The History of Modern Stupidity and the Scourge of the Polarized Hidden Sub-Tribes

Jonathan Haidt offers a retrospective and a vision in his recent article: "WHY THE PAST 10 YEARS OF AMERICAN LIFE HAVE BEEN UNIQUELY STUPID. It’s not just a phase."

But first of all, who is making most of the noise in America?

The “Hidden Tribes” study, by the pro-democracy group More in Common, surveyed 8,000 Americans in 2017 and 2018 and identified seven groups that shared beliefs and behaviors. The one furthest to the right, known as the “devoted conservatives,” comprised 6 percent of the U.S. population. The group furthest to the left, the “progressive activists,” comprised 8 percent of the population. The progressive activists were by far the most prolific group on social media: 70 percent had shared political content over the previous year. The devoted conservatives followed, at 56 percent.

These two extreme groups are similar in surprising ways. They are the whitest and richest of the seven groups, which suggests that America is being torn apart by a battle between two subsets of the elite who are not representative of the broader society. What’s more, they are the two groups that show the greatest homogeneity in their moral and political attitudes. This uniformity of opinion, the study’s authors speculate, is likely a result of thought-policing on social media: “Those who express sympathy for the views of opposing groups may experience backlash from their own cohort.” In other words, political extremists don’t just shoot darts at their enemies; they spend a lot of their ammunition targeting dissenters or nuanced thinkers on their own team. In this way, social media makes a political system based on compromise grind to a halt.

Here is a glimmer of hope because we have now identified the problem (and see here):

The story i have told is bleak, and there is little evidence to suggest that America will return to some semblance of normalcy and stability in the next five or 10 years. Which side is going to become conciliatory? What is the likelihood that Congress will enact major reforms that strengthen democratic institutions or detoxify social media?

Yet when we look away from our dysfunctional federal government, disconnect from social media, and talk with our neighbors directly, things seem more hopeful. Most Americans in the More in Common report are members of the “exhausted majority,” which is tired of the fighting and is willing to listen to the other side and compromise. Most Americans now see that social media is having a negative impact on the country, and are becoming more aware of its damaging effects on children.

Will we do anything about it?

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Trigger Warnings as Warnings in and of Themselves

Jonathan Haidt wrote about the deep meaning of trigger warnings back in 2015 in his article, "THE CODDLING OF THE AMERICAN MINDIn the name of emotional well-being, college students are increasingly demanding protection from words and ideas they don’t like. Here’s why that’s disastrous for education—and mental health."

This new climate is slowly being institutionalized, and is affecting what can be said in the classroom, even as a basis for discussion. During the 2014–15 school year, for instance, the deans and department chairs at the 10 University of California system schools were presented by administrators at faculty leader-training sessions with examples of microaggressions. The list of offensive statements included: “America is the land of opportunity” and “I believe the most qualified person should get the job.” . . . The current movement is largely about emotional well-being. More than the last, it presumes an extraordinary fragility of the collegiate psyche, and therefore elevates the goal of protecting students from psychological harm. The ultimate aim, it seems, is to turn campuses into “safe spaces” where young adults are shielded from words and ideas that make some uncomfortable. And more than the last, this movement seeks to punish anyone who interferes with that aim, even accidentally. You might call this impulse vindictive protectiveness. It is creating a culture in which everyone must think twice before speaking up, lest they face charges of insensitivity, aggression, or worse."

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On the Betrayal of Women

At Common Sense, Zoe Strimpel has written an article titled "How Feminism Got Hijacked. The movement that once declared “I am woman, hear me roar” can no longer define what a woman is. What happened?"

In this article, Strimpel refers to this March 31 2022 Headline in The Washington Post:

What follows is an excerpt from Strimpel's excellent article:

Post-Feminist Feminism has morphed into a dark, strange Anti-Feminism. Anti-Feminism borrows from the language of liberation, but it’s not about liberating women. It’s about pushing women out of college sports. It’s about telling girls they aren’t lesbians or tomboys, but in fact men struggling to find themselves.

