Overplaying Their Hand

Society Snaps Back

If you only teach children (and then adolescents, and then adults) a certain view of the world and don’t fairly teach them the objections to the worldview, or critical thinking, you will have a large group of enthusiastic followers… but they will lack epistemological rigor and will not be able to effectively counter arguments that they encounter. This will rarely lead to their apostasy (instead they will replace logic and evidence with strong emotions and ad hominem attacks on their opponents) but it will mean they are less capable at persuading others, especially those outstanding minds who are significantly smarter than the average, or people with broad life experience, or people who really know how to think. You will have, effectively, created an intellectual caste system, in which the dull and the midwits will accept the orthodoxy, and most of the courageous and the brilliant will not. The lower castes will react to their betters with rage and disgust, comforted by their numbers and the institutions they control.

If you don’t teach children (and adolescents, and then adults) how to manage their emotions and embrace struggle and hardship you will gain a bevy of potential followers who rely on others for their validation and comfort… but they will lack the emotional resources to follow through and accomplish difficult things. They will be mired in self-absorption and unable to contend with or outwork those well-parented young people who learned about the difficulty of life as they gained the confidence required to summit its peaks. You will have created a psychological caste system, in which most young people are fragile and unhappy while a cognitive and psychological elite are bold and self-assured. The lower castes will regard the upper with incomprehension and envy. The presence of their betters will create a vague sense of unease and this negative emotion will be treated with outsize alarm, as all of their negative emotions are. The lower castes will react to their betters with rage and disgust, comforted by their numbers and the institutions they control. However those institutions will suffer in appreciable quality and as they weaken they will be replaced.

These are homeostatic mechanisms: factors which build the movement and yet contain the seeds for its weakening, and fracture… and replacement.

When you train activists to be self-righteous and absolutist and contemptuous of the mainstream and tradition, you gain a large number of young people who are blindly loyal to the orthodoxy and nearly incapable of introspection or rational policy deliberation… but they will be unable to build a constructive movement. They will not have the discipline or respect for others needed to organize effectively and communicate their ideas. They will favor brief and showy displays (created with social media in mind, since that is the real setting of their lives and identities). They will NOT win mainstream support and their efforts will actually cause a great deal of disgust and anger at their movement, eventually turning large segments of the population against even unobjectionable goals.

“A CBBC presenter should not be involved in protests against evidence-based medical care for children.”

From

The Glinner Update

(linked here):

THE TELEGRAPH: A medical conference discussing the clinical care of children with gender issues was ambushed by aggressive trans activists who attacked attendees and tried to storm the venue.

The Clinical Advisory Network on Sex and Gender (CAN-SG) is an organisation made up of doctors and psychiatrists who campaign for science-based dialogue on gender issues. On Saturday, it hosted an event at the conference space belonging to the Royal College of GPs (RCGP) in Euston Square in central London. The event, called First Do No Harm, aimed to explore “Current controversies in the care of children and young people with gender-related distress”.

The conference was besieged by violent trans activists, many of them masked, who tried to prevent it from going ahead. They threw smoke bombs, tried to intimidate and assault attendees and then attempted to storm the venue. Dozens of police officers were required to prevent the thugs from forcing their way into the building.

Video footage from inside the conference venue shows trans rights activists trying to break down the doors.

An article in The Daily Mail suggests that one of those leading the protest against a clinical conference on child healthcare is a presenter from CBBC (the BBC’s station aimed specifically at children).

Dr Ronx Ikharia, who describes herself as ‘trans and non-binary’, presents the popular CBBC programme, Operation Ouch! She used a loud hailer to make a speech outside the venue, claiming that the conference is ‘doing harm’. Stephanie Davies-Arai of Transgender Trend, said “A CBBC presenter should not be involved in protests against evidence-based medical care for children”.

Speakers at the conference included a number of experienced clinicians, such as Dr Anna Hutchinson, education lead for the new NHS gender services for children, as well as social worker, Sonia Appleby, the former safeguarding lead at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust, and de-transitioner, Ritchie Herron, who spoke about undergoing the very hormone treatment and surgery under discussion.

‘The right side of history’ does not demonstrate against scientific fact and clinical integrity, nor does it try to silence those with expertise and experience.

Jane Symons, vice-chair of the Medical Journalists’ Association, said of the event, “It’s the first time I have ever attended a medical conference requiring police protection. Healthcare should be driven by evidence not ideology.”

This is the event which was protested. ‘First, Do No Harm’ is an excellent heuristic for medical providers. How many of the protestors would have been able to give a fair and coherent description of their opponents’ claims, do you think? How many would ascribe everything to transphobia?

There was a moment 2-3 years ago when the dynamism and ever-shifting tides of culture seemed to have been stilled. This is ironic, in retrospect, for it was among the most confusing and disputatious periods of the past century. The sense-making institutions seemed to have coalesced around a new (and, relative to even recent ideas, radical) orthodoxy: Western society was irreparably racist (to the point that being class was now of much less importance) and sexist. Sexism was the main driver of ‘inequities’ (a favorite new term) in corporate boardrooms and films and legislatures. Sex was simultaneously much less salient, though, for ANYONE could identify as a woman and that identification would (or should) grant that person access to the full range of women’s spaces and benefits. Heterosexuality itself was a historical chimera, vaguely causally linked to colonialism and capitalism, and alternate modes of attachment and parenting should be promoted and celebrated. Immigration was simply the newest and best way to help the disadvantaged and should be enthusiastically allowed and facilitated whenever possible, and anyone who pointed out issues or downsides to that effort was a xenophobe and probably a racist.

The new orthodoxy WAS fairly well-entrenched in many of the sense-making institutions… but even there the effect was illusory. Many people were doubtful of or even opposed to the new ideas and aims, but were simply too cowardly to say anything.

It turns out there are homeostatic mechanisms operating within the social justice ecosystem as well: when you stigmatize any dissent or vocalized opposition you create what seems like unanimity, but is actually just fear and conformity. Because the ideologues never actually made any effort to speak to dissenters or convince them, and just bullied the masses into silence, they made themselves widely disliked and lost opportunities to make allies (real allies). Their ability to appeal to different kinds of people and to craft convincing arguments died on the vine. The people who were inclined to do those kinds of things were not the ones who were empowered.

In movement after movement and college after college and company after company we will see whistleblowers, lawsuits, and internal coups as the ideologues who gained power (many of whom have personality disorders) are unseated and their loony bylaws amended and the activists pushed to the margins (which is their normal position, in a stable society). The organizations will try to regain their old sense of ease and competence. Unfortunately, this will be difficult in most cases. Once trust has been broken and the workplace (or school, or discussion board, etc., etc.) made into a hostile and erratic place there’s no simple path back to harmony.

The countries which embraced totalitarianism emerged shocked and reeling, not just from the violence and repression but also from the deletion of religion, and debate, and freedom. They had based their entire societies on a lie and after one participates in a project like this there is no wide path back to the place before. Nothing is ever the same again. We have constructed a delicate balance of goodwill and competence and public decorum, over centuries. When that is pulled down, even for a brief time, it proves extremely difficult to rebuild.

Some things are NOT subject to homeostatic mechanisms.

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