“The end cannot justify the means, for the simple and obvious reason that the means employed determine the nature of the ends produced.” - Aldous Huxley A year and a half ago I sent an email to a woman I admired who works as an herbalist, inviting her to be a guest on my podcast. I received the following response:
thanks for writing this piece, for looking kindly & thoughtfully at a bunch of things that deserve nuance & are far more complicated than “we” (by that i mean lefties/progressives, speaking w/o authority for my tribe) want them to be.
i remember first hearing yrs ago of bari as essentially an untouchable- then accidentally reading her me2 questioning piece and finding -2 my surprise!- that it resonated soundly with my own opinions, then eventually becoming a closet reader of her substack. (for the record, i don’t agree with her, or you, or anyone, on everything. but she, and you, have some interesting things to say. so i read).
i SO want my tribe, the progressive/left, to be as awesome irl as we are in my mind: open minded & big hearted & 99% right & super gracious when we’re wrong.
i hate seeing the dissonance.
and i see the dissonance so much. today i was likened to ted cruz (!?) by a loved one when i shared my personal discomfort with compelled pronoun listing. because “liberals don’t have a problem with that, just ppl like ted cruz”...
and that naïveté is a through line in my progressive spheres, with a few “don’t tell them” back-channel conversations about whatever “aha” topics a person has marking the way.
my take?
we (progressive lefties) aren’t the “good guys” and they (moderates/conservatives) aren’t the “bad guys”. both sides straw man the other. both sides are falible. both sides have some good points & sometimes we’re talking shit. we’re *all* just ppl and yet, in my spheres to say that is heresy. to not tow the line is heresy. to suggest the other side has a good point on that one thing is heresy.
This was a great read. Relieved to hear anyone willing to talk about these crazy and dangerous happenings. I get so upset sometimes internally when having conversations that I just can’t find the words to explain how I feel.
I say stuff like this a lot, about how unfortunately movements are turning people away by not allowing for human error and becoming seemingly authoritarian. Free, open discourse is important and always will be. Due process is also important. Yes there are true, horrible injustices in the world. Many of them. We should of course continue to speak out about them and work towards an equitable and peaceful world. But some of those “injustices” are small and they are actually just misunderstandings. If we don’t allow for people to say, sorry I was wrong, for some of these mistakes, especially more minor ones, then we are oppressing others and have lost touch with the morals that brought us to our beliefs in the first place. Furthermore, pushing people to accept things without them understanding them, can be confusing and again push them further from the movements than closer. ..maybe strategies need to be rethought at that point.
I plan to share this essay with anyone who asks me why I am concerned about free speech and the current ideology of the progressive left. Like you, I grew up firmly democratic in a hippie/lefty community and this has long been my orientation. But within the last few years the increasingly strident insistence that people one disagrees with are dangerous and must be "de-platformed" is deeply distressing.
Fuck yes Anya, so well articulated and validating to hear!
The past 5 years or so I’ve developed a soft spot for predominantly “red” rural culture/people (where I live). Previously I was living at an urban farmhouse collective so progressive we literally were a hub for the 2020 Green Party presidential candidate haha. I genuinely have an appreciation for both lifestyles/perspectives…but [when I bother engaging/being vulnerable] I continue to experience condescension and derision from “liberals,” whereas the rural conservative folk have always welcomed me and are shockingly generous.
So suffice to say, my fundamentally progressive values of equity and inclusion are unfortunately sometimes lost in the eagerness to rebel against the woke liberal dogma. But it’s truly progressive perspectives like yours that bring me gently back to Earth, or at least the Earth I want to live on. So thank you!
Social justice, equality, diversity, and inclusiveness are all good things. This is what wokism seems to be promoting but the means by which it wishes to achieve these things is not being doing in a healthy way and only delays true change. We cannot shut down speech in the pursuit of change, we should be seeking all perspectives and all voices. Wokism seems to be perpetuating the same toxic behavior that it is seeking to change. It’s time for the adults to take back control of the wheel and stop letting the children drive before we drive off a cliff. Wokism is nuanced but it’s time for liberals to grow a pair and realize what emotional maturity looks like and stop giving in to these narcissistic little fucks.
In my mind, language is a form of expression; a way to express outwardly what is within. I think comedy is a great example of how the inner desire for laughter can be expressed with words that might come off as hurtful or offensive to some. To me, intentions are what really matter. This logic also applies in reverse. Someone could be saying all the kindest and least offensive things, but if that person is a sociopath, then what actually matters are their intentions, not their superficial words. If someone is offended by something that they knowingly recognize as honest intentions, then, to me, this is just a lack of emotional intelligence.
