Sunday, December 30, 2018

Part 3: Social Justice Sect Coherence

Last post I went over an amateurish classification of social justice sects. The main conclusion was that the adaptiveness of viably adaptive sects was dependent upon their access to resources to reward group members. Co-opting state institutions was an easier way to generate resources necessary to sustain replication. This capacity was dependent upon the ability to create allies. 

Allies can be created by 1) sympathetic ideology and 2) ideology which frames attackers in Kafka-esque traps. New religious movement history shows costly commitment displays, such as 2nd century Christian crjuxifictions can also inspire broad-based ally-ship. Thus, allies can also be created by 3) costly commitment displays by a radical wing.

In this post, I’ll take a look at the confluence of these sects to explore whether these sects will balkanize, unify, or provide mutually re-enforcing benefits while remaining independent.






SOCIAL JUSTICE SECT COHERENCE


Adaptively Viable Social Justice Sect
Adaptiveness over time
Theorists
Strong potential

Missing: sacred values, common ritual, and costly commitment.
Puritans
Moderate, but strong potential

Missing: common ritual, freeloader detection & punishment, and in-group reciprocity
(Cult of personality) Activist organizers
Strong

Freeloader detection to prevent usurpation seems to be an Achille’s heel
Chosen people
Strong

Antifa-like protestors
Strong






ONE SOLUTION
The most obvious solution here is for mutual re-enforcement. Over time, this should produce a common set of beliefs. In some ways this is sort of similar to the slight unification that occurred within American Protestantism during the late 80’s and 90’s via the evangelical movement. Evangelical’s are now defined as much by what they are not (they are not Mormons, Anglicans, 7th day Adventists, etc.) as by what they are (they are Gospel tied, life-style based proselytizers).

One potential resonance is a coming-of-age type ideology based upon a chosen-people veneration. Theorists are energized and operationalized by activist organizers who feed people into various levels of protest movements (with antifa-like experimentation as an ultimate ideal). People then mature into a Puritanical sect that is supported by common experience and where freeloaders are detected by  ongoing commitment tests.

An ability to disavow radical protestors seems key. After all, radical cults, fail for good reasons. But, participation in such experiences should be nostalgic*. Furthermore, such participation should re-enforce the intentions behind such movements, even if other means are deemed more sanguine.

The big conundrum here is the role of the “chosen people of color”. As mentioned last week, this sets up a classic caste-based hierarchy. Will people of color really become a ruling class, or will these identities become flexible enough that they become a clear-cut ideological and commitment based test?

My reading of multi-level cultural evolution (especially work by Turchin) suggests intra-elite competition should produce filtering for potential elites but never produce full power turn-over to a particular group based upon their identity. The only time you really get identity based caste take-over is when the usurping group has a very elevated technological progress advantage on some dimension (reading, weapons, agriculture, group size solutions, etc.). North American and African colonization is an obvious modern example.

It would seem inevitable that this will produce some nasty conflicts between people of color who see themselves as the rightful heirs to power and “ally” elites who won’t give such power up easily. This will select for Stalin-esque sociopaths. The whole thing should blow-up.





OTHER SOLUTIONS
Unification
I just don’t see full unification as possible. This would require a significant authoritarian dynamic with clear hierarchical structures. This seems antithetic to all sect’s core values.

However, Sweden seems to show that I may be wrong. There you seem to have a fairly coherent set of moral principles that seem to be increasingly pervasive and backed by state authority and supported by a majority of the population. Right-wing backlash suggests an authoritarian trap is inevitable. Ideological authoritarianism has, at best, an uncertain track record in the developed world. Thus, unification may be possible, but seems incredibly unstable over time.


Balkanization
I’m not sure any of these sects can remain viable when isolated. Inter-group competition at the level of socio-political quasi-religion is very steep.  For example, could a “hate speecher” ever make much headway without theorists to support their game?  It is doubtful. Competition in this arena is just too fierce. Political and ideological foes are very motivated.






CONCLUSION
To summarize, my rough sense is that Social Justice sects should engage in a mutually supportive game that gradually brings the sects together under a general belief system. But, that belief system will likely be very loose. I expect to see unification occur via some idealized coming of age ritual.

Anabaptists have something similar. Young adults are given lots of leeway to "experience" the world before they lock into the demands of adulthood. In general, I expect Social Justice sects to encourage the attitude that  "extremist exploration of social justice values is needed". Its a great way to see just how far such waters can be taken. It also let’s people renounce such foolishness as they age either by an appeal to better methodologies or as a necessary experience of youth. 

