Since dislocating my shoulders (which is a pertinent reminder to write a post called "rationalizing my own stupidity" and look, I've already derailed this post) and yes I mean "shoulders" plural or the technical term I learned "bilateral dislocation;" I have found the new habit of taking long evening walks. This will probably change now summer is behind us, but the seasonal transitions are not as well defined as our calendar.
I walk late at night, and I walk far. I most often listen to audiobooks, but as my concentration and attention continues to improve, I tend to lift heavier weights - attention-wise - by walking in serene silence.
The lateness allows me to see fauna I had never really observed because I did not hit Melbourne's interlaced trails at night for all the decades I've lived here. Maybe once or twice riding a bicycle home along an actual trail rather than the most direct grab-bag of streets between a gig-venue and my home, I would see a fox. But Melbourne's many parks, gardens and park-like spaces accommodate an abundance of foxes. There is also the majestic silent flight of owls. The dusk exodus of cockatoos and commute of bats are well known and well observed, as are possums who often leave testimony of their nocturnal life through the electrocuted corpses found beneath above ground powerlines around suburbia.
If I walk later, I see more foxes, owls, spiders in the middle of highly ambitious webs. If I leave earlier I see more dog walkers.
And every dog on a walk has a smile for me and I for them. Two evenings ago I came across a little buddy for whom I had to pull out my headphones to say hello. He was happy as a clam, wobbling and fumbling around on two extremely gimpy back legs with a kind of boundless oblivious energy that resembled a kid in a candy store.
As one does, I asked his owner "how old?" (En Mexico gentes preguntar "masculino o feminino?" de sus perritos.) and surprisingly he said "Three" and began to detail that they were 1.5 years into extensive rehab after spinal surgery, including hydrotherapy.
This, is love. One can look at a situation like this like a cautionary tale of the reverse lottery of dog ownership. Most people cannot just let a puppy die, the reverse lottery of dog ownership is to buy a dog (and the designer dogs can be quite expensive, breeders earn their keep on a single litter of puppies and pay for their house with one mother's total legal output) get attached and then discover yourselves in for medical bills.
Love is the attachment to your dog, and the simple reality that for $10,000 you can keep your dog around a little longer with some quality of life, and for $2,500 you can buy another dog, that merely has the potential to become your second or nth dog, but you will have a your-dog sized scar in your heart for the rest of your life.
For me though, though it sucks, love is what money is for. Yes, this is a post, and I know this is poor form, about economics.
Watch for example The Martian, where millions of dollars are spent to rescue Matt Damon from Mars, his crew who decide to resupply and form his rescue mission lose themselves a year of terrestrial living in order to risk a small window of opportunity to get Matt Damon back to Hollywood.
Think then, on all the other causes that money could be spent on, to save more human lives than Matt Damon. For a fraction of the cost food security could be given to populations suffering famine. Vaccines could be rolled out and diseases that kill children eliminated. A few thousand dollars could prevent hundreds of deaths from preventable mosquito born diseases.
But I think, The Martian works as a movie because we are not accountants and actuaries. We intuitively calculate the symbolic value of rescuing a stranded solitary human being on an alien planet, and most people would I think concur that it is worth the spend to expand our human frontiers in this way.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb in one of his books points out that during the Lebanese civil war, where people were being killed daily in violent armed conflict, the popular imagination was captured by an Italian girl who got stuck down a well.
I heard an argument from Cam Murray that persuaded me, at least, that Australia's superannuation should be repealed as a scheme, and I do focus here on one relevant argument, which is exactly the situation where you get a letter from your Superfund that tells you you have $20,000 and a vet tell you you need $6,000 for surgery for your dog or it dies. So you of course let your dog die, because there's nothing in the scheme that says you can access your super in these circumstances, you'll just have to wait 45 years to enjoy that $20,000 with which you can finally commission a memorial statue...or something.
(Other arguments against Super are that it is funded out of wage-rises, as in employers fund the contributions instead of giving pay rises. It helps grow wealth inequality, and most people should they have super use it to just pay down their mortgage and retire etc. etc.)
At which point, we can expand love beyond the love felt between man and dog, one of the purest and longstanding loves, despite like all forms of love, there being its perversions and betrayels in the specific. But the same goes for our lovers, our children, our family, friends, extended family.
This is what money is for, and I've monitored the exchange rates. In Mexico I heard of a particularly moving story where a woman we knew had a son get into a motorcycle accident. The local hospital said he would die if he was not transported to a hospital that can help him. In a country like Australia, this can arise for the uninsured if they need to be helicoptered to a big-city hospital from a remote area, because despite universal health care this does not cover ambulance services, and the ambulances that fly can hit you with a bill in the $100,000s. Btw ambulance membership is like 50 smackeroos a year and covers any and all bills.
Where was I? Blessed Mexico. Yes, so...[ugh] in Australia you would get the helicopter anyway, then declare bankruptcy and maybe have to sell your house. In Mexico, there's a good chance the house won't cover the cost of the IC ambulance transportation, so you get presented with "pay or die." scenarios. This mother was able to secure a loan from an In-law for some collosal sum that would be in Australian terms the vicinity of $100k, to be paid back...somehow. For this was not an investment opportunity, and even if it were a high risk one because there was so much to still do to save the son's life.
He was transported, some amputations and organ removals were made, an induced coma and I'm happy to report that he pulled through and to my knowledge is still alive to this day. It is entirely possible that somebody wound up financially ruined by this act of love, but the decisions made reflect well on everyone involved bar the state of Mexico.
That's but one example of the exchange rate. Desperate non-solutions to that of preserving our time on this planet and our opportunities to be in the vicinity of love include what an elderly Kerry Packer paid his long time helicopter pilot for his kidney to buy him a few more months of life, botox, ozempic etc.
I've heard many boomers remark and assert of their age cohort in general that the richest of them would give it all to be (our) age again. This remark I'm sure only holds under the assumption that such a transaction would be miraculous. Should rejuvenating technologies actually exist, I'm sure competition would drive the prices down, such that we would discover that boomers would stop short of giving it all to be my age or younger, and instead settle for helping some guy with a machine enough money to pay off his sportscar finances, or some guy with a machine made in China enough money to pay his rent for one week.
But if the Faustian pact was available, everything to be 21 again, I kind of wish boomers would take it, to gain an appreciation of how much youth is depreciated by the generational apartheid on assets. How I would love to see how an influx of 21 year olds entering the job market, who may know a lot more about financing a company and paying minimal income taxes, fare with their degrees from the 70s and early 80s held by a quarter of them, and their inability to type with ten digits over two, and their grasp of OSs, coding etc. hold up in an ultra-competitive job-market, especially when the devil now controls the majority of Capital.
I feel only the exceptionally successful boomers would have a chance. The rest, having a second wind of youth with which to truly experience the pleasures of meth, jenkem and bath salts.
And this brings me to the severity of the exchange rate, which is the how little respect we give for those who will fork over a fortune of money, literally the tokens of debt owed to them for work they have suffered through, for the love of puppy, or spouse, or child, or brother or sister.
This is, one of the first and last good points Brett Weinstein made: We have to look at the fate of benevolent firms.
We live in a world where many successful businesses' true competitive edge is a disregard for laws and regulations. They get around minimum wages by having workers work twice the hours they are paid for and so on.
The problem with the true price of love, are the people waiting, ready and willing to swoop in and take your house.
In this sense I am somewhat sympathetic to former worlds-richest-man and oil magnate Paul Getty, though I know him mostly through the onscreen depiction from "All the Money in the World" where when his grandson and namesake was kidnapped, first by people he had instigated in his own scheme, and eventually by the Calabrian Mafia, he declined to pay the ransom - out of consideration of the safety of all his other numerous grandchildren. He eventually paid an agreed sum equal to the maximum he could claim in taxes or on insurance or something. It was sizeable but relative to his wealth miserly, and his grandson's physical and mental health by then was irreversibly damaged.
But we really have no protection for people who choose for their own sake and for the extended, integrated network of loved ones, to choose love over money. There's no backstop where people can go bankrupt but for their assets their generational wealth, which even while being quite modest, under growing wealth inequality must be defended at all costs.
Now people waste exorbitant amounts of money all the time at the top end of town, forget about surgeries for sickly dogs. First class flights? The price point difference between a 9am flight from Melb to Sydney on Jetstar in roughly 5 weeks from today is $122 (with baggage allowance) to $1,094 for a Qantas business class flight same time same day. There just isn't the utility to be extracted from Business class in a roughly 3 hour flight. Sure there is then the lounge memberships, early boarding etc. and many wealthy people use charter flights in private jets.
Now the incremental utility grows with frequency of travel. It is fair enough that someone who has to fly for work a hundred times a year, be put in the peak comfort available. I'm also assuming that businesses get tax concessions for travel expenses like this, while keeping the financial assets like frequent flyer points becoming effectively public business infrastructure.
But there's also the car collecting, the country and town houses, the beach houses etc. and all the associated upkeep, the race horse part ownership etc. But can these low-utility excesses a) keep an even keel between people sacrificing all for love and b) be called a form of love of their own?
“I say that homosexuality is not just a form of sex, it's a form of love, and it deserves our respect for that reason.” — Christopher Hitchens.
Is love of limited run super and hyper cars a form of love that deserves our respect? If so, only in proportion. Certainly far less than the love of lovers, should be afforded to a love of things. With all but the most handcrafted by dead artisans, things, unlike your dog can be replaced by an identical thing. Whether new for old (like a new Lotus) or old for old (like a restored DeLorean).
Bringing me to a question that I have had an uncomfortable amount of time to ponder, for which I will have to establish a little context.
My oldest friend, chronologically, killed himself which is statistically, one of the most likely ways for a man to die, so I am by no means alone in having such a thing disrupt my life and sense of place in the universe nor even unusual. What was of tremendous consolation to me, was how I had interacted with my friend while he was alive. The Hitchens phrase above is one that he oft repeated, having gone to the effort of crafting it, but I draw it from his memoir Hitch-22 as my most recent hearing of it. In the same audiobook there was packaged an interview with the author, contemporary to publication of his audiobook, where he was asked "why now" and he remarked that many of his friends had paid him the compliment of suggesting it was too soon, and that he had much good work ahead of him. But Hitchens pointed out that one doesn't get to experience the advent of it being "too late" to write an autobiography on account of being dead.
In the same sense, whatever my friend's state of mind was when he ended his own life, somewhere in the biological building blocks of that mind was the certain knowledge that I loved him, that I had said what needed saying before it was too late. This is because, while certainly the worst loss I'd experienced in my life, it was not the first.
And here is the crux: I have observed people who live there lives, largely as habit (and I would too, were I secured enough) remarking about how a death can "put things in perspective" and I have no doubt they are experiencing the dizzying reorientation of how before the news they'd been consumed with some trivial task they were required to do at work.
