24 February 2024
The third line of the Serenity Prayer brings some tonic to this open wound. Wisdom is the eternally noble destination toward which the prayer directs its readers. That wisdom is acquired through knowledge, know the difference. As above, that knowledge comes from a scrupulous observation and respect for that which is real and ethical. The difference, of course, refers to the distinct qualities of those things which cannot be changed and those that can. Let’s look at an example.
EXAMPLE #1
Throughout my second education (as a philosophical psychotherapist), I was the oldest person in my classes, by decades. I resumed the long-deferred undergraduate degrees in 2015 and the masters in 2021, highly contentious years for a conservative/classical liberal. Very early, and in both psychology and philosophy courses, I felt the pervasive sub-zero fear of self-censoring. Unlike my early-life years at Queen’s University at Kington (1978-1980), where we could argue any peaceful if contentious position, that freedom was long gone by my return to Ontario universities.
In the first few weeks of my master’s degree, I was in a Zoom-based breakout room with four female, twenty-something fellow counselling psychology classmates. Not one, but two of those students, said, with conviction, “I’m so fucking sick of old white men.” One of those students was black and one was white. While the context led me to believe that they were referring to readings about Freud, Rogers et al.., I found myself feeling invisible, isolated, and unwelcome. I also thought about what would have happened, had I uttered the parallel obverse: “I’m so fucking sick of young, black women.” I suspect I would have been called out, accused, condemned, cancelled, and asked to leave uOttawa. Would that have been just?
In fact, how unfair was the statement the two young women uttered? In context, i.e., we were there to study how to sensitively relate to intimate groups of people (the m.o. of psychotherapy), so my feelings of invisibility, isolation, and being perceived as the enemy (white, male, educated, apparently prosperous = privileged) were not outrageous. But, despite me mentioning this to some of our professors, informally, I saw no need to foment an ugly example of injustice, unfairness… In my apparently privileged life, I have certainly suffered harsher, meaner, more personally directed insults and outrages—as have most people so…you just move on.
And that’s the difference. Wokusts don’t “just move on” from a statement like the one I fashioned as a hypothetical retort. They embed, alert comrades, and start fires to eradicate ideas and people. If it is true that Wokusts seek to eradicate ideas, their stance on free thought and free speech are logically predictable: both ought be cancelled ASAP. As above, with Wokusts, I have never heard of a one-to-one open debate, Wokusts engage in pile-ons. Like the cruel treatment of a poorly dressed, shunned, outcast in school yards, this is about groupthink. We’ll follow up on that in a future post and finish the point about the effect on individual souls.
Those hypothetical fires might have burned me out of uOttawa but they would not have killed me or ruined me, though better men have taken their own lives from more intense but parallel fires e.g., the Toronto principal, Richard Bilkszto. (He will be discussed in a future post.)
What are the harms that that uttered statement might have caused? If I were depressive, suffered social anxiety, or paranoia, I might have been traumatized. The call out was directed at my gender, age, and—though a disproved concept—my apparent race. And this from people who overtly virtue signalled themselves as anti-racist, anti-agist, and anti-sexist. If such judgmental statements are considered kosher in Woke circles—and I understand that to be the case—the intent of such ideas is retribution, marginalization, and shaming.
Above (on page 6), Johann Hari’s dictum that the opposite of addiction is not sobriety, the opposite of addiction is connection, comesto mind. Do marginalization, alienation, or shaming foster or banish connection? In my work with people, trying to leave addiction and/or trauma behind, it took me a couple years to realize that those souls were unable to accept and internalize a compliment. Through constant interactions—for years—we realized together that self-compassion was necessary for recovery and completely absent in those who were freshly recovering. More significantly, Maslow, Rogers, and virtually every humanist psychologist since those two, have been arguing that unconditional acceptance of the other is essential in constructing a nurturing therapeutic relationship.
I accept this based on theory and experience. If acceptance is compassionate tolerance, why do intelligent citizens stand by while universities, governments, and sheep-like corporations suck up to Wokust tenets endorsing retribution, marginalization, and shaming?
We will return to this question and the motivation behind retribution below in a future post, but, for now, let’s tie this back to the Serenity Prayer.
