Social Justice Warrior: The New Sorcerer’s Apprentice?
Respect history and experience and don´t meddle with things you don´t understand; that is one of the lessons which could be learned from the Sorcerer’s Apprentice, a poem written by Goethe.
Hat der alte Hexenmeister
sich doch einmal wegbegeben!
Und nun sollen seine Geister
auch nach meinem Willen leben.
Seine Wort und Werke
merkt ich und den Brauch,
und mit Geistesstärke
tu ich Wunder auch.(The old sorcerer did
once go away!
And now his ghosts should
live according to my will.
His word and works
and practice I notice
and with strength of mind
I do miracles too.)
Goethe
When you are judged because you are a member of a class (or race, gender, or whatever group) and not as an individual, everything is possible. You can be found guilty just because you are a member of that group, not taking into account the things you do, but only because you are from that class.
The so-called social justice warriors don´t seem to realize that one day, they might find themselves also in a `wrong` class, and the mob will go after them. If they would know history and would know the history about Russia after the October Revolution, China after the Communist Revolution, and the Cambodian revolution of the Red Khmer (this is not a complete list…), they would realize and know that the group which is favorite one day, can be doomed the next. There will be no reason for it, no rationale; it all will make no sense. You were applauding for the leader; still, you got imprisoned because you didn´t applaud long enough… You wrote a positive article about Lenin and Marx, but you didn´t mention Stalin enough. You protested against people who possessed too much, but suddenly the mob thinks owning an iPhone is also capitalism and starts attacking you. From being oppressed, suddenly, you find yourself the oppressor. The danger is that you become a victim because you belong to an oppressed class; it doesn´t even matter if you suffered oppression yourself. And on the other side, you can become guilty of being an oppressor because you belong to a class, and again, it doesn´t have to mean that you oppressed people yourself.
Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and … its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.
Sir W. Churchill
The rigid and unrealistic stratification of any given society into oppressors and the oppressed presented by Engels (1906) and cited by Gasper (Gasper, 2005) is a misconception of reality because some oppressors join the oppressed through mismanagement of their resources or unpredictable misfortunes. And some of the oppressed join the oppressors through their ingenuity, hard work, or merely through some sheer stroke of luck. (Kyambalesa, 2019) A historical example of this is the emancipation of the serfs. The serfs were peasant slaves and got emancipated in 1861; thus, getting freedom and gaining control of a part of the land and production. With the agriculture reform, incentives were given to create larger farms. After the October Revolution, Russia changed rapidly, and how ironic, the people who had been serfs before were now on the wrong side of the fence. Stalin started collectivization and getting rid of the kulaks and peasants. Their production was taken, their land was collectivized, and the kulaks had to work in collective farms and labor camps. The oppressed became oppressors and became oppressed once again. All in the name of social justice.
The so-called social justice warriors should think about the consequences of what they are proposing and be aware that every action has consequences, sometimes good, sometimes bad, and often both. Abolishing police, okay, and then what? Maybe precisely the group of people you want to protect with this are the people who will suffer the most. Be careful what you wish for.
Social justice warriors are moral narcissists; they consider themselves having the moral high ground. And they will not allow other ideas or opinions, there is only one right way, and that is their way. They will not challenge their ideas, and if you try to discuss or ask questions, you will be put in a group; racist, sexist, capitalist, misogynist, Nazi, or fascist. As a result of this, open discussion is made impossible. By putting you in a group, they skip the argument based on content and effectively silence you.
Socialism leads not to an assault on the specific abuses of `capitalism` but to an assault on reality tout court. It becomes, in effect, an effort to suppress the real world, and this is something that cannot succeed in the long run. But for a protracted period this effort can succeed in creating a surreal world, one defined by the paradox that inefficiency, poverty, and brutality an be officially presented as the summum bonum of society.
E. Carrère, Limonov
One of the questions is, why would people turn to these ideas? Why would people choose to give up liberty and possession to the government? Mises discusses the idea that people adopt antiliberal revolutionary ideas to deal with their own inadequacy in the face of reality. (Mises, 1927) Equal opportunities do not have to lead to equal outcomes, so it can be comforting to blame society or the system instead of looking at yourself and recognizing that maybe your own shortcomings or faults lead to your failure or not reaching the goal you had hoped for.