What I generally observe though, is that for many the grieving process is merely a disruption to the habitual life. What most appear to do (and this may be an illusion of the alienating nature of grief) is process until they rediscover the reasons their habitual life formed in the first place.
Something like "the reason I care about the reconciling the weekly stock reports with the monthly stock reports is that I am paid to care, by my employer, and with that pay I secure the things my children need so they may one day have a job like mine that will allow them to provide for their children."
Which is to say, they gain some perspective, but not a sustainable one.
The question I was forced to ponder, was the debilitating effects of maintaining the kind of perspective that comes with grief. To truly realize that much economic activity, does not matter or at worst, is actually counterproductive to achieving love and life.
This is a perspective that is no doubt disquieting, but the reality we live in is one of FTX, Enron, LTCM, Theranos etc. People turned up to work at Enron, went through inductions including OH&S videos where they possibly were told technically they should change shoes in order to lift an archive box from a storage shelf, sexual harassment, they were given a desk and a swipe card to enter and exit buildings, a network login and an email, they received payslips and salary was deposited in their bank accounts and pension funds. They paid their taxes, and laboured away in various departments, all the while having no idea about the full implications of "Mark to Market" accounting that would enventually liquidate the entire firm and invalidate whole lifetimes of economic activity.
To be sure, many an innocent and unassuming productive worker at Enron likely paid down a mortgage and put their children through school through the attractive salaries offered and recieved. It was not a total waste of their lives, but the part of their life wasted was all that they produced for Enron. One has to chalk it up to a learning experience, but then the skills learned by doing useful work for an ultimately useless company carry the stink of the Enron brand to a resume, and job interviews are often decided in 40 seconds based on attire, demeanour, grooming, manner and punctuality before getting to the thorny question of whether you were caught up in the demise of Enron or a somewhat innocent drone.
An archetypal news story, I guarantee to recur so long as you are alive is "[Insert publicly listed company here] posts $x.x Bn losses" which means that the sum total culmination of effort exerted by workers in that company went toward delivering a service or product that more people didn't want or need than did.
The premise of "It's a wonderful life" is that Jimmy Stewart has one fucking job to deliver a fat wad of cash to the bank to avoid bankruptcy and forfeiture of assets and he fucks it up. He then wishes he'd never been born and an angel shows him what life would be like if he hadn't been, where he realizes the significant positive impact he has had and chooses to live.
The fact though for most of us, is that we are largely redundant. That in itself is fine, even with redundancy ultimately some component has to do the things that are of value. But in the recent 20th Century we had vast amounts of devestation and bloodshed - from the Trench Warfare of The Great War that ravaged Europe and fed a whole generation of young men into a meat grinder, where the Christmas day truce lasted so long military command had to force the soldiers to resume killing each other again. Then WWII that also had the Holocaust, through to the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, famines in India etc. Then there was Stalinism (~10 million, mostly famine and gulags and 1 million in political executions) and Maoism (40 to 80 million estimated dead best summed up in Maoism) , and if you are reading this, you are probably sitting in a place where you are more or less fine, with access to water and food, shelter and internet. Sorry to those of you who are homeless reading this on a phone plugged into a socket in a train station or shopping centre.
Happily in recent times, I am inclined to concur that my perspective is likely not debilitating. I have no problem with people acquiring what I should dub a modest wealth. And consistent with my views on The Martian, a truly talented athlete that can capture the imagination of so many and expand seemingly the frontiers of human possibility like Michael Jordan is probably as rich as I think a person should be, albeit this is restricted to the exorbitant wages paid to him by the Chicago Bulls that were so in excess of what anyone else in the NBA was paid, that they actually put in a wage cap that held until inflation allowed Steph Curry to earn Jordan's 90s money some 20 years later. Not the having children make shoes for $s and selling them for $$$s side that has made Jordan a billionaire.
And there's nothing wrong with billionaire's so long as they are paying taxes, taxes like someone would pay if they were paid a billion dollars for work, and not the sale value of the assets they hold, where they pay destabilizingly little tax.
The fact is, mental health is king. We experience our own lives subjectively, and the tragedy of meeting an unhappy and insecure rich person, is not just that their lack of perspective has wasted their lives, but needs must be concluded that they have likely wasted much of everyone else's lives that have invested in them. Perhaps somebodies can sometimes throw money at a person who lacks perspective so they can take it and make money for them while they spend their precious time achieving Eudaimonia but right up to the POTUS and DOGEUS down to the local well-healed nobody whose bones will be indistinguishable from all the other hairless apes, the king goes back into the box with all the other pawns and all that, who cannot shut up about how smart he is to have built a property portfolio to provide a service valued by nobody (in many cases literally nobody, because they are just sitting on and speculating on property prices) and leaving a legacy that will not have their great grandchildren even knowing their names.
And I am not driving at achievement culture as described by Byung-Chul Han in "The Burnout Society" as the alternative here. Because someone is likely to remember Musk and Trump in three generations time, assuming there's anyone here to remember, and Putin and Xi and whoever else too, are not examples to look to and their lives, despite their accomplishments all, look like they lack perspective. The lives of people who have risen to heights of influence that have placed them completely out of touch. No a life quite ordinary can be meaningful and rewarding, so long as it keeps the price of love firmly in perspective.
As I wrote the last few paragraphs, I could overhear one of my loved ones on a phone advocating for another of our loved ones. This same loved one recently had a birthday and we the family that were able gathered to celebrate it in a modest and intimate dinner with modest but delicious food and cake. I was coming off a particularly challenging week, one filled with disorienting ambivalence as I met some of the best and worst people to deal with all mixed up like the climbs and dips of a rollercoaster.
My aunt was a tonic after that week, to sit down with because she is good and decent and kind, and maybe these very qualities have lead to her being denied much in life, though there are other factors at play. The fact is I love her and she is worth loving.
My chief persistent pang (which is good to write because an ear would likely hear "pain" where it expects to hear it) is from my Mexican dogs, and yes, I'm circling in for a conclusion. Some conscious part of me understands how worthy of ridicule it is to build my life plans going forward about reuniting with our short-lived companions before they die, when dogs are a dime a dozen, or un peso por docena, but they are my dogs not in any legal sense, but in the attachment formed.
Yes, ironically, it was Usma that taught me there were more dogs to love after Bess, my companion of 15 years from childhood to prolonged adolescence. I know I can fall in love with another dog, but we already love eachother. And I know that dogs tend not to follow "absence makes the heart grow fonder" for their survival instinct are too strong, and they operate their affections more along the "what have you done for me lately" lines. But I am supremely confident it would take just a few hours before after a feed they want to curl up by me again, once again, in love.
Truly coming full circle on this long walk, yesterday on lunch break I happened across quite the opposite pairing of owner and dog. A healthy strapping dog in its prime, on the leash of a man who had severe burns covering at least 50% of his face. I don't know his circumstances, he was walking through the lawyer part of downtown, not in the student and shopper part sitting with a makeshift sign declaring him homeless.
But those debilitating injuries and scarring can't make life easy, probably not easier than mine, and it puts me in mind of all those homeless, those sleeping rough be it in Melbourne, Australia freq. world's most liveable city, or the streets of Mexico, and their animal companions, typically dog who no doubt increase donations by their mere presence, help keep them safe from molestation and assault at night and form a precious loving bond, unconditional but fragile.
Herein lies the perspective, worth maintaining - if you are homeless you get a pass. Life must be constant stress, so insecure. Everyone else, keep and defend your best energy for those you love. You may be giving work and career your all for those you love, but they don't get to experience your energy. They get to nurse your exhausted self while you recuperate. The economics says, you are not reaping the rewards of your productivity. Productivity has surged in the last 50 years and workers have seen none of the gains, beyond the cost reductions of technology.
The blind leading the blind is fine, provided your blindness isn't caused by shutting your eyes to remember your infrequently used pin number through muscle memory. If you can open your eyes and maybe lead a blind person instead to secure love and mental comfort.
"England is under the rule of a patriarchy." ~ Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own 1929.
Nate: "I don't think the cleaners are cleaning the floor."
Jade: "There are no cleaners."
Nate: "Then why do we put the chairs on the tables?"
Jade: "The patriarchy." ~ Ted Lasso, Season 3, Episode 11.
It's become a thing for me, I've never really seen an episode of the Twilight Zone, maybe a couple, but it is the bizarre and disorienting feeling that everyone uses "patriarchy" like they know what it means, what it is referring to and how it works. I however have only the vaguest impression, and an incoherent and unintelligible one at that.
"When people say '...because Patriarchy...' I don't know what the fuck they are talking about." was what I said to a female friend, and probably because of how I said it, this lead to an unproductive conversation, featuring a variation of "it's not my job to educate you." Albeit changed to be on behalf of all women.
To be clear, I believe in sexism, I believe in inequality. I'm not in denial, nor pro these things. It's just specific terms of art that I struggle with mentally. Like I have a problem with "reactionary" because it basically requires an assertion instead of an argument - it assumes that our notions are proved to be progressive (as in, will accomplish progress). "Patriarchy" is like that, because we can be talking about an actual something, and then someone basically uses "patriarchy" in the sense of "yeah well, the reason this is a problem in the first place is because of might Vectron."
Every now and then, I get this pang of suspicion that I have not done the obvious and just google it, which pre-Gemini would bring up wikipedia, and post Gemini I scroll past Gemini as it burns fossil fuels to generate some summary whether I want it to or not, that I cannot trust and find the wikipedia page.
I fucking hate this term, because, now some 10 years later, I still have no fucking idea what people are talking about when they invoke "Patriarchy".
Let me give you my working starting point:
Patriarchy, by usage, can mean 1 of 2 things, and potentially both simultaneously:
1. A passive description of the status quo, where several if not most, metrics favour men.
2. A conspiracy theory.
By "both simultaneously" I am referring to the rhetorical strategy - Motte and Bailey, which is when you argue as if the Patriarchy is a conspiracy theory (men meeting in the back of a pub or on the golf course or strip club and plotting ways to stop women from achieving equality) if questioned though if that is what you mean, you retreat to the much easier to defend definition of Patriarchy which is the statistical reality of the status quo.
Now when I say "easier" I mean that in the context of conversations taking place in the 21st century in a Wealthy Democracy like Australia. If it was 1960 or 1970 I'd be like "oh yeah, you are referring to all the meetings we have in the back of a pub or on a golf course or strip club where moustached men basically trash women together." But now we are talking about pay gaps arising in a legal context where sex-based discrimination is illegal.
The trouble with the easily defended status quo, is that the statements appealing to Patriarchy as an explanation, leave us with nothing to do, it is like making an appeal to "rainfall" as in "because rainfall" and then elsewhere coming out with calls to action like "let's smash rainfall."
