Divided We Stand: A War Of Thought
[Writer’s Note: This was originally posted on my website on 6/22/2020. There is a full podcast in video and audio format covering this article.]
I normally do not find it useful to use words like war in a context outside of their explicit meaning, especially when they should be reserved for the harsh and violent actions they depict, but we are not in normal times. Our politics have always been a blood sport, more or less, but now it almost exclusively results in each side standing their ground and accusing the other of being evil. But is this sour discourse and bad-faith debate inherent in politics, or is it a symptom of an underlying cause we tend to ignore? I have a few thoughts on why it is the later claim.
Let me start by making a claim that will turn most people off to this article entirely: President Trump is a symptom of division, not a cause of it. There, now that basically no one from either side likes me, let us continue.
There is a common theme to many of the articles I write. This theme is taken from a popular quote from Andrew Breitbart saying, “politics is downstream from culture.” This is the main reason why I believe the culture has gone corrupt which is manifesting itself in our politics, especially considering politics is just the study of people. We have been dividing ourselves as a people, highlighting our differences using arbitrary characteristics like race, well before our politicians decided to weaponize inequality and injustice based on these characteristics. Because this conversation went into the political sphere, we now find it convenient to blame politicians rather than look at our own behavior. I know this to be true because I have done it myself.
It is a hard thing to recognize your faults instead of blaming the symptoms on others. There is a story in the Bible that teaches us to look inward at our own faults before condemning others. Now, I am sure not everyone reading this is an avid reader of the Bible or a believer at all, but the Bible is a collection of stories meant to teach how we ought to interact with the world and the teachings are useful whether or not you are a believer. In the Gospel of John in chapter 8, there was a woman who was accused of adultery, a sin punishable by stoning. The people condemning the woman for this grave sin brought her to Jesus to affirm this condemnation, but Jesus said, “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.” (John 8:7 [KJV]) In the end, there was no stoning because no one is without sin. The lesson from this story is we must be able to challenge our own sins and flaws before going around condemning everyone else. The famous Rule 6 in Dr. Jordan Peterson’s book, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote To Chaos, goes through the same idea by stating, “Set your house in perfect order before you criticize the world.” Perhaps if we practiced this a little bit more, we would find real solutions to our cultural problems, but that does not completely explain why we are where we are today.
Since we are on the religious theme, we might as well look into the secular religion of Woke-ism. The religion of Woke-ism uses the same mechanisms as a traditional religion to dictate a new set of moral standards. The death of God left a vacuum to be filled with a secular ideology to serve as our moral compass. Woke-sim, which has its roots in Marxist philosophy, is the belief that social hierarchies are mechanisms of oppression. This is why Woke-ism demands ambiguity between the sexes, a critical rethinking of the justice system, the complete dissolve of the nation-state, and elimination of free market capitalism. All these structures naturally result in some sort of hierarchy where the people on top (the oppressors) stand on the shoulders of those on the bottom (the oppressed).
Throughout modern history, one of the obligations of who we consider the Left is to tear down hierarchies, which is not always a bad thing. In fact, this role has been one of the most important responsibilities fulfilled throughout human history. Opposing this role has traditionally been an obligation of the Right who defend hierarchies because hierarchies are naturally occurring in human, and even animal, behavior and do serve an important role. Hierarchies do become rigid over time and they must be knocked down before they become corrupt but knocking them down prematurely while they still serve an important purpose to society is very harmful as well. For more information on what social factors and personality characteristics that predispose (not predetermine) the individual to embracing a more Left or Right political stance, I highly recommend Jonathan Haidt’s book The Righteous Mind. I would go into more detail here, but that would add quite a bit of length to this article.
Dr. Jordan Peterson explained, during one of his many talks, the differences in understanding of the Left and Right in the American context compared to the European context. I bring this up because hierarchies played the main role in this difference. Dr. Peterson explained the American context of Left and Right dive more into specific issues like economics and the view of freedom over equality, or vice versa. He goes on to explain the European context has more to do with the roles I explained before. The Right builds up hierarchies, and the Left knocks them down. This is the balance between order and chaos, and we must always have a little of both. (Note: Unfortunately, I could not find the clip of Dr. Peterson’s talk about this subject because there are thousands of them out there. If a reader could find it, I will add the talk as a reference and link it to this article.)
Using this understanding, I find the most likely cause of the corrupt culture we are seeing today is a combination of these two theories: (1) The Left has knocked down almost every relevant hierarchy, good or bad, using their power and influence in media, entertainment, and education that has resulted in them building their own hierarchy to fill the void which they refuse to acknowledge. (2) The Right must now take up the traditional role of the Left in knocking down the hierarchy built by the Left, but the Right has no idea how to do so. This is why the typical arguments given by the Right, fact and logic-based arguments from conservatives more specifically, have not slowed down the spread of Woke-ism who do not rely on facts or logic. And this is also why the Right, who associate themselves with the Republican party in the US, nominated a lifelong Democrat like Donald Trump because he understands the language of the Left.
Just like the Right attempting to fill the opposing role, the Left is also struggling to regulate their own hierarchy because that is not a role they are used to filling. You see this in the volatility of acceptable behaviors allowable under the Woke moral system. 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. No one is sufficiently far enough Left if their ideas and world view do not continue to trend further and further Leftward, yet we see influential figures and large corporations virtue signal and adopt these far-Left ideas. We see this because Woke-ism has established its own currency.
