N. S. Lyons on The Upheaval addresses the question of whether wokeness is over with, and in the negative. In so doing, they manage to drag in, among other reasons, overpopulation, a favorite of mine, as a reason for the unstoppable nature of wokeness, whether you like it or not, and I cannot resist quoting someone referencing Professor Turchin:
14. Elite overproduction is still in overdrive. In what is rapidly becoming one of my preferred explanations for the Revolution, the evolutionary anthropologist/mathematician/prophet of doom Peter Turchin has identified “elite overproduction” as having been one of the top drivers of revolution and civil conflict throughout history. He points to the tendency for decadent societies to produce far more overeducated elites than there are elite-level jobs, leading to large numbers of underemployed, resentful elite-class intellectuals of the type who tend pine after the position and status they “deserve” and eventually start spending their free time starting revolutionary cells. Or as James Lindsay has put it, all the children of the upper-middle class bourgeoisie “fake elites,” who find they will likely never be part of the truly wealthy elite (e.g. Bezos) that they aspire to be, have quickly become “a breeding ground for ressentiment in society” instead.
But, scrabbling desperately with one another for status, and horrified at the idea of ever falling into the ranks of the mere working class, the overproduced elites have found another solution: they’ve set themselves up, not as the nobility, but as the First Estate, the new clergy, where they can labor diligently to produce basically nothing but the “right” opinions to police our collective moral rules. And now they’ve succeeded in creating their own job market (e.g. critical theorists, diversity consultants) out of thin air. Or as Mary Harrington recently put it succinctly: “Once you start seeing the calls for moral re-evaluation of everything as a mass job application on behalf of an ever-expanding surplus of arts graduates it’s difficult to unsee.” And in this crowded, hyper-competitive world of the bourgeoisie, the surest way to move up is to take someone else down – hence “cancel culture” and the vast, elaborate, ever-changing, mandatory “correct” vocabulary that functions as a way to help weed out any of the competition (or dirty proles) who can’t keep up. Thus Wokeness.
Have young people stopped trying desperately to make it into Harvard or Yale and join the smaller and smaller share of the population that represents the elite? No way. It’s just that, thanks to the latest expansion of a huge, growing industry of administrators and consultants, the professional managerial class has an array of profitable new fallback options after investment banker. Now instead of having to labor through something difficult, like medical school, in order to achieve a respectable, well-paid career, one can always become a Chief Diversity Officer (average annual salary in Northern California in 2021: $231,500 to $329,500).
Which makes for a gripping argument for the mistake of having an overeducated citizenry, I suppose. True? I’m not sure. Being mildly educated myself – yes, yes, just a Bachelor’s in Computer Science, plus a lifetime of inquisitive reading – I’m somewhat horrified, but I can also recall reading, some thirty years ago, about resentful English PhDs who could not get a full time job at a higher education institution, and instead had to split their time between various part-time teaching jobs.
Entitlement is always a bit disturbing, isn’t it? Especially when it infects those who, themselves, are shouting against it. American humanity is a funny gig.
Anyways, that’s just one of more than 15 points Lyons is making. Interesting stuff, although some of it seems to be beyond my comprehension. And I ran out of gas. Go read it to catch up on the phenomenon.
