If wokeness gets one thing right, it’s the potential harm in labeling people. It’s the imposition that we shouldn’t name people by their various conditions and afflictions, and rather see these aspects as part of their whole personhood. Progressives often contradict this with boutique sexualities and political micro-factions. But this hypocrisy is their problem, not mine. Let’s focus on what this insight says about the current environment of political and social self-identification.
Referencing Haidt and Lukianoff’s work on cognitive distortions, labeling and self-labeling can encourage patterns of thought that don’t correspond to the reality of a person’s life and lead them to contort their personality to fit their assigned identity. This has far-reaching implications. We’re so loyal to the floating signifiers of left and right, woke and anti-woke, that we lose ourselves in the struggle to be a “true leftist” or a “true conservative.” We sleepwalk into saying things we don’t mean, conceived by other people who don’t give a damn about it. And in our stupor, we lash out at people who point out the contradictions of our stated positions.
This lashing out usually remains within the play-acting of online flamewars. But at a certain point, things get serious. It’s all kayfabe until Owen Hart falls to his death. If you’re so dedicated to fitting within the confines of a political concept, you might de-individuate to the point where you organize a harassment campaign to get someone fired, assemble a mob outside their home, or just murder them in cold blood. Perhaps if you’d been honest with yourself about what you want and why, you could have meaningfully negotiated with this person. But now it’s too late, and you don’t want to admit you just spent a decade living a lie.
This process of reverse engineering is what drives political polarization. When you observe a self-styled radical, take note of what they’re like on social media or in crowds vs. how they act when you’re alone with them. The difference is often stark. If you encounter someone who reacts to everything with hyperbole and histrionics, make a mental note: Don’t listen to them. You can’t trust them.
While not much for “collapse-posting,” I believe the political noise on social media will soon become ignored by most of society and lose its power to shape anything beyond its own sphere. There was a cultural turn somewhere around 2013 or 2014, driven by the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis and its economic consequences. Out of this swamp came wokeness and its stalwart adversarial motivator, the alt-right. You might say it’s been a long proxy war between people who spent their evenings on Something Awful and those who did so on 4Chan, along with the attendant marginal corners of academia and half-animated corpses of 20th-century radicalism that serve as the ballast for both factions.
I’m not posturing as an exception to the rule. I’ve avoided some of the more acute neuroses of our age mostly because I haven’t tried to build a large online profile. Perhaps this is because I’ve landed steady-enough employment that I don’t need to be an inflammatory bastard to get attention and beg for money. Still, I’ve gone through many of the phases typical of millennial men from an upper-middle-class suburban background: radical atheist; hardcore libertarian, almost to the precipice of an-cap absurdity; blue-globe unironic neoliberal poster; peripheral dabbler in what was called the “post-left”; and I spat out some lines in these articles that have become common among self-branded “dissidents.”
So, I get it.
But here’s the thing. Most of my opinions haven’t changed much since I was 14, as I’ve kind of known what I wanted out of life since then. I want to have a decent job that pays enough to live well, have healthcare, and do as I please. I want to talk about music, movies, and books freely without worrying about people wielding them against me. I’m cool with people doing their own thing as long as they’re not actively spreading lies or harming those who can’t decide things for themselves (i.e., children). And I want to live in a country that allows the maximum number of people to do this too.
I’m still a “live-and-let-live” person. But as I’ve gotten older, I’ve begun to add “... at your own risk.” What does this make me? A moderate liberal? A left-wing libertarian? A centrist conservative? A market-oriented social democrat? A post-Marxist ex-libertarian socialist?
Who cares?!
Just say what you really think and leave it at that. People are going to say what they want about you no matter what. Let them call you names, apply labels to you, and place your words on the insane tabletop game in their heads. It’s all noise.
This is an excerpt from a longer article, “What Drives Political Polarization,” published on May 2, 2023 at Splice Today.