Late anthropologist Ernest Gellner wrote: “the tribe has fallen apart, the shrine is abandoned.” In fractures from those broken bonds, dangerous ideologies grow.
Thanks, as ever. This writing is why you are one of the very few I'll pay money to read. In an account of her early life in Mao's China, Jung Chang wrote, in 'Wild Swans', of her reaction as she began to grasp that her's, her imprisoned family's and her fellow citizens' revered hero was not the figure in whom she'd been taught since birth to have faith. Her first reaction was panic - not at being mistreated in the ingeniously unpleasant ways the Chinese Communist Party treated (and still treats) its dissidents. Hers was the alarm that accompanied waking from a dream; of abruptly comprehending the depth of her indoctrination and the duplicity in which she had innocently cooperated. Nietzsche wrote 'Madness is rare in the individual - but with groups, parties, peoples, and ages it is the rule'. Charles Mackay, about the same time, wrote in his 'Extraordinary Popular Delusions' [1841] 'Men, it is said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses more slowly, and one by one.' I've been a centrist dad much of my life, growing up within a woke ascendancy. Finding myself thinking as you do (though not so eloquently) still comes as a surprise.
Argh! That's my dad you're talking about there! About which I harbour far too much to attempt to address here.
But suffice to say my trajectory initiated partly by teenage rebellion has been very similar to yours (though I must be a couple of decades older). To the extent that I'm sure my father and I would agree on many points nowadays.
Thank you for sharing! It's wild, isn't it? I often think of my very Catholic grandfather, who was like a pariah among his very lefty children, but whose values I appreciate way more now...Even though I'm nowhere near as religious as he was.
It's true that a shared culture shaped by Christianity is under assault and getting harder to find. This is, of course, a loss to Western Civilization. But ultimately, we die as individuals, and we face God as individuals when we depart this planet for eternity. Stay close to Jesus Christ as prophesied in the Old Testament and revealed in the New Testament.
All three military men, burghers, landed gentry are deeply assimilated. Rules with status. When their world destabilizes, they seek the next most structured system that preserves their status. It looks like progress, but it’s just re-assimilation, like a costume change.
And status!! But to give these men something of a break, the information war they were subjected to (ie regime lies) was actually quite sophisticated. So that should be taken into account as well. They were given plenty of ballast upon which to hold their views.
Isn's this the mass formation theory? It aligns with my experience: the shock of watching the real hippies of Oregon display their covid vaccination status proudly on lanyards. And the women and men defending boys on my daughter's sports team and in her hotel room and their own daughter's medicalization of puberty or gayness. I am only now really recovering from the instability all that caused in me. Now, even as real attempts at fixing our culture/ government are attempted in the US, I see them doubling down and heading to protests. Dizzying.
That's an interesting point, it is a bit like mass formation although I would say it's a lot more circumscribed. Definitely adjacent. I don't think this particular group of 'respectable' people is under a psychosis, but more a respectability trap. The hippies who love Big Pharma on the other hand...
I see mass formation as a parallel process. It describes the group hysteria/psychosis but not the motivation that leads to it. The motivation is assimilation into a more powerful group for safety/protection/respect.
Likely the attachment was never to the ideas, but to the accepted culture. When the accepted culture moved, so too did their ideas. Sort-of status, but does it ever raise to the level of consciously adopting the ideas in order to present an image? Or are they just instinctively conforming?
The word I use is assimilation. It goes beyond conforming because it involves adopting and internalising popular beliefs of the in-group as an expression of their new identity. They need to convincingly signal their new status - for themselves and others in the group.
I just love Jenny's analysis that inspired these comments!
When I hear “assimilation” I think of a transition from “out” to “in”. Whereas I think many people continuously update their views to remain with a perceived Overton Window without really being aware that they are doing so
This is true even when someone deliberately chooses to hold a counter-cultural view - they choose a different Overton Window but then fine-tune their beliefs with their chosen Window and community. Being aware of this is helpful, as you can at least notice belief-drift and choose to accept or reset it
Really interesting, definitely going to look up that book. I think there is something in what you wrote. Many have commented on the sense of ‘moral superiority’ a lot of ‘woke’ adherents appear to assume. Maybe they are outwardly showing the world they are part of something exclusive. I often get a sense of “you might think my ideas are crazy, but that’s because you don’t exist on my level of knowledge. You can’t see what I see”.
