An excellent article. Paradoxically, this over-evaluation of subjective experience is a bastard offspring of deconstruction and postmodernism in philosophy. People like Lyotard and Foucault tried to deconstruct the subject, pointing out that our selves are socially and linguistically constructed. Somehow this insight has devolved into the belief that our self is the only ground of truth. But you correctly point out the contradiction at the heart of it: some experiences are devalued because of the subject's politicized identity (a conservative, a whit male or a Jew), while others are unimpeachable because of the subject's real or imaginary victimhood. It is a philosophically and politically incoherent but a dangerously powerful movement.
I agree 100%. It's a cultural trend that just happens to intersect with technological/economic changes and radical political agendas. I was just surprised at how many modern abnormalities and maladaptations were connected to this change (in my view)!
In a faculty meeting around 2015 or so, the golden millennial was charged with informing us elders on what is "offensive" these days.
"Never ask someone where they're from," she schooled.
We teach international students.
Try to untangle the logic: It's "offensive" to assume someone's sex ("gender"). We all have to act as though we're confused about our bodies in an effort to make that confused person feel "included." Never mind that it makes most of us feel EXCLUDED. I don't want to ask people whether their perceptions match their genitals. I don't want anyone asking me.
In processing the most benign statements evolved into "offenses" imaginable, I said, "But this is grossly subjective. It's going to wreak havoc."
The Millennial, who had earlier informed me that "sex is a social construct" that there is "no difference between men and women" gave me a LOOK.
No seriously, I said. How is getting easily offended -- over someone trying to start a conversation by asking you where you're from -- how is that a good thing? Are you thinking cause and effect? This is not going to go well!
And, well, here we are.
On another note, a Chinese national student informed me that another instructor in our program arrived to class 30 minutes late on the day after the election, and she was openly weeping, swearing, and holding our international students captive for nearly the entire session, during which time she called Trump a "motherfucker," and passed bread around saying that everyone should take a piece of bread while they still had their "freedoms."
The student in question had written a few sentences in her grammar section that were favorable about Trump. He was worried that she would fail him for that.
I've heard SO MANY anecdotes like this. Think of the 'pronoun' issue: we should all announce pronouns in our emails... and NEVER assume someone's gender. Who is this for?! Even TRANS people (especially trans people) don't want to be asked about gender! They want to easily pass as the opposite gender.
Answer (and this is really the only answer I can find): there are radical utopians who want to purge our society of the IDEA of gender (and its association with sex) and they are using concepts like kindness, tolerance, inclusivity towards this end, to great effect. You go down the list and all of these changes are like that.
I think the Critical Theorists were happy to use a self-absorbed and disconnected cohort of young people for their own ends (just as they're happy to use trans people, and immigrants, et al, without any REAL concern for those people). Unfortunately for them, these kids are too whiny and ridiculous to be agents of lasting political change (I hope). Instead, they've just thrown our society into disarray... and these kids into a cult. I don't think that language is too strong.
I mostly blame the theorists themselves (so enamored of their ideology that they have only seething resentment for all of the good and noble things in the world), and (less) the faculty and administrators, who tend to be idealistic and foolish young women, or cowards.
I wrote this awhile back about a 12-hour hunger strike at Harvard. Lol. Don't worry... everyone survived:
Thanks for the read. It makes me think of that quote, "psychology is more infectious than the flu." This has become so evident in the past decade as our realities have become constructed and distorted in the media space, as feelings have taken the place as fact, and how trying to figure out what is true becomes more impossible every day.
Another excellent article. I was a bit surprised though you didn't touch on the logical contradiction at the heart of so many of these movements: subjectivity for me, but not for thee. I suspect this is key to understanding this phenomena as a perversion of collectivism, NOT as individualism taken too far.
Subjective claims to "My Truth" and "Lived experience" are frequently only regarded as valid for the speaker, based on which intersectional identities they claim. For example, Modern Feminism does not give any validity to the lived experience or "My Truth" claims of abused men any more than they do to the more objective statistics and empirical evidence regarding mutual domestic abuse. The lived experience and "My Truth" claims of whites who have suffered racial discrimination do not receive the same open reception as similar claims by Blacks, regardless of supporting evidence. It's not only that "feelings > reality" in this distorted worldview, but that "feelings > reality" ONLY if you have the correct position in the victim hierarchy according to that worldview.
