#secular values

"Religion doesn't appear too harmful when it is muzzled by a rational, secular society, but should you make the dangerous mistake of allowing it to govern, you'll be granted front row seats to see its true insanity shine."

By: Helen Pluckrose

Published: May 2, 2023

Yesterday, I wrote about whether or not liberalism has failed or whether we are failing to do liberalism. My contention is that it is the latter. No political/ethical/social/economic philosophy can work if we don’t use it. Currently, there simply aren’t enough people consistently defending freedom of belief and speech, opposing the evaluation of individuals by their race, sex or other immutable characteristics and taking an evidence-based reformist (rather than revolutionary or reactionary) approach to social progress for liberalism to work, either in law or in culture. This seems to be due to many liberals having forgotten how to do this consistently and everybody else not wanting to do it in the first place.

This piece is a continuation of this theme by looking at the question of whether liberalism is the best way to defeat Critical Social Justice (CSJ): AKA wokeism. People raise this very reasonable question with me often. I recently had a very angry American gentleman appear randomly on an Instagram post of mine to ask if I will ever have the honesty to admit that I was 100% wrong to urge Americans liberals not to vote for Donald Trump. After reminding me of my own claim that the liberal left is needed to push back the Critical Social Justice left and then informing me of President Biden’s complicity in the promotion of “gender ideology” and “CRT malarkey” he concludes: “When are you going to admit you were wrong and those on the "extreme alt-right" (but really just normal people who are not stupid) were correct about where this would all go?” He then either blocked me or Instagram blocked him so I was unable to reply. I would have said:

I am not in the habit of calling normal people who are not stupid “the extreme alt-right.” Nor would I put conservatives more generally into this category. I particularly respect liberal conservatives trying to address illiberalism on the right. (Well done on the liberal trajectory towards acceptance of same-sex marriage). Nor do I at all deny that a right-wing party would be less tolerant of Critical Social Justice than a left-wing one. This is because CSJ is an illiberal movement on the left. I have been very open in my criticism of this movement and about this being what liberals on the left currently need to work against particularly strongly when a left-wing party is in power. In the same way, liberals on the right have to address illiberalism in their parties particularly strongly when they are in power.

This is why I can be completely honest and say I still think the GOP is “not the solution for anyone who values science and reason and wants to protect a liberal society that defends freedom of belief and speech and viewpoint diversity as well as rigorous scholarship and consistently ethical activism for genuine racial, gender & LGBT equality.” If that wasn’t what you wanted to protect, I was not addressing you. If it was, then we can oppose authoritarian Critical Social Justice together as a legitimate impediment to it, but do pay attention to all the book banning and conspiracy theorizing coming from the right. For me, all the women who no longer have access to abortion & could die due to actions driven by the Republican party when it wasn’t even in power stand out. If you can avoid being a single issue thinker, you might see why somebody could be unconvinced that the GOP is the party more committed to liberal principles right now, even if you still disagree with them.

Single issue thinking is simply not compatible with liberalism. Even an authoritarian wants to protect the freedom of people who agree with them. Unfortunately, it is quite easy for a liberal to become an authoritarian. As the political scientist, Karen Stenner argues and demonstrates in her 2005 book, The Authoritarian Dynamic, authoritarianism is not a stable personality trait but can arise in response to a perceived threat. When we feel ourselves to be secure, humans are most tolerant of difference. When we feel ourselves to be in danger, we are the least tolerant. Jonathan Haidt, discussing authoritarianism in relation to nations and drawing on Stenner’s work says:

Countries seem to move in two directions, along two axes: first, as they industrialize, they move away from “traditional values” in which religion, ritual, and deference to authorities are important, and toward “secular rational” values that are more open to change, progress, and social engineering based on rational considerations. Second, as they grow wealthier and more citizens move into the service sector, nations move away from “survival values” emphasizing the economic and physical security found in one’s family, tribe, and other parochial groups, toward “self-expression” or “emancipative values” that emphasize individual rights and protections—not just for oneself, but as a matter of principle, for everyone.