My sense is, the greater one attempts to seek clarity on what people mean by Patriarchy, the more it will be asserted to mean it describes a kind of passive statistical picture - truisms - most CEOs are men, most Political representatives are men etc. So a large part of the problem is I think arising from the word "Patriarchy" itself, because "-archy" as a suffix implies a system of governance or rule, eg Monarchy or Oligarchy.
Oligarchy might be a good example, because we have historical formal oligarchies like one that is close to my heart - the Republic of Genova where there's noble families that basically ran a city state for a handful of centuries. Then there is an informal oligarchy that some use to describe the US state, particularly the legislative branches, where wealthy campaign donors exist, and some 60% of legislation that passes aligns with donor interests, as compared to a minority of legislation that passes reflecting key campaign promises to the voting public.
Even so, it is relatively easy to explain how this informal oligarchy is operating, but if you take a phenomena like the unadjusted gender pay gap, often in my experience used as a synonym for Patriarchy, it is not easy to explain how the phenomena arises. It is certainly not clear whether the phenomena is invoked as an example of an emergent phenomena or some kind of intelligent design.
Economics' Intelligibility Crisis
I hold a bachelors degree in Economics, a social science and have done so for probably more than a decade now. Not only do I hold a qualification, it's a field I'm interested in since both before and after my studies.
Only yesterday I learned from finance Youtuber Patrick Boyle that strictly speaking the term "inflation" should only apply to a loss of purchasing power as a direct result of increasing the money supply. I've seen many economists as a result, perhaps even most, misuse or mischaracterise the cost of living crises experienced around the world as due to inflation.
I make this technical error myself, because inflation tends to be invoked in conjunction with the Consumer Price Index, which will indicate inflation even without it being caused by an increased money supply diminishing purchasing power.
If the general public, and even economists don't understand what inflation means, this can result in for example the world wide ousting of democratic incumbents in 2024. Including equal and opposite oustings like the UK Conservative Party's historic loss in 2024, and Trump's ordinary victory in 2024.
Perhaps for the economically illiterate, every time the news invokes "inflation" it is as frustrating for them as "Patriarchy" is for me. What the fuck are you talking about "inflation"?
The spikes in cost of living experienced worldwide since 2022 were driven not generally by increased money supply or quantitative easing, but instead by supply chain disruptions and companies simply putting prices up to increase their profit margins.
But the news says "inflation, inflation, inflation" and central banks increase interest rates. Leading to my impression of Australian newspaper mastheads in 2024 - Interest rates high because inflation, interest rates not coming down because inflation isn't [Shakes fist].
Anyway, in contrast to "Patriarchy" inflation is a) not economics 101, b) I can point you to Mark Blyth's presentation on his book "Inflation - A Guide for Users and Losers" to give anyone who might exclaim in frustration "I don't know what the fuck they are talking about" by way of explanation and finally c) I'm actually pretty happy to have a crack at explaining inflation to my friends myself, though I don't have a basketball analogy for inflation.
Feminism 101
So I ask a feminist friend "what do you mean by Patriarchy?" they get angry and tell me it's not their job to educate me. I give it a google, skip Gemini and get to wikipedia - because a) Wikipedia is pretty good. and b) Wikipedia is also a good indicator of how obvious something is.
For example, if you want to know what "Ad Hominem" is:
Often currently this term refers to a rhetorical strategy where the speaker attacks the character, motive, or some other attribute of the person making an argument rather than the substance of the argument itself. ~ From Wikipedia "Ad hominem"
That's enough for me to get it, but someone can read on for pretty simple examples. Simples.
Now for Patriarchy:
Patriarchy is a social system in which positions of authority are primarily held by men. The term patriarchy is used both in anthropology to describe a family or clan controlled by the father or eldest male or group of males, and in feminist theory to describe a broader social structure in which men as a group dominate society.[1][2][3]~ From Wikipedia "Patriarchy"
In which sense is Jade from Ted Lasso using "Patriarchy" to explain to Nate why they put the chairs up on the table even though nobody cleans the floors? Anthropological or in feminist theory - common sense says feminist theory.
I can use my quick google of Patriarchy to then understand what this joke means by substituting "positions of authority are primarily held by men" in for "Patriarchy" in which case, either the character is offering as a serious explanation that this particular procedure in this particular restaurant exists because men primarily hold the positions of authority in society - like the Executive, Administrative and Judicial branches of Government, editorial positions in media, and are the predominant owners of property. And not the specific individual that dictates how things are done in that one restaurant.
I mean sure "Patriarchy" explains it, the same as "Economy" explains it.
In which case, Patriarchy is often misused much like inflation is in economics.
But understanding what people are talking about when they invoke Patriarchy is not simply clarified by that first sentence. We then establish that anthropologists use "Patriarchy" in a very concrete way to describe actual formal systems of control, and feminist theory uses "Patriarchy" to describe something very abstract which is...well I don't know. Not from this at least because "broader social structure in which men as a group" becomes the "it's merely a commentary on contemporary mores" part where Elaine's next question naturally is "but what is the comment?"
Now Sociology 101 probably needs to cover "what is a social structure?" and "what is a social system?" so I'm going to go there, and to be fair, if I was looking up "Ad hominem" because someone had dismissed me as simply "being ad hominem" and I'd googled it, I might need to look up what a "fallacy" is. Wikipedia links the word "fallacious" on the Ad Hominem page, but I need to go look up "social structure"
In the social sciences, social structure is the aggregate of patterned social arrangements in society that are both emergent from and determinant of the actions of individuals.[1] Likewise, society is believed to be grouped into structurally related groups or sets of roles, with different functions, meanings, or purposes. Examples of social structure include family, religion, law, economy, and class.
Again, wikipedia is pretty good. This tells me, that if we are invoking a social structure, then we are by default referring to something ambiguous.
So now I have enough common sense to assume from context that most invocations of "Patriarchy" are not in an anthropological context, but feminist theory context, and so the natural question becomes "of this broader social structure, are we talking 'emergent from' or 'determinant of'?" Or both and which bits apply to what is under discussion?
Back to the Patriarchy page:
Sociobiologists compare human gender roles to sexed behavior in other primates and argue that gender inequality originates from genetic and reproductive differences between men and women. Patriarchal ideology explains and rationalizes patriarchy by attributing gender inequality to inherent natural differences between men and women, divine commandment, or other fixed structures.[4] Social constructionists sociologists tend to disagree with biological explanations of patriarchy and contend that socialization processes are primarily responsible for establishing gender roles[5], they further argue that gender roles and gender inequity are instruments of power and have become social norms to maintain control over women.
On the one hand, this explains a lot, but more immediately it establishes that "Patriarchy" is contentious? controversial? I'm not sure what the right word would be, what we can see though is that different approaches disagree as to the nature of the social system, and perhaps even if it's a social system.
For me, I also don't understand what an "instrument of power" is. I could take a guess, and probably name examples across the spectrum from abstract to concrete. Concrete instrument of power: a handgun, abstract instrument of power: vocabulary.
Wikipedia doesn't have a page, so I googled it, Gemini was loading and I just went to sociology.instute:
The three key instruments of power—coercive, compensatory, and conditioned—represent distinct strategies to exercise control. Each of these relies on specific methods, ranging from threats and rewards to persuasion and education. These instruments not only shape individual behavior but also structure institutional relationships and societal hierarchies.
So while I'm here and it's giving brief friendly sociology 101 blurbs, I'll grab the definitions of coercive (pretty obvious), compensatory and conditioned. Starting with coercive:
Coercive power, also called condign power, relies on the use of threats, intimidation, or physical force to gain compliance. This form of power is direct and often aggressive, aiming to control behaviour by instilling fear of punishment or harm. It is frequently observed in authoritarian regimes, disciplinary institutions, and law enforcement mechanisms.
Then compensatory:
Compensatory power, on the other hand, relies on the promise of rewards to elicit desired behaviours. This approach incentivizes compliance by appealing to people’s self-interest, offering tangible or intangible benefits in return.
And conditioned:
Conditioned power is the most subtle and sophisticated instrument of power. It operates by shaping attitudes, beliefs, and values through education, persuasion, and cultural conditioning. Rather than using force or rewards, conditioned power changes how people think, aligning their behaviour with desired norms and expectations.
Okay, so now I'm up to speed on "Social constructionists sociologists tend to disagree with biological explanations of patriarchy and contend that socialization processes are primarily responsible for establishing gender roles[5], they further argue that gender roles and gender inequity are instruments of power and have become social norms to maintain control over women."
Though, I don't know how to categorize "gender inequity" as any of the three main types of instruments of power. It's not obvious to me, as a reader/listener whether "gender roles" are the product of the instrumentation of Patriarchy, or the instruments of power employed by the Patriarchy or both, in the Orwell 1984 sense of "power is the means and the ends" sense, but that's probably for feminism 102.
So let's finish off the wikipedia introductory text with it's last paragraph:
Historically, patriarchy has manifested itself in the social, legal, political, religious, and economic organization of a range of different cultures.[6] Most contemporary societies are, in practice, patriarchal, unless the criteria of complete exclusion of women in authority is applied.[7][8]
This is for me and my subjective experience at least, the most concrete section of the introduction. Firstly, the last sentence introduces a new variability - a definition of Patriarchy with a "complete exclusion" criteria, so Qing dynasty China is patriarchal even under the implicit rule of Dowager Empress Cixi, The Hawaiian Kingdom is patriarchal under Queen regent Liliʻuokalani, the Yoruba in Africa were patriarchal even under queen regent Orompeto, Tudor England is patriarchal even during the reigns of Mary I and Elizabeth I, and contemporarily the UK is patriarchal even with Prime Ministers Margaret Thatcher, Teresa May and Liz Truss. Germany is patriarchal even with former Chancellor Angela Merkle, the United States is Patriarchal even with AOC serving as a senator.
On this side I would be in agreement that common sense should eliminate the criteria of complete exclusion of women in authority. To me that strikes me as being like "there's not nothing in the fridge, because there's racks and drawers in there." and arguing it down to anything that isn't a void/vacuum containing no matter or energy does not constitute the fridge having "nothing" in it.
But the first sentence. At first blush it is a straight forward read, easily understood. It means there have been laws saying women can't own property or can't vote and that is a manifestation of patriarchy, there have been campaigns saying women can't be trusted with the nuclear code because of their period and that is a manifestation of patriarchy, there is scripture that says a woman ate forbidden fruit and was cursed with reproduction and that is a manifestation of patriarchy, there's economies where something painted by a man is worth more money than something sewn by a woman and that is a manifestation of patriarchy.
The two things again are that there's a lot of overlap between social, legal, political, religious and economical systems. The political and legal and economic are often interdependent systems and religious was the (if I'm learning any sociology 101) structure in which many of those systems historically existed.
