Education as indoctrination?

 In the US, there's been a recent upsurge in opposition to Critical Race Theory, and to a lesser extent its parent theory, Critical Social Justice Theory.

The opposition basically boils down to this

Black Lives Matter activists and white supremacists shouldn't be employed in our schools for exactly the same reason.

— James Lindsay, intentionally unendurable intellect (@ConceptualJames) June 23, 2021

Education has now mostly completed its shift toward what history usually refers to as "citizenship" education. In these phases education takes on a substantial moral character. The late 1800's was one of the more dramatic examples of this cyclical shift. Protestants tried to remove the catholic nature of immigrants. The result was a focus on morality. Catholics, feeling the marginalization this brought with it, elected to separate from the public school system.

I expect we will see a similar shift in K-12 education. In Alberta you have teachers who refuse to teach the "white supremacy" of a right wing curriculum. You also have rural folk saying much the same thing with regard to woke progressive indoctrinal curriculums. Decisions will get made based on the relative strength of bureaucratic institutions (which are exclusively left wing progressive) and populism (which is the last bastion of center and conserverative power).

The evolutionary arrow suggests institutions will win.  The only question is whether their lack of magnanimity in cultural victory will cause as second great split in public education, like the late 1800's public - separate school system schism.  We have the tech to do this.  Homeschooling is always the system to look at in this regard.  I suspect we'll see teacher's unions and progressive controlled governments locking up homeschooling.  But, you may also see populist governments de-fanging union control by enabling alternative educational systems.

Political "Catholicism"

 This week I've been reading Yoram Hazony's "The Virtue of Nationalism".  He had an interesting term for Wokeism - he called it a type of anti-liberal catholicism.

His idea was that wokeism is at least as religious as any other conventional religion, has the same type of appeals to authority as any other religion, has the political desires of medieval catholicism, and has the same assumptions of universality as small c catholicism (it is all encompassing and nothing escapes it).

Looks like Tim Pool has an editor from the New York post on who is following the same line of reasoning.  Wokeism is a new political religious force that just assumes it is the only possible paradigm and all other perspectives are just wrong an sinful.

As you can see, this sets up a huge fight with America's protestant roots.  You don't have to go too far back (to the time of Kennedy) to remember how reviled papists were.

I'll have to see how this interview goes.  Tim Pool, tends to be a bit too non-academic for me to handle his long-form stuff...

America's Political Prisoners

 No more needs to be said.

https://amgreatness.com/2021/06/10/letters-from-a-d-c-jail/

The US is now a third world democracy at least in most places where things actually matter.

Back to Religion's Roots

I have just started reading Czachesz's article on the transmission of early christian thought in order to get some info on its parallels to Wokeism.

It's hard for us to remember that religion WAS NOT historically in control of a unified system of narratives, rituals, social life, philosophy, etc. This turn happened during the axial age (8th to 3rd century BCE). 

Not only the variety, but also the complexity of early Christian religion is highly perplexing. Most religions in Greco-Roman antiquity were cults, which can be basically described in terms of rites and institutions. Mythology was also important, but it was transmitted in a number of different ways (history, poetry, fine arts, etc.) rather than controlled by religious institutions. The interpretation of mythology, together with the discussion of the great issues of life, was outside the realm of religion. In early Christianity, in contrast, a single institution coordinated aspects of mythology, ritual, social life, philosophy and ethics.  - pp 66

Thus Wokeism is probably just taking us back to the roots of socio-political religion. It is not an aberration. It's the de facto way cults, temples, shamans etc. used to operate.

Right now we see a cultish explosion and people tend to think, "that can't be religion.... it doesn't have much supernaturalism to it".  Well, it certainly has a devil figure. Does it really need a fully embodied deity?  Will the quintessential BIPOC develop?

Other people see Wokeism's fragmented cults and think "that can't be religion.... it is not a formal institution".  Sorry, as I've said before, it seems like most ancient cults and chiefdom era temple-based groups weren't either.  They were more akin to political thought tanks that had a decent-enough influence on some of the populous to act like a CNN contributor.  They both spout some imaginary stuff, push a certain meta-narrative view, have specific views that can be modified or enlarged by the right "donation" or ask by the right sort of power figure.  Should they both have messaging that comes out on the "right side of history" they add to a meta-narrative cannon.  This cannon, should it resonate with larger cultural wells can then tweak that society's grand meta-narrative textural base.  For instance the addition of a Baal vs Elohim script. Or a 1619 counterfactual trope.

I'm looking forward to reading more...