Jorg Friedrichs writes [UPDATE: link fixed],
In short, status is more salient for honor and face than for dignity cultures. In honor cultures, hierarchy is like a “pecking order” with “cockfights” rife among status-anxious rivals because the honor code requires defending honor against real or perceived challenges from peers. In face cultures, hierarchy is engrained in the collective consciousness of the group and status anxiety cannot burst into conflict because people must know their place. In dignity cultures, self-worth is a birthright so status and, by implication, status anxiety should matter less.
There is a lot of interesting, speculative discussion along these lines.
On a related note, in a recent Cowen-Haidt discussion, Jonathan Haidt brought up one of his old posts.
I just read the most extraordinary paper by two sociologists — Bradley Campbell and Jason Manning — explaining why concerns about microaggressions have erupted on many American college campuses in just the past few years. In brief: We’re beginning a second transition of moral cultures. The first major transition happened in the 18th and 19th centuries when most Western societies moved away from cultures of honor (where people must earn honor and must therefore avenge insults on their own) to cultures of dignity in which people are assumed to have dignity and don’t need to earn it. They foreswear violence, turn to courts or administrative bodies to respond to major transgressions, and for minor transgressions they either ignore them or attempt to resolve them by social means. There’s no more dueling.
Campbell and Manning describe how this culture of dignity is now giving way to a new culture of victimhood in which people are encouraged to respond to even the slightest unintentional offense, as in an honor culture. But they must not obtain redress on their own; they must appeal for help to powerful others or administrative bodies, to whom they must make the case that they have been victimized.
I have to assume the ultimate resolution will involve the Federal government. Maybe the first step is to receive government student loan “help(?)” you will have to have an approved process for adjudicating micro-aggressions where white males must prove their innocence.
Weaponized female competition.
If so, not a happy future. I wonder how much the passage of non-discrimination laws starting in the 1960s, and continuing to this day, has provided major incentives for victimhood.
Moral culture is downstream of real power relations (as a handful of 19th century German philosophers would tell you).
People don’t tend to complain about victimhood and offense in the absence of some perception that the complaint is the optimal way to get what they want from someone else, even if merely triumph in some petty, personal power-play. One manifestation of power is terror, and the classic terror relating to offending a person is that their big brother, kin, clan, tribe, class, allies, etc. will come after you too and put you in a world of hurt. If you don’t have some equal coalition that can and will reliably defend you in such circumstances, then you would be toast, so you’d best be terrified and careful to walk on eggshells lest you inadvertently step on some hidden landmine.
Today, potential accusers know that merely by making an accusation in the right way to the right ‘authorities’ (that is, anyone who can harm you, including the SJW mob) is a terrifying prospect for anyone lower ranking on the oppression-totem-pole, because of the very real prospect of the whole weight of their coalition coming down on the accused like a ton of bricks, with no hope of self-defense or appeal. That’s why they’re called ‘crybullies’. The terror of that capability to marshal these forces constitutes real power, whether or not it is has been explicitly formalized in the texts that supposedly describe the arrangements and limits of authority in our society.
This implies an inherently victim group coalition basis for redress of grievances.
It is not like small claims court where individuals hash out disagreements based on tangible and implied contrats. Perceived status slights have to be class-on-class.
How does the defendant class effectively defend an individual when he is accused of personally slighting an oppressed class on behalf of his/her (who are we kidding, it’s his) membership in the oppressor class? For the oppressor class to defend one of their own is to admit their oppression.
Small but committed interests triumph over large but shallow interests.
Everyone here probably supports free speech, but despite bitching about SJWs we haven’t actually stopped these people from achieving their goals. People are still being fired, sued, etc. So long as that goes on, fear will be enough to keep people in line.
The SJWs are willing commit? Will the free speech people? Until the SJWs are actually stopped from achieving their objectives, I assume nobody who supports free speech really gives a damn about it in a meaningful way.