We have many examples of this phenomenon historically when a relatively stable community faces a threat and responds by becoming intolerant of difference. There is no rational reason at all why the arrival of the Black Death in Europe should have resulted in mass persecution of Jews, but it did. “Survival values” came to the fore during a disaster and intensified in-group bias and out-group hostility even though the out-group was not at all responsible for the disaster? On an individual level, this can take the form of ‘radicalisation’ in which the individual is worked upon to induce a sense of fear and danger from, again, an out-group, which can result in dehumanisation and violence.

It is this switch that can be flipped from emancipative (liberal) values to survival values that can make a liberal an authoritarian and I would suggest that ‘single issue thinking’ can also have this effect. Those of us who focus intensely on one kind of cultural problem need to be particularly careful not to flip this switch in ourselves. It is all too easy for somebody who begins studying a particular cultural issue and starts out with liberal principles which they try to apply consistently to become increasingly anxious and convinced that this is the one big threat to society until they are no longer guided by their principles but determined only to defeat this one thing. This phenomenon is often seen in online political commentators and described with the phrase “If you stare too long into the abyss, the abyss stares back at you.”

Today, one of my readers ( a much more thoughtful Dutchman)* commented on the last essay saying that he thought it was a fair empirical question to ask whether liberalism is the most effective way to combat CSJ. I think he is quite right. However, I would quibble a little and say that the exchange of just one word would produce different answers in my mind.

Is liberalism is the most effective way to combat CSJ?

Probably not, no.

Is liberalism the best way to combat CSJ?

Yes, absolutely. It’s essential.

It depends very much on what your primary aim is. If the primary aim is to get rid of CSJ, then pushing it out with another popular illiberal belief system could well be more effective than trying to get a consensus on the 'live and let live' approach of liberalism. If your primary aim is to live in a liberal society I do not see any other way to achieve that than liberalism.

There really are only two ways to deal with any authoritarian movement that has power and prestige in society.

Become more strongly liberal and fully & consistently insist upon people's rights to hold and express their own views and not to have others' imposed on them

Put our strength behind whichever authoritarian belief system we dislike least that also has the potential to squash out the ones we dislike most.

While belief systems vary widely, any that gains the cultural power to make the social rules will ultimately either allow people freedom of belief and speech or it won't. If you have to pretend to hold certain political, religious or philosophical views or pretend not to hold the ones you do hold to avoid material harm to your person or livelihood, it is authoritarian. If you are being “held accountable” to anybody else’s religion, politics or philosophy, rather than just reasonable laws and responsibilities of citizenship that apply to everyone, it it is authoritarian.

Yesterday, I said I will not do the Ibram X. Kendi style argument about liberalism: “You can either be liberal or illiberal. There is no such thing as ‘non-liberal.’ When speaking of a worldview that someone holds it can certainly be non-liberal if it does not share the foundational principles of philosophical liberalism but is not authoritarian in that it does not seek to impose any views on or ban any views of other people. I do not intend to tell anyone who is not an authoritarian that they are a philosophical liberal. They could, for example, be a conservative Christian who does not wish to force anybody else to be one. In this case, their own worldview is not liberal, but their attitude towards the religious freedoms of others is.

When it comes to wielding power to make the social rules and penalise dissent, this really can only go one way or the other depending on whether it does penalise dissent or not. There is no such thing as ‘a little bit authoritarian’ or ‘partial freedom of speech.’ Whenever somebody says “I support freedom of speech but…” followed by something that forbids the expression of certain ideas or justifies penalising people for expressing them, they would do better to say that they believe protecting people from certain ideas is more important than freedom of speech. This is a coherent and arguable ethical position. It is just not a liberal one.