But if we take legal and economical manifestations, we may find societies where women cannot legally own property. So woman's husband dies, the estate goes to her husband's brother. But if we have a society like the Mexica (Aztec to most westerners) women could own property, but it is still patriarchal as a society due to the manifestations of patriarchy elsewhere.
With the second thing being that Patriarchy can "manifest" tying us back to the essential question of is Patriarchy emergent or determinant or both?
I guess I would already conclude, that nothing from reviewing the Wikipedia article on Patriarchy contradicts my working impression of 2 definitions - inert status quo or conspiracy theory. "Patriarchy" may well be feminism 101, but it would a) carry a prerequisite of having completed sociology 101 and possibly further, b) it is not "a google away" from being well understood.
I remember my art teacher Mrs. G handing me back an essay I'd written, probably my artist statement where I'd just used the word "simply" as an adjective and though the context is forever lost to me, it had been circled in red pen and annotated with "nothing simple about it" which is great feedback and it applies to the word "Patriarchy" this is not a simple concept to invoke:
"Taylor Swift tickets are really in demand."
"When you say 'demand' I don't know what the fuck you are talking about."
"Oh, I guess I mean people want to purchase tickets to her concert, like it will increase their pleasure if they are able to attend and this motivates them to try and purchase a ticket. That's what demand usually means, and I guess relative to tickets to see a Boney M reunion concert, there are more people who want Taylor Swift concert tickets, so they are really in demand."
I contend, someone just cannot do that with "Patriarchy" it is not analogous to a fellow social science 101 concept like "demand" in economics. It's not even analogous to an advanced economic concept like "Say's Law" where supply creates its own demand which were I to invoke in the form of "...because Say's Law..." again a) I'd be happy to explain it to you and b) you are a quick google away from understanding what Say's Law is. c) there's a good chance most economists haven't heard of Say's Law or cannot recall it and won't apply it, d) wretched as economics is, it is my experience that most economists when discussing economics will concede all the problems economics has - like why unemployment is understated, why GDP is not a great measure of human progress and flourishing etc.
A quick google of Patriarchy gives the impression of a vague, nebulous, contentious concept where there is nothing simple about it.
Sociology's Intelligibility Crisis
The most important part of the above interview, that I feel is a very important interview, is where Chomsky talks about monosyllabic truisms. Mono means "one" and "syllabic" means "in syllables" so the words "one" "in" "at" "bin" "get" are all monosyllabic. It is of course an exaggeration, even when Chomsky, a famous linguist, stresses that you can "literally" express "these" ideas in monosyllables.
Examples like "it's perfectly true that most scientists are male." "It's perfectly true that women have had a hard time breaking into the sciences." "It's perfectly true that there are institutional factors making it hard for women in sciences. etc."
From your subjective experience it might be completely intuitive that these truisms are sufficient to become incensed, to politicize you, to radicalize you.
One of the stories in Genderqueer: Voices from Beyond the Sexual Binary is a recollection of someone who had a teacher failing their school work, because they were failing to conform to her expectations of femininity. That story incensed my sensibilities. It was an enraging read. My sensibilities are that the work should be graded on its substance, and a teacher was trying to leverage her legitimate role of grading schoolwork for evidence of comprehension, to try and socialize a child.
The story in its telling makes its own argument, I care. Many invocations of Patriarchy though, will not distress my sensibilities, they will instead invoke "so what?"
If someone asks the question: "Why hasn't a woman run a sub 10sec 100m sprint?" and the response is given "because the Patriarchy promotes and exults sports that men excel in, not women." This is not outrageous to me, this is a "okay, so what?" moment, Patriarchy here is too vague and nebulous a social structure or system to care about, this is not teacher is abusing her power, this is the economy, biology, psychology.
These are examples, of what could constitute people mean by the word "Patriarchy" when they invoke it. Indeed whenever I question use or mention of Patriarchy, the most intelligible responses I get are illusions to specific examples of sex and/or gender disparities.
For example, the Baiji is a critically endanged/possibly extinct species of River Dolphin, by contrast the Aberdeen Angus breed of cattle is globally designated at "least concern" for extinction. It is perfectly true to note the disparity, and a moral consensus could likely be reached that we don't want fresh water dolphins to disappear from Chinese river systems, and we overproduce Angus beef and could stand to lose some beef cattle.
But it is almost banal to point out that a domesticated species that humans eat have grown numerous due to social structures like the economy, and Baiji a wild species that humans eat are possibly extinct because of social structures like the economy. So what? A major contributing factor was Mao's "Great Leap Forward" to the Baiji being depleted. Patriarchy then, covers everything from Maoist totalitarian command economies, thru to Sri Lanken and Icelandic democracy.
This is not very informative though, and positing some social superstructure that "manifests" in the form of anywhere a disparity can be observed is not helpful.
Many parallels have been drawn between religion and postmodernism, perhaps notably Johnathan Haidt and Jon McWhorter. I just want to make a useful analogy.
There's a term called "Igtheism" that I would apply to myself, though in practice I would use "Atheism" because far more people know what it means and it conveys enough to be confident we both know essentially where I stand.
Igtheism is a contraction of "Ignosticism" and specifically it means "god is incomprehensible/unintelligible." in practice for me, it means if you tell me you are a Christian, I don't know what you mean and hopefully I can simply point to the phenomena of theologians on Youtube since September 11 arguing for a very abstract philosophical god, and like, Trump's evangelical Christian base particularly as manifested in Paula White and her calling for intervention from Angels in Africa. "Christian" refers to everything from someone who equates "God" with the phenomena of consciousness thru to people who believe a bearded man sits in the sky, especially when we take a historical perspective.
These can set up frustrating cul de sacs of unintelligible language like "Patriarchy" and "Christianity" where people simultaneously assert that "nobody" and "everybody" does this and not that.
"No Christian believes in Heaven as a gated community in the clouds where Ben Franklin is playing Hendrix at Air Hockey, Christians believe the afterlife to be unity with God, and hell to be estrangement from God." It's a) helpful to actually know what you believe but b) a mischaracterization that all Christians are homogenous, or at least all true Christians are homogenous.
So this is a little aside to shore up my perspective that "Patriarchy" by usage, refers to the status quo (monosyllabic truisms) or a conspiracy theory, or both simultaneously.
If you just do nothing, do human societies emerge as Patriarchies? or are positive actions required to be taken to impose a patriarchy on a society?
By usage, the "conspiracy theory" form usually leads to a common sense inference that men are doing Patriarchy. However, the example from Genderqueer is one where a woman is participating in Patriarchy right? Abusing power to enforce gender roles, clearly oppressive and I'm aware there is a term for this phenomena which is "internalized misogyny" at which point, we are talking about a super structure that is very very difficult to understand.
A good example of emergent behaviour though being the reality TV series "Survivor" I'm not going to invest in a rewatch, but my recollection is that in its very first season it was fairly clear what was intended in the design of the series was that contestants would compete for immunity challenges and then based on the challenge or interpersonal interactions they would individually decide who they would vote to be eliminated at tribal council after host Jeff Probst facilitated some questions. I think simplicity demands that the producers thought that challenges + tribal council + vote would create sufficient drama to make the show a hit.
In the first season, Rich and two other contestants didn't break any rules, they just did something contrary to the intended design, or intended scope of the design - they coordinated their votes. This lead to dramatic betrayal but Rich won. I'm confident that you can go back and watch the post "tribe merger" and the non-Rich tribe being disoriented that vote coordination is going on.
Then flash forward two or three seasons, and there's an emergent behaviour - a "meta" to survivor, contestants arrive and very quickly negotiate alliances and sub alliances pledging to take one another to the final two, before forming a voting block of four. So with an American context you could quickly see a kind of Arabic Bedouin culture spontaneously emerge:
Bedouin apothegm is "I am against my brother, my brother and I are against my cousin, my cousin and I are against the stranger" sometimes quoted as "I and my brother are against my cousin, I and my cousin are against the stranger."
Did contestant Rich orchestrate a social system to parasitise all future generations of Survivor? or did it just evolve via natural selection of the rules of the show? I can't read the minds of the producers of Survivor to know what their intent was. I can infer from the challenges voting blocks posed to editors, that the producers never intended it to become a thing. They have certainly since shown a penchant for interfering to create drama, and then produced 180 more seasons after I stopped watching any series two decades ago.
A similar potential phenomena renders Patriarchy unintelligible at worst, banal at best. Saying that "historically patriarchy manifests" is potentially like saying "historically it has rained, and it continues to do so."
Back to the Wiki Before I Give Up
So not a quick google away. Now I had done more copying and pasting paragraphs of text just from the Wikipedia article, for the sections of "Social Theories" and sub-section "Feminist Theories"
After investing quite some effort into breaking down and writing out my own process of trying to apprehend Patriarchy, the quality of the wikipedia article itself devolved into what felt like just hate-reading.
These would be my quick and dirty observations:
The first is that these sections convey the unintelligible nature of "Patriarchy" because they cannot describe Patriarchy directly, but hone in on specific "manifestations" if you will, that are further diminished by the sources being Not In Our Genes (1984), The Menopause Industry (1994) and Theorising Patriarchy (1989) all of which are fine, because they could be landmark works, but when compared to the Wikipedia article on "Natural Selection" though it includes references by Aristotle, Charles Darwin and Malthus, it's actually hard to find references used to substantiate claims in the article about mechanisms that are older than 2008.
This is the second thing, because after this section I recalled that what I was really interested in was some experiment that convinced most people that Patriarchy is a thing, whatever that thing may be, that they are referring to. An analogy to "The Peppered Moth" but for Patriarchy, rather than natural selection. What happened to the peppered moth isn't a lab based experiment either, just an observation of moths adapting when their habitat changed colour, so their wing colours basically turned from white with black spots to black with white spots within very few generations.
I suspect most people would just point to "the pay gap" as a documented phenomenon, but that just puts me right back to where I started - it doesn't explain what Patriarchy is. Is it intelligent design like creationism, or is it natural selection like evolution?
The most concrete thing in this whole section is Sylvia Walby's checklist for Patriarchy that seems to describe a broad social system:
Sociologist Sylvia Walby has composed six overlapping structures that define patriarchy and that take different forms in different cultures and different times:[2]
The household: women are more likely to have their labor expropriated by their husbands such as through housework and raising children
Paid work: women are likely to be paid less and face exclusion from paid work
The state: women are unlikely to have formal power and representation
Violence: women are more prone to being abused
Sexuality: women's sexuality is more likely to be treated negatively
Culture: representation of women in different cultural contexts
This though, I'm going to assume on common sense, works the same as "Historically Patriarchy has manifested..." in so far as, you don't need all six but any one of these criteria to be met to declare Patriarchy.