Individualism isn't their fundamental value, or they would logically need to extend the same right to interpret reality subjectively even to those they dislike or disagree with. This isn't at all what they actually do. Rather, they condemn objectivity and logic as inherently biased against them. They likewise condemn any members of their victim hierarchy groups whose subjective lived experience and "My Truth" claims don't match their preferred narrative. There's a surreal quality to seeing white liberals proclaim with absolute moral certainty that Black conservatives are "the voice of White Supremacy", with zero self-awareness that white people telling Black people what they are allowed to think, say, and vote is itself a pretty close approximation of White Supremacy in practice. When individuals aren't allowed to disagree with the collective, the philosophy is necessarily more collectivist than individualist.
You certainly hit the nail on the head about it being pathological though. They're many good articles at this point discussing the "Cluster B" society that has emerged. What I find most interesting about it is how the pathology differs from Left to Right. Particularly regarding Narcissism, which seems to have inexplicably become rebranded as the best path to "taking care of yourself", "living your best life", and the basis for "curating your social circle to remove toxic people". Narcissism manifests with subtle differences between the Left and the Right, primarily that the Narcissistic Left particularly exhibit "need for affirmation" whereas the Narcissistic Right exhibit "entitlement to respect".
This echoes the difference in conception of "Rights", with the 'Progressive' Left often using a "Positive Rights" framework where if you have a Right to something that implies a duty on others to provide that something for you, versus the Conservative Right often using a "Negative Rights" framework where if you have a Right to something that implies only a duty on others to NOT interfere, infringe, or violate on your Right to that something. Applied to Narcissism, this matches well with the Left demanding that dissenters actively affirm their "politically correct" positions and subjective identities, whereas the Right demands simply that the Left not insult or otherwise disrespect theirs. It's "If you're not actively my ally, you're my enemy" versus "I don't care what you do in your personal life, but stop trying to force your nonsense down my throat and interfering in my personal life." Or, for the more extreme examples, leftist protestors literally likening "misgendering" with a lethal threat and lack of government funded transitions with an actual genocide, whereas the rallying cry on the Right is more commonly prohibitions like "Don't Tread on Me" and "Leave the kids alone".
That’s the strange thing about subjectivity in the modern sense (as far as I can gather): they’re not actually MAKING a truth claim about their subjectivity being an accurate guide to reality (the “my truth” trope is usually just a way to make their own feelings and experiences seem ESPECIALLY important). If they were they would run into the issue: WHOSE subjectivity is correct when they differ? Then you’re right back to the beginning. You’re right-it’s a contradiction.
It seems more reflexive to me-more emotional. I suspect you and I are giving it far more analysis than they often do. It really just seems to be individuals ASSUMING their subjectivity is correct, without considering others’ at all. Think about it: Trump voters’ real claims and motivations (for example) are hardly ever stated, much less addressed. It’s easer just to dismiss them all with epithets.
I suspect this has something to do with the new ‘victim hierarchy’ too. If you have a bunch of people running around believing their subjective impressions are correct you need to adjudicate it somehow. Giving automatic preference to certain people based on sex or orientation or ethnicity or status solves that nicely. It’s a bizarre and unreliable way to find the truth… but if your goal is to validate a huge and fragile pile of egos and feelings and prejudices it seems to work. It just leaves everyone feeling perpetually reactive and aggrieved because the whole thing runs of feelings… and feelings are transitory. They’re not like rules or coalitions or ideas. Perhaps that’s why these people never seem to accomplish anything. They take over institutions, ruin their operation with their histrionics and virtuous displays and then move on. The scheme requires a great deal of wealth and leisure to support… but think of the waste!
I tend to think ALL of our inner life is socially constructed… but it’s the intersection of our culture (dreams, language, values, beliefs-most of which are as invisible to us as air) and the happenstance of our experiences INTERSECTING with our personalities (which are mostly genetic). The personality drives your reaction to certain events and the formation of psychological complexes but all the inputs are social and environmental. Just a guess though…
If you put people in solitary confinement they become psychotic within weeks or months. Our brains can’t function without massive and daily social input. Without that fuel it will begin to try to stimulate itself using hallucinations and delusions.
Speaking of know nothing brain washed dimwits it seems to me that such is the case with many/most of the adherents of the now famous MAGA (make America grotesque again) cult which is lead by a religiously and culturally illiterate nihilistic barbarian who is also a pathological liar and a life long professional grifter/ con-man.
He is very much a part of the sucker-is-born-every-minute showbiz tradition of P T Barnum. Barnum was of course wrong. There are now thousands of suckers born every minute.
Humpty Dumpty is an expert in manipulating and ripping off (financially) his brain washed dimwits.
This argument would be more cogent if it was neutral as to the identity of those asserting the primacy of their subjectivity. We are ALL subjective. We all have our own stories we don’t even know we are telling.
