House of Eratosthenes

So I was reading this epistle posted on this Internet woke-kiosk called The Mary Sue, which was sounding the familiar clarion call of the woke, “Oh how much I hate this thing, come gather around and help me hate it.” In this case, for today, “it” would be J.K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter adventures.

The author piqued my curiosity by willfully using the word “problematic.” This isn’t a good word. It doesn’t say anything. Take an object, let’s say it’s a beehive, or a pair of salt & pepper shakers. A milk bucket. You tell me it’s “problematic” and what does that say about the thing? Nothing. You’re telling me about yourself, and your objectives. You’re trying to start a new cultural more in which the thing is generally disliked, for some reason. You’re instigating an exchange. You’ll grant me approval if I help you dislike the thing. Or, you’ll withhold the approval unless I help you. And…that’s it. That’s all you’re saying.

You don’t need to overthink it like this to see the — problems. The word is just awkward and weird. It is a punchline all unto itself, fairly screaming “educated beyond my intellect.” But our newer generation of woke-people just can’t stop using it. The walls of their echo chamber are so thick? They can’t see this?

It’s like they’ve become, bit by bit, now perfectly willing to ‘fess up to anyone paying attention

1) They haven’t got anything to say besides telling us about their dislike of something;
2) They haven’t got any reason for disliking it, other than someone else gave them instructions to dislike it;
3) If the thing they dislike were to go away, it wouldn’t help anybody besides them — in short, there’s really no reason for anyone to listen to ’em.

Van Harvey clued me in on something that gave me a bit of a shock. There’s a verb to go with the adjective: Problematize.

Problematizing is, as adherents to Critical Social Justice and other critical theories would say, the process of making those oppressions (and other moral failings) â€œvisible.â€ Put otherwise, problematics are what critical theories criticize, and problematizing is how it does its criticism. The goal of this activity is to replace false consciousness (especially internalized oppression) with critical consciousness (i.e., wokeness) and thus agitate for a social and cultural revolution.

So wait…what? The anti-woke, like me, have been accusing the woke of just looking for reasons to be upset. Advancing the notion that peace with them is impossible, that if their demands are ever met in total, they’ll just come up with more. And here they are, not only admitting it, but being proud to do so?

It seems like something they should only be talking about behind closed doors.

Well if this isn’t a secret, or hasn’t been one, then I can only conclude the “progress” progressives have been making is due to a monumental misunderstanding.

We entered a cul de sac, doomed to stall or beat a retreat, way back in the prior century. When we allowed progressives to assume a role as final arbiter in the rules of good manners.

It isn’t because my biases are the opposite of theirs, and I don’t trust their judgment. Although those apply. No. I would expect a reasonable progressive, if you can find one, to concede the point that never being happy is an indispensable part of their ideology. This is easily defined and easily tested. Just give them whatever they want, which is something we’ve done many times. They’ll find a new way to be unhappy, to say “Still not good enough.” Progress, remember?

This sounds so captivating, especially to decent people. “We’re making a perfect new world, one in which that behavior, acceptable now, simply isn’t good enough.” Who could say no? What could possibly be the problem?

The problem is that, ironically, it makes us all into wretched people.

We become a society in which, if any one of us plays Rip van Winkle and falls asleep for twenty years, when he wakes up he finds himself a pariah among those who used to accept him, through no fault of his own. It doesn’t matter which guy. It doesn’t matter what twenty years those are. Our society is one in which you’re obliged to stay up on where all these reforms are going, and what ones are coming along next, in order to keep your status. In fact, in order to remain only marginally acceptable.

The higher standards are not the focus. The whole point of the activity is the rejection. The goal is to find more things “problematic.”

It’s a motte-and-bailey argument. The motte, the mild and easily defended argument, is: People shouldn’t be annoying each other on purpose. They should put just a minimal amount of effort into complying with these new rules, to avoid offense. Unfortunately this comes attached to a whole slew of baileys, as reliable as a thunderclap following the lightning. Ignorance is no excuse. If you don’t follow these rules we made up, you’re unfit. Your shortcoming must be deliberate. It must prove something deficient in your character, irredeemable. And if you occupy a position of authority, profit or honor then you must be unfit for that and the rest of us have to separate you from it.

We can’t continue down this road.

Ultimately we’re going to have to admit society took a wrong turn, quite a ways back. This is a tough thing to admit, because it all started with “It’s a sign of bad character to treat a black fellow differently from the way you’d treat his white counterpart.” Which is true. Progressives want all the credit for guiding us out of that sort of discrimination. Well, a lot of people gave it up without progressivism helping them, and a lot of people never started on it. But more importantly: It’s not a manners thing. Can we admit that now? That’s a “make society go” thing, a “the American dream is for everybody” thing. A don’t-be-stupid thing.

Very subtle difference but an important one. You can be a rude cluck and concede that the American dream is for everyone. Manners were not on the bill.

We goofed way back there. Nowadays, it’s many times a year progressives have new ideas for our ever-evolving “manners.”

Whoever proposes a bold change for all of us, should be ready to deal with rejection. The bolder the change, the greater the readiness, and the bigger the problems that emerge if the readiness is not there. Now we’re armpits deep in this wreckage of progressives telling us “The change we have in mind for today, is [blank]”…and they’re entirely unready to deal with any dissent, or even any questions. To the contrary. We’ve become accustomed to their readiness for the opposite, to destroy anybody who so much as hesitates to go along, let alone those who refuse to do so.

This is unmaintainable even if the progressive ideas are good.

A pattern has emerged in which, the more impractical and extravagant the progressive idea, the harsher the social penalties to be lowered on those who resist. We have to pretend men can get pregnant now. Use the pronouns. Go to the training. Our ability to earn money to pay our mortgages, utilities and grocery bills depends on accepting the falsehoods.

We’re running out of road.

We shouldn’t have put progressives in charge of manners. It’s not their thing anyway. Their agenda is not for people to be better mannered or less offensive to each other. They thrive on the offense. They aren’t about manners. They are about control.

We’ve accepted clear and obvious falsehood, and now we’re paying the penalty.

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The Problem with the Problematizing ProblematizersSunday, February 4th, 2024

The Problem with the Problematizing Problematizers
Sunday, February 4th, 2024