I believe the essence of the reason people have difficulty opposing groupthink is both wisdom-based and socially based. In terms of primacy, the social precedes the intellectual because, not so long ago, not belonging to a group was to be an outcast. To be an outcast meant you were on your own against grouped men, beasts, and nature—or as Hobbes put it, “…no account of time; no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short” (Hobbes, Leviathan, in Harris, Morgenbesser, Rothschild, & Wishy, 1960, p. 965). I hope you see that the shortness is a direct product of being solitary amongst the nasty and brutish. Cancel culture fosters solitude of the outcasts.
As Aristotle and evolution attest, human beings, by nature, are social creatures. As Hobbes argued, society does not come about naturally. From one perspective, that which does not happen naturally is unnatural—or the product of human reason—in origin. And it is hard to argue that the Magna Carta or the Declaration of Independence were products of nature. Aristotle argued that states (countries) are creations of nature by which I understand him to mean that humans are innately inclined to gather, share, and divide labour per their aptitudes and talent. He was explicit.
“Hence it is evident that the state is a creation of nature, and that man is by nature a political animal. And he who by nature and not by mere accident is without a state, is either a bad man or above humanity; he is like the Tribeless, lawless, hearthless one, whom Homer denounces—the natural outcast is forthwith a lover of war…” (Barnes, 1995, p. 1988. Politics I.1253a3-4).
Why do we need to know this? We need to know this because the actions, and possibly the intent, of Wokeism is to foster precisely Hobbes’ feared state of the war of all against all. The defense of that assertion is implicit within this example.
2. If you welcome all dialogue (except that which incites death, sickness, racism…) you remove the power from those who prescribe the dogma (the high priests) and award it to every thinking, independently minded human being who can understand and reason through an argument. In other words, freedom of speech fosters informed democracy while cancel culture fosters obedience to a cult of self-appointed priests, ironically, an oligopoly from those who purport to love “social” justice i.e., measured equality or sameness of outcomes.
3. Per this example (#1), in a world of free speech, governed by law, the truth or falsity of an argument is decided—and left to be decided—by each member of a polity (political-geographical unit). In a world where old white men (the Western Canon, no less) are never to be praised (or cited), the truth or falsity of an argument is decided—exclusively—in accordance with a dogma prescribed by a cadre of mutually appointed comrades (kinda like those exclusive men’s clubs, eh?). Funny, that. Moreover, books are restricted and burned—something I’m seeing with increasing frequency in boards of education as this is being written.
4. As above, the intent of Wokeism is not free thought and open dialogue, but retribution, marginalization, and shaming of those unrepressed by the strictures of the prescribed dialogue. Per Aristotle, Hobbes, and evolutionary nature, what are the effects on human souls of retribution, marginalization, and shaming? The effects are disconnection, self-doubt, isolation, anxiety, and depression—the very opposite of the point of this book which is eudaimonic reason, freedom, and order.
5. One of the most basic tenets of humanism, acceptance of the other, is explicitly rejected by Wokusts. Acceptance of the other is tolerance in action. I am unlikely to embrace the political values of a person in favour of large, strong, centralized governments but that does not mean it is right for people who favour free markets and minimal government to cancel that person’s opportunities to be educated, socialized in an academic context, or allowed to proceed, without overt public shunning, to complete their degree(s). Again, it would not occur to people practicing tolerance that they have the right to do such a thing, yet the Wokusts have been practicing this in examples that began (for me, with Lindsay Shepherd and proceeded to Jordan Peterson and Richard Bilkszto). Let’s be clear; the Wokusts sought to make those individuals, and thousands more, outcasts, no less. Or, per Aristotle’s Homer, tribeless, lawless, and hearthless.
To be continued next week.
Dan Chalykoff is a Registered Psychotherapist (Qualifying). He works at CMHA-Hamilton and Healing Pathways Counselling, Oakville, where his focus is clients with addiction, trauma, burnout, and major life changes. He writes to increase (and share) his own evolving understanding of ideas. Since 2017, he has facilitated two voluntary weekly group meetings of SMART Recovery. Please email him (danchalykoff@hotmail.com) to be added to or removed from the Bcc’d emailing list.
References
Barnes, J. (Ed.). (1995). The complete works of Aristotle: The revised Oxford translation. Princeton University Press.
Harris, M., Morgenbesser, S., Rothschild, J., & Wishy, B. (1960). Introduction to Contemporary Civilization in the West. Columbia University Press.
Comments