I gave up breaking down the wikipedia article at this point, because the Social Theories section is borderline incoherent, and there is still "Biological Theories", "Evolutionary Biology" and "Psychoanalytic Theories"
The article begins to have problems like "[who?]" "[citation needed]" and "[further explanation needed]" and there is very little action on it's corresponding "Talk" page.
Why Am I Talking About Richard Dawkins?
I like "The Selfish Gene" but like most people, I have been over Richard Dawkins for multiple decades now. I'm not pleased to read an article that puts me in mind of "The God Delusion" which though an important book at the time of its release, I do not view as more valuable than Bertrand Russell's much shorter "Why I Am Not A Christian" much of which was reiterated by Dawkins, almost wholesale in his book.
But in the God Delusion, Dawkins introduced an idea of "Sky Hooks" vs "Cranes" as a basketball fan, "The Sky Hook" is Kareem Abdul Jabbar's signature move, and so ingrained is this use of the term "Sky Hook" that I still find Dawkins' terminology confusing.
As I understand it, a "sky hook" as I understand it, is a non-explanation, because it is a hook that just magically comes down from the sky, whereas a crane you can trace the hook back to the ground, to terra firma and it explains how it can lift something up.
Now I don't want to get into helicopters, but helicopters are cranes, not sky hooks.
But using the truism definition of Patriarchy, that things are unequal in men's favour we can expand and contract and substitute a statement.
"The gender pay gap exists because the patriarchy does not value women's work as much as men." I wrote this, I'm not actually quoting anyone, I just hope it strikes people as sufficiently cogent and cromulent.
becomes: "The gender pay gap exists because things are unequal in men's favour, women's work is not worth as much as men's."
Which we can now contract via substitution:
"The patriarchy exists because the patriarchy does patriarchy."
It may not be a perfect demonstration, but at least to me, it illustrates how frustrated I get when Patriarchy is invoked. I feel gaslit that people act as if everyone knows what Patriarchy means, and it produces statements to the effect of: "Wind is caused by wind blowing wind around."
The Rarest of Conversations
Very occassionaly something like the gender pay-gap can actually be spoken about. I can discuss with another human being whether we are talking about the adjusted or unadjusted pay gap, and from whence the pay gap arises, how it comes about and how it functions and what can be done.
But that's about the extent of it, and, I'm not sure I've ever had that conversation with a woman.
I'm going to give another example, of a conversation that is difficult to have, because of the usage of Patriarchy.
Going back to the women's 100m world record which has been held by Flo-Jo since the late 1980s, stands at just a bit under 10.5 seconds. Usain Bolt holds the men's record, set much more recently at just a tad over 9.5 seconds meaning he beats Flo-Jo by over 10m. 190 men have run sub 10 second 100m since it was first done in 1968. Right this is a record measured in hundredth's of a second, and it can be hard to perceive the signifigant distances between first and last place with the difference of time being less than a second.
At which point, there's an interesting argument to be had as to why so much attention is lavished on the 100m sprint. It is certainly my perception that the Olympic 100m sprint champion is generally given more esteem than the 200m winner unless they are the same person.
Of course, all the sex differences can be explained by biology, to broadly conclude that on average men are faster runners than women, even though I personally will never run as fast as the top 141 women of all time.
Steven Fry on QI offered an explanation though, that men dominate sports because men invented most sports and they are specifically designed to make men look impressive.
Okay, so now hypothetically we are having an interesting conversation about the Patriarchy. We can sit back and think about establishing equality, not through equalizing prize money, salaries, air-time/media coverage etc. which they debate with WNBA and AFLW (maybe).
But equalizing two sports, like put in a sport alongside the 100m sprint that women tend to excel at and not men.
Now these sports already exist on that narrow criteria. I'm thinking predominantly gymnastics, where women tend to excel men. What we can immediately see though, is that while women may hypothetically or in reality outperform men in gymnastics, gymnastics does not outperform track and field.
Part of it may be, that gymnastics have this subjective component. Competition is not direct, like a running race or team sport, but indirect where one goes to the beam, the pommel horse, the floor routine etc. and performs for judges who then score your routine, and then it is averaged and tallied and ranked.
But what if we just designed a new sport where it could be "run" race style but rewarded women's greater statistical flexibility as gymnastics does? I'm picturing a race through some kind of jungle gym...
I'll put a pin in this idle speculation to point out what is rare about conversations along this line - they are somewhat actionable. There's something to do, a unifying sense of purpose operating on the hypothesis that mens sports out-earns women's sports with very few exceptions because sports are designed for men's bodies.
I suspect these conversations are rare, because they carry an inherent risk that it might reveal that it has very little to do with social systems or structures at all, or at least those systems and structures are really efficient.
Which is to say, that to celebrate a sport dominated by women equal to the 100m sprint, may require a massive energy input that just isn't expended by the Patriarchy.
Feels like time to just
Conclude
Use whatever words you like. I hope to make my case that invocations of "Patriarchy" are confusing, but everyone acts like its obvious what is meant and furthermore, what needs doing.
I am not going to police language, at least not directly. I intend to grant Patriarchy for the sake of argument, and then ask, to me, the crucial question "How efficient is the Patriarchy?"
Anoche yo vi resumen di notacias de Grammy Awards. Aparentamente Beyonce ganado todos por "Cowboy Carter" o es primera Negro gente que ganado "El mejor album de country" o algo.
Los LAFD tambien estuvo involucrado en la ceremonia. Por supeusto como podemos celebrar celibridad sin reconociendo el departamento con fondos insuficientes y tirar n poco dinero a su manera.
Mi pregunta es "cuando ahora Beyonce? Con album de country." Es para mi una metafora hermosa por esta posto. Creo todo tiempe en los ultimo dies o vente anos si Beyonce quieres hechas una album de country si puedes. Porque ahora?
Porque country hace mucho calor ahora. Y no quiero entrar los "apropriacion cultural" mi punta es mas la gente hace lo mejor que puede. Hace lo mejor vivar para siempre, hace lo mejor ser virtuoso y honrado, y espesialmente hace lo mejor ser siempre relevante.
"Cowboy Carter" hechas los ano pasado en de la misma manera Google necessitas Gemini, Apple necessitas Apple Intelligence, Meta necessitas Llama 3 etc. etc. No es gentes todas, pero muchos gentes necessitas ser siempre relevante.
Y entonces recientamente llegue una fiesta y cuando mi llegue una persona dijo "aya, en el Chilly Bin" y otra persona pregunta "tu dijo 'Chilly Bin'?" esta pregunta es porque "Chilly Bin" es el nombre por nevera en Nueva Zelanda, Australionos decir "Esky."
Los gente explicado "Estoy tratando no usar 'Esky' no mas." Y importante, en los fiesta cuando eso es dijo, no todo gente se puso de pie y aplaudió o se burló con burla. Es mas neutral. Pero, por que no dijo "Esky"? Es porque "Esky" es chico para "Eskimo" (Esquimal) y Australianos creas "Eskimo" es peyorativo, como "Spics*" por Hispanicos.
*Antes Australia tiena una marca famosa de queso llamada "Coon" queso, y en ano 2021 remarca a "Cheer" porque "Coon" es un peyorativo en EE.UU a pesar de los etimologia es diferente. "Spicks and Specks" es una programa de juegos algo popular en un medio de televisión australiano moribundo que rutinariamente excluye a los hispanos de aparecer a pesar de su título engañoso.
Esta historia solo es una ejample de vivas en el mundo que no es posible escapar la local para lo global. Si "Eskimo" es un mal exstonimo en Canada, en Canada todos indigena de la Artica es Inuit, pero en Alaska vivas Inuit y Yupik, y probablamente por Inuit y Yupik es ofensiva si solo usar "Inuit". Pero Eskimo es bien por Inuit y Yupik, pero no incluye Aleut.
Youtuber(doro?) Destiny dijo "cuanto más abstractas se vuelven las cosas, menos funcionan tus intuiciones." y eso yo creo es un bien ejample de esta. por Australianos EE.UU es cerca, mas concreto y los Americas es abstractas....el misterioso nuevo mundo.
Mi amiga Lu Lu posta en BF(? o fb?) un otra video/short/reel acerca de "Estados Unidos no es solo America" y lamento informate desde regressa Australia, Australianos no entienden Mexico es en America del norte. (Incluje mi antes mi viva en Mexico) Eso es a pesar de "NAFTA" y proxima Copa del Mundo es "Las America del Norte Copa del Mundo" Con EE.UU, Canada y Mexico.
Mayoria Australianos crees Mexico es en America del sud, probablamente porque Mexico es sud de "Los sud" en EE.UU. Australianos mas educado pense Mexico es en America del Centro. Entonces Mexico es muy abstracto por Australianos y probablamente Inglesa (ellos llaman Doritos "Nachos" entonces que oportunidad todas cosas Mexicanas tienes?) Alemanes, Holandeses, Suecos, Italianos y por supuesto... les Franceses.
De aqui via despues cuando FOX noticias dijo "paises Mexicanos" o otra cosa mas o menos igual.
Pero antes mi hablo de "Emelia Perez" los otra mejor ejample es "LatinX" (y presumamente "MexicanX", "Cubanx", "ColumbiXnX", "(X)L(X) SalvXdXrX" etc.) Los origen de palabra no es cierto, quien creador quien lo creo, no lo se, y posiblamente no pueda saberse. No es porque los gentes han sido borrados, pero no estaba escribo. Esta articulo refute LatinX es creador de blancos liberales por los sensibilidados de blancos liberales (mas o menos) y yo creo es mas probable creador de LGBT ciudadanas estadounidenses en salas de chat de internet y despues adoptado de academia en 2004.
Los problema por gentes blancos en los anglosfera no es quien creador pero quien dijos "LatinX" como PBS hora de noticias en EE.UU, y los esfuerzo insufficiante a pensar en qual gentes "LatinX" es por y contra. Una otra grande problema es los processo de problamatizar por ejamplo con "Esky" pero Australianos dijo "Americans [Americanos]" por Gringos y Chicanos una problema mas grande que exonimo por gentes indigenistas de Arctico. "Americano" borra Canadianos y todas Latinos, pero Australianos no tiene un llama en inglese por ciudadanas estadounidenses. No es facil como "Europeas" de UE, y otra ves, por gentes Blancos Europa es Cerca y en esta caso las estructura de EE.UU es abstracto y los nombre verdadero es "Unionist" o "Americanx" en inglese, es dificil como "LatinX."
[lo suspiro] La vida es complicado por seguro. Yo? Queiro todas es mas indulgente, y adoptar los disposicion de curiosidad no pureza y especialmente moralismo (wikipedia ES redirigido a "moral" pero es diferente). Mis gustas modales y no gustas etiqueta. Modales es inclusivo y etiqueta es excluyente eso es los diferencia.