It is the madness that led a storied American newspaper to run an anti-woman (or de-woman-ed) headline—garnering roughly 1,400 comments (almost all negative) before shutting down the comments section. It is the trap that ensnared a Supreme Court nominee, who had acquitted herself with great aplomb and suddenly found herself at the end of an ideological cul de sac. To attempt an answer, any answer, to the question—Can you provide a definition for the word ‘woman’?—would be to re-center women, biological sex, the concrete, mundane experience of ordinary, boring, bourgeois and working-class and very poor women the world over. It would be to attempt to undo the hijacking of the feminist cause and to return it to the people for whom that cause was created so many decades ago.

Returning the cause to the people for whom it was created is the only way to save it, and to stop the many discriminations that girls and women still face: domestic violence; the economic and psychological penalty of having babies; the manifold hurts and crimes visited upon countless women in non-Western countries simply for being women. For now, doing anything about all of that is a fantasy. First, we have to honor the actual meaning of words, like woman. We have to insist that those meanings are important. We have to go back, again, to first principles. That is the only way forward.

I will never stop using the word "woman" to refer to the women in my life, whether they be my mom, my daughters, my sisters and my friends.  I do so proudly and publicly.  I will speak out strongly against those people who use the word "women" only in private (especially liberals who agree with me but who are too cowardly to speak out). In the meantime, we see headlines like this: "Two inmates at all-women's New Jersey jail are PREGNANT after both had sex with transgender prisoners: ACLU won battle to house 27 trans inmates there."

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American Teenagers in Crisis

First the shocking data:

The above is from Derek Thompson's article in The Atlantic: "Why American Teens Are So Sad: Four forces are propelling the rising rates of depression among young people."

The four forces are:

1. Social-media use

Social media isn’t like rat poison, which is toxic to almost everyone. It’s more like alcohol: a mildly addictive substance that can enhance social situations but can also lead to dependency and depression among a minority of users.

2. Sociality is down.

More social media means less unstructured face-to-face time with others.

3. The world is stressful—and there is more news about the world’s stressors

"Fears about finances, climate change, and viral pandemics are smashing into local concerns about social approval and setting oneself up for success."

4. Modern parenting strategies

Today's helicopter parents are depriving their teenagers of opportunities for learning how to tolerate discomfort and developing a sense of personal competence. Further, Thompson notes "a broad increase in an “accommodative” parenting style."

In conclusion, here is an excerpt from Thompson's article:

The world is overwhelming, and an inescapably negative news cycle creates an atmosphere of existential gloom, not just for teens but also for their moms and dads. The more overwhelming the world feels to parents, the more they may try to bubble-wrap their kids with accommodations. Over time, this protective parenting style deprives children of the emotional resilience they need to handle the world’s stresses. Childhood becomes more insular: Time spent with friends, driving, dating, and working summer jobs all decline. College pressures skyrocket. Outwardly, teens are growing up slower; but online, they’re growing up faster. The Internet exposes teenagers not only to supportive friendships but also to bullying, threats, despairing conversations about mental health, and a slurry of unsolvable global problems—a carnival of negativity. Social media places in every teen’s pocket a quantified battle royal for scarce popularity that can displace hours of sleep and makes many teens, especially girls, feel worse about their body and life. Amplify these existing trends with a global pandemic and an unprecedented period of social isolation, and suddenly, the remarkable rise of teenage sadness doesn’t feel all that mysterious, does it?

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Colin Wright’s Experience with University DEI Departments

Colin Wright is a biologist who wanted to teach at a university.  He explains his interview process in this video. The universities only cared about two types of diversity:  1. Physical appearance and 2. Sex and gender identity.  They did not care about viewpoint diversity.  They did not care about equality, but only about equity (guarantying equal outcomes).  Wright believes in hiring the best person for the job, not what they looked like. He believes that it is dehumanizing to deal with others based on their physical appearance or their sexual or gender ideology because this insists that we should reduce human complexity to a single trait. The DEI statements he encountered required him to give assent to segregation based on physical traits.

Wright gave up on his dream of teaching at a university. He hears from many teachers who are self-censoring or lying in order to keep their jobs.  His conclusion: Diversity, Equity and Inclusion orthodoxy prevents diversity of thought.

Eric Weinstein's reaction to Wright's video:

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