We Need a Middle Class Revolution
The ruling class is behind the grandiose thinking that has caused division and polarization
Lately, I have been thinking a lot about why so-called 'woke thinking', i.e. critical theory-style thinking, has become so prevalent on both the left and the right, despite its demonstrated harms, and why our politics has become so polarized more broadly speaking. I have come to the conclusion that it is because the ruling class is basically in total control of the media (both the old and new media), and hence the cultural discourse. Members of the ruling class are prone to grandiose thoughts, and an impulse to want to remake everything, because they have too much time on their hands, and because they are indeed very out of touch with practical everyday life. Let me explain.
Let's face it: the ruling class are currently in control, not just of government and industry, but of our entire cultural discourse. Ordinary middle class people are only able to 'choose' from what the rival factions of the ruling class are championing. The odds of an idea created by ordinary middle class people breaking through are very, very low, in a media landscape where loads of money and connections are required to launch any influential campaign. By ruling class, I mean people with either a very substantial amount of intergenerational wealth, or a network of connections among influential circles of society, or both. To be in the first group you basically need to have very rich parents, and likely very rich grandparents too. To be in the second group you need to have at least attended an Ivy League school, and you likely need to have parents who have connections in influential circles, or at least know the right people. It is clear that not everyone can be like Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg or Taylor Swift, or even an influential journalist working at the New York Times or Washington Post, and this is likely to already have been decided at birth for most people. Ordinary middle class people who make an ordinary amount of money, who went to an ordinary university and know only ordinary people, have no way to break through into the cultural world created by the ruling class. They can only passively consume the media funded and created by the ruling class, which means that they can only choose to side with one rival faction of the ruling class or the other, or else tune out altogether.
The problem with the ruling class's control of the cultural discourse is that they are much more likely to have grandiose thinking, and are much more likely to be out of touch with how practical everyday life works. Both these factors strongly predispose one to 'woke thinking', of either the 'woke left' or the 'woke right' variety. After all, when you have all that money and all that power, you inevitably slip into the 'hero' mindset, where it is easy to start dreaming of grand plans to remake everything. You also stop appreciating how practical, incremental change can improve the lives of many people, while ignoring the very real pain disruptive change can bring to people. Thus you end up dismissing the value of working within the society we've actually got to improve things. If regular middle class people drove the conversation instead, I think we would see a lot of these grand narratives about our culture being dominated by something like 'interlocking systems of oppression' or 'the cathedral' lose their hold on our imagination.
Using a 'shared values' approach, rather than a political philosophy-based approach, to combat woke thinking also fits into this vision of middle class revolution. The fact is, only a minority of ordinary middle class people care about political philosophy, or even understand political philosophy in the first place. Most simply don't have the time to care about this stuff. Don't get me wrong, I believe that the continued development of political philosophy is necessary, because it can give us important insights and arguments to use. However, a broad-based, middle class movement cannot be based on political philosophy, period. After all, fighting ideology with ideology is the ruling class way, because of the ruling class's grandiose thinking style, and this has given us the 'woke left' vs 'woke right' phenomenon. On the other hand, fighting bad ideology with our long-standing shared values like freedom, compassion and objectivity is the middle class way, and I believe the most effective way to win the battle of ideas in the public marketplace of ideas.
Finally, there still remains the question of, how do we get there? How do ordinary middle class people snatch back the cultural narrative? There is no easy answer here, but the first and most important step would be to consciously realize the situation we're in. We need to recognize the ruling class-backed narratives for what they are, and think critically about them. We need to stop listening to celebrities, mainstream media journalists, TV news talking heads, podcasters and other influencers telling us what to believe, because most of them are basically spokespeople for one of the rival factions of the ruling class. We need to realize that it's OK to pick neither side of the ruling class's culture wars, and it is actually more productive to come up with an independent view yourself. We need to resist the peer pressure to conform to ruling class narratives, and find creative ways to break the 'coalitions' the rival factions want to create in their war against each other. If we do all this, we will have progressed a long way, and the next step will likely become apparent when we get there.
Note: I have decided to refrain from commenting on the second Trump administration and the politics surrounding Trump until the dust has somewhat settled. During the next month, the frequency of posts will be lower than usual. After that, I intend to fully resume my regular commentary, including providing a retrospective commentary on the first few weeks of Trump 2.0.
TaraElla is a singer-songwriter and author, who is the author of the Moral Libertarian Manifesto and the Moral Libertarian book series, which argue that liberalism is still the most moral and effective value system for the West.
She is also the author of The Trans Case Against Queer Theory and The TaraElla Story (her autobiography).
Its such a reward in of itself to share your sentiment that is truly important o for lack of a better word focus on Consensus. Thats my goal lately. I wrote a piece which directly was inspired by you and David Brooks recent article. and would love to know what Martin Luther King would say. Anyways, Im not a writer, but I m going to keep writing and reading your stuff, because this is where we need to be. To be in Consensus.
I think that you really have a good intention with your analysis and ideas here. At the same time I am thinking about the following. What if "the ruling class" is the middle-class? Most people who voted for both Biden and Trump are middle class. Even in Europe, as in Sweden, most voters are middle-class and all political parties in the parliament are competing for the middle-class voters. Even the traditional leftists as Social-Democrats are today more of a middle-class party.