I explain the idea of social capital in an article I wrote titled The Free Market Of Ideas. Social capital is the accumulation of social value that can be used at a later time or spent on self-fulfillment, and much like monetary capital, there are different forms with varying value in each marketplace. Think of traditional social capital, or the trade of trust, shared values, and social reciprocity, as the gold standard. This is considered the gold standard because it has the same basic value in each marketplace. Think of treating others with respect to trade for more respect back in return. It is not always a perfect return on investment, but most cultures recognize this exchange of social goods. The new Woke-ism currency being bought and sold now is what I call Woke Capital.
Woke Capital is more similar to counterfeit currency. Counterfeit currency does not always lack value as long as the person trading for the currency still believes it holds value, but it is not tied to any definable value making it extremely volatile and devalues real currency. This Woke Capital volatility incentivizes behavior like cancel and callout culture because of its demands on destroying hierarchies while building one up at the same time. This is why large corporations like Starbucks buy Woke Capital by supporting causes like Black Lives Matter (BLM) in the hopes of earning more support from the Woke crowd, but then still get accused of oppressing others by participating in the evil capitalist system. They are praised for a short period of time for their virtue signal, but then torn down because their Woke Capital has plunged in value after it is exposed for being counterfeit. This also devalues real currency (social capital) by harming the core value exchange, which is trust. This is because it has no real value, but corporations and talking heads are buying hoping they never get canceled.
As we can see from the long list of people who have had their careers and personal lives hurt or ruined by others digging into their past and finding dumb things they said when they were young, especially when they get their first chance to climb an established hierarchy, the cancel and call out culture will come for everyone eventually no matter how Woke they present themselves that day. 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 do not believe hard enough, and then finally comes for the revolutionaries of the ideology 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 is time for the crowd to give their applause, do not ever be the first to stop applauding. The question is, how do we fight this?
We cannot fight this using facts and logic alone, as I briefly stated at the beginning of the article, because Woke-ism does not recognize facts and logic that do not affirm the religion. This is also why the Right has such a hard time fighting against Woke-ism because the main tool of the Right is citing books filled with facts and figures laying out the trade-offs necessary to promote freedom that will lead to prosperity, but that is not always a compelling argument to a person who is constantly told they are being oppressed. Many political and cultural commentators believe we must fight the emotionally charged language of the Left with more emotionally charged language from the Right, but this will only amplify the emotion of both sides which is never a good way to solve a problem. The best way to make the cultural shift we need to strike a balance between order and chaos is to expose the underlying illness causing the symptoms.
This illness is lack of meaning. It is easy to lose the meaning of life when we have grown so comfortable with the lives we have now and only find meaning in our own happiness. Every adult knows they cannot always be happy, but they can be in a perpetual state of shifting accountability so they can blame their lack of happiness on to someone or something else. This is only natural if we come to the conclusion that meaning is only tied to happiness, fairness, and prosperity. The world has no obligation to make you happy. The world has no obligation to be fair. The world certainly has no obligation to fill the hole in your life with riches and prosperity. This is not what meaning is meant to be.
Meaning can be derived from purpose. The English philosopher John Locke referred to the “pursuit of happiness” in his book titled An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. This concept was later used by Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence. Some people take this concept as happiness being owed to them, almost like an entitlement, just for living and breathing. That is not the point. The purpose comes from the pursuit of an end goal, like true happiness. Jefferson makes a point that life and liberty are prerequisites for that pursuit. Happiness just given to you with no pursuit is just imaginary happiness. It is not sustainable. The pursuit is what gives purpose which yields meaning. Bringing meaning back into our lives will fill the void that is currently being filled with the volatile nature of Woke-ism. So, the solution is to go to Antifa protests and hand out written works by John Locke right? Not quite.
Many illnesses, especially considering how much this illness has infected the culture already, can take some time to treat, but that does not mean it is not treatable. Taking back some of the institutions used to spread the word of Woke-ism is the first step to spread the antidote of meaning. Supporting anti-Woke journalists, entertainers, and professors and defending them against the Woke mob will help in this effort. Finding ways to talk to people of opposing views and explain what gives you meaning in your life is another great way to spread the message. By creating a counterculture that treats people with respect and values their opinion is the best way to fight against cancel culture as long as those opinions do not fight against the liberty of others (we can callout real racism). Leading by example by showing what gives you meaning is an effective way to make this cure contagious. It will take time, but we must persist.
I hope by now you can reread the claim I made at the beginning of this article and understand why I made it. President Trump is a divisive figure to most, but he did not cause the corrupt culture we see today. And I am not writing this piece as a defense of the president. I have plenty disagreements with his policy and actions, but public figures like President Trump, and even President Obama, should not be the accountability shields we desire to deflect blame. We must take inventory of the mistakes we made that contributed to our current cultural climate and learn from them, not weaponize the mistakes of others. The only way we can rebuild the cultural fabric of society is accepting our mistakes and moving forward united. United we stand, divided we fall.
P.S. If you are still reading, and I hope you are, I will be republishing my writing from my website on Medium so there may be some older stories I cover, although I do not often cover current events. I shut down my website because I have changed my main resource of communication and content hosting to Locals.com. Although I will be publishing my long-form written content on Medium, you can find my more regular content, podcasts, and interactive community at engineeringpolitics.locals.com. Please feel free to join this growing community if you want to stay up to date and/or support this content. Thank you for your consideration!
Note: None of the persons, podcasts, or books referenced above reflect my ideas and personal beliefs, nor should they be held accountable for anything published on this site in the future.