Extremist connections are valuable because a small number of mobsters can have outsized effects on the Overton window. This is because of the value violence and intimidation have. And, because of the difference costly commitment displays bring to more moderate sections of the moral movement.

The net structure leverages people of color as an idealized platonic re-imagination of deity. Is this paganism on steroids, or non-supernaturalism ancient Christianity where the historical Jesus is as real as God gets (i.e. a normal mortal who happens, like everyone, to have the capacity to represent a platonic ideal people can imagine)? I suspect its a mimetically fit way to concretize an otherwise abstract moral big brother (group agent).

Problems occur on the leadership front. Do positions at the peak of power require certain types of identity? Or can a profession of ally-ship or request for “adoption” into such groups suffice? Both intra-elite competition and recruitment & retention concerns suggest the inevitable lure of an “adoption” solution over a “pure lineage” solution.  This also helps to justify the pyramidal nature of the enterprise. It also helps avoid a color/sex based caste hierarchy that likely wouldn’t survive modernity.






NOTES
* It might be wise to remember the experience of 70's era far left terrorists who were able to fully re-integrate into society via left leaning institutions like Universities. Their follies were often rationalized under the idea that these terrorists had good intentions but just picked very bad ways to implement. Usually behaviour was rationalized under "cultish" influences. Core ideology rarely had to be rejected.

Saturday, December 29, 2018

Part 2: Social Justice Sects

Part 1 laid out what I infer to be the most common trajectories of new religious movements. A small sample of tests cases were then compared to the categorization. Some gaps were found. Next a multi-factored behavioural rating scale was used to assess where things “start to be religious”.  A broad-brushed look at radical activist Social Justice categorized it as quasi-religious.

In this post, I’ll try to analyze radical activist Social Justice in terms of behaviourally differentiable sects. After doing this, I then compare social justice sects to new religious movement trajectories. Who knows what will come out?

People looking for some more background on cognitive approaches to religion can look at:

Posts in this series






Part Two: Social Justice Sects

Theorists
  • These are largely academics who are concerned about getting the theory of justice and critical theory studies correct.  From a behavioural analysis, affiliation probably centres on academic curiosity (mixed with strong general desires to help marginalized peoples).  Affiliation does not seem to be about establishing a systemic quasi-theology. Affiliation is certainly concerned about shoring up a systemic theory of oppression and marginalization. But, many theorists seem to lack the sacred value hysteria and moral big brother focus that characterize other comparable social justice sects.
  • Sample character: 
    • your average, moderate, Critical Theory professor



Protestors
  • This would include “Jack booted” antifa-like extremists and the more sanguine protest ritualists. The goals of both groups could be considered mostly political.  Religious behaviour is mostly expressed during protest events. 
    • Sample character:
    • your average antifa protest addict
    • the suburban soccer mom going to the their annual women’s march or anti-Trump event



Online Mobsters
  • This group suffers from the same sect spanning issues that the religious “cult” group did. While cults were characterized by the severity of in-group out-group gradients, online mobsters are characterized by the medium of expression and the net effect of individual intent.  Basically the group is characterized by virtue signalling dynamics and an intent to not let social justice sins and sinners stand unchallenged. Anifa is a violent, nihilistic, expression of this dynamic in extreme. 
    • Sample character:
    • your average twitter NPC (non-playable character)



Puritans
  • No platformers and hate speechers.  These are strong adherent of hate speech restrictions. They tend to authoritarianism. Justification mainly involves the need for pure environments and safe spaces. Safe space work may be on behalf of another group. They differ from online mobsters due to the broader scope of action they’re willing to undertake and a more clearly defined zone of focus.
    • Sample character:
    • Alyssa Milano and Apple’s Tim Cook



(Cult of personality) Activists Organizers
  • This group is characterized by a focus on political operations. This may include people who work for established political parties, NGO-like political organizational groups, and some College and University activist professors and diversity officers.  For this group, activism is not an individual enterprise, it is a pyramid-scheme group effort.
    • Sample character: 
    • Protest organizing Evergreen/Mizou Critical Theory professors & diversity officers



Structuralists
  • These are the people playing deep state technocratic games. They’re the cabal who know how to push human rights legislation through using the decade plus strategies which are required to move chessboard pieces to ensure checkmate. They know the vision they want manifest and they’re not put off by the processes required to get there.
    • Sample character:
    • former Ontario premiere Wynn



