Category: Student Posts

This week’s reading from Mark Mitchell held a common theme of  moral relativism. The moral universe has become relativized and has created areas where most of us don’t think that it is morally right to allow ppl to do morally unjust acts. At the visceral level there is foundational moral vocabulary created by society and there is to some degree a conforming to moral parameters that people have to adhere to. In order to be a consistent moral relativist one must think that everything that other people do is okay because we cannot morally judge them. We give up our autonomy at a certain level. In class we discussed examples like not being able to agree with someone agreeing to be murdered and cannibalized or someone willingly being someone’s slave. There is this moral distortion that occurs. Extreme acts like these create a moral vacuum. Left without a solution society rips itself apart and plays into this moralizing game. It is used as a mechanism to fuel revolutions and civil wars. Throughout time there has been an existing rift between transgressors and the morally pure. This is true with our current situation in the world and events like the bombing of civilians in Ukraine. This idea of the morally pure versus morally evil  is a common theme evident in many religions as well. For instance in the case of Christianity Jesus was depicted as morally pure and was transgressed against and died for the salvation of humanity. Christians are taught that if they live morally pure lives in this world then their souls will be saved and they will be allowed to live in the utopia that is heaven. I think a lot of times it is not so simple or black and white with morality. There is a continuum and many gray areas of how we define moral acts. This varies greatly according to the moral and social conformity of different cultures as well.

Wokeism, a social justice movement that has gained popularity in recent years, is heavily influenced by the ideas of philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. In his work, Nietzsche questioned the concept of truth and the notion that there is a single, objective truth that all individuals should strive towards. Instead, he argued that the pursuit of truth is entwined with the pursuit of power, and that individuals and groups use narratives of truth to persuade others to behave in ways that serve their own interests.

Mark Mitchell, in his book Power and Purity, asserts that Nietzsche believed that the only thing that all individuals are truly pursuing is “the will to power.” This, according to Mitchell, is the true “bedrock” of human behavior and the key to understanding why individuals and groups engage in moralizing and identity politics. In other words, the pursuit of power is the driving force behind wokeism and other social justice movements.

However, Nietzsche’s own writings do not support this interpretation. Rather than seeing the will to power as an all-encompassing force, Nietzsche viewed it as a tool that individuals could use to shape their own personalities and overcome internal struggles. In this sense, the will to power is more akin to willpower or self-control than it is to a universal truth.

Joshua Mitchell, in his book Identity Politics and the New Tribalism, offers a different perspective on the origins of wokeism. He argues that the decline of Christianity in the western world has left a void in people’s lives, and that wokeism and other social justice movements have filled this void by offering a new moral framework. This framework, based on the idea of “oppressor” and “oppressed” identities, provides individuals with a sense of belonging and a way to categorize the world and the people in it.

But this moralizing approach, according to Mitchell, is ultimately destructive. It divides people into hostile camps and keeps them constantly at odds with one another. Instead of engaging in identity politics and moralizing, Mitchell argues that the state should focus on raising competent citizens and leaving moral issues to individuals and their communities. Only by moving beyond the divisive language of wokeism can society truly progress.

After talking about the Nietzism aspect of Mark’s readings that we read from last week, that helped me better understand the concept and connect his ideas with Josh’s in how they were either similar or different. From what I got from our talk in class is that Josh Mitchell does agree with Mark that there is a relationship between Christianity and identity politics. 

What I liked about the reading we did for class this week was how Josh Mitchell started talking about what an identity is first, before he even got into explaining identity politics. I also liked how he talked about inheritance and how in American society we kind of went from talking about inheritance and then that changed to identity. He provided two explanations for identity. The first one is that identity refers to “kind” and how it went from something unstable to stable.the second version is a more radical meaning of the word which is that it evolved into the specification of a relationship. In the way he described it, it makes me think of how people have relationships with each other such as owing a debt (which he uses as an example). In this way, the second meaning of identity is where we see the transgressor and innocent victim relationships emerge. The victimhood aspect of identity politics somewhat reminded me of what Gad Saad talked about in his book the parasitic mind. 

How each political party responded to identity politics is also quite interesting. The Republican party defends ideas on market commerce and tradition (going against marxism and progressivism). I believe he is saying that identity politics gets rid of the physical aspects of payment that the republican party believes in through working you will receive payment. 

The gist is that the republican party doesn’t like identity politics but the democratic party does. 

