Wokeness Has Important Tactical Advantages Over Liberalism (19/30)
I'm writing 30 posts in 30 days, this is number 19.
The victories of wokeness have been nothing short of remarkable. Sure, incidents like this and this are, in some ways, uninteresting: socially ascendant actors wrested power and money away from others. Tale as old as time. However, the form of this victories are interesting, in that they take the form of surrender. Trader Joe's showed how easy it was to resist woke social pressures: you just have to say no, and nothing happens. Woke politics gets powerful liberals to give up their own power and money based on, apparently, nothing more than the threat of some Tweetstorms.
This must be explained. Here's one potential facet of the explanation.
If you're looking to establish a coherent system of morality, it helps to have a telos, a proper end for human life—virtue as a defined personal agenda. For a rigorous defense of this, see Alasdair MacIntyre's excellent After Virtue. For a less-rigorous defense, just think about the world for two seconds.
Let's compare two people: the modern liberal and a really sharp Muslim man who energetically attempted to convert me one night.
The modern liberal would like to reduce suffering and inequality, and be open-minded and tolerant. Noble goals! Time to reduce suffering. You have an extra $100. Would you like to donate all of it to malaria relief? That's a good option. But perhaps, in the long run, the best way for you to alleviate suffering would be to perform well at your socially conscious startup, and that efficiency on your enjoyment of life. Get a tasty vegetarian meal for you and your spouse, especially from a new Syrian restaurant run by refugees who need your support. But, oh, wait, what about your children, whose innovations will help us terraform Mars? Maybe you should buy some dogecoin to invest in their future.
And let's not even get into open-mindedness and tolerance. The difficulties of those concepts are well-explored.
None of the above options are bad. But even in this relatively small slice of life, we see how it's difficult to execute on liberal ideals in a satisfyingly exact way. Sure, you can resign yourself to the nebulosity of it all and try to make your best guess about how to behave ethically, but it does lack clarity. It kind of comes down to whatever makes you feel good in the moment. It’s a morality of broad, fuzzy principles backed up by gut checks.
Compare this to the devout Muslim. There's really not much wiggle room there. The guy who tried to convert me had an instant answer to every question about how I should live my life. What careers were best, how I should dress, how I should eat, how I should conduct my relationships, and so on. Any questions about virtuous conduct could be answered in light of a firm concept of the good life. Does this action take us closer to our telos? If so, do it. It was impressive; I was excited by his surety.
Wokeness, unlike liberalism, has a telos, although not one as firm as that of fundamentalist Islam. The proper life is to be an anti-racist, or a dyed-in-the-wool progressive, or, to rely on a pejorative term, a Social Justice Warrior. You're good if you're Doing The Work, which is to say, undoing the white supremacist cisheteropatriarchy. While that translates into a long and ambitious to-do list, and there's a certain amount of internal conflict about priorities, it's fairly obvious whether you're committed to the project or not.
In some respects, wokeness and liberalism share aims, but wokeness is more focused. They both want to reduce suffering, but wokeness is more precise about where it comes from. They both want to reduce inequality, but wokeness has a more clean-cut system for determining what the important inequalities are. They both want to listen to neglected perspectives, but wokeness is absolutely sure about what the neglected perspectives are.
So, the wokeist can easily accuse the liberal of being halfhearted in the pursuit of the common good they claim to desire.
Like this:
W: Hey liberal, I applaud you for being committed to progressive aims. So, how are you Doing The Work?
L: Good question, my woke friend! Well, I'm donating to environmental charities, and I treat people fairly, and I consume ethically, buying organic and sustainable products at Whole Foods.
W: Ethical consumption, I see. So, you're using capital you've accrued through privilege to buy luxury goods. Are they produced by black-owned businesses, or, say, a queer collective?
L: Not that I know of, although I believe Whole Foods has progressive hiring practices. So, that's fairness, I suppose.
W: Progressive hiring practices approved by a white CEO, under the guidance of Amazon, a company that's problematic for all sorts of reasons.
L: I mean, yeah, I guess so. Um, could you suggest an alternative?
W: Respectfully, I feel that you should educate yourself on this matter. There are a few books I might recommend.
L: That sounds great, I should do some enlightening reading. I’ve been feeling too scattered to even read lately, you know. With the social media and all.
W: Yeah, I’ve noticed that you’ve been active on social media. Now that we’re on the topic, I’m concerned that you’re not amplifying marginalized voices enough. Have you thought about how your focus on gleeful self-expression is self-indulgent?
And so on.
This is kind of a structural weakness for the current flavor of liberalism. It's not fatal, by any means. After all, Joe Biden was elected. But an ethical system based on pluralism will always seem mushy next to one with singularism, especially in a polarized climate where pluralism has narrower appeal than it once did.
In short, it's hard to claim that you're living the good life if you're committed to not declaring what that is.