Equity at any Cost’ers
  • This group is so focussed on equality of outcomes that they believe delaying progress to ensure equitable representation is a worthy sacrifice, no matter the cost. Diversity benefits are more valuable than a systemically prejudicial meritocracy. The benefits of patriarchal capitalism are ill gotten gains that come of the backs of people of colour.
    • Sample character: 
    • radical affirmative actionists like most Swedish government ministers



Chosen People
  • These would be your radical intersectionalists. They deeply believe that being a person of color enables one to not only understand the patriarchy in which everyone operates, but to also have access to the hidden insights a person of color’s unique experience creates. They ascribe sacred value to such insight and treat it as almost mystical. But, more than this, they act as if POC control (via their unique insights) would solve many of today’s problems.
    • Sample character: 
    • Ocassio Cortez



Allies
  • These are a general laity that supports social justice ideas in general, but is weakly affiliated to any single group. They may stand up in certain cases where no leaders are found. But, they generally view their role as supportive. They may often want to “let marginalized voices speak”.
    • Sample character:
    • Beta male feminist hipster




TEST
Obviously this list isn’t rigorous, nor is it meant to avoid prejudicial connotations. Let’s test how well it works with a very superficial analysis.


Person
Sect
Comments
Cathy Newman
Structuralist
She seems more like an activist organizer, but she isn’t trying to lead a group of acolytes. She is merely pushing an agenda to affect what she sees as valid social change. If she gets lots of money doing it, so much the better.

Justin Trudeau

Structuralist

He is making social change for the betterment of society. Unintended consequences will get resolved over time. Their existence shouldn’t stand in the way of progress.

Ron Perlman

Ally

He is active on twitter, but his primary purpose doesn’t seem to be trolling or acolyte farming. He mainly supports the movement when and where it seems to be needed

Bill Maher

n/a

You could try to fit him as a structuralist, but I think his classical liberal values, which include letting people be themselves (despite heavily mocking them), preclude any cabalism

Linda Sarsour

Activist organizer

She seems to be much more focussed on creating a cult-of-personality to affect change than in playing structuralist games. She could also be a Chosen-Person sect. But, her defining characteristic seems to be popularity & followers.
Al Sharpton
Equity at any cost’er

It is really hard to place him anywhere because I think money and power are his main concerns. Social Justice for his “people” is a nice secondary benefit. Because I don’t think he really cares about system costs, I think equity-at-any-cost fits him much better than chosen-people. I see his black power rhetoric as more motivational than as religiously accurate.But chosen people might work.
Evergreen College's Naima Lowe
Chosen people

While she certainly seems to be about generating a cult-of-personality, and hence could be an activist organizer, I suspect she truly sees POC power in sacred terms.




Categories seem fairly weak with significant overlaps and uncertain definitional bounds. Inferred intent seems to play a large role in differentiating categories. This means the list is not very behaviourally oriented.

Activist organizers and structuralists seem to be weakly delineated. The difference is supposed to lay in the role cult-of-personality plays. I’m not sure how well this comes through.  What seems to occur is that structuralists are people who already have power while activist organizers are more focussed on producing followers to generate sufficient power. (top down vs. ground up )




ANALYSIS
The first thing analysis shows is a significant degree of overlap between many of the social justice sects.  From this one can infer that Social Justice has not yet solidified into traditional religious structures (or that the categorizations suck...).

Most New Religious Movements typically come into existence with a fairly defined set of behavioural expressions and delineate-able doctrinal differences. Social Justice clearly does not do this. James Lindsay has proposed that this has occurred because Social Justice is a religious like faith expression that has emerged, de novo, from a modern secular paradigm. It is not a break-off from religion, it is a re-invention of the cognitive wells that form religion. As already mentioned, I tend to view Social Justice as a major evolutionary transition in religion-governance gene-cultural landscape. This position is, perhaps, the middle road, between Lindsay’s position and that of traditional New Religious Movement break-off patterns.

Significant cross sect overlapping is a good critique for Social Justice not being a religion. I think the behavioural parallels discussed last post make this a moot point. But, it seems reasonable to believe that Social Justice's lack of coherent behavioural focus negates accurate religious classification.




GLEANINGS
Significant sect overlapping suggests looking for the sects which have and do not have the adaptive group characteristics necessary for religious-level binding over time.