The whole mercy and justice correlation were interesting as well since mercy can supplement justice but can not be the substitute for it. 

The way that Riley explained how identity politics is connected to Christianity made it more clear to me. The ideas of transgressions and moral purities come from Christianity. When the world is created by a pure entity, God, out of that we get humans who make wrong decisions (transgressions) and sins emerge. Sins are then become permanent stains on human beings. How they can rectify the moral good is by becomes an issue. However, God solves the issue in a supernatural way by creating another supernatural being that then beings the scapegoat and pays all the debts for the sinners in the community. 

I’m not very religious but I know the basics so sometimes its nice to get a reminder on how it works. 

Josh Mitchell is interested in how the western world thinks on western problems. There is a hint of Christianity there even though we do not even realize it. Therefore Christian foundations become inescapable since they become entangled with cultural discourses and affect the way that members of society think about things

I thought that Joshua Mitchell posed an interesting phenomenon of a world where transgressors were gone entirely. He framed a question of can the innocents be innocent without transgressors? After one purge takes place and white heterosexual males are gone then another group of transgressors ultimately will take their place and the cycle keeps repeating itself until the last identity group is reached. This group then takes on the stance of the innocent victim only to actually be using just enough power to scapegoat and urge its transgressor.

This week’s reading was one that I found very thought-provoking and made me self-reflect on what I thought of as true and what values are in relation to others and the world. While I did not self-reflecting a part of the reading that I had trouble understanding is at the bottom of page 20 to the top of page 2. When looking at truths and what can be claimed as a personal truth or as Mitchell says “my truth” he brings up an example of what can’t be true and the limits truth has. In one of these examples, he states that one can not choose to be a gender that they were not born as, and even after transitioning it is still not true that they are the gender that they identify as because at a genetic level he claims that there is no such thing as transgender. I found myself questioning this extensively because I do know transgender people and to say that they do not exist I find a very problematic and frankly transphobic comment. I understand that Mitchell is looking at this on a genetic level but gender and sex are two different things, and this might be a very new concept that has not caught on completely, but gender is a social construct and it is fluid and a spectrum. Sex is what is assigned as birth and it is a binary unless someone is intersex. I also found it interesting that he paired that comment with the idea of being transracial. I understand why he might try to compare the two to prove a point but they are drastically different. Gender is an internal sense of self, race is not. One can not inherit gender, unlike race. Race is also not just physical differences but it holds very strong social connotations like a culture where gender has no culture.

One thing that was brought up in class is how currently, religion is much more important in eastern world than in western world which is perplexing because back when religion first started to be prevalent in the world, it was much more prominent in the western world. We did not go into depth about why it ended up working out this way however, what we do know is that back in the day when religion was first introduced in the western world Christianity was the main type of religion what was being practiced and the reason so many people believed in it was because they looked at it as an a gateway for explanation of all of the world events that were happening that they were experiencing for the first time. They were not able to explain things with science such as diseases, natural disasters and famines so they all turned to religion. Moving forward to present time in western civilization, we are now so advanced technologically and we have much more knowledge so people don’t have to turn to religion for the answers to all of the things we don’t know. Now if someone does not know something it is very likely that someone else does. This is where intellectuals come into play. There are intellectuals all over the world however, the work of intellectuals has had a major impact on western civilization as they are responsible for most of the technological progress that the western world has experienced over the years. Now looking at the eastern world, it is pretty safe to say that there are a lot more countries that are not very advanced technologically because they do not have the same resources as a lot of countries in the western world which is one of the reasons religion is much more prominent. It is interesting because based on my observations in general, people who are Christian in the western world don’t practice Christainity as seriously as say Islamic people in the eastern world practice Islam. It seems like most of the Christians in the west are baptized at a young age just because that is the norm and that is was peoples ancestry have been doing for years so they just follow along. So they are Christian on paper however, they do not live their life ever thinking about religion or following the values and beliefs that Christianity preaches. We as Islamics for the most part take their religion much more seriously to the point that if they break the rules of their religion, they are punished. I wonder how much of a factor the technological advancement of each region of the world is in relation to the seriousness of how each religion is practiced. I know that it is not the only factor as well so I am curious what other factors play a role as well and more specifically the factors that caused the shift from religion being much more prevalent in the west to the east.