The problem of determining what is considered offensive is subjective and relies on perception, which is infinite and far from absolute. With a lack of absolute clarity in understanding how someone is expressing themselves, should we really choose to censor people? Shouldn’t we instead nurture our ability to see each other's true intentions, teach intuition and discernment? To me, censorship is just another distorted version of logic and reasoning in an overly mechanistic society.
In terms of wokism, I see good intentions by those who are peripherally involved, but I also see those who are seeking to control, and it feels like more of a fundamental aspect of wokism.
From an evolutionary psychology point of view, liberal and conservative refer to poles on a phenotypic continuum which are much deeper than political orientation, which have evolved under different selective pressures. See the work of Avi Tuschman and Jonathan Haidt. The totalitarian need to control and punish those who are perceived to be an enemy is not the hegemony of either liberal or conservative. One difference is that conservatives are much more tolerant, forgiving, and loyal to their "own" (on the average). On the other hand, liberals are more willing to find common ground with the outgroup, especially when they are perceived as oppressed in some way. So if you had been black, native american, or trans, perhaps the herbalist would have been less antagonistic. Since you are perceived as defecting "ingroup", you are not afforded much kindness.
But this is also in contradiction to the average liberal tendency to be kinder than conservatives, which might explain your indignation. The 6 values that Haidt identified (that distinguish liberals from conservatives and from libertarians) are sometimes in conflict with each other. In this case kindness is in conflict with weak ingroup solidarity and the universal (both liberal and conservative) need to punish or in some way reform defectors/cheaters within an evolutionary group, and weak ingroup solidarity wins.
It's simultaneously satisfying and disheartening for me to be able to model human beings thus, as if they were automatons. At least it's only deterministic in the limit of large populations and averages. I don't have this coded into equations yet, but I think it's possible...
As far as ends justifying means, there is also the issue that some ends are possible in our imaginations, but there is no real life path to get there. Or else any realistic path requires a better model of human nature, perhaps the nature of life.
i love this.
thanks for writing this piece, for looking kindly & thoughtfully at a bunch of things that deserve nuance & are far more complicated than “we” (by that i mean lefties/progressives, speaking w/o authority for my tribe) want them to be.
i remember first hearing yrs ago of bari as essentially an untouchable- then accidentally reading her me2 questioning piece and finding -2 my surprise!- that it resonated soundly with my own opinions, then eventually becoming a closet reader of her substack. (for the record, i don’t agree with her, or you, or anyone, on everything. but she, and you, have some interesting things to say. so i read).
i SO want my tribe, the progressive/left, to be as awesome irl as we are in my mind: open minded & big hearted & 99% right & super gracious when we’re wrong.
i hate seeing the dissonance.
and i see the dissonance so much. today i was likened to ted cruz (!?) by a loved one when i shared my personal discomfort with compelled pronoun listing. because “liberals don’t have a problem with that, just ppl like ted cruz”...
and that naïveté is a through line in my progressive spheres, with a few “don’t tell them” back-channel conversations about whatever “aha” topics a person has marking the way.
my take?
we (progressive lefties) aren’t the “good guys” and they (moderates/conservatives) aren’t the “bad guys”. both sides straw man the other. both sides are falible. both sides have some good points & sometimes we’re talking shit. we’re *all* just ppl and yet, in my spheres to say that is heresy. to not tow the line is heresy. to suggest the other side has a good point on that one thing is heresy.
i appreciate you making space for this here.
This was a great read. Relieved to hear anyone willing to talk about these crazy and dangerous happenings. I get so upset sometimes internally when having conversations that I just can’t find the words to explain how I feel.
I say stuff like this a lot, about how unfortunately movements are turning people away by not allowing for human error and becoming seemingly authoritarian. Free, open discourse is important and always will be. Due process is also important. Yes there are true, horrible injustices in the world. Many of them. We should of course continue to speak out about them and work towards an equitable and peaceful world. But some of those “injustices” are small and they are actually just misunderstandings. If we don’t allow for people to say, sorry I was wrong, for some of these mistakes, especially more minor ones, then we are oppressing others and have lost touch with the morals that brought us to our beliefs in the first place. Furthermore, pushing people to accept things without them understanding them, can be confusing and again push them further from the movements than closer. ..maybe strategies need to be rethought at that point.