Durante mis tiempo en Guadalajara yo escriba una suuuuuuuuper largo posto acerca de "decolonizacion mis estante para libros" y alli apprendi de "La Legenda Negra" y "La Legenda Blanco" por primera ves. Con los egocentricidad de todas humanos, antes de jamas pensar de "colonialismo" tiene competicion. Especialmente de Inglese y Espana / Protestanos y Catolicos:
España está en muchos lugares, por no decir en la mayoría, muy escasa de gente y casi desolada. Las causas son:
1. Una mala religión
2. La Inquisición tiránica
3. La multitud de putas
4. La esterilidad del suelo
5. La miserable pereza de la gente, muy propia de los galeses e irlandeses, que caminaban despacio y siempre cargados con un gran estrangulador y una larga espada.
6. La expulsión de judíos y moros...
7. Guerras y plantaciones
~ Francis Willoughby, Relación de un viaje realizado por gran parte de España, 1673
No importa Inglaterra tambien expulsion de Judios en 1290, y solo lo volco en 1656, seite anos antes arriba relacion de un viaje era escriba. La punta es, anglosfera y latinosfera tienne una historia de ser enimogos. Entonces cuando dijo "LatinX" una otra problema es los borro de cultura y herencia de Espana tambien.
Antes mis tiempo vivas en Guadalajara mis trabajo por siete anos era en una centro de llamadas. En ese tiempo nosotros no preguntamos "ques es su genero?" pero despues mi regressar a los Australia una vez mas yo trabaje en una centro de llamadas. Esta ves por una trabajo nosotros preguntamos por mi primera tiempo "que es su genero?" mas que 99.90% de encuestados usar "hombre/masculino" o "mujer/feminino" y en mas como todos casos es que nosotras tendria previsto basado en su voces*.
*(y los datos existen para analizar la utilidad de los pronombres, incluidos los de género neutro y los neopronombres, porque los entrevistadores hacen breves notas de respuesta que casi siempre especifican si hablaron con una "m" o "f" masculina o femenina y esto podría compararse con las identidades de género autoidentificadas recopiladas en la demografía. Predigo que un metaestudio mostraría que para la sociedad en general, preguntar/declarar pronombres tiene poca o ninguna utilidad, todo cuesta, ningún beneficio. Predigo que los pronombres no ganarán fuerza, dejarán de usarse en general y, cuando se usen, indicarán un espacio LGBT.)
Los mas frequente demografia usar una otra genero es viejos como un broma de protesto. Habla con mas que mil gentes de 18 anos a 93, solo en dos veses mi habla con gentes mas alla de bimodal, y una de ese yo creo tambien es un broma de protesto pero viene de voce femenina y paranoica sobre seguridad.
Entonces si gentes blancos no aprendir los cultura profundo local, que oportunidad tienes con cultura exotico como las grandes Americas? "LatinX" es un peyorativa por Latinos que vives en EE.UU, mayoria blancos no apprendes Espanol, que "Latino" es de idioma "Latin" o "Semetico" es de idiomas "Semetic" (incluje Arabe) y "Romantico" es de "Roma" quien habla "Latin."
Nosotros es sensitivo a entre si, no otras. Sensitivo a los modas local mas que curioso a los profundo. Mi ciudad donde vives por ahorita, Melbourne (dijo Mel-bun) tiene una chikitito Espanasfere llamado calle Johnston, y aqui y alli tacos por muchos dolares, pero tienes una mas grande cultura de Queer, y ese cultura gustas interseccionalidad como Mexicanos gustas tamales. Eso es porque, probablamente Blancos usar "LatinX" y apprendes nada de otra poder colonial y los ninos mestisos de nosotros rival roto. Solo sabes "Real Madrid" porque Beckham fue alli por moneda, con Ronaldo y Zidane en 2003.
Como todos gentes en una posicion de responsibilidad, no gustas hables con partes interesadas. No es cultura mas que los cultura de classe managerios. Gustas mas hables con entre si. Estas producar "album country de los ano" por Beyonce en las Grammys, pero no los corazon de country, las CMAs en Nashville.
Entonces Emelia Perez. Trans no gustas, Mexicanos no gustas y 13 nominacions por esta anos Oscars. Soy Blanco y ahora en Australia entonces soy es los ultimo que sabes pero "Johanne Sacreblu: El Musical" es una respuesta perfecta:
Eso esta ahi arriba con "Dan Hibiki" de CAPCOM y "Los Peterman Gira de Realidad" de episodio "Las magdalenas" de Seinfeld por respuestas via bromas de mierda. Y los monos que comen queso y se rinden se quejo mucho como "Emily en Paris" (como todas) pero hecha Emilia Perez.
[otra ves suspira] Gentes blancos, como todos gentes de el mundo, es no una cosa. No se donde los Francos obtenar los idea su cultura es una de grandes intelectuales, he visto "Grave" y es un buena pelicula pero cuando sus personajes conversar los etica de carne es juvenil. (Mi gustas mucho los escritor y director, "Titane" es supar bueno.) Y reciente lo vi "La Sustancia" y es bueno pero obvio (eso es una parte del estilo lo creo) y cuando he visto "Anatomia de una caida" la escena más aterradora y de suspenso fue aquella en la que ABOGADOS, ABOGADOS profesionales, empiezan a criticar la literatura.
Eso me hizo asustarme de los tribunales Franceses como "El cuerpo en llamas" en Netflix hizo asustarme de los tribunales Espanes, pero porque posmodernismo no judicial adversarial.
No solo es Francia. Gentes Blancos en todos lados es implicado en Emilia Perez. Es un golpe contra no Mexicanos, no Trans pero intelligismo y una victoria por contra-intelligismo. Pinche Ice Cube, escritor de "Viernes" entiendas el espiritu de collaboracion con Banda MS por "Cuales Fronteras?" y si Ice Cube es un Los Angelino de Arriba California o "American Mexico" en Inglese no de Francia, pero Clint Eastwood demuestra sensibilidad y amor en "The Mule" y por forasteros o "los otras" en "Gran Torino" sin embargo el hizo esto.
Tommy Lee Jones hecha "Los tres entierros de Melquiades Estrada" y es supar bueno por sensibilidad y amor tambien. Entonces hay por supuesto muchos peliculas hecho en Mexico de Mexicanos, no solo Johanne Sacreblu, mas reciente es Roma, Ya No Estoy Aqui y Infierno ayuda me entiendes Mexico (menos de "Viva Mexico" que laaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargo) o por los interseccion de Queer y Mexico es "Cassandro" con su afiliacion de Amazon prime, y hablando de Gael Garcia Bernal tienes "Amores Perros" por peliculas menos hechas reciente, "Macario" por una pelicula classica.
Porque Guillermo Del Toro puede hecha "Pinocchio" una historia de Italia en Italia sin furor, o El Laberinto del Fauno, una historia original en Espana durante los guerra civil de Espana sin furor y nada de peliculas Del Toro es progressivo (exceptamente el Sexo de Mujer y Pescado que es contra El Senor) pero...
Los intelligencia dise "hacer el trabajo" y soy blanco, y hombre nacio, y Australiano entonces muchos tiempos esculcha los "necissitas hacer el trabajo" y, y eso es importante entonces con claro - Los Academy via 13 nominacions por Emilia Perez, cuando los director aceptado no investigado los contexto Mexicano por este pelicula, LOS ACADEMY es expuesta por no hacer el trabajo.
Y es una chicita pelicula, no visto de nadie (incluje yo) y deberia en el esquema grande no es importante, menos que Paquita Salas, entonces porque 13 nominacions? Porque?
Las arrogancia de Blancos.
En el ano 2002 dos comediantes Australianos y tesoros nacionales Roy y HG presentó un espectáculo de comedia en los Juegos Olímpicos de Invierno: Ciudad de Lago del Sal. Una broma periodica es alistarse EE.UU Americanos por informes meteorológicos en Australia. Los broma es la mapa tiene muchos problemas, Ciudados en estados differentes y cambiar los isla de Tasmania, y gringos no entiendes. (una ejamplo aqui)
Pero yo vivo en Guadalajara por 4 anos. Porque mis Novia es una Nortena (y no es Latina, es Mexicana!) y comiste elote con mantequilla, limon y mas mantequilla, es tan alto como una refrigerador, gustas tortillas de harina del trigo, y tienes peshugons como una vacca, mi visitar Shihuahua en total probablamente por tres o quatro meses, DF por el punado de semanas o una mes y dos dias en Querotarro y Michoacan. Mexico es un lugar grande, y Mexicanos no es una cosa.
Puedo yo senalar todos estados y capitales en una mapa de Mexico? Creo que no. Entiendo Tapitios? Mas que Chilangos pero no, no en totalmente.
Pero, quien entiendes la palabras insinceras mas que Mexicanos? Solo los Aboriginals de Australia. Pobres El Tigre, mis ojos lloren por ti.
En el futuro, habra mas palabras insinceras de Gentes Blancos. Aqui es palabras de sabiduria uno Latino:
" Al despuntar la aurora, hazte estas consideraciones previas: me encontraré con un indiscreto, un ingrato, un insolente, un mentiroso, un envidioso, un insociable. Todo eso les acontece por ignorancia de los bienes y de los males. " ~ Marco Aurelio, Meditacions Libro II.
Which isn't to say I try at all to be Woke. Nor though do I have much time or energy for the kind of person that if you make any concession even out of civility, like using they/them pronouns, as Wikipedia does but does not use neo-pronouns eg. ze/zer, would then deem Wikipedia, a wiki, "woke".
But I still have time to seek out and understand arguments for wokeness. For context, I still have time to listen to rational arguments for the existence of God, even though we are talking about a very big data set it is true to say that I now pretty much never expect an a) new/novel argument for God to be presented, more or less all of them fit in Wikipedia's shortlist of 13 arguments. b) I have no anxieties that I might actually hear something that would dramatically shift my world view to believing in the supernatural. The closest possibility is that someone will maybe make a compelling argument as to the utility of religion, but even then, these arguments tend to be like "there was more social cohesion in the relatively recent history where the state was secular but people were in the habit of going to Church and there were 4 TV Channels and they hadn't figured out that news could be a profitable entertainment format yet" and gloss over centuries of how shit the world was under religious rule.
Anyway, probably too much context, the point being that there's a learning curve where the gains are made most quickly, and in under a decade "Wokeness" has made it most of the way toward having the same expectations as Theology. With some important differences a) I have little expectation people will even make arguments and if they do, what is already treated as an a priori is way underdetermined, I will get into that later. b) I have lower expectations that I will here an argument for the utility of the nebulous grab bag of ideas that constitute "Wokeness" in this regard Woke ideas like Antiracism, DEI, Intersectionality etc. the natural experiments, and in some cases experiments have been done, and I have as much optimism that the ideas will prove their utility in respect to stated goals as I have fear that leaving a fan on in an enclosed space will result in my suffocation.