From Mark Mitchell’s book chapters from Power and Purity, we discussed two different truths and how this can relate to the overall class theme of wokeism. There is a Puritanical worldview and a Nietzchean worldview. We largely discussed the Puritancial worldview. It is a moralizing discourse in order for individuals to fit into a particular mold. The Puritans perpetuated a force of anti-freedom and conformity. This can be compared to the wokeists, which are a group of the present. The wokeists are similar to the Puritans as they have the same reasoning style of relativism. This concept of relativism was started by the ancient Greek philosophers. It is the idea that all knowledge claims are limited to the perspective of the claim they made. However, intellectuals in American culture see a problem with this wokeist view. Their approach is a moral worldview. It is suggested that intellectuals in American culture are participating in the political project which is built out of identity political and moral individuals. This is the Nietzchean worldview. After this we transitioned to the topic of our souls in Christianity. 

Religion is the product of a work, something greater than you is what gives you your value. The idea of being a part of something bigger than yourself, reminded me how I have felt my entire life by participating in sports. My whole life I have identified as an athlete. After college, it is going to be difficult to transition as I will not have a team that is bigger than me. There will be a new identity marker for me. I think that it is interesting to note the secularization rate in the United States. There is now a downward trend away from people associating with religion. I wonder since COVID has played a significant role in everyone’s lives over the past 2 years, if there has been a change in the rate of religion. I feel like during times of stress, people want to turn to something that is bigger than themselves, so they do not feel alone. I wonder in the United States if people turned to religion, or if there was another outlet instead?

During Week 10 of class Peter Wood came to class and discussed chapters of his book, The 1619 Project. I thought our talk about postmodernism was interesting. The idea of this concept is that facts are constructed by people who are pursuing their own interests. Therefore, the truth is provisional. Wood thought that it is appealing to those who grew up in democratic society, as it allows for respect for other people’s interpretations. The idea of postmodernism is quite different from the concepts that we discussed in the beginning of the course. The New Left followed careful and critical discourse (CCD). The CCD stated that you needed to justify claims and they needed to have Truth. One could not say something was true just because they have authority. I think recently, if people read one news article, they believe that they know the whole story and feel as if they can provide a truth on it. I think that sometimes news sources want to promote a certain agenda. Therefore, to avoid perpetuating postmodernism it is best practice to read multiple articles to understand the full scope of the situation.  I think that it is difficult to fully understand some of the claims that Peter Wood is making without having read The 1619 Project. I believe that I need more context because I was unaware of the project prior to this class. I think that being informed of both sides would have helped me to understand the parts of the readings I was confused about, and having my questions answered.

Overall as we read about the evolution of the intellectual class in a historical and political context it is interesting to evaluate how this identity has transgressed throughout time. In the beginning of this course we talked about the beliefs of the old class and now we are trying to evaluate the framework that constitutes the New Left. One important question to ask about this matter is: How does the quasi religion of the New Left compare to that of the Old Left? There are three main political ideologies to consider in this discussion which consist of communism, new leftism, and wokeism. We must first establish that historically the bourgeoisie secularized religion. They relied on rational thinking and logic for answers rather than a supernatural force. They argued that they did not want their knowledge of the world diluted by a false power. They also think that they can see the reality because of their own struggle (Marxian thinkers provide them with those ideas). In regards to wokeism there is especially a hostility to religion. Wokeists viewed religion as a force for anti freedom and conformity. They also thought that religion can be a way in which groups set themselves among other groups which leads to hostility. They viewed institutions that reinforced like-minded thoughts and ritual as the institutionalization of conformity. They encouraged social deviance and political reform. 

I think that this process of religionization from intellectuals is a very important concept to study. We can first consider the role that gnosticism plays in society and how this relates to the intellectuals’ agenda. Gnosticism transfers the supernatural narrative of religion into a worldly narrative. Now intellectuals believed that it was capable of achieving a utopian society in this life without the assistance and worship of a supernatural god or force. There were many different approaches that intellectuals tried to take on in order to achieve this utopian. According to the Marxist view, the intellectuals sought hope through the proletariat class. They hoped that the working class were the only ones capable of overcoming a bourgeois capitalist society. Wokeist intellectuals thought that they could create a utopia through expression of free speech and challenging conventional societal standards. Yet, something that I found contradictory about this claim was that there were repetitive cases of Wokeists shutting down hearing other people’s opposing views. There are examples of them storming podiums and screaming and chanting to prevent opponents from expressing their views. Therefore, I think this a double standard and weakens the legitimacy of the claims that wokeists claim to believe are inherent to their worldview. I furthermore think that wokeists are neuro puritanical in their reasoning. There is this aspect of moralizing judgment in their viewpoints. Furthermore, there is a relativism in truth. They think that their version of the truth is the only truth worth expressing which could be fundamentally restrictive. I wonder if because they are especially fueled by outrage if they are not incorporating empirical facts into their viewpoints. This relates to Gad Saad’s discussion of the pursuit of freedom and defense of the Truth. I think in our search for the truth we shouldn’t immediately shut down opposing viewpoints without scientific evidence and rational thought which I think wokeists do not advocate for.

