet as insignificant.
“From the inside, when you subscribe to a narrative, when you believe in it, it feels like you’ve stripped away all irrelevant noise and only the essence, The Underlying Principle, is left — the signal, in the language of information theory. However, that noise you just dismissed as irrelevant has other signals in it and sometimes people will consider them stronger, truer and more important.”
And
“Our intuition has problems with the idea that the same set of facts can have different “signals” behind them and none is The Single Underlying Truth. In particular it’s hard to grasp that this allows multiple narratives to coexist, even if they appear to contradict each other. Why? Well, narratives contradicting each other means that they simplify and generalize in different ways and assign goodness and badness to things in opposite directions. While that might look like contradiction it isn’t, because generalizations and value judgments aren’t strictly facts about the world. As a consequence, the more abstracted and value-laden narratives get the more they can contradict each other without any of them being “wrong”.”
-John Nerst
From: https://everythingstudies.com/2017/12/19/the-signal-and-the-corrective/
I'm not sure if I'm understanding those quotes correctly, but they seem to be defining the problem. If a term like "the left" or "woke" is never specified, it's very difficult, if not impossible, for someone not within the narrative to understand it, much less believe in it. I don't dismiss them as insignificant--my governor's loose use of those exact words to dismiss any progressive arguments for or against legislation has been extremely effective!--but have been trying for years to see some sort of shape around them that never coalesces. It often seems like they're more useful as murky ideas than as specifics. What is "the left"?! Unless it's Ezra Klein and The Nation and some other specific voices, I have no idea, and if it *is* those specific voices, then wouldn't it be more useful to name them individually?
"Cancel culture" I feel like I have a slightly better understanding of, but I'm not sure if it means what people imply it means. There are a lot of shifts in Western society that people are trying to start coming to terms with about what we value and what we care about, and, as often happens, people with louder voices tend to get heard first, and as also often happens, people with the power to react often do so in hamfisted ways, responding to their own fear of being judged rather than trying to think deeply about what their actions mean. That's always going to happen. The problem, as I see it, is the deeper one of what Robert has called cognitive empathy, and maybe what I call lack of imagination, not a specific left or right issue.
I try very hard not to accept large media narratives about what is going on in society, from any direction. It can be difficult to question, especially when it agrees with my own biases, but it's easier to see when media gets something I know well very wrong. Then I can more easily accept that they might also get things wrong that I don't know much about. (Isn't there a term for this? I feel like I heard it recently.)
Don't know if that really answered the question. A good comparison might be a dismissive catch-all term I'm more familiar with, which is "green decoy." Ryan Zinke started using this term to categorize certain conservation-oriented groups as basically fake (fake people, fake interests, fake activities) when they started speaking up against some of his actions when he was Interior Secretary. Backcountry Hunters & Anglers in particular, which has a lot of influence and supported his nomination but then didn't support a lot of his actions (I should caveat that I'm an active member of BHA). Someone coined "green decoy" to paint groups like that as fake (fake hunters, fake active outdoors-y people, etc.). It feels similar to me, a way to say "this thing/group/person is not real, or at least has no valid interest in the things we are talking about." An erasure.
Last time you said that you weren’t rambling either! This is actually very helpful. I guess I have met people like that but I think of them not as left or right but as controlling. An urge to control what people think or feel can take many forms.
Excellent rebuttal, Bob. I’m with you on this one, 100%. Hang in there.
well-said.
Cool discussion in the comments. Thanks for bringing this up.
What’s been on my mind, and relates because I’m thinking and feeling about it — not justified in any way other than that — is the idea of somatic practices. Specifically somatic abolitionism, as presented by Resmaa Menakem.
https://www.resmaa.com/movement
I’m presently learning more about this idea, but in general somatic practices can be the shortcut from endless, “I think the reason bad thing X happened is Y” / “No, the reason bad thing happened is Z!” arguments (circle jerk, ouroboros — each a wonderful punk band or album, that’s what you meant, right Eric?) whatever-you-want-to-call-it.
Things like somatic abolitionism, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission or similar focus in is the idea of recognition of pain and suffering. Feeling. Being human.
That’s generally what I’m seeing in the world as late. There is such a strong drive to intellectualize and rationalize what’s happening rather than deal with it. Menakem uses the term “metabolize” which seems to fit. Whatever it is that moves people a smidge past cognitive empathy to felt empathy, compassion.
As you show in the article, I can imagine Darwin wasn’t fond of the harshness of nature because he was an empathetic soul. If that’s getting missed in favor of framing the actions he made in his time as mistakes in today’s context, that’s too bad.
That's fascinating. I like "bodies of culture." Very mind-opening.
Agreed! I’m still absorbing.
He was on a podcast last year that has some more detail too: https://resources.soundstrue.com/podcast/resmaa-menakem-somatic-abolitionism/
That was great, thank you! I enjoyed th episode on soil, too.
Thanks!
I just finished listening to your interview with Agustin Fuentes and came away feeling like there's some real hope for dialogue and nuance in these conversations and issues. Fuentes is right, a podcast (or other long-form interviews) allows each side to question, clarify, and cede certain positions. Ultimately I think it can lead us to some really positive approaches to how we learn about and teach about these "great men of history" and their ideas, and I thought Fuentes did a great job explaining that it's better to learn more about these individuals, to see the flaws, so that we have a more complete picture. I also really appreciated his point of what a thorough scientist Darwin was with his process, nd how that can sometimes get lost in the attention paid to his results. Anyway, long way of saying excellent work Bob!
Another wonderful defense of cognitive empathy from Bob, which I believe is as important to avoiding the "A" word as any other efforts. Intellectual honesty is worth fighting for in an era when "spin" and media manipulation are reaching a new zenith. If we lose Enlightenment values, we will enter a whole new Dark Ages where technology will enable witch hunts that will make the Inquisition and Salem Trials look like a dress rehearsal.
"Ouroboros or a circle jerk" made my day, thanks.
Bookmarked for watching, hopefully sometime this week.
Ouroboros has been used in so many mythologies I'm not sure it's fair to use it to describe this phenomenon, or to compare it, to, um, the other :)
This kind of thing has happened so many times, though, in so many iterations. I really think it's part of something deeper, wrapped up with a willingness to dehumanize an "other" in order to make simple, reactive narratives easily swallowable. While some will try to excavate fuller history in good faith, others will try to use that excavation to create their own narratives. I don't think that should stop the excavation, but spotting simplifications is something that I appreciate people like this group for!