As an ideology, I’ve always seen it as mostly an upper middle class (or children of) affliction. You only have to look at the media (BBC, Guardian) or the Universities in America (which would cost a fortune to attend).
In addition to working class people having more important things to get on with than wonder which radical academics biased views they are going treat as gospel.
Anyway! I didn’t change, they did! I didn’t leave the left, it left me 😢
Long long ago when TV in our house in England was B & W, there was series featuring a brain who could explain everything. My dad said he was v clever but that his manner was along the lines of "How can I, a genius, explain these complex ideas, so straightforward to me, so that you the viewer will be able to understand them?"
Well, I both read and listened. Great analysis, Jenny! The human structures most depend on are of forms which are not able to be naturally sustained! Brittle and rigid, doctrines and dogmas, crystalline in their construction, are held together by an electricity, like a static charge, crafted by abrasion, a rubbing together of similar things that dissipates instantly when conducted! A facsimile of the psychic power of the Cosmos, the human spark shorts out! Woe is us! And so, the brave and courageous, naive in experience, journey in the wilderness in search of Beauty and Clarity! Totally terrified!
Oooh, I like that -- especially the static charge. That's exactly what you feel when you say something unmentionable in the wrong company -- like an electric shock that goes through your interlocutor.
And thanks for listening! I'm never sure if people use that little feature.
I used to think about moral posturing on people’s part, what now seems to fall largely under the rubric of virtue signaling. People profess all kinds of things that they don’t understand or really believe in. I’m not talking about hypocrisy. People say things or profess beliefs that make them sound good to others and themselves. It’s pretty natural. Most people are not very reflective or insightful and never ask themselves, why am spewing fashionable nonsense.There is an economist, who tends to spew total nonsense, Bryan Caplan, who made one good point when I listened to him. That is in polls people will express all sorts of pros and cons with regard to things. Yet, you’ll notice these alleged preferences don’t actually effect their behavior.
So what happens is a fog of the zeitgeist descends on people and they say yes or no no. It sounds good to them. That’s a hard thing to deal with.
Is this a case of "strong men create good times, good times create weak men, weak men create bad times, bad times create strong men", and the You Are Here arrow points at the third step? Because we took the underpinnings of the good times for granted or, worse, as "problematic" or superfluous?
I saw a meme thing a few weeks ago -- two panels -- which went something like: "I despise Christianity" "I will exploit your Christian feelings" (wish I could remember exactly, grrr). Anyhow, I think that is very astute of Geller, and explains a lot about how it is indeed because the shrine is abandoned and the catch phrases of the previous creed still known but their context and purpose not, that the populace is essentially has no immunity to those who use those phrases and sentiments for their own, quite opposed purposes. This works in both the context of religion, and, I would argue in our civic "religion" where women and men were slotted into the black and white places, straight and gay replacing them, trans and cis replacing them, etc.
On a slightly different note, in my experience of our horrific epoch of failed institutions and mistaken reliances, it has been my "moderate" friends who have shifted way to the left and dropped me, actively or passively, and the closer friends who've stuck with me further left than average. My staunch Republican friend who worked in Congress -- gone. My cousins who were quite conservative Catholics -- now back ranting on Facebook about Trump after a quiet Biden period. Another cousin, highly materialistic from childhood, who was saving babysitting money for her trousseau (in the sixties and seventies!), ranting against her sorority sisters who didn't hold out for a 2 carat engagement in the eighties, indeed marrying a go getter guy and ending up with all the toys after the go getter guy got onto military contracting gravy train -- she's now ranting on Facebook about her devotion to Heather Cox Richardson!
This made me think of the quote “Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, and weak men create hard times". Arguably we are in the ‘good times’ phase wherein ‘weakness’ in the form of irrationality has been implanted.
I also consider the demise of Christianity in the West to be at the heart of the moral, intellectual and psychological fall we are experiencing. And I’m not religious!
Brilliant! I thought it was just women following fashion as always. But with the elimination of the reality check of genuine journalism, there is no check for these misguided souls.
Thanks, as ever. This writing is why you are one of the very few I'll pay money to read. In an account of her early life in Mao's China, Jung Chang wrote, in 'Wild Swans', of her reaction as she began to grasp that her's, her imprisoned family's and her fellow citizens' revered hero was not the figure in whom she'd been taught since birth to have faith. Her first reaction was panic - not at being mistreated in the ingeniously unpleasant ways the Chinese Communist Party treated (and still treats) its dissidents. Hers was the alarm that accompanied waking from a dream; of abruptly comprehending the depth of her indoctrination and the duplicity in which she had innocently cooperated. Nietzsche wrote 'Madness is rare in the individual - but with groups, parties, peoples, and ages it is the rule'. Charles Mackay, about the same time, wrote in his 'Extraordinary Popular Delusions' [1841] 'Men, it is said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses more slowly, and one by one.' I've been a centrist dad much of my life, growing up within a woke ascendancy. Finding myself thinking as you do (though not so eloquently) still comes as a surprise.