I am belabouring this point because it is central to understanding the significance of the question “Is liberalism the best way to defeat wokeness?” The answer to this comes down to whether you see liberalism as a tool to defang a specific ideology or as an end goal in itself.

Take our hypothetical conservative Christian again and put him in a predominantly Muslim country. It is in his interests then to strive for a liberal government and culture as this will enable him freedom of religion. But is it in his principles? We can find out if we move him to a predominantly Christian country. If he still defends freedom of religion even though it now benefits people who are not him and believe things he must think are wrong, it seems very likely that he sees a liberal society as an end goal in itself. If he does not defend freedom of religion but supports or condones authoritarian Christianity, it is very likely he was using liberalism as a tool in a specific situation and his end goal is primarily a Christian society. Again, this is a coherent and arguable ethical position if he believes Christianity to be better for society than freedom of belief. Again, it is not a liberal one.

It is important to be clear about whether you consider liberalism to be your end goal or whether it is a tool in your arsenal for reaching a different end goal. My impression is discussion is that a significant number of people are not clear about this. If you are somebody who considers yourself liberal and opposes the Critical Social Justice movement and its authoritarianism, do you primarily oppose CSJ or authoritarianism? Do you consistently oppose authoritarianism and consider CSJ to be a current, powerful example of it? Or is your primary goal defanging CSJ specifically so that you might consider a range of options including giving an alternative ideology equivalent power to make the social rules and impose them on people?

Of course, practical reality is not so black and white as this, however principled we may be and however committed to liberalism as an end goal. As discussed above, liberals are quite often forced into a ‘lesser of two evils’ position when it comes to voting when neither party is being particularly liberal and the only alternative is not voting at all. Many seem to feel that we are in a similar position now with cultural movements and that it has come to a ‘lesser of two evils’ choice from which, if obtained, it could be easier to work towards liberalism as an end goal. I see their point but I am holding out and would encourage everybody to hold out. I have been accused by a good friend of taking this to an extreme, but I am pretty sure that I would become authoritarian before it came to the situation he describes. Maybe.

==

By: Angel Eduardo

Published: Apr 28, 2022

So much has been said about “wokeness” being a religion that it can fill a book—perhaps several. John McWhorter has written one, and it wouldn’t surprise me if we see more in the next few years. I’ve quibbled with McWhorter a bit about the “religion” label, not simply because many find it inflammatory and it tends to shut conversations down, but also because it really is inaccurate. “Wokeness” isn’t literally a religion. There are legal and institutional reasons this distinction matters, and I often worry that the comparison McWhorter and others make causes more miscommunication than elucidation on the topic.

I can understand the comparison, however. Having grown up Catholic, it’s impossible for me not to see the resemblance. I’ve often said that a great deal of the seemingly insane and incongruous behavior displayed by many of those we call “woke”—and, unsurprisingly, by many of those we call “anti-woke” as well—only makes sense through a religious lens. Much of their precepts are taken on faith rather than evidence; much of their tenets are considered unquestionable; much of their logic seems circular and self-fulfilling; and many of their adherents behave in vicious and intolerant ways toward those who disagree. I still think that’s true, and I think McWhorter is right when he posits that alien anthropologists would have trouble distinguishing these relatively new dogmas from the more standard iron-age fare we’re all used to.

However, I think that same familiarity is causing some of us to misfire when it comes to what we should do about it. A certain cohort seem to believe not just that “wokeness” is a religion, but that it is a replacement religion—a pernicious new ideology meant to fill the hole left by our collective secularism. As we moved away from the church, they argue, we still had that deeply human need for meaning, community, and purpose. We needed something to get us out of bed, to make our lives feel important, and to make ourselves feel a part of something greater. Those desires had to get fulfilled somehow, and what some of us found were the political ideologies currently wreaking havoc on our discourse and institutions. As a result of these new dogmas, we seem hopelessly polarized and incapable of productive communication; we consume ourselves with out-group hostility and in-group factionalizing; and we use social media to feed our worst instincts and desires.