I do think it is also prudent to acknowledge that for some people, the social costs of being persuadable on some point is too high for them to be open minded. I think it's a Larry David bit from Curb or something, where someone suggests that he won't try sucking a dick because he's afraid he'll like it, and I can't recall who, but someone pointed out that that fear is actually a rational one, because for most people discovering that late in life that you are bisexual or homosexual would seriously upend your life and relationships, even though we can be reasonably confident that that is not how sexuality works, the premise of "trying" a homosexual act though itself is suspending this understanding of sexuality.
I have friends, close friends, that I basically think have to be woke, still, because the social costs of even entertaining the idea that they may be wrong on some things, make their social life unnavigatable.
But I am not one of those people, I'm in a position where if I flipped tomorrow and thought that 'wokeism' was the good fight, I would pay no social cost, equally, I pay no social cost by not being woke. I have enough evidence now, that all of my closest friends are comfortable confiding in me their views, as I am comfortable with them.
I still try though.
So let's talk my experience of trying briefly. I watch "breadtube" videos, probably the best of which I would say is Contrapoints/Natalie Wynn. Lindsay Ellis is also good, but she has basically retired from Youtube, does some stuff on Nebula, and fundamentally I know her from critiquing culture, specifically the Disney Renaissance of Little Mermaid thru...Lilo and Stitch? Which though interesting, and refreshingly argued I can't accept the premise and think what has happened is that Lindsay has mistaken that while 80s, 90s Disney content was important to her, it is therefore important to society generally.
From there, youtube goes downhill into "Big Joel" "Signified B Sides" and "Tom Nichols" to name just a few, I have stopped consuming their content for similar reasons to my stopping watching any of Bob's Burgers. I can watch whole episodes of Bob's Burgers and not laugh, I don't get that show, it has no jokes. I think we are supposed to just find the general zaniness/kookiness of the cast amusing, like someone took Family Guy and said "what if we removed all the random cultural reference gags?" You get Bob's Burgers.
The aforementioned youtubers, I watch their videos and glean no insight.and I'm serious, I have watched Tom Nichols "why is everybody holding microphones now" videoessay and by the end of it, could not justify it even being made. Big Joel is the worst Signified B Sides his extra channel is vacuous enough that I cannot bring myself to invest in his hour long videos on anything.
Ta Nahesi Coates is the only woke public intellectual I have come across who even generates interesting ideas. From him, it falls off into almost pure grift of Robin DeAngelo and Ibram X Kendi. Kimberly Krenshaw is not stupid, but her Ted talk is terrible, and also Coleman Hughes goes through one of her essays where she cites nothing to substantiate her claim that White Woman are the major beneficiaries of affirmative action.
The overwhelming thing though, that I would describe as Wokeism or Wokeness, is that they just don't argue. It's 100% assertions and memes. If Wokeism is anything, it is a movement of sensitivity, trying to create environments where you a) assume you are right, b) make it uncomfortable for anyone not to ape/parrot you.
Of particular concern is a specific meme with rhetorical utility: "It's not my job to educate you." and it's derivatives. My basic understanding of the argument, is that if you are a woman, whose every waking moment is an experience of oppression under the patriarchy, for men to constantly hit you with "I don't understand could you explain that to me." is more impression, because the task of educating is a cost in the form of time and energy.
Be that as it may, this meme is also rhetorically useful for someone who cannot explain something because they do not understand it themselves. In fact, it serves as an excuse to maintain beliefs that are unjustifiable.
I personally feel, that the grab-bag that is wokeism, is approaching an objective disaster. Almost entirely counterproductive by all conceivable metrics. I feel the good fight is addressing the systemic problem that is growing wealth inequality by educating people as to the economy.
I absolutely do not expect people to understand the economy, and I fully assume my responsibility to educate where I am capable of doing so, and refer to educational resources where I am incompetent. It is not just my job, but my moral duty to educate where I can, and disclose what I do not understand.
Now you can argue that that is my privilege, because I am not burdened by suffering under say, the male gaze, while being asked constantly to educate male peers about the male gaze because they do not understand. But pretty much nobody understands the economy, and among many economists, there are too many that have no interest in the possibility that economics as a field might have many problems.
And the chief problem with economics, is that it is at least the number 2 system effecting pretty much every issue you can name, after only the solar system, and the key issue is the lack of criticism and scrutiny economics receives.
So with that particularly nasty rhetorical meme addressed, I am going to turn toward the case study of this post - a video essayist who wishes to defend Wokeism and sees the Woke mission as one of educating.
I am totally down for getting educated, and I have tried to educate myself. Wokeness has been a bounty of bizarre and disorienting ideas that are counter to both my intuitions and everything I learned. From the very beginnings of my exposure in the form of Trigger Warnings on facebook posts, to my first friend to declare her opposition to Evolutionary Psychology on the grounds that it is condescending to women, my mind has been blown again and again by these memes and I have investigated to extend to them the benefit of the doubt, that it is not just the Emperor's New Clothes, and pretty much everything comes up short.
Let me break down the general presentation of wokeism:
Racism is bad
Sexism is bad
Discrimination against LGBTIQ+ is bad.
Then you append to these:
Therefore quotas, acknowledgement of country, defund police etc.
Therefore believe women, #metoo, #timesup, equal pay for WNBA, LatinX etc.
Therefore punch a terf, neo-pronouns, LatinX, gender affirming care.
and Therefore intersectionality.
These are fait accomplis. These are (like everyone) attempts to colonize the future, but some of the most brazen attempts to do so. Much of the content I have consumed so far, assumes the audience is already onboard, and I suspect this is not an assumption based on the easily available educational resources with which someone can get up to speed, but a kind of social pressure that likely was not designed but evolved where audiences go along because the atmosphere is created where one naturally assumes they should know and understand complicated ideas like intersectionality, privilege preserving epistemic pushback, standpoint theory, performativity and deconstruction.
I am coming to hate Peter Boghossian but his video "Confrontation at Portland State University" provides a good example of someone attempting to explain Gender-as-a-social-construct as just a sequence of assertions even after Peter claims to be a Gender Studies Scholar. It's an uncomfortable watch because it is a confrontation, where everyone is on edge, in such disorganized disarray it's also unreasonable to expect people to put together cogent coherent arguments, but almost everything "Woke" that I expose myself to when vetted for content consists of little more than truisms coupled with fait accompli assertions.
Truism: Anything intelligible is expressed in language and all language is a social construct, therefore non-binary is a useful improvement to our socially constructed schema. This is my near universal experience of Wokeism/Wokeness.
Another hopefully simple and illustrative example might be: Truism: People experience discrimination based on race. asserted fait-accompli: Antiracism.
What is obfuscated is everything between a simple truism and a very specific set of memes captured in Antiracism.
It is incredibly hard to find something as simply argued as: People experience discrimination based on race. This is bad because race is based on appearances, usually immutable qualities like skin pigmentation and other features like eyelids etc. group identities like race may even be descriptive of larger populations eg. Latinos are usually Catholic, but they are not predictive of individuals. Therefore, we can redress the problem of racial discrimination through a humanist approach like MLK Jr. and judge people by the content of their character, or through an Antiracist approach like Robin DiAngelo and Ibram X. Kendi where the salience of race is raised to saturate absolutely everything between dreams and work, fighting racism by having people look for it everywhere all the time by everybody.
And I strongly suspect the reason efforts to understand Wokeness through questions that solicit arguments is often met with such hostility and results in tense confrontations rather than chill conversations, is because most of the Woke memes cannot be justified.
a) because the memes foundation is based on heavy heavy counterintuitive theory that is out of reach of most people's cognitive faculties, like my limitations in understanding General and Special relativity in Physics.
b) because they are not justified, as suggested by the heavy mental gymnastics and impenetrable postmodern speak of the foundational theories invoked to justify most often, motivated double standards (usually an invocation of "power") that just do not hold water.
And despite the many many hours I have invested in trying to see if the emperor has any clothes at all, and him coming up naked every single time, I am still open to the possibility of persuasion as implausible as it increasingly seems.
So when I see a video entitled "In Defence of Wokism" I'm going to check it out.
Not only did I check it out, I got the whole way through, which is not something I could say of the even more fascinatingly implausible "Case against Democracy" made by Curtis Yarvin on Triggernometry. Which is if you are making a case against Democracy, and in the first 13 minutes you have invoked the conspiracy theory that William Shakespeare didn't write his portfolio of plays or sonnets and whatever and you have the gumption to assert that "most intelligent people" subscribe to a theory that some guy we only know through the plays he wrote did not in fact write those plays but it was instead written by some other guy, that if true would become the most significant thing we know about the other guy and you think an intelligent person deems such triviality a good investment of anyone's time, then yeah, I can reasonably infer that you are willing to waste my time if I keep watching.
Now Triggernometry has 1.24M subscribers, but it took a long time to get there, Triggernometry reached 500k after 5 years in 2023, Alice Cappelle is up to 473k subscribers in 4 years, with less videos produced, and she is a one-woman video essayist doing it in her second language.
Go ahead and subscribe to Alice's channel because at the very least, she is interesting. I haven't been interested in anything Triggernometry has done since Konstantin Kissin started releasing "explainer" videos as though he has expertise on anything beyond the subjective experience of being Konstantin Kissin.
So having done my part to prop up Alice Cappelle's channel and content, allow me to proceed to not tear it down.
I have featured her before, and recently, for the first and other of her videos I saw "How feminism turns into f*scism" which gave me the expectation that her defence of wokeism would be a poor one, based on how terribly she opened and then argued against women being free to join male dominated right-wing nationalist youth groups or anything else women may choose to do.
This one does not open so terribly, but if someone said to me "I'm going to defend wokism" I could say - here is what needs defending: Not that interaction effects (the basis of intersectionality) exist, but that intersectionality results in justice (social or otherwise), not that racism is bad but that Antiracism is more effective than humanism at achieving justice, that identity is not negotiated socially, that gender dysphoria can be diagnosed with high enough confidence in pre-pubescent juveniles, that media effects are strong etc. etc.
The broad theme being, pick an idea, any idea and argue for it.
I couldn't find the video I was thinking of, which was a response to the UK's Cass Review Report, that found insufficient evidence to support the use of puberty blockers to treat minors with gender dysphoria, but I found arguably a better example of someone making arguments against the Cass Review on GB news (a polite British analogue of Fox News) Barrister Robin Moira does really well, exhibiting grace under fire, even though I think Andrew Doyle is a) not a conservative in the broad sense and b) not remotely like a Fox News idealogue.
I am not personally persuaded by the case Robin makes, I think the Saudi Arabia conference on Women's Rights is a false one, a better analogy being an absence of public servants or industry lobbyists on an independent commission.