In terms of adaptiveness over time, this table from last week which was used to characterize religiousness, is probably good enough start in relation to adaptiveness. I’ve added in a few items which characterize adaptive groups (from D.S. Wilson perspective), but which are not characteristic of Atran’s religious group behavioural characteristics. I’ve also removed some of the purely religious items, such as clean hands. I’m on the fence about my inclusion of identity fusion.
  • strong norm enforcement
  • freeloader detection & punishment
  • sacred values
  • useful common ritual
  • costly commitment
  • identity fusion
  • steep in-group out-group gradient
  • in-group reciprocity



Sect
Adaptiveness over time
Changes expected for 
Adaptiveness over time
Theorists
Strong potential

Missing: sacred values, common ritual, and costly commitment.

Theoretically you should see an increase in costly commitments, say via increasingly ludicrous (quasi-factual) foundational beliefs which should be treated creedally. You also need some common ritual. University is probably good enough for common ritual unification as long as the departments associated with this sect provide an unique-enough experience compared to regular classes. This could probably emerge with a small number of activist organizers within the department, and expectations that theory be meshed with experience.

Interestingly enough, this seems to be exactly what is happening in practice.
Protestors
Weakly associated protest groups are not adaptive, and have a long ways to go to be such.

Anita, is very adaptive.

No changes to antifa are necessary. It might need a bit more of a coherent set of doctrines, but clearly its anarchist roots resist this. Thus it is more likely to stay a cult that to evolve into a broader religion. It has found stability in a very challenging evolutionary landscape. But, it has done so at the expense of broad coherence and universality. It will probably never be more than a fringe cult. Deviation from this is likely to be very counter-productive.
Online mobsters
Weak

Missing: freeloader detection & punishment, costly commitments and steep in-group out-group gradients.

Spatially segregated adaptive groups are hard to develop and maintain. I doubt the unification online mobs create is sufficient for adaptiveness. How do you know who is a fellow mobster? This spells adaptive doom. Online mobsters are likely to evolve into Puritans. This evolution is likely to happen as zone of actions (e.g. non-playable character memes) get refined.
Puritans
Moderate, but strong potential

Missing: common ritual, freeloader detection & punishment, and in-group reciprocity

The main change that is needed for group adaptiveness over time is a way to distribute group conferred benefits. A quid pro quo hiring system based upon meriticrital success in Puritan enforcement is one obvious structural solution. They also need to find some sort of common ritual. I suspect the easiest answer is to focus on outcomes rather than inputs. This makes for a broader entry point for new members. The crux seems to be freeloader detection. This is why I suspect a move into meritocracy seems likely. It would be interesting to see what methods emerge for showing one’s bonafides. I suspect online mobbing and protest participation as well as orange-man-bad vehemence are likely options.
(Cult of personality) Activist organizers
Strong

Freeloader detection to prevent usurpation seems to be an Achille’s heel

The key problems here are the same ones that other pyramid schemes and cult of personalities face. How do you provide enough return benefits to your members to prevent usurpation? How do you transition from one leader to another?

One should expect to see parallel institutional structures develop which can feed members, pyramid like, into a ready source of employment or position of influence. The development of Patreon-like subscriber bases seem likely.
Structuralists
Weak

Cabal like affiliations are extremely hard to develop and maintain. Perhaps, at very high levels you might have some backdoor networks develop. It seems like the EU bureaucracy has this down. But, this can never be a broad based religious group. At best it can be a Rosicruscianist like elite that is likely to not have enough day-to-day interaction to develop all the necessary components of a full religious adaptive group. Norm enforcement coordination seems especially problematic due to cost-compliance administrative issues.
Equity at any cost’ers
Weak but with strong potential

Missing: strong norm enforcement, freeloader detection, and useful ritual

This sect’s adaptive difficulties seem to stem around differentiating those who support affirmative action in a weak sense, and those who are so doubled down on its value as to accept almost Luddite like implementation costs. Thus, for this belief categorization to become adaptive it needs a way to differentiate degree amongst its adherents. An obvious solution is to require some costly commitment signal that acts as a ritual induction or routine. Luddites often do this with technological rejection and historical dress. Quasi-factual taboos, such as food abstinence, are another likely means of differentiation. One possible solution might be a move toward indigenous clothing and/or prohibitions on cultural appropriations.
Chosen people
Strong

No adaptive components seem to be missing. The challenge here is size expansion. How do you get non-POC to come into your movement? Ally-Ship is a good potential solution. You simply create a caste-based system based upon identity, then gradually loosen identity criteria. Religions such as Mormonism do this (to some extent) via their adoption-into-the-tribe-of-israel rituals.  But, as caste based solution is very adaptive for the power caste, even if it is really hard to pull off. You really have to sell the “hidden” or “esoteric” knowledge of the ruling class. Interestingly enough, we do seem to see this happening. Hence, you should expect to see lots of fighting around this issue. I’d expect to see lots of sacralization and blasphemy accusations here.
Allies
Lots of adaptive potential, but weak actual adaptiveness