And much like those who look back on exes with rose-colored glasses because they’re miserable being single, the proposed solution is that we should all go back to church.

Given the desperate circumstances and heightened stakes the culture war seems to have created, I can understand the desperation. But we mustn’t make decisions from a place of desperation. There’s a good reason you and your ex broke up. Trading dogma for dogma is no solution at all.

Yes, our pattern-seeking brains are hard-wired to search for and create meaning amid life’s chaos. We are deeply social animals and have evolved to crave community and connection. We’re soothed by ritual, comforted by camaraderie, and need to feel a sense of purpose in our lives. Religions have historically provided these things, but at an incredibly high risk of intolerant and sometimes murderous dogmatism and tribalism, resistance and hostility toward scientific and social progress, and centuries of warfare and oppression. Let’s not forget just how steep that price has been, or else we might find ourselves a bit too enthusiastic about going backward.

I understand that plenty of people would resent the idea that returning to church is going backward. They believe that secularism was the true regress—particularly with respect to fulfilling those desires for meaning, community, and purpose. I, of course, must disagree. I often liken being traditionally religious today to running Windows 95 on a brand new MacBook Pro. You’re free to do it, and it may work for you, but there are far better ways to get what you want and more without the obvious drawbacks and outdated operating system. The energy you’ll inevitably put into working out all the bugs to make your system compatible with the twenty-first century would be better spent simply developing a new one. That doesn’t mean the new ones will automatically be good for us, however. We’re still human, after all, and prone to the same failings as our ancestors. If these political ideologies are serving as sources of meaning and purpose for people, it’s because a better alternative has yet to be presented—not because it’s impossible.

I happen to know that we can find meaning, community, and connection without believing a single thing on insufficient evidence, hating a single human being, or devolving into factions of rancor and division. I know because I’ve done it, and I’m far from alone. All it takes is an acknowledgement of what we know is true about the world around us and a broader perspective on what makes us human.

Look around. We are, each of us, interlocking and overlapping circles of identity and individuality, both unique and unified in our differences. We share 99 percent of our DNA, and yet within that 1 percent we are breathtakingly diverse and multifaceted. We are each a singular, inimitable expression of beauty and wonder; children existing within a fraction of an eye blink of history. We are individual waves in one ocean—together but apart, one and a multitude, infinitesimal and infinite. Everyone I meet is at once a stranger and my own long lost sibling. I see myself in them and them in me. We are, as Carl Sagan once said, a way for the cosmos to know itself. We are stardust. Every atom in our bodies, and in everything we see around us, was forged in the heart of a star, billions of years ago. We are, as George Carlin once put it, simultaneously greater than, lesser than, and equal to the universe. In a concrete, fundamental way, we are all manifestations of the cosmos—colliding, arguing, and disagreeing, but also uniting, befriending, loving, and working together to build a better world for ourselves and, by extension, for others.

Every word of that is true. It requires no faith, causes no hatred, and insists on no dogma. It’s also beautiful and can serve as the core of a sensible, scientific, and secular kind of spirituality.

I’ve always found it strange that the question “What is the meaning of life?” is considered unanswerable. The answer is in the capacity to ask the question. The meaning of life is to experience it and make it as good as we can for as many of us as we can. We will never be here again, and that is why every moment is a gift. Consciousness is its own reward.

Many people claim not to be moved by these notions, but I can’t fathom what could be greater, more numinous, more edifying, more unifying, and more comforting than the idea that we are at once in, of, and about the universe. If we’re looking to fill a God-shaped hole, we need look no further than ourselves and one another. We created that hole to begin with.

Our current political ideologies are terrible substitutes for the things we’re looking for, it’s true. There’s still a baby we haven’t quite figured out how to completely save without the bathwater—but that’s not an argument for keeping the bathwater. Religions had a head start by a few millennia, so it’s unsurprising that they’re further along and still getting by despite their flaws. To say that the psychologically and socially positive aspects of religion haven’t been adequately replaced isn’t a sign of failure; it’s a statement of purpose. It means that there’s still a great deal of exploration and discovery ahead of us.