What do you propose as a plan for “the free speech people”? Voice isn’t working. There is only exit. But if you need to use voice to persuade some adversary to tolerate your exit, then you’re stuck.
Voice is working for the SJWs. They can get people fired by tweeting.
I’ll admit that it would require courage, risk, and sacrifice, but in the grand scheme of things could they fire some professor if twenty others professors at that college all agreed to resign en masse? If they were willing to stage protests in the same was as the SJW people, and to stand tall when the mainstream came after them?
What if donors cared enough about free speech to pull donations over it? What if elites more generally made it know they would come down hard on any institution that gave into SJW demands?
How many times would they have to follow through before administrators were more afraid of the free speech people then the SJWs?
These aren’t crazy scenarios. They don’t even call for that great of a sacrifice all things considered. That they don’t happen is a sign that free speech people don’t really care.
You are punishing the victims.
Wait, maybe since you haven’t already solved this problem that means YOU don’t care.
I’ve been a whistleblower. I’ve taken shit for my beliefs multiple times. If some incident happened at my place of work I’d follow through, I’ve already done so before.
If you mean I didn’t threaten to quit my nonexistent job at Yale or cut off my non-existent donations to Yale when the SJWs at Yale got someone fired then your right, I didn’t do those things. However, if you actually worked at Yale, were an alumni or donor, an influential journalist, academic, or politician, etc then you should have done something.
Yeah, I don’t work at Yale either, and would never give them any money in the first place. But I would guess those things probably aren’t really effective things to do. If you do those things, get fired, and all it does is get you replaced by a SJW, I could say you don’t really care about free speech.
I think what is likely to be effective is to develop effective ideas.
If a sizable proportion of Yale professors were willing to resign, they would win.
If Academics around the country rallied to the cause in sympathy, they would win.
If one important Yale donor made a stink about it, they would win.
If the students at Yale that didn’t like it all threatened to stop going to class until the person was re-instated, they would win.
Nobody even tried to oppose it, can we be surprised by the outcome.
Exactly what ideas do we need? You already know whose right and whose wrong.
First mover and coordination PROBLEMS are called that for a reason.
Our grandparents would overcame those problems. Could you imagine them putting up with this. I’m not going to make excuses for weakness. Call it like it is.
I’ve in the past pondered a website to coordinate things like that. I’m not a developer and there is nothing in it for me, but if anyone is interested I could describe the logic.
Maybe the bravery of our grandparents is just jobs being more plentiful and careers being less tenuous. We know academia has gotten more competitive. They are kow towing people because it works, probably because any weeding out method “works.” They just used to be more focused on job performance over political ring kissing.
They lived through the Depression. They dealt with world wars and pandemics. Don’t tell me the only reason they had spine is because they had it easier then us. Christ.
I’m starting to not care what you guys think of us.
Just kidding. I quit caring a long time ago!
First link is bad, methinks.
While the theory makes some logical sense, I’ll just say I think “victimhood culture” is an uncharitable characterization. Someone from that perspective may say “empowerment culture” to convey the same meaning.
I think you’re abusing Arnold’s use of ‘uncharitable’ interpretations. How can “empowerment culture” reasonably describe the widespread acceptance of racially segregated safe spaces, codification of microaggression offenses, erosion of due process, and the general subversion of individual rights across college campuses?
Again, someone from that mindset would say
How can “victimhood culture” reasonably describe the widespread promotion of self expression in safe spaces, opposition to tolerance and bigotry, awareness of subtle forms of personal and institutional racism, etc etc
Now I don’t actually believe this, my point is that if the goal is to be charitable to these people, I’d pick a different term
I guess this column is another part of the victimhood culture.
That false irony was cute the first hundred times, but never true. One thing is what it is because it is not other things. Nobody is complaining here. We are describing. Some people propose a difference between honor and dignity cultures. Maybe you propose that everything is just interest group struggles and they just look different based on which interest group has the power. The irony would be, how oppressed can a group really be if they are the ones everyone is kow-towing to now.