When is it bad to deploy reality testing? When is it advantageous to operate purely on emotional reflex in forming beliefs and dealing with others?
It’s not neutral in focus because I see it as a HUGE problem in certain places and not so much in others. Journalists, teenagers on social media, folks who believe the other side is evil simply based on their opinions, mentally ill people, women-these are some of the groups for which it seems to be a particular problem.
Service employees, small business owners, police, people willing to communicate w others of different beliefs, people living with nuclear families, immigrants-these are people who seem better at reality-testing in my experience.
Everyone has a subjective experience. Everyone uses emotion and bias in reasoning. We should all keep in mind that these are wildly unreliable guides. ANYONE who’s ignoring the possibility that they’re wrong (like the folks cutting off family because of their vote) and anyone who’s telling people their impulses are valid or useful in forming opinions about the world is doing a disservice. Emotions are important and valid but they’re simply irrelevant to public policy. Things might make you angry but that anger doesn’t validate your beliefs. You can apply this to every social reality. Always test your emotions against the facts you have at your disposal. It’s not about political ideology-it’s about mental health.
I suppose I am guilty of tone policing. We don’t disagree on one of the problems in a multi-factoral world. I suppose it is the direct oppositional approach to your observations that makes me think it won’t persuade someone that doesn’t already agree with you.
To whom you are attracted sexually is purely subjective and therefore cannot reasonably be contested by an outside observer.
Where you decide to live your life on a spectrum of superficial, stereotypical male to female attributes (and we all do) is also purely subjective and similarly cannot be questioned.
However, your biological sex reflects an objective reality which cannot be changed by your subjective personal view and futile attempts to do so can result in serious health impacts to you as well as harms to members of the sex you are impersonating (primarily women).
Others who are grounded in objective reality should never be forced to accept your subjective version of your actual biological sex.
Finally, it's past time for the LGB community to separate themselves from the trans activists who are trying to take away the rights of women to fairness in sports and to privacy and safety in their restrooms, locker rooms and prisons. They also advocate for the chemical and surgical mutilation of children many of whom would grow up gay.
Their actions are evil and the
understandable negative reaction to the harm they are causing is spilling over to innocent people who are just going about their business, marrying and leading their lives.
An excellent article. Paradoxically, this over-evaluation of subjective experience is a bastard offspring of deconstruction and postmodernism in philosophy. People like Lyotard and Foucault tried to deconstruct the subject, pointing out that our selves are socially and linguistically constructed. Somehow this insight has devolved into the belief that our self is the only ground of truth. But you correctly point out the contradiction at the heart of it: some experiences are devalued because of the subject's politicized identity (a conservative, a whit male or a Jew), while others are unimpeachable because of the subject's real or imaginary victimhood. It is a philosophically and politically incoherent but a dangerously powerful movement.
I agree 100%. It's a cultural trend that just happens to intersect with technological/economic changes and radical political agendas. I was just surprised at how many modern abnormalities and maladaptations were connected to this change (in my view)!
In a faculty meeting around 2015 or so, the golden millennial was charged with informing us elders on what is "offensive" these days.
"Never ask someone where they're from," she schooled.
We teach international students.
Try to untangle the logic: It's "offensive" to assume someone's sex ("gender"). We all have to act as though we're confused about our bodies in an effort to make that confused person feel "included." Never mind that it makes most of us feel EXCLUDED. I don't want to ask people whether their perceptions match their genitals. I don't want anyone asking me.
In processing the most benign statements evolved into "offenses" imaginable, I said, "But this is grossly subjective. It's going to wreak havoc."
The Millennial, who had earlier informed me that "sex is a social construct" that there is "no difference between men and women" gave me a LOOK.
No seriously, I said. How is getting easily offended -- over someone trying to start a conversation by asking you where you're from -- how is that a good thing? Are you thinking cause and effect? This is not going to go well!
And, well, here we are.
On another note, a Chinese national student informed me that another instructor in our program arrived to class 30 minutes late on the day after the election, and she was openly weeping, swearing, and holding our international students captive for nearly the entire session, during which time she called Trump a "motherfucker," and passed bread around saying that everyone should take a piece of bread while they still had their "freedoms."
The student in question had written a few sentences in her grammar section that were favorable about Trump. He was worried that she would fail him for that.
I've heard SO MANY anecdotes like this. Think of the 'pronoun' issue: we should all announce pronouns in our emails... and NEVER assume someone's gender. Who is this for?! Even TRANS people (especially trans people) don't want to be asked about gender! They want to easily pass as the opposite gender.