The only chance this has of being adaptive is if ally-ship gives one some in-group benefits. Mandatory diversity statements in the job market are one way ally-ship can be signalled and rewarded. You might expect to see some other sort of signalling here. For instance, a Che t-shirt, rainbow necklace, or some other dress maker might work. However, there is also an equal chance of punishment by out-group members. Thus, you’d expect to see some fairly subtle behavioural or dress clues. For instance, wearing certain types of hipster dress that stays one step ahead of non-fashion oriented commoners. The adaptiveness of ally-ship seems to be determined by how much power and access to reward systems the targets of ally-ship can grab. In some sense, it is like Communist grifters who are weakly ideological, but see it as a useful means-to-an-end. If it works, great. If not, oh well, players still get some benefits, and are well positioned for their own power grabs. Peter Turchin’s elite competition model for quasi-elites fits well here.




CONCLUSIONS
Antifa will stay small and highly adaptive. They will probably recruit from more sedate protest group-members and from online mobster groups.  Antifa will probably stay the cultish end of any Social Justice religious movement. As with old Christian martyrs, the high sacrifice costs this group can leverage can make a non-linear difference in recruitment for the more sanguine versions of the generalized ideology.

Activist organizers and Chosen people are the most adaptive groups. You should expect these groups to grow based on the ally-ship they can generate. Activist organizers face the issue of staying one-step ahead of pyramid collapse. How can they mine enough rewards to prop the system up?

One way is through post-secondary accreditation benefits. Another way is through ally-ship provided returns. Who should I hire, a conventional english major, or an activist major who is committed to diversity?

Ally-ship is really the most interesting “sect”. But, it seems limited because it can’t reach autonomy. It is dependent upon an external-to-the-group material target of devotion. Thus, while it has huge potential, I don’t see ally-ship going anywhere. You could get an ideologically united group based on some form of human-rights via a some group agent based moral big brother. Perhaps such an ideological based system would be adaptive. But, my suspicion is that you need behavioural manifestations of such an ideology that would be de-facto re-inventions of the sects already listed.

Equity-at-any-cost’ers are an interesting group. They just need a way to develop their own communes. But the history of commune success is very clear - they very rarely work. They need a large-enough break away group size in order to self-sustain. A nation state might be able to pull this off. But, chances are small of any country having enough social coherence to resist the complete economic marginalization this would engender. Sweden seems closest to trying this, but even it seems unable to handle to costs their degree of diversification now imposes. Perhaps if their land-based migrant pipeline had remained closed, they could have run their experiment for longer?





IMPLICATIONS

The crux for social justice sects, who are also likely to stabilize and grow over time, lays in their ability to confer group benefits on their members. This ability seems related to capacity to co-opt existing state institutions. This capacity, in turn, seems dependent on their ability to generate allies.

Costly commitment displays by a radical semi-affiliated group, seems to be a leverageable way to increase recruitment and sympathy.  While antifa is well positioned to fulfill such a role, I doubt the individuals who make up antifa are well-disposed for such sacrifices. Is arrest, police brutality and getting beat up by right-wing extremists, enough? Perhaps today it is. But, perhaps it isn’t. The Charlottesville death certainly made a huge difference in ally-ship.  So did some of the sensationalized police-on-black deaths. Media channels are well staffed to virulize any narrative re-enforcing events.

Sunday, December 23, 2018

Part 1: Social Justice's Religious Sects - Setting the Stage

The analysis of radical social justice activist groups as de-facto religions or quasi-religions is increasing. Back in 2015 I tended to get a lot of push-back on the idea. Now it is increasingly entering into common discussions (like this recent Globe & Mail article).

Jonathan Haidt was the first to really popularize the idea. He did so via his Two Teloses lecture series. Of course the idea of applying religious labels to non-traditional religious like group dynamics isn't new. Demerath had an organizational science book on this in 1998.  I used this logic in my 2008 Master's work on systemic change designs. Although, I must say, I did so with a fair bit of pushback. At that point, the Science of Religion hadn't yet come of age. That disciple was still fairly nascent and  was still coming to terms with the New Atheist movement.  From my perspective, pushback against the New Atheist's growing evangelical-esque dynamics really pushed innovation in the Science of Religion. At the same time evolutionary tools were slowly seeping into the social sciences. The Science of Religion's adoption of gene-cultural tools has, in my mind, made a huge difference it what it can say about the grey areas of quasi-religious behaviour and behavioural groups.