Power and Purity

Wokeism, like communism and the new left movements of the past, is a quasi-religion centered around a single set truth. In the case of wokeism, this truth is moral absolutism, the belief that there are certain things that are inherently good and others that are inherently bad. Adherents to wokeism are expected to ascribe to these moral absolutes and actively work to root out any perceived instances of immorality in society.

At first glance, this might seem to align with the non-relativist worldviews of certain religions, such as Puritan Christianity. However, while Puritans were serious about their beliefs and strict in their moral code, they understood that salvation took place in the afterlife, not on Earth. In contrast, wokeism and other quasi-religions like communism believe in the possibility of redemption and transformation on Earth.

This focus on earthly redemption is perhaps why wokeism has been able to gain a foothold among the intelligentsia, who are attracted to the idea of using their intellect and education to bring about positive change in the world. However, as we have seen with communism and the new left, this pursuit of a single set truth can quickly turn into moral totalitarianism, with those who do not adhere to the prescribed moral code being ostracized or silenced.

This is evident in the way that wokeism promotes self-expression and inclusivity, yet at the same time aggressively fights against any views that differ from its own. This type of identity politics ultimately leads to a form of moral puritanism where anyone who does not conform to the woke moral code is deemed unacceptable.

The question then arises: why do people believe in these quasi-religions, and how can we explain the decline in religiosity among the younger generations? One possible explanation is that, in a world where objective truth is increasingly seen as relative, people are drawn to belief systems that offer a sense of moral certainty. Additionally, the rise of individualism and the decline of traditional institutions may have led people to seek out alternative sources of meaning and purpose.

However, as history has shown us, the pursuit of moral absolutism and purity often leads to destructive outcomes. It is important for individuals to critically examine their beliefs and the sources of their moral framework, rather than blindly adhering to the latest ideology or movement. 

Some notes below:

Truth is used as tools to gain power

Relativism

• All claims depend on the position? 

Puritan Christianity vs. Nietzsche 

Christianity has set morality standards

• Newer religions and movements attempt to strip away christianity yet keep the part about there being things that are good and bad.

Wokeism is similar to communism or social justice movements we studied earlier

• There is one set truth. Here the truth is morality. Certain things are good, others are bad. And people must ascribe to these moralities. 
• In earlier studies of communism, the one set truth is that all societies will eventually enter communism. And also communism viewed that there is only one truth: the proletariat truth is right, the bourgeha truth is bad and corrupted.
• There is no such thing as relativism. No to each their own. They all eventually become secular.

How are smart people adhering to wokeism?

Christain worldview – non-relativist.

• Puritans were very serious about what they believed
• They have to either believe in their “common truth” or be expelled.

While both religion and quasi-religion / gnosticism have certain redemption outcomes, the difference is that most religions understand salvation takes place in another world, but gnosticisms believe that the redemption should happen on earth. 

• This is why communists believed that they should be actively trying to revolutionize and change the societies, so that all societies will reach communism.

Self-expression is the source of sacredness

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Why would those Middlebury students believe that a talk can be so harmful?

• Like Gad Saad’s argument – there is a trend of over-protection (trigger warnings) that actually in turn make people more sensitive. Because people see them not often enough in regular life, they might misinterpret some usual unharmful statements as harmful.

Wokeism seems to be somewhat contradictory

• They claim to be promoting expression, yet for the views different from their own, they try hard to fight against it.

Wokeism: identity politics

• Moral puritanism

Moral totalitarianism produce quite the opposite outcome

Communism -> new left -> wokeism

Question

• So we have talked a lot in class about how wokeism is similar to communism and the new left movements that we studied earlier.
• But, I still have this question about why people really believe in these quasi-religions. 
• Why do people believe in it? Why do people think that 
• Or, why do people believe in religions in general? Also, how can we explain the decline in religiosity in the new generations?