Answer (and this is really the only answer I can find): there are radical utopians who want to purge our society of the IDEA of gender (and its association with sex) and they are using concepts like kindness, tolerance, inclusivity towards this end, to great effect. You go down the list and all of these changes are like that.
I think the Critical Theorists were happy to use a self-absorbed and disconnected cohort of young people for their own ends (just as they're happy to use trans people, and immigrants, et al, without any REAL concern for those people). Unfortunately for them, these kids are too whiny and ridiculous to be agents of lasting political change (I hope). Instead, they've just thrown our society into disarray... and these kids into a cult. I don't think that language is too strong.
I mostly blame the theorists themselves (so enamored of their ideology that they have only seething resentment for all of the good and noble things in the world), and (less) the faculty and administrators, who tend to be idealistic and foolish young women, or cowards.
I wrote this awhile back about a 12-hour hunger strike at Harvard. Lol. Don't worry... everyone survived:
https://jmpolemic.substack.com/p/a-feast-of-impotent-vanity
Thanks for the read. It makes me think of that quote, "psychology is more infectious than the flu." This has become so evident in the past decade as our realities have become constructed and distorted in the media space, as feelings have taken the place as fact, and how trying to figure out what is true becomes more impossible every day.
Another excellent article. I was a bit surprised though you didn't touch on the logical contradiction at the heart of so many of these movements: subjectivity for me, but not for thee. I suspect this is key to understanding this phenomena as a perversion of collectivism, NOT as individualism taken too far.
Subjective claims to "My Truth" and "Lived experience" are frequently only regarded as valid for the speaker, based on which intersectional identities they claim. For example, Modern Feminism does not give any validity to the lived experience or "My Truth" claims of abused men any more than they do to the more objective statistics and empirical evidence regarding mutual domestic abuse. The lived experience and "My Truth" claims of whites who have suffered racial discrimination do not receive the same open reception as similar claims by Blacks, regardless of supporting evidence. It's not only that "feelings > reality" in this distorted worldview, but that "feelings > reality" ONLY if you have the correct position in the victim hierarchy according to that worldview.
Individualism isn't their fundamental value, or they would logically need to extend the same right to interpret reality subjectively even to those they dislike or disagree with. This isn't at all what they actually do. Rather, they condemn objectivity and logic as inherently biased against them. They likewise condemn any members of their victim hierarchy groups whose subjective lived experience and "My Truth" claims don't match their preferred narrative. There's a surreal quality to seeing white liberals proclaim with absolute moral certainty that Black conservatives are "the voice of White Supremacy", with zero self-awareness that white people telling Black people what they are allowed to think, say, and vote is itself a pretty close approximation of White Supremacy in practice. When individuals aren't allowed to disagree with the collective, the philosophy is necessarily more collectivist than individualist.
You certainly hit the nail on the head about it being pathological though. They're many good articles at this point discussing the "Cluster B" society that has emerged. What I find most interesting about it is how the pathology differs from Left to Right. Particularly regarding Narcissism, which seems to have inexplicably become rebranded as the best path to "taking care of yourself", "living your best life", and the basis for "curating your social circle to remove toxic people". Narcissism manifests with subtle differences between the Left and the Right, primarily that the Narcissistic Left particularly exhibit "need for affirmation" whereas the Narcissistic Right exhibit "entitlement to respect".
This echoes the difference in conception of "Rights", with the 'Progressive' Left often using a "Positive Rights" framework where if you have a Right to something that implies a duty on others to provide that something for you, versus the Conservative Right often using a "Negative Rights" framework where if you have a Right to something that implies only a duty on others to NOT interfere, infringe, or violate on your Right to that something. Applied to Narcissism, this matches well with the Left demanding that dissenters actively affirm their "politically correct" positions and subjective identities, whereas the Right demands simply that the Left not insult or otherwise disrespect theirs. It's "If you're not actively my ally, you're my enemy" versus "I don't care what you do in your personal life, but stop trying to force your nonsense down my throat and interfering in my personal life." Or, for the more extreme examples, leftist protestors literally likening "misgendering" with a lethal threat and lack of government funded transitions with an actual genocide, whereas the rallying cry on the Right is more commonly prohibitions like "Don't Tread on Me" and "Leave the kids alone".
That’s the strange thing about subjectivity in the modern sense (as far as I can gather): they’re not actually MAKING a truth claim about their subjectivity being an accurate guide to reality (the “my truth” trope is usually just a way to make their own feelings and experiences seem ESPECIALLY important). If they were they would run into the issue: WHOSE subjectivity is correct when they differ? Then you’re right back to the beginning. You’re right-it’s a contradiction.