I plan to share this essay with anyone who asks me why I am concerned about free speech and the current ideology of the progressive left. Like you, I grew up firmly democratic in a hippie/lefty community and this has long been my orientation. But within the last few years the increasingly strident insistence that people one disagrees with are dangerous and must be "de-platformed" is deeply distressing.
Fuck yes Anya, so well articulated and validating to hear!
The past 5 years or so I’ve developed a soft spot for predominantly “red” rural culture/people (where I live). Previously I was living at an urban farmhouse collective so progressive we literally were a hub for the 2020 Green Party presidential candidate haha. I genuinely have an appreciation for both lifestyles/perspectives…but [when I bother engaging/being vulnerable] I continue to experience condescension and derision from “liberals,” whereas the rural conservative folk have always welcomed me and are shockingly generous.
So suffice to say, my fundamentally progressive values of equity and inclusion are unfortunately sometimes lost in the eagerness to rebel against the woke liberal dogma. But it’s truly progressive perspectives like yours that bring me gently back to Earth, or at least the Earth I want to live on. So thank you!
Social justice, equality, diversity, and inclusiveness are all good things. This is what wokism seems to be promoting but the means by which it wishes to achieve these things is not being doing in a healthy way and only delays true change. We cannot shut down speech in the pursuit of change, we should be seeking all perspectives and all voices. Wokism seems to be perpetuating the same toxic behavior that it is seeking to change. It’s time for the adults to take back control of the wheel and stop letting the children drive before we drive off a cliff. Wokism is nuanced but it’s time for liberals to grow a pair and realize what emotional maturity looks like and stop giving in to these narcissistic little fucks.
Thank you, Anya.
Such a good read, beautifully written. Thank you for this.
Excellent read Anya!! Thank you for your research on this piece.
In my mind, language is a form of expression; a way to express outwardly what is within. I think comedy is a great example of how the inner desire for laughter can be expressed with words that might come off as hurtful or offensive to some. To me, intentions are what really matter. This logic also applies in reverse. Someone could be saying all the kindest and least offensive things, but if that person is a sociopath, then what actually matters are their intentions, not their superficial words. If someone is offended by something that they knowingly recognize as honest intentions, then, to me, this is just a lack of emotional intelligence.
The problem of determining what is considered offensive is subjective and relies on perception, which is infinite and far from absolute. With a lack of absolute clarity in understanding how someone is expressing themselves, should we really choose to censor people? Shouldn’t we instead nurture our ability to see each other's true intentions, teach intuition and discernment? To me, censorship is just another distorted version of logic and reasoning in an overly mechanistic society.
In terms of wokism, I see good intentions by those who are peripherally involved, but I also see those who are seeking to control, and it feels like more of a fundamental aspect of wokism.
I didn't know about all of those different stories. Thank you for writing this. Makes me sad but it's a very good summary of what's been going wrong.
From an evolutionary psychology point of view, liberal and conservative refer to poles on a phenotypic continuum which are much deeper than political orientation, which have evolved under different selective pressures. See the work of Avi Tuschman and Jonathan Haidt. The totalitarian need to control and punish those who are perceived to be an enemy is not the hegemony of either liberal or conservative. One difference is that conservatives are much more tolerant, forgiving, and loyal to their "own" (on the average). On the other hand, liberals are more willing to find common ground with the outgroup, especially when they are perceived as oppressed in some way. So if you had been black, native american, or trans, perhaps the herbalist would have been less antagonistic. Since you are perceived as defecting "ingroup", you are not afforded much kindness.
But this is also in contradiction to the average liberal tendency to be kinder than conservatives, which might explain your indignation. The 6 values that Haidt identified (that distinguish liberals from conservatives and from libertarians) are sometimes in conflict with each other. In this case kindness is in conflict with weak ingroup solidarity and the universal (both liberal and conservative) need to punish or in some way reform defectors/cheaters within an evolutionary group, and weak ingroup solidarity wins.
It's simultaneously satisfying and disheartening for me to be able to model human beings thus, as if they were automatons. At least it's only deterministic in the limit of large populations and averages. I don't have this coded into equations yet, but I think it's possible...
As far as ends justifying means, there is also the issue that some ends are possible in our imaginations, but there is no real life path to get there. Or else any realistic path requires a better model of human nature, perhaps the nature of life.