People have been oppressed and have suffered throughout history; it is part of life and life is unfair. It can be a motivation to think that the world and humanity can be fundamentally transformed and perfected through the intervention of a chosen group of people (an elite who has a kind of special knowledge about how to perfect human existence. (Voegelin, 1959) In Marxism, we see this because it purports that the perfect society on earth can be established once the proletariat has overthrown capitalism. In Nazism, the idea is that utopia can be achieved by attaining racial purity once the master race has freed itself of the racially inferior and the degenerate. (Voegelin, 1959) It leads to a desire to dominate because of the conviction of the superiority of this vision. As a result, there is very little regard for the welfare of those who are harmed by the resulting politics, which ranges from coercive to calamitous, as the English proverb: “You have to crack a few eggs to make an omelet” or its Russian variety: “When you chop wood, chips fly”. (Voegelin, 1959)
Hate and envy also can play in role in motivation. Envy can stem from an individual’s reaction to a personal inadequacy and a desire to find a way to shift blame to anyone or anything other than himself. (Shoeck, 1987) But how to explain that some people engaged in revolutionary movements are themselves well off and not members of the toiling masses they seek to ´liberate´?
In this case, people are not afflicted with envy, but rather with a fear of envy or the guilt of being unequal. Shoeck argues that ´the guilt-tinged fear of being thought unequal is very deeply ingrained in the human psyche,´ and that it can be observed in the way in which people who excel at something will consciously or unconsciously lower their performance. This phenomenon is unfortunate enough for the workplace, but the consequences can be much more serious when it comes to politics. (Shoeck, 1987)
Schoeck argues that such guilt may lead a person to forgo their old life in order to serve the less fortunate but that many times such a person does not seek to extirpate their guilt by leaving their own comfortable station, but rather by insisting that the entire world must join them in eradicating inequality. According to Shoeck, one of the most important motives for joining an egalitarian political movement is this anxious sense of guilt: ‘Let us set up a society where no one is envious.´ (Shoeck, 1987)
Ideology — that is what gives evildoing its long-sought justification and gives the evildoer the necessary steadfastness and determination. That is the social theory which helps to make his acts seem good instead of bad in his own and others’ eyes, so that he won’t hear reproaches and curses but will receive praise and honors.
A. Solzhenitsyn
Schools and universities should be a place for the free exchange of ideas. You should be able to discuss freely and challenge ideas. It is a way for developing yourself and your views, learn about weak points and strong points and learn about other perspectives and ideas. It is interesting if your ideas get challenged, and it can be very insightful. Unfortunately, if ideas get challenged nowadays, or if people disagree, it is considered aggression or as offensive, which is absurd. If someone ´attacks´ an idea of you, it is not a personal attack; it is not an attack on your personality; it is an attack on your ideas, don´t take it personally.
And it makes no difference how important the provocation may be, but into what kind of soul it penetrates. Similarly with fire; it does not matter how great is the flame, but what it falls upon. For solid timbers have repelled a very great fire; conversely, dry and easily inflammable stuff nourishes the slightest spark into a conflagration.
Seneca
The problem of marking things as offensive or even criminalizing completely normal behavior is that your ideas will not be challenged anymore. Therefore you cannot test your ideas or develop them more. Higher education has begun a transformation along the same lines as the 1966 Maoist `Cultural Revolution` in China. As the cultural revolution, the energized identity-politics movement presents itself as a cleansing force. Higher education should give the possibility to talk about any idea, and only in discussing ideas and getting challenged can we get to better ideas. At least it provides more insight into each other´s ideas, which can lead to an understanding of each other.
Social Justice Warriors don´t have new ideas or solutions. They are playing with their master´s ideas without realizing what powers they can unleash. History shows us where these ideas can lead to and the devastating results. Be careful what you wish for; good intentions pave the road to hell.
Interesting links:
The Problem Of Identity Politics
The Problem If 2 Plus 2 Does Not Equal 4
Fictional Alarmism, Time for Some Debunking. Part II: Social Issues
Transgenerational Guilt: A Road to Nowhere
Good Times Create Weak Men, And Weak Men Create Hard Times
References
Gasper, P. (2005). The Communist Manifesto — Karl Marx and Frederick Engels: A Road Map to History’s Most Important Political Document. Chicago: Haymarket Books.
Kyambalesa, H. (2019). A Critique of Socialism and Marxism.
Mises, L. (1927). Liberalismus. Jena.
Shoeck, H. (1987). Envy — A Theory of Social Behavior.
Voegelin, E. (1959). Wissenschaft, Politik und Gnosis. München.
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