I’m ready for it.

Honestly, right now it's the woke.

The reason is that we've been living with religious bullshit for a long time and we've grown accustomed to how to deal with it. When it comes to the imposition of any given religion, both non-believers and those from any other religion are able to, and comfortable with, pushing back, leveraging principles of secularism.

“'I don’t believe what you believe, and I don’t have to. I defend your right to hold, express and live by your own belief system, but you have no right to impose any of it on me.’

This statement is the essence of secularism and it is absolutely central to liberal democracy. In a secular, liberal democracy, we mandate tolerance of a plurality of worldviews and we encourage a positive attitude to diversity of thought as productive of greater understanding and broader knowledge. Restrictions on what others may believe, say and do are reserved for behaviours that directly harm other people or prevent them from believing, saying and doing what they believe to be right. But what happens when an ideology that holds that beliefs other than its own are directly harmful to or oppressive of others and society fails to recognize that ideology as a belief system in itself, to which the statement cited above should apply? Then we get what we are seeing right now.”

(Source)

On top of this, there are usually constitutional and legal edicts to prevent such imposition - separation of church and state, freedom of religion, freedom of belief, etc.

The battle against religion has been long fought, but we have the weapons to combat it, we have the experience, and all indicators are that religion is on the decline. We can decline to participate, insist that we are not obliged to, and feel no guilt for this. We just have to persevere, and counter each assault the way we always have.

Wokeness has attained institutional power at the highest levels of education, corporate, including social media, and even government, and it's still ascendant. It is not the Rebellion, it is the Empire; nobody is being punished for subscribing to woke ideology, only punished for not subscribing. It's being imposed on entire companies, schools, entertainment, and other institutions in a way religions could only dream of.

Remember the plumbing company that went viral over forced prayer? From Sandia to Coca-Cola to Bank of America, that sort of compelled speech is happening all over the place in the name of "diversity, equity and inclusion," words that sound good, but don't mean what they sound like (this is intentional, BTW). And people don't have the same recourse.

People don't know how to resist its imposition onto them, or even that they're allowed to. They're being told (gaslit) that if they disagree with it, it's only because they don't understand it, or because they're a dirty sinner (guilty of some -ism). You have to navigate Kafka traps, Motte and Baileys, loaded questions and weaponized empathy, and if you get to the end of that maze, you still have to worry about cancelation (modern day witch burning).

The battle with wokeness is new, and we don't have solid defences against it, have some track record of success keeping its illiberalism at bay, and all indicators are that it's currently on the rise. Although there is some awareness growing of what it's doing. We can't always decline to participate, nor insist that we're not obliged to, and guilt is heaved in our direction for this.

This is why I talk about it in religious terms. I don't really care if it exactly matches up with any definition of religion. That’s not the point. As they say, “perfect is the enemy of good.” It’s a way to view the ideology in terms of other things we understand and deal with. So once you start to see the parallels, that secular architecture in your mind activates and you can start to decide for yourself what you believe, and how you are willing to express that belief, whether you’re willing to be compelled to say things that aren’t true or signal things you don’t believe when you wouldn’t put up with this from Xianity, Islam, etc.

And no, this is not a defence of religion, or what it’s capable of or what it’s doing right now. My point is that we can see and understand religions and criticize them openly and without guilt. Wokeness has unearned deference and reverence and is getting special treatment traditional religions do not; or at least, that we know we’re not obliged to. It’s being given power and authority it has not earned, with claims that have not been proven, in a way we don’t give to religions.

And that we need to get to the same place with the Critical Social Justice theology as well. Until we do, we’re not going to have much hope of reining it in the way we can rein in the traditional religions.