In this post I'll look at (informally theorized) trajectories of new religious movements. I'll then use that to look at radical activist social justice groups. Will they match up? Will this process produce any novel insights, or is it just a futile exercise is bigotry justification and straw-manning?





TRAJECTORIES OF NEW RELIGIOUS MOVEMENTS
My general sense is that new religious movements tend to fall into a limited number of formulations / concentrations. Unfortunately classifications seem mainly based on intuition rather than any rigorous  phylogenetic work. But perhaps I'm just not up to date on the literature...

There is the sociological classification of new religious movements. Campbell's old cult classification may be the most relevant for my ends. This includes:
  1. a mystically-oriented illumination type
  2. an instrumental type, in which inner experience is sought for its effects, and
  3. a service-oriented type, which is focused on aiding others.
Cambells work is focussed on orientational intentions. I tend to favour a bit more behaviouralism. For example, where would Campell classify Amish or Hutterite Luddites? Probably in 2. Where would millennial doomsday cults fit in? Probably in 2. Hence, I think that it is just too big a category. So here is my sense of the break down:


Millennials
  • These are fairly concerned about ushering in a new utopia. In a decent number of cases, the ends justify the means. Mormonism had a heavy millennial influence during the 1840’s-60’s. Jehovah Witnesses had a heavy millennial phase, which I believe, climaxed around WW1.


Luddites
  • The main idea with these groups is that the benefits of progress are outweighed by its costs it. Cost benefit analysis is almost always done via social system calculations. Some movements just freeze society at a technology point near their departure time. Other movements retrench backward in time a ways. Amish and Hutterites are classic examples of Luddites. Mennonites are much more mixed. Popular attacks against North American Christianity and Christian dominated politics is often framed as retrenchments back to an imagined golden social age. In effect, they are attacked as weak social Luddites. In our era, a not insignificant number of people reject technology in Luddite like ways. Ludditism is almost exclusively technological in nature. But, I’m sure some radical social versions with moderate technological throttling would fit the bill too.


Cults
  • New Religious Movement (NRM) studies of the 80's were fascinated with the phenomenon of cults.  There was lots of hysterical pressure put on legal and political institutions in this regard. Remember all the cases of Satanist daycare worker abusing kids? Sounds like #metoo hyper-hysterics, no? Basically cults are largely defined as groups with super steep in-group out-group gradients who also happen to express a lot of the dynamical factors which characterize religion. They're usually based on, and driven by, charismatic leaders. But this isn't always true. A few cults manage to survive the inevitable charismatic leadership succession crises which most undergo and morph into reasonably legitimate religions. A host of religions from the 1830’s great awakening managed this feat. Most do not. Many cults are "millenialistic" (albeit frequently in new-age rather than classical ways). Most of the sects listed here are cultish on their fringes. While the cult category need not be separate, I think they’re behaviourally unique enough to warrant their own dimension spanning category rather than simply being a term used to describe the radical fringes of any given category.


Evangelicals
  • I probably shouldn't use this name for this purpose, but common parlance now broadly defines evangelical religions as those highly focussed on proselytization tinged with a decent amount of “we were warned you” sentiment. Evangelical formulations usually stabilize when they're combined with an easily demarkable "red pill" like conversion experience. This might be a born again confession, getting a testimony, or some similar dramatically profound change-act ritual.


Gnostics / Mystics
  • Gnosticism is largely characterized by a severe rejection of materialism and an extreme focus on mystical experience. In some ways, it can be imagined as the classic cultist who sits humming mantras to themselves while pursuing aesthetic ideals in order to get more in touch with mystical planes. While I was initially uncertain about the validity of this sub-set, Cambell has convinced me otherwise.

Revelatory (added in after going through the validation process)
This religious trajectory is probably best characterized via the purposeful addition of what is interpreted as "fact" based knowledge additions. The process is usually via prophetic traditions, but need not be so. Catholicism systemic theology approach wouldn't be considered revelatory because of it rational logic focus. Revelatory religions are much more dynamic with knowledge acquisition. Often this produces too much revelation which then inspires infighting and validation / authorization issues. Historically, many new religious movements are energized in a revelatory phase and then, if they survive, tone things down. Revelatory knowledge has heightened epistemological value. Often it is responsive to timely existential angst issues. It is not fully shamanistic, but certainly intersects with that tradition.


Obviously these categories aren’t mutually exclusive. Campbell’s and other’s definitions are much better here. But the accuracy that comes from the necessary generalized parsing required by non-overlapping categorization probably poorly serves our analytical purposes.





