
The End of Identity Liberalism - nafizh
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/11/20/opinion/sunday/the-end-of-identity-liberalism.html
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angersock
I consider myself fairly progressive in my politics, and am quite annoyed that
Trump got elected. I'd like to think that folks like me are on the right side
of history.

That said, one of the biggest missteps in progressive popular rhetoric that
we've made in the last five years has got to be the increasing reliance on
identity politics when engaging the opposition.

Concepts like intersectionality, privilege, erasure, and so forth can be quite
useful in an _academic_ setting. They can shed a lot of light on how to view
issues of diversity and give some insights in to how we can evaluate different
social and cultural structures. They can enable somebody performing analyses
to help acknowledge and account for their own biases, producing higher-quality
work.

In an _informal_ or _public_ setting however those same ideas tend to be
distorted and misused by people, being used to do such things as assign guilt
and blame and to erect unimpeachable rhetorical positions that prevent good-
faith discussion.

In trying to acknowledge minorities and their plights the untrained or the
emotional will often throw back in somebody's face supposed privilege, and
dismiss any statement as being valueless because of who it comes from. The
untrained will sideline themselves with intersectionality arguments that
require that _everyone_ must be recognized and have a seat at the table before
_anybody_ individually does, and in so doing deadlock efforts to make progress
lest some tiny splinter be left behind. Folks will make arguments about being
erased and having violence committed against them for such minor things as
their opponents being bad with pronouns or pointing out factual inaccuracies.

This strategy many of our side have adopted, and it's a strategy that others
people we should be trying to reach. It antagonizes those who might otherwise
be our allies, because it denies their shared humanity with us because they
don't have the correct skin color or bank balance or upbringing or culture.

And perhaps worst of all, it inflames the passions and biases the vocabulary
such that, when a _real_ threat does come along, we are unable to speak out
and be taken seriously.

We have to leave the lens of identity and related tools back in the contexts
where they help, not hurt, understanding.

~~~
internaut
I think you are mistaken in thinking this is a temporary reset.

I believe that there exist giant but difficult to see cycles in our social
world which occur on the order of every 50 or 100 years.

Around 1973 wage growth halted for 60-80% of workers in the West. As you can
imagine, economic cycles and social cycles are linked, even if they are not
the same and one lags the other.

The next generation after the millennials is not progressive, it is much
further to the right than the right of the present. To cut a long story short
I believe that the phenomenon we see in Israel with the young people there is
going to spread to Europe and America.

My tentative guess is that this left/right divide we talk of, is actually tens
of thousands of years old and is buried into our source code, our DNA.

It would make sense, would it not, since 'being wrong' politically usually
meant death for whoever didn't turn out to be our ancestors.

It follows that 'changing our perspective' or 'education' is not going to
work, that is thinking on the software level when the bug/feature is coming
out of the hardware.

To give you a quick run down of what I think is on the cards.

\- Root and branch purge (ex-STEM) of the universities for monetary and
ideological reasons (looks like starting in Japan).

\- Gen Z becomes the most right wing in living memory.

\- Social programs go bankrupt. No Pensions. End of social democracy.

\- Transnational nationalism becomes a thing.

\- The middle class lose their jobs thanks to sustained cuts (dying tax base)
and technology. Silicon Valley gets flak.

\- Interest rates rocket upwards. Student loan debt and mortgage debt becomes
unsustainable.

\- Conflict breaks out in Europe.

\- Surveillance and robotics technology bring us all kinds of new goodies.

The good news, as I see it, is similar to the 20th century. Depending on where
you lived it was either a utopia or a dystopia. It was either the best of, or
the worst of worlds depending on place and time. France on the eve of the
Revolution, Germany before the crash, these were the most advanced societies
of the time.

I suspect this all looks strongly like a step backwards but a glance at
history suggests this is preferable to the alternative of a long slow
stagnation. I suspect retrenchment is a necessary feature of our system.

~~~
consz
Do you have a blog? I like reading your thoughts (though I'm unclear on how
much of it I believe).

Your previous posts have convinced me to read The Book of the New Sun. I'm
optimistically hoping it is as good as you believe it is.

~~~
internaut
> Do you have a blog?

No, although somebody requested I write an essay which I made on Gene Wolfe
and Peter Thiel called 'Peter and the Wolfe'.

[https://medium.com/@internaut_48577/peter-and-the-
wolfe-b8de...](https://medium.com/@internaut_48577/peter-and-the-
wolfe-b8dee6228918#.5y6t5s1rq)

> I like reading your thoughts (though I'm unclear on how much of it I
> believe).

I get enjoyment out of speculating about the big picture.

How valid those speculations are is very much up in the air. I don't want
anybody to take everything I say as gospel, but I would also say that focusing
on arbitrary details (e.g. I could be wrong about biotech since I possess no
deep insights about how it works) does not meaningfully alter the Tech Stag
Hypothesis. It can be falsified of course e.g. if real wages increase but my
point is that 'what about solar' rebuttals don't really work. It is possible
to have islands of progress in an ocean of misery.

This is a really important point. In the BBC series 'Ascent of Man';

Drive for Power: [http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x206z0e_bbc-ascent-of-
man-0...](http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x206z0e_bbc-ascent-of-man-07-the-
drive-for-power_tv))

Jacob Bronowski eloquently points out that the French had all kinds of cute
toys, advanced contraptions but it was all so profoundly meaningless. It
looked very advanced (and still does) but in another, truer sense, it was a
dead end. The real change was happening elsewhere in places and ways less
obvious.

Back on point, the Thielan perspective is that there is a Liberal view, a
Conservative view, a Libertarian view... and so forth about the world. There
are other contexts too like Royalist and Communist but the point is that it
isn't quite sensible to state that one of these models is right and the others
are incorrect. Even were one of these world views completely defunct, we know
it existed for a real reason.

I hasten to add this is not relativism. Human society is dynamic and
contextual. Sometimes something is true or real for a long time, and then it
isn't. The divine right of kings is no longer valid.

Gene Wolfe explains all of this much better than I could ever hope to.

> Your previous posts have convinced me to read The Book of the New Sun. I'm
> optimistically hoping it is as good as you believe it is.

I don't think I've been quite the same since my reading of it.

I recommend reading Neil Gaiman's Wolfe Primer:

[https://www.sfsite.com/fsf/2007/gwng0704.htm](https://www.sfsite.com/fsf/2007/gwng0704.htm)

Don't forget the atmospheric 'music' of the spheres. I think I read Joseph
Tainter's Collaspe of Complex Societies at roughly the same time. All of that
together was quite an experience!

If you could tell me how you get on that would be marvelous. There are so few
people who have read Wolfe and it is always nice to hear of travels along the
same paths.