It seems more reflexive to me-more emotional. I suspect you and I are giving it far more analysis than they often do. It really just seems to be individuals ASSUMING their subjectivity is correct, without considering others’ at all. Think about it: Trump voters’ real claims and motivations (for example) are hardly ever stated, much less addressed. It’s easer just to dismiss them all with epithets.
I suspect this has something to do with the new ‘victim hierarchy’ too. If you have a bunch of people running around believing their subjective impressions are correct you need to adjudicate it somehow. Giving automatic preference to certain people based on sex or orientation or ethnicity or status solves that nicely. It’s a bizarre and unreliable way to find the truth… but if your goal is to validate a huge and fragile pile of egos and feelings and prejudices it seems to work. It just leaves everyone feeling perpetually reactive and aggrieved because the whole thing runs of feelings… and feelings are transitory. They’re not like rules or coalitions or ideas. Perhaps that’s why these people never seem to accomplish anything. They take over institutions, ruin their operation with their histrionics and virtuous displays and then move on. The scheme requires a great deal of wealth and leisure to support… but think of the waste!
Not much of a way to continue to construct culture and civilization.
This is excellent. I wonder how much of our inner, private self is socially constructed, what ways it varies and the reasons.
I tend to think ALL of our inner life is socially constructed… but it’s the intersection of our culture (dreams, language, values, beliefs-most of which are as invisible to us as air) and the happenstance of our experiences INTERSECTING with our personalities (which are mostly genetic). The personality drives your reaction to certain events and the formation of psychological complexes but all the inputs are social and environmental. Just a guess though…
If you put people in solitary confinement they become psychotic within weeks or months. Our brains can’t function without massive and daily social input. Without that fuel it will begin to try to stimulate itself using hallucinations and delusions.
Speaking of know nothing brain washed dimwits it seems to me that such is the case with many/most of the adherents of the now famous MAGA (make America grotesque again) cult which is lead by a religiously and culturally illiterate nihilistic barbarian who is also a pathological liar and a life long professional grifter/ con-man.
He is very much a part of the sucker-is-born-every-minute showbiz tradition of P T Barnum. Barnum was of course wrong. There are now thousands of suckers born every minute.
Humpty Dumpty is an expert in manipulating and ripping off (financially) his brain washed dimwits.
This argument would be more cogent if it was neutral as to the identity of those asserting the primacy of their subjectivity. We are ALL subjective. We all have our own stories we don’t even know we are telling.
When is it bad to deploy reality testing? When is it advantageous to operate purely on emotional reflex in forming beliefs and dealing with others?
It’s not neutral in focus because I see it as a HUGE problem in certain places and not so much in others. Journalists, teenagers on social media, folks who believe the other side is evil simply based on their opinions, mentally ill people, women-these are some of the groups for which it seems to be a particular problem.
Service employees, small business owners, police, people willing to communicate w others of different beliefs, people living with nuclear families, immigrants-these are people who seem better at reality-testing in my experience.
Do you detect a pattern in these groups?
Everyone has a subjective experience. Everyone uses emotion and bias in reasoning. We should all keep in mind that these are wildly unreliable guides. ANYONE who’s ignoring the possibility that they’re wrong (like the folks cutting off family because of their vote) and anyone who’s telling people their impulses are valid or useful in forming opinions about the world is doing a disservice. Emotions are important and valid but they’re simply irrelevant to public policy. Things might make you angry but that anger doesn’t validate your beliefs. You can apply this to every social reality. Always test your emotions against the facts you have at your disposal. It’s not about political ideology-it’s about mental health.
I suppose I am guilty of tone policing. We don’t disagree on one of the problems in a multi-factoral world. I suppose it is the direct oppositional approach to your observations that makes me think it won’t persuade someone that doesn’t already agree with you.
To whom you are attracted sexually is purely subjective and therefore cannot reasonably be contested by an outside observer.
Where you decide to live your life on a spectrum of superficial, stereotypical male to female attributes (and we all do) is also purely subjective and similarly cannot be questioned.
However, your biological sex reflects an objective reality which cannot be changed by your subjective personal view and futile attempts to do so can result in serious health impacts to you as well as harms to members of the sex you are impersonating (primarily women).
Others who are grounded in objective reality should never be forced to accept your subjective version of your actual biological sex.
Finally, it's past time for the LGB community to separate themselves from the trans activists who are trying to take away the rights of women to fairness in sports and to privacy and safety in their restrooms, locker rooms and prisons. They also advocate for the chemical and surgical mutilation of children many of whom would grow up gay.
Their actions are evil and the
understandable negative reaction to the harm they are causing is spilling over to innocent people who are just going about their business, marrying and leading their lives.
XXX