Great deep dive into one of the themes of your excellent talk on Friday. I wish you would have further connected the tension between dominance and prestige based status to the luxury belief concept, and in general to luxury belief activism which often suggests that striving for dominance (via cancellation and female aggression) serves to compensate for lack of sources of prestige (academic ability or other positive attributes, social standing).
This is terrific Rob. Thank you. I was not aware of this study. Ironically today I am in a conversation with a liberal friend that is defending activists jurists in the Supreme Court. Before reading this piece from you with this study, I had commented that I find the activism-as-a-way-of-life mindset of my liberal friends and young democrats a fascinating study in human psychology and also interesting with respect to history and mass cultural shifts, but that today seem to be more often young, educated upper-class white females.
My thinking on this is that the historically reasonably open and reasonably fair US system of rewarding people based on productive merit... the meritocracy if you will... just like as demonstrated in the continued record-breaking athletic performances in the Olympics... which the US has dominated for almost a century... that the US that fueled and spread throughout the world with the post WWII Global Order... and thus as made that competition for merit reward a global game... it has just raised the bar for what it takes to win. And then at the same time we have pushed so many through the high-learning factory to gain prestigious degrees... a problem has arisen that is made of two parts:
- One: the expectation for high status has risen from all the education and also exacerbated by social media where celebrity-ism can be made in a day... and virtual likes and followers provides tribal acceptance endorphins.
- Two: gaining rewards in the open meritocracy has become very much more difficult for the following reasons:
1. People are more talented and capable in general, and most entrepreneurial opportunities today are highly technical and require significant capital... thus putting them out of reach of regular folk even if bright and talented.
2. It is a global competition today instead of being contained domestically, or even within a community.
3. Corporate consolidation along with regulatory bloat has blocked many of the opportunities for upstarts.
I think the dump of so many females into the education system, the profile of the average activist, with the feminist-pushed expectation that women can have it all and are deserving of it... has created a mess of female passive narcissism without the self-awareness that many are miserable pursuing careers like men... and in their core want a normie life of married with children... but they cannot admit it. Being discontent with their lives, they are irritated and angry and turn to activism to break the system that makes them so miserable.
Watch the third season of the FX TV series Fargo set in the 1970s where Kirsten Dunst plays a brilliant part of a character that is a married woman seeking self-actualization. She deserves a Emmy for that performance IMO. This is final scene with Peggy, her character, being finally apprehended after months of her and her husband being involved in a cascade of stupid decisions after she hit and killed one of the sons of a mob boss with her car, and then running from the mob and the law. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5mhlXE5G3g
It’s a vicious cycle. Emotion is now the engine of ascendancy and success, bringing the well oiled modern industrial economy that formerly ran on merit to its knees, threatening imminent collapse. (E.g., see Disney.) At the same time the new ascendant class—liberal women—has driven itself literally into mental illness. The more the rational order that coddled them collapses, the crazier they get, and the faster they destroy the rational order.
‘. . . a liberal defending activist jurists in the Supreme Court.’ Just point out the political orientation of a majority of the current Court. Increasingly, that’s enough to convert them to strict constructionism.
"The populists want a strong leader to liberate them from the dominance-oriented status seekers and rule according to the populists’ preferences." 🎯 But . . .
The rare thing, in these times at least, is to find a strong leader who is not just another dominance-oriented status seeker.
I may not have received all the article was saying, but in my first reading I wondered if the propensity of some people to post very strong opinions on social media categorizes them as the former.
Any thought on the relationship between individualistic and group dominance. Most histories view the assassination as an attempt by the Senate / aristocracy to restore its dominance, not primarily as any individual’s attempt at dominance.
There might be a similar phenomenon within the progressive activist movement, with its huge emphasis on creating ‘leaders’, i.e., people who can lead society, and on building and wielding ‘power.’ And on the justification for the Party to govern on behalf of the Proletariat (though I’ve never heard anyone use those terms). This still leaves plenty of room for (and examples of) dominance contests among segments of the movement, and among individuals within each segment (though always couched in ‘battle against oppression’ language). Rather like nested Russian dolls.