VALIDATION
Instead of jumping right into social justice analysis, let’s take some time to look at some fringe religions and see how well they fit into our categorization.

Branch Davidians
  • Obviously religious. Clearly millenialistic. Also cultish.  I would probably think the millennialistic behaviour rules over the cultish. Everyone can be cultish, and non-Luddite separation from society didn’t quite seem to be their main game.


Scientology
  • Obviously religious. It seems to have started out as a cult, but managed to transition quite quickly to religious status. As history shows, producing scripture seems to aid this process. But, I don’t think any of my categories really match it. I suspect I need a new category for “revelatory” sects, whose main focus is on communication new information of divine importance.


Atheism +
  • As I understand it, atheism + is a social grouping that utterly denies the factual validity of supernaturalism, but recognizes the evolutionary importance of ritual and moral-based association. Their dynamics generally aren’t overly religious. The movement has a hard time retaining members. Proselytization tends to be very weak. Atheism+ is clearly not mystic. Rationalism isn’t overly concerned with the sublime. Neither is it millenialistic. It might strive for a better world via an aggregation of individual behavioural consequences, but it is a stretch to say it is focussed on ushering in a new world. Some atheist+ may envision and hope for a societal phase change via enough religious implosions to enable a more thorough secular phase change. But, generally the purpose of individual behaviour isn’t to effect a phase change, but to keep environmental degradation to a minimum, and to maximize their own well-being. Atheist+ is clearly not cultish. Thus, it fits no sect categorizations and should not be considered a religion nor on a religious vector.


Proud Boys
  • While I don’t know too much about their specific ideology, as far as I can tell, this group is mainly about defending the right of people to voice and choose political incorrect political leaders. Thus it is probably mainly a protest and counter-protest group. It has no millenialistic tendencies (unless you count status quo maintenance as millenialistic).  It is not Luddite. It may want to preserve social status quo. But even then, the group is somewhat anti-racist (via color blind goals at least). It is neither gnostic nor evangelical. The closest fit would be cultish. 
  • The group does fit a lot of the behavioural dynamics of religion. It has ritual, costly sacrifices, a grand narrative, and sacred values. It really doesn’t have much of a Big Brother though. Obviously this point could be argued. But, it seems more like a political cooperative than a group whose norms have such sacred value that there is a sense that going against them is wrong towards some bigger essence or semi-embodied group agent. Thus, Proud Boys really can’t be considered religious - even though their dynamics seem to hit a number of classic points. Their behaviour is also not reflective of any of the sect categorizations listed. 
  • My opinion could be change with more information on Big Brother roles, in-group out-group gradients, increased moral theorizing, or more mysticism or more millennialism. This suggest I had better make up a rating scale to see what cut-off scores would be sufficient for me to categorize a group as religious. In the past I've used Scott Atran’s work to tease out what is and isn't religious.



High 
(3)
Moderate (2)
Low 
(1)
Non-existent (0)
Moral Big Brother




Moral Big Brother’s embodiment level




Sacred values (volume)




Sacred values (significance lvl)




Common ritual (combo of significance & frequency)




Costly commitments




Clean hand actions




Avg degree of member’s identity fusion




Steepness of In-group out-group gradient






Arkeon
  • To find some other fringe religious movements, I consulted google. I tossed out the ones that seemed to be obvious offshoots of existing religions and did some superficial reading. Arkeon fit the bill, although as an offshoot of Reiki, I may be pushing things a little.
  • This is basically a charismatic movement that appears to be focussed on creating community feelings via rites of passage and ancestral history. Without much to go on, I’d suggest it’s mainly a mystical movement that doesn’t reject materialism. From the reaction of the Italian authorities, it’s probably fairly cultic. Without more information I really can’t classify it. But, if I was forced to, it seems religious. It’s NRM trajectory appears to either be that of a cult or a concretized mysticism.
Looking at my rough multi-factor rating scale analysis, it looks like 16/27 or so is a threshold value. Traditional religions are probably scoring 24 or 25 and above (out of 27). Supernaturalism, priesthood authority, and identity fusion seem to be the biggest areas of differentials compared to fringe religious movements.  According to my rating scale, fringe movements probably get a religious score (16+/27) via
  • strong moral big brothers, or 
  • via sacred values (the two really intertwine), or 
  • via cult like identity-fusion and steep in-group out-group gradients.



