Idea: there’s a lag or delay that can span decades between the smartest people initiating some social progress and its full uptake across society. During this period, people with less intelligence may interpret it in a way that’s regressive.
I’ve written about the ‘Political B Team’, which consists of average people who’ve taken over political activism now that the smartest people from previously disadvantaged groups are free to pursue their niche interests. But who are these ‘smartest people’, and what makes them smart?
There’s a moment in this interview with Germaine Greer that I love; it starts at about 1:00 in the video, but especially from 1:35 onwards until 2:30. In case you don’t watch it, Greer says she’s not in favour of equality if this means an equal split of the status quo, but she is for the liberation of woman from this situation (and by extension everyone, I’d say). Not only is Greer deeply aware of this status quo but she says in relation to what liberation from it would look like that, ‘I can’t tell you what’s round the corner, because I don’t know’.
This is real intelligence. Academic-type intelligence can influence how quickly and comprehensively people acquire what’s already been established and this will impact the point of entry they have within a debate – but without insight, imagination, doubt, creativity, intuition, humility, and self-awareness academic intelligence is just robotic, especially within the social sphere.
What Greer is illustrating is a capacity to be aware of and doubt what her subconscious may be automatically generating, and then imagination and creativity to go beyond what she’s learnt. In terms of the specifics of that interview, this way of thinking would be inconceivable for many people who are interested in the topics discussed. As I said in ‘Unholy Allies’, ‘We may be in a weird, temporary moment where society has opened up a space for people to question gender while at the same time there’s still enough gendered behaviour around for a significant percentage of society to form essentialist views about it based on unchallenged, automatic perceptions generated by their brains.’
It takes time for the whole of society to become genuinely aware of some truth about the world, especially if this challenges automatic perceptions. Large sections of society can be decades behind the people who first initiated some social progress. Unfortunately, we’ve found ourselves in a situation where the pushback against social progress, bizarrely by people calling themselves progressives, is becoming extreme, and I suspect this is because some automatic perceptions are very fundamental to how some people think. As a consequence, we’re seeing the return of people who can see beyond these perceptions. Although this time rather than fighting for the right to explore their individual interests, they’re now having to spend time away from their niche interests to battle this new regressive movement, sometimes to the point of those careers being threatened by ‘cancel culture’.
Who are these people? In the UK and in relation to challenging gender ideology, you have: Rosie Kay (dancer, director, and writer), Emma Hilton (developmental biologist), Kathleen Stock (philosopher in the area of aesthetics, fiction, and imagination), Helen Joyce (mathematician and journalist), Maya Forstater (business and international development researcher). How many of these women are professional political activists? None.
These are effectively the same people from generations ago battling the same enemy: mindless people who can’t see beyond their automatic perceptions. Except now rather than there being two genders that people must conform to based on their biology, sex is no longer an objective fact and there’s an endless number of gender boxes to put people in. It’s still the case that for many people their brains tell them essential boxes exist and everyone must be in one, regardless of reality or what conflict this generates.
How do we play this ‘generation game’ between the first, smartest people who initiate some social progress and later generations who might misunderstand or reject this change? I think one important insight is we have to be realistic about who can and can’t understand it. Some people are so incurious about where their thoughts and feelings originate they will treat them as essential and true regardless of what reasonable people say and do. I suspect these kind of people are in the minority. For the majority, as has been the case for other social progress, it’ll just take time.