Argh! That's my dad you're talking about there! About which I harbour far too much to attempt to address here.
But suffice to say my trajectory initiated partly by teenage rebellion has been very similar to yours (though I must be a couple of decades older). To the extent that I'm sure my father and I would agree on many points nowadays.
Have forwarded your link to my siblings . .
Thank you for sharing! It's wild, isn't it? I often think of my very Catholic grandfather, who was like a pariah among his very lefty children, but whose values I appreciate way more now...Even though I'm nowhere near as religious as he was.
It's true that a shared culture shaped by Christianity is under assault and getting harder to find. This is, of course, a loss to Western Civilization. But ultimately, we die as individuals, and we face God as individuals when we depart this planet for eternity. Stay close to Jesus Christ as prophesied in the Old Testament and revealed in the New Testament.
Intriguing piece!
All three military men, burghers, landed gentry are deeply assimilated. Rules with status. When their world destabilizes, they seek the next most structured system that preserves their status. It looks like progress, but it’s just re-assimilation, like a costume change.
Yes, 'costume change' is a perfect way to describe it. Woke ideas are now the fabric of polite society.
That is such an interesting observation. You just hit the hail on the head.
I personally saw it with certain men during Covid- I was shocked. You just put a puzzle piece in place for me along Jenny’s astute essay.
Thank you SW! I didn't even think about covid response by these men but yes, it does make sense. Assimilation = protection.
And status!! But to give these men something of a break, the information war they were subjected to (ie regime lies) was actually quite sophisticated. So that should be taken into account as well. They were given plenty of ballast upon which to hold their views.
Isn's this the mass formation theory? It aligns with my experience: the shock of watching the real hippies of Oregon display their covid vaccination status proudly on lanyards. And the women and men defending boys on my daughter's sports team and in her hotel room and their own daughter's medicalization of puberty or gayness. I am only now really recovering from the instability all that caused in me. Now, even as real attempts at fixing our culture/ government are attempted in the US, I see them doubling down and heading to protests. Dizzying.
That's an interesting point, it is a bit like mass formation although I would say it's a lot more circumscribed. Definitely adjacent. I don't think this particular group of 'respectable' people is under a psychosis, but more a respectability trap. The hippies who love Big Pharma on the other hand...
I see mass formation as a parallel process. It describes the group hysteria/psychosis but not the motivation that leads to it. The motivation is assimilation into a more powerful group for safety/protection/respect.
Likely the attachment was never to the ideas, but to the accepted culture. When the accepted culture moved, so too did their ideas. Sort-of status, but does it ever raise to the level of consciously adopting the ideas in order to present an image? Or are they just instinctively conforming?
The word I use is assimilation. It goes beyond conforming because it involves adopting and internalising popular beliefs of the in-group as an expression of their new identity. They need to convincingly signal their new status - for themselves and others in the group.
I just love Jenny's analysis that inspired these comments!
Agree on Jenny’s comments
When I hear “assimilation” I think of a transition from “out” to “in”. Whereas I think many people continuously update their views to remain with a perceived Overton Window without really being aware that they are doing so
This is true even when someone deliberately chooses to hold a counter-cultural view - they choose a different Overton Window but then fine-tune their beliefs with their chosen Window and community. Being aware of this is helpful, as you can at least notice belief-drift and choose to accept or reset it
Really interesting, definitely going to look up that book. I think there is something in what you wrote. Many have commented on the sense of ‘moral superiority’ a lot of ‘woke’ adherents appear to assume. Maybe they are outwardly showing the world they are part of something exclusive. I often get a sense of “you might think my ideas are crazy, but that’s because you don’t exist on my level of knowledge. You can’t see what I see”.
As an ideology, I’ve always seen it as mostly an upper middle class (or children of) affliction. You only have to look at the media (BBC, Guardian) or the Universities in America (which would cost a fortune to attend).
In addition to working class people having more important things to get on with than wonder which radical academics biased views they are going treat as gospel.