Atheist+

High 
(3)
Moderate (2)
Low 
(1)
Non-existent (0)
Moral Big Brother


X

Moral Big Brother’s embodiment level



X
Sacred values (volume)


X

Sacred values (significance lvl)


X

Common ritual (combo of significance & frequency)


X

Costly commitments



X
Clean hand actions



X
Avg degree of member’s identity fusion


X

Steepness of In-group out-group gradient



X
Sum = 5/27

Proud Boys

High 
(3)
Moderate (2)
Low 
(1)
Non-existent (0)
Moral Big Brother


X

Moral Big Brother’s embodiment level


X
x
Sacred values (volume)

X


Sacred values (significance lvl)


X

Common ritual (combo of significance & frequency)

X


Costly commitments


X

Clean hand actions


X

Avg degree of member’s identity fusion

X


Steepness of In-group out-group gradient


X

Sum = 12/27


A Proud Boys Version I’d Just Barely Label Religious (PB v1)

High 
(3)
Moderate (2)
Low 
(1)
Non-existent (0)
Moral Big Brother


X

Moral Big Brother’s embodiment level


X

Sacred values (volume)
X



Sacred values (significance lvl)
X



Common ritual (combo of significance & frequency)

X


Costly commitments


X

Clean hand actions
x



Avg degree of member’s identity fusion

X


Steepness of In-group out-group gradient


X

Sum = 17/27

A Proud Boys Version I’d Just Barely Label Religious (PB v2)

High 
(3)
Moderate (2)
Low 
(1)
Non-existent (0)
Moral Big Brother
X



Moral Big Brother’s embodiment level


X

Sacred values (volume)

X


Sacred values (significance lvl)


X

Common ritual (combo of significance & frequency)

X


Costly commitments

x


Clean hand actions


X

Avg degree of member’s identity fusion

X


Steepness of In-group out-group gradient

X


Sum = 16/27

Arkeon

High 
(3)
Moderate (2)
Low 
(1)
Non-existent (0)
Moral Big Brother

?
?

Moral Big Brother’s embodiment level
?
?


Sacred values (volume)


?

Sacred values (significance lvl)

?


Common ritual (combo of significance & frequency)
?



Costly commitments

?


Clean hand actions


?
?
Avg degree of member’s identity fusion
?



Steepness of In-group out-group gradient
?



Sum = 18.5/27



SOCIAL JUSTICE’S FIT

Now that the stage has been set, it may make sense to try my rather imperfect rubric to see how “Social Justice” might score from your perspective.


High 
(3)
Moderate (2)
Low 
(1)
Non-existent (0)
Moral Big Brother




Moral Big Brother’s embodiment level




Sacred values (volume)




Sacred values (significance lvl)




Common ritual (combo of significance & frequency)




Costly commitments




Clean hand actions




Avg degree of member’s identity fusion




Steepness of In-group out-group gradient






Social Justice (generalized based on radical activist actors, i.e. the top quartile of Critical Theory majors))

High 
(3)
Moderate (2)
Low 
(1)
Non-existent (0)
Moral Big Brother
X



Moral Big Brother’s embodiment level


X

Sacred values (volume)

X


Sacred values (significance lvl)
X



Common ritual (combo of significance & frequency)

X
X

Costly commitments

X


Clean hand actions
X



Avg degree of member’s identity fusion
X



Steepness of In-group out-group gradient

X
X

Sum = 20/27

When I did this, I got a generalized social justice score of 20/27. That was higher than the Arkeon cult! It was much higher than my threshold levels for Proud Boys. I have to admit, I was expecting something in the range of 14 to 18. Maybe I’m just really biased? Or, maybe there really is something to Social Justice as a religion? Or maybe my amateurish rating scale is crap?

When combined with other work analyzing Social Justice as a religion:

this point of inquiry seems genuine. The way our current great religious awakening is likely to intertwine governance and religion via “Social Justice” in a possible 3rd major religious evolutionary transition is a potentially very significant occurrence. Arguably nations (via the justice of immigration and the criminalization of hate dissent) are breaking apart as a result of this. Europe has already fractured over it. The topic of understanding this phenomenon seems rather sanguine.

Onto It

This analysis is not intended to show that Social Justice is a religion. Rather, the purpose it to investigate its potential sects. If none of its sub-groups match up with standard new religious movement sect categories, it is pretty unlikely that Social Justice itself as an umbrella group is religious. Similarly if most of its sub-groups match up with one or two closely related sect categories, then it may be likely that Social Justice itself will orient to those cultural wells. Something about its future trajectory may therefore be inferred or attempted to be inferred.

Part 2 will be the analysis of social justice sects