Now of course, perhaps one of the ideas in the grab bag of wokeness, is that arguing your case is bad. But I would at least hear that argument.
So let me summarize my subjective experience of Alice's defense of wokism.
1. Alice states that the video is about political strategy.
2. The first substantive point Alice makes is that she is from French Flanders (the North of France) a de-industrialized, poorer region that had a carbon based economy. That when she was young she moved from Lille to the country side. Basically as I subjectively understand it she makes the case that she is from a French analogue to the United States "Rust belt" and that it is known in France as "The Lab of the Far Right" this is all in service of debunking a left-wing stereotype that people outside of city-centres are "deplorables" as per Alice's referencing Hillary Clinton's "Trump's basket of deplorables" quote.
3. She then ties this to electoral maps, and the emerging political strategy on the left to not discuss issues that do not appeal to rural voters/make them upset.
At which point, I should probably note that as I'm experiencing this defence of Wokism, it has departed from anything I would expect as a defence. Alice has structured this video (so far) as debunking three assumptions about rural electorates that have switched from socialist to far-right. As I understand it, but it is unsaid, her defence is actually addressing a criticism of the Left that typically is expressed as "the Left have abandoned the working class" which is to say, the real abandonment was dropping the labour rights policy focus for what is broadly described as Neoliberalism, and now have adopted identity politics or "wokeism."
4. Alice lays out an agenda to debunk three concepts of far right voters - "depressed" "uneducated" and "racist"
5. Alice makes an argument that rural people are not psychologically or emotionally depressed, a valid point consistent with "the illusion of superiority" that people who live in cities don't have much insight into people who don't, but that is about as charitable as I can be. She argues quite effectively against the case that people are not economically depressed, sighting the ageing demographics, the closure of public services etc.
6. When addressing "uneducated" this section is hard to follow. Her first takeaway is that far right voters are not homogenous, citing a sociologist who claims disengagement due to resignation from young-people and the working class. This point in itself works against any defence of Wokism because it is an argument, at least with this superficial citation, that the Left have abandoned the working-class. Then there's stuff about an imitation vote and demographics of Trump v Harris, nothing really about education until Alice talks about her personal experience of canvassing in French Flanders, at which point I think I understand that Alice is using a definition of "uneducated" as "not aware of the facts" not as I understand it to usually be used in a demographic context which means "having not completed secondary school and/or not going on to tertiary studies" Alice asks her audience, including me at this point to "just trust her on this" that when presented with facts debunking claims about immigration people still say they will vote far-right. To employ my earlier analogy, this is like confronting a Christian with archaeological facts about the Exodus story that debunk the book of Exodus and then being surprised that they state they are still Christian.
7. The "racist" debunking first cites far right tactics, like appealing to women by stating they will protect them from dangerous migrants, and to People of Colour (POC) by stating they will protect the hard working assimilated from recent immigrant "welfare queens". Alice characterizes this as "fake progressivism" and cites it as evidence that the far right are being met with resistance. Alice then makes an argument from personal experience that the far right has to adopt tactics to overcome resistance to outright racism, classism, sexism etc. is because of people like her. This is the first real actual defense of wokism, but it is underdetermined because she said the video was about political strategy, and as such she needs to make an argument in this case that the resistance is an effect of wokism and not progress in general since say 1918.
8. The structure becomes less clear now that there aren't three words to debunk. Alice moves to a question of "where racism comes from" and cites sociologist Vincent Tiberj who wrote a book that states that it is top-down. So this is in line with a common thread I perceive in "Wokeism" which is that media effects are a priori (an assumed fact) strong. This means, and in Alice's example, you see politicians given air time to state immigrants are taking your jobs, and this makes people racist.
At which point it is worth taking another pause, for me to point out I would expect a defence of Wokeism to defend an interpretation of media effects as strong. I guess "some guy says they are" is an argument, an appeal to authority, as such it is a terrible argument where one should actually use the argument the authority figure makes to justify their authority.
9. Alice gives an exposition of media effects that is some combination of the Powerful effects period, Chomsky's 5 filters and social constructivism. These arguments establish that Alice is "woke" but are not in any way a defence of wokeness itself. Alice wraps up this section on racism saying her arguments are based on her personal experience and the most recent sociological book published on the subject which is Vincent Tiberj's book from April last year.
10. Alice recaps the electoral map, and alludes to the aforementioned discourse that the left need to move away from identity politics. "Shut up the Wokes Mouth" and this is depressing, moving onto her question "When did woke become a weakness?" she then gives a brief history of "Woke" etymology. She states her position that the left retreating from wokeness, anti-racism, intersectionality, LGBTQ+ etc. is a form of surrender.
11. Alice now defines the role of the left as politicizing people through education or entertainment. From the 1960's "The personal is political" brings this left mission into the domain of identity politics (feminism, civil rights (addressing racism), Queer rights) and asserts that I guess identity politics has "brought millions of votes" which is an assertion that in my own efforts, I would really like clarity on and maybe a citation, in order to have a meaningful discussion about political strategy on, that includes a defence of wokeism.
12. Alice concludes this point by stating something again I subjectively take to be treating Woke as synonymous with being the left, and basically not to get psyched out by electoral maps and continue with the mission of "educating" through activism, infographics, books, essays, video essays, commentary videos, music, film, sportsetc. These links giving me a chance to give a broad selection of woke content that consists of pure assertions and no arguments.
13. Alice then asserts that the aforementioned materials that are part of the left/the woke's mission to educate are helpful for people in far-right territories, tying it back to her personal experience in French Flanders, defining herself as a rural science girl turned left-wing influencer.
At this point, for someone like me, who you can label as far right, indicating under the Freudian heuristic "He who does not believe, does not live in accordance with his beliefs" that identity is not subjectively autonomous, but socially negotiated because I will state now that I am not far right, nor even gross-right. I am not woke though, and I do not share the conceit that woke is a synonym for left, a "you're either with us or against us."
My conception of left is a relative one, drawn from the historical context of those opposing the regime anciens in the French Revolution. To be left means to me, to be critical of the institutions to which you belong. My impression of Alice is that she regards the left as a conceptual territory that has been successfully colonized since the 1960s by identity politics, that have now evolved into a nativist-conservative one party state of Wokeism, the left is their country and they will make it great again.
The absence of any argument in defence of the contents of wokeism, my summarization, commentary tend toward ridicule. Alice's defence I understand to be simply a doubling down, a kind of "Hitler declares total war in the face of certain defeat." And a very depressing example of what I have come to expect from all ideologues, which is when confronted with failure, take the infinite recourse to a lack of commitment sooner than admit any mistake, hubris etc.
What arguments/assertions she makes has mostly substantiated the Left's abandonment of the working class and parasitism of the left by wokeness, literally taking over left wing labour movements and replacing any representation of the working class with identity politics.
This experience is really frustrating for me, and Alice reflects the rhetorical disposition of people I know out there in the real world. They do the same thing, they don't make arguments, they just assert. Admittedly, I have not consumed a sufficient amount of Alice's videos to know if she ever condescends to do educating on her channel, even with videos whose first word in the title is "how..." like "how feminism becomes f*scism."
I Offer An Alternative
This is a response to Alice's thesis. Firstly I will defer to Jonathan Rauch an impressive thinker who wrote "The Constitution of Knowledge" and more recently "Cross Purposes" for which he did an interview on the Michael Shermer Show and specifically at the 1:27 mark Rauch points out that the 2024 US Presidential election was an ordinary one.
I'm with those who say actually it was a quite ordinary election featuring two extraordinary candidates for different reasons but it's the third election in a row where the voters turned out the incumbent party, and that's happened everywhere in the world in 2024. Incumbents were turned out everywhere if you compare the exit polls of 2024 to 2020 at looks like a big shift toward Trump. Try comparing the exit polls of 2024 to 2016 the last time Trump ran against an incumbent an unpopular, essentially incumbent, party candidate: almost identical. The only exception is a continuing realignment of Hispanics toward bipartisanship that's been going on for years that's healthy um that's a natural diversification.
So firstly I would point out that the above passage contains actual arguments, citing objective facts that can be checked. To the Hispanics trending to bipartisanship, I'm not inclined to check it because this assertion makes natural sense, it resonates with the rise in profile of Gay men as conservative commentators, post marriage equality in the UK and US. As Hispanics become deminoritized they are becoming more receptive to being "protected from welfare queens" not by the far right, but any right wing party. However rather than citing a single sociologist, this assertion could be checked against a consensus by political sciences as a historical claim.
Now, like two or three posts ago, I already shared a map produced by MIT of job-losses in the US from decarbonization. So this is the ice-skating-uphill part of defending wokeism. Okay, it's the end of the Yuan dynasty, do to environmental events like drought and governmental ineptitude there is wide spread famine and starvation. Alice seems to be of the opinion, that the left's mission would be to educate starving peasants, watching their children die of malnutrition as to the oppressive nature of Patriarchy. And if this is losing out to the Red Turban Rebellions, where peasants revolt against the Yuan empire, then the "left" need to just double down and not be discouraged.
I present this as an alternative to maybe the situation in French Flanders, if it is analogous to what is happening in the US, the UK, Canada, Australia, Mexico, Brazil, Sweden even, where wealth inequality is growing, and continues to grow, the middle class are shrinking, wages are stagnating if not going backwards, housing is becoming unaffordable because the rich are using it for investment purposes, asset prices are reaching record highs, the Left are preserving neoliberal economic policies that ended the post war period under Reagan and Thatcher while embracing Wokeism as their chief left-wing credential, electorates are calling out for change and the only people offering something different are far right parties who are attributing everything to immigration.
I defer to Jonathan Haidt who I think is drawing inspiration from Ancient Greece's "Elephant and the rider" analogy, but more modernly "our conscious mind thinks it is the oval office, when in fact it is the press secretary." There is a lot of evidence to suggest that while many people voting far right think they care about immigrants and grooming gangs and DEI and trans issues, a better predictor of their vote is if they live in a Carbon based economy, if they have experienced inflation under any incumbent government etc.
On that front, while I don't think the US election was lost in 2024 by the democrats because of DEI and Wokeism, it does play a role in giving them a cheap alternative to making the changes an electorate has been calling for since the Global Financial Crisis. Consider, that people really thought Obama would change things, that it meant something to have a black President.
The Democrats have been ignoring the call for change since Obama's winning of the primaries, where the party rejected Hillary.
Based on the crappiness of Alice's defense, I implore you to abandon wokeism, and would direct you to Gary's Economics because you are using up the oxygen when we need to come back from the brink.
See also Mark Blyth, Yanis Varafoukis and spend time there before re-entering culture wars. And I'm sorry my list of economists fighting the good fight is not more diverse, but these dicks and balls are competent communicators and critics.