Anyway! I didn’t change, they did! I didn’t leave the left, it left me 😢
Long long ago when TV in our house in England was B & W, there was series featuring a brain who could explain everything. My dad said he was v clever but that his manner was along the lines of "How can I, a genius, explain these complex ideas, so straightforward to me, so that you the viewer will be able to understand them?"
"affluenza"
Brilliant!
A great post! And brilliantly written.
Thank you!
Well, I both read and listened. Great analysis, Jenny! The human structures most depend on are of forms which are not able to be naturally sustained! Brittle and rigid, doctrines and dogmas, crystalline in their construction, are held together by an electricity, like a static charge, crafted by abrasion, a rubbing together of similar things that dissipates instantly when conducted! A facsimile of the psychic power of the Cosmos, the human spark shorts out! Woe is us! And so, the brave and courageous, naive in experience, journey in the wilderness in search of Beauty and Clarity! Totally terrified!
Oooh, I like that -- especially the static charge. That's exactly what you feel when you say something unmentionable in the wrong company -- like an electric shock that goes through your interlocutor.
And thanks for listening! I'm never sure if people use that little feature.
I didn't even know that little feature existed. Not paying attention, I guess.
I used to think about moral posturing on people’s part, what now seems to fall largely under the rubric of virtue signaling. People profess all kinds of things that they don’t understand or really believe in. I’m not talking about hypocrisy. People say things or profess beliefs that make them sound good to others and themselves. It’s pretty natural. Most people are not very reflective or insightful and never ask themselves, why am spewing fashionable nonsense.There is an economist, who tends to spew total nonsense, Bryan Caplan, who made one good point when I listened to him. That is in polls people will express all sorts of pros and cons with regard to things. Yet, you’ll notice these alleged preferences don’t actually effect their behavior.
So what happens is a fog of the zeitgeist descends on people and they say yes or no no. It sounds good to them. That’s a hard thing to deal with.
That's a good point. People tend to say what they think the questioner wants to hear.
You pack more substantive, thought-provoking ideas into a short essay than most Substackers do in 4,000-word manifestos.
Ah, Irwin, thank you! I needed to hear that today! 💜
Is this a case of "strong men create good times, good times create weak men, weak men create bad times, bad times create strong men", and the You Are Here arrow points at the third step? Because we took the underpinnings of the good times for granted or, worse, as "problematic" or superfluous?
Yes. Sums it up nicely. That saying is the most concise description of what is happening.
We totally took the good times for granted, and rejected their underpinnings altogether. It is quite heartbreaking to think of it.
luxury beliefs from limousine liberals...everyone reaches for them at our collective peril.
Pretty much.
I saw a meme thing a few weeks ago -- two panels -- which went something like: "I despise Christianity" "I will exploit your Christian feelings" (wish I could remember exactly, grrr). Anyhow, I think that is very astute of Geller, and explains a lot about how it is indeed because the shrine is abandoned and the catch phrases of the previous creed still known but their context and purpose not, that the populace is essentially has no immunity to those who use those phrases and sentiments for their own, quite opposed purposes. This works in both the context of religion, and, I would argue in our civic "religion" where women and men were slotted into the black and white places, straight and gay replacing them, trans and cis replacing them, etc.
On a slightly different note, in my experience of our horrific epoch of failed institutions and mistaken reliances, it has been my "moderate" friends who have shifted way to the left and dropped me, actively or passively, and the closer friends who've stuck with me further left than average. My staunch Republican friend who worked in Congress -- gone. My cousins who were quite conservative Catholics -- now back ranting on Facebook about Trump after a quiet Biden period. Another cousin, highly materialistic from childhood, who was saving babysitting money for her trousseau (in the sixties and seventies!), ranting against her sorority sisters who didn't hold out for a 2 carat engagement in the eighties, indeed marrying a go getter guy and ending up with all the toys after the go getter guy got onto military contracting gravy train -- she's now ranting on Facebook about her devotion to Heather Cox Richardson!
This made me think of the quote “Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, and weak men create hard times". Arguably we are in the ‘good times’ phase wherein ‘weakness’ in the form of irrationality has been implanted.
I also consider the demise of Christianity in the West to be at the heart of the moral, intellectual and psychological fall we are experiencing. And I’m not religious!
I have nothing clever to add so I'll just say thanks.
Brilliant! I thought it was just women following fashion as always. But with the elimination of the reality check of genuine journalism, there is no check for these misguided souls.