Great deep dive into one of the themes of your excellent talk on Friday. I wish you would have further connected the tension between dominance and prestige based status to the luxury belief concept, and in general to luxury belief activism which often suggests that striving for dominance (via cancellation and female aggression) serves to compensate for lack of sources of prestige (academic ability or other positive attributes, social standing).
This is terrific Rob. Thank you. I was not aware of this study. Ironically today I am in a conversation with a liberal friend that is defending activists jurists in the Supreme Court. Before reading this piece from you with this study, I had commented that I find the activism-as-a-way-of-life mindset of my liberal friends and young democrats a fascinating study in human psychology and also interesting with respect to history and mass cultural shifts, but that today seem to be more often young, educated upper-class white females.
My thinking on this is that the historically reasonably open and reasonably fair US system of rewarding people based on productive merit... the meritocracy if you will... just like as demonstrated in the continued record-breaking athletic performances in the Olympics... which the US has dominated for almost a century... that the US that fueled and spread throughout the world with the post WWII Global Order... and thus as made that competition for merit reward a global game... it has just raised the bar for what it takes to win. And then at the same time we have pushed so many through the high-learning factory to gain prestigious degrees... a problem has arisen that is made of two parts:
- One: the expectation for high status has risen from all the education and also exacerbated by social media where celebrity-ism can be made in a day... and virtual likes and followers provides tribal acceptance endorphins.
- Two: gaining rewards in the open meritocracy has become very much more difficult for the following reasons:
1. People are more talented and capable in general, and most entrepreneurial opportunities today are highly technical and require significant capital... thus putting them out of reach of regular folk even if bright and talented.
2. It is a global competition today instead of being contained domestically, or even within a community.
3. Corporate consolidation along with regulatory bloat has blocked many of the opportunities for upstarts.
I think the dump of so many females into the education system, the profile of the average activist, with the feminist-pushed expectation that women can have it all and are deserving of it... has created a mess of female passive narcissism without the self-awareness that many are miserable pursuing careers like men... and in their core want a normie life of married with children... but they cannot admit it. Being discontent with their lives, they are irritated and angry and turn to activism to break the system that makes them so miserable.
Watch the third season of the FX TV series Fargo set in the 1970s where Kirsten Dunst plays a brilliant part of a character that is a married woman seeking self-actualization. She deserves a Emmy for that performance IMO. This is final scene with Peggy, her character, being finally apprehended after months of her and her husband being involved in a cascade of stupid decisions after she hit and killed one of the sons of a mob boss with her car, and then running from the mob and the law. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5mhlXE5G3g
It’s a vicious cycle. Emotion is now the engine of ascendancy and success, bringing the well oiled modern industrial economy that formerly ran on merit to its knees, threatening imminent collapse. (E.g., see Disney.) At the same time the new ascendant class—liberal women—has driven itself literally into mental illness. The more the rational order that coddled them collapses, the crazier they get, and the faster they destroy the rational order.
‘. . . a liberal defending activist jurists in the Supreme Court.’ Just point out the political orientation of a majority of the current Court. Increasingly, that’s enough to convert them to strict constructionism.
"The populists want a strong leader to liberate them from the dominance-oriented status seekers and rule according to the populists’ preferences." 🎯 But . . .
The rare thing, in these times at least, is to find a strong leader who is not just another dominance-oriented status seeker.
I may not have received all the article was saying, but in my first reading I wondered if the propensity of some people to post very strong opinions on social media categorizes them as the former.
Harold Bloom is the ideal tutor from whom to learn about condescension.
Any thought on the relationship between individualistic and group dominance. Most histories view the assassination as an attempt by the Senate / aristocracy to restore its dominance, not primarily as any individual’s attempt at dominance.
There might be a similar phenomenon within the progressive activist movement, with its huge emphasis on creating ‘leaders’, i.e., people who can lead society, and on building and wielding ‘power.’ And on the justification for the Party to govern on behalf of the Proletariat (though I’ve never heard anyone use those terms). This still leaves plenty of room for (and examples of) dominance contests among segments of the movement, and among individuals within each segment (though always couched in ‘battle against oppression’ language). Rather like nested Russian dolls.
As a founding member,. how do I communicate a brief message to Rob?
you can email me robert7105@gmail.com