In 2021 the American Booksellers Association, a trade association that promotes independent bookstores, , sent out, among a number of other titles, promotional copies of Abigail Shrier's Irreversible Damage. While this is a routine practice, it drew immediate and scathing criticism from trans activists. Immediately, the ABA apologized for this violation, while admitting that "apologies are not enough." The form their penance should take was an ongoing discussion.
Just this past week, London's Wellcome Collection, a museum dedicated to the history of science and medicine, shuttered its longstanding Medicine Man exhibit on the grounds that it "told a global story of health and medicine in which disabled people, black people, indigenous peoples, and people of color were exoticised, marginalized, and exploited—or even missed out altogether.”
These are two separate incidents on different sides of the Atlantic in different fields. But what they and other recent events have in common is that decisions have been made with no input from the general public. Leaders of these institutions are in a private conversation with activists and no one else, regardless of who their decisions affect. Whether this is a matter of affinity or cowardice is up for debate. Except, of course, you know, debate is bad.
Cultural institutions like museums and bookstores are supposed to form the bedrock of civic culture. Civic culture is supposed to be for everyone. But one or both of these premises have been eroded. The institutions don't want to see or hear from anyone outside of their clique. So where does that leave us?
2 comments:
Abigail Shrier's book was well worth a read. The problem with the recent tendency to deplore anything that may offend a particular group leads only to cultural chaos and division. In order to remain functional societies require some level of cohesion and consensus - while what we have a lot of right now is relativism run amok. When people are pitted against one another to the point of disregarding their common humanity, interests and struggles it makes it far easier for a ruling class to subjugate all of us. The Occupy movement scared the power structures but the Woke movement plays into their hands.. as do a few others we could name.
It was interesting that Geoff Shullenberger also focused on Graham Hancock's Ancient Apocalypse series which was basically the barest introduction to alternate history. There are also alternate physics and alternate cosmologies and alternate views about man made global warming that conveniently allows governments to monetize C02.
Jer found this short but true Twitter clip this morning about identity politics. Things are changing.
I don't think I ever realized before it happened how much relativism would lead to authoritarianism. Actual authoritarianism, not the "whatever I don't like is fascism" definition, which is part of the problem. It turns out that when you don't have rules that apply to everyone what you do have are rulers. Absolute rulers. And no, our leaders don't want us discovering our common humanity. They'll try to choke off any movement that promotes that kind of message.
The mentions of Graham Hancock are something I found interesting, even though that's not what I was writing about. Deep history historians like Daniel Lord Smail point out that a lot of history happened before the invention of writing led to the written historical record. That does open up a lot of possibilities in terms of things we don't know about.
Norman Finkelstein seems to have a pretty clear view of these trends. He's right that identity politics has served as a weapon of the hollowed-out Democratic Party. One that they're not eager to put down, and won't until they're sure it has no more charge.
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