Creedal Confessions in Academia

Creedal religious confessions seem to be a structural feature of universalizing religions.  This might range from fairly basic "there is no god but Allah and Mohammed is his prophet" to technical Nicene-like statements. 

Recently a statement of confession and commitment was produced by Christian faculty members from across the United States.  In the tribalized trajectory of Western society, what might this portend and what light does cultural-evolution theory shed on the general dynamics of groups evolving to formal-creedal practice?

Background

Tribal religions "just are".  In highly implicit cultures where religion, group membership and culture have no boundaries, technically precise definitions of minimal belief standards are non-sensical.  Beliefs aren’t aren’t designed to make sense to outsiders and they certainly aren’t optimized for proselytization. 

However, religion and governance (Norezayan, 2013) have co-evolved.  Some multi-level selection researchers view this as a series punctuated co-evolutionary steps (Turchin, Norezayan, Atran).  Basically human groups bounce around an evolution-transition-landscape* which due to between-group competition selects for highly cohesive highly coordinated small groups or less continuously cohesive less continuously coordinated large groups.

Under some conditions large groups can outcompete smaller more efficient groups.  In other conditions they can’t.  Tensions between within-group selection and between-group selection makes the whole scenario rather complex (in the technical sense of the word).  But, evidence strongly suggest a directional arrow to the products of selection*: Increasingly larger groups facilitated by better conflict minimization tools, better coordinating tools and sufficient within-group dependencies.

The emergence and stabilization of universalizing religion as a higher-level of selection was, in part facilitated by overt belief structures and easier in-group immigration paths.

A small-group "coherence" approach minimizes within-group freeloading at the expense of size.  A large-group "size" approach threads the omnipresent freeloading needle by making essential norms very overt and by leveraging various natural tendencies for group-to-individual biasing.  Obviously religion and quasi-religious dynamics are very effective in this regard.  Atran's “In God's We Trust” provides a pretty good base in this regard.  Norezayan's “Big Gods” makes a compelling evolutionary argument why these dynamics are selected for (albeit only making tangential use of formal multi-level selection tools).

The Big Question

This multi-level lens leads to some interesting speculation about the dynamical landscape of formal belief (creedal) statements within the intersection of academia and todays increasingly tribablized quasi-religious political environment.

Speculation will avoid value-based analyses.  While I favour the conflict minization that comes with higher levels of selection, I’m also pragmatic enough to realize some structures just aren’t yet stable enough (selection amongst component actors hasn’t stabilized the conditions required for an evolutionary “transition”).  Unfortunately this situates conversation in the world of utilitarianism.  As a naïve non-philosopher, I see not way around this.  So, this argument is obviously subject to all the faults and critiques inherit with utilitarianism.  Alternative suggestions are welcome.

I’ll talk about the dynamics of creeds in religious-secular intersections by situating the formalization of belief in a multi-level selection context.  This will be done by showing how creedal statements function as a higher-level of selection for an individual and a lower-level of selection for a nation-state. Next, I’ll frame this as a classic example of tension between adjacent levels of selection.  This brings in complex oscillatory dynamics.  When expressed in a sufficiently large population we should therefore see multiple (drift) paths expressed.  Gene-culture co-evolution suggests which paths are (stochastic) wells. The cultural phenotypes of these wells will be explored and compared to some recent examples of quasi-religious secular social movements who have also tended to semi-formal creedal-like confessions.  I’ll then speculate, using cultural evolutionary insights, what difference the explicitness of formalized creeds might make.  Finally, I’ll remind you that just because formalization may facilitate between-group competition does not mean that creeds are either good or bad.  Rather it means that good intentions can have bad outcomes and bad intentions can have good outcomes.  I’ll tackle this by coming back to the issue of time scales and units of analysis.

Creeds & Levels of Selection

The academic “statement of confession and commitment” presents an interesting case study in levels of selection.  It brings together a number of Christian faculty from across the country.  Its pretty likely that signatories will “have each other’s backs”.  In other words, the signing of this confession increases the probability of mutual support, especially as related to attacks against the morality espoused therein, and the ability to espouse such morality within academic settings.  While some signatories may view this creed as simply a “good-enough” statement of their own values, the group nature of this statement makes omission of  a functional analysis naive. 

Functionally, why a joint statement?  Why a statement at all?  A levels of selection analysis looks at these functional question in terms of whether it brings people together as a group or separates them into smaller groups. 

This question is not simple.  Human acts are nested in multiple strong and weak overlapping group hierarchies.  For instance, what is the functional effect of this type of creed on a University as a whole? On a pluralistic political society? On a nation torn by questions of open or closed borders? On a lone individual in an isolated university department?

In this regard delving into a deconstruction of the creed itself may just muddy the waters.  Some might find the creed unifying.  Some may find it divisive.  Do we arbitrate who is right?

My particular approach is to simply reference classic studies, especially those in social identification theory, which suggest identity politics – well intentioned or not, tends to lead to clearly identifiable groups which then (probabilistically of course) increase the likelihood of between-group competition. 

But, in this regard trajectory is key.  Identity politics may facilitate a move up a level of selection; individuals coalesce as small groups which can then coalesce as groups of small groups (medium groups), and so on…  But identity politics may also facilitate tribalization.  Large group cohesion is replaced by a focus on smaller group ties.  Instead of nationalism, we get various levels of tribalism.  Does nationalism disappear?  Of course not.  Rather the tension between adjacent levels of selection is tweaked.

Which way do things go? In most cases, we just don’t know.  Speculation exceeds error bounds by quite a bit.  We do know that as the fitness between adjacent levels of selection become equivalent the degree of complexity in cycling between adjacent levels increases commensurately (Okasha, 2006).  But, not knowing which way things will go doesn’t mean we’re blind.

For instance, a recent Nature co-authored by Nowak (who has done a lot of simulation work in the field of evolutionary altruism) suggests pairwise bonds facilitate within-group altruism.  Too many connections limit the conditions necessary for reciprocal altruism.  Too few connections and altruism can’t spread.  Cordes and Richerson (among lots of others) have also done good technical work in this field.  Unfortunately in a world with multiple level of selections, “pairwise” is always relative…  is it between individuals?  Between small groups?  Medium groups, etc.  The math is agnostic on scale.

A random walk approach (aka. the default drift hypothesis previously mentioned) is quite useful in large populations.  Most every possible walk eventually gets expressed.  What then matters then is comparing potential paths to natural evolutionary wells.  In other words, what proximate causes influence (stochastically) the relative cultural fitness of different paths?  This doesn’t imply what will happen.  It simply informs what is likely to happen if the population is large and our gene-culture co-evolution information is accurate.

Gene-Culture Co-evolution

For a primer on gene-co-evolution basics watch a classic presentation on lactase persistence or look at the classic Cavali-Sforza book or the Boyd Richerson version or any of the modern stuff by Gintis, Mesoudi, Henrich and others.  Darwin’s Cathedral is a good intro as well. Although it doesn’t get into the technicalities of dual inheritance much, it’s a classic work on multi-level selection insights into religion, quasi-religion and adaptive group resonances.

Some of the most salient applications can be summarized by combining D.S. Wilson’s and Scott Atran’s works.  Adaptive groups resonate around morality.  As List & Pettit (2011) show, quasi-real group agents emerge in non-deterministic judgment aggregation problems via a process of inferred moral ascription.  Both Wilson and Atran suggest hypsentitive agent detection heuristics do this, as does a strong fitness advantage for being able to predict other people’s actions (in a way where false positive are much less problematic than false negatives).

Once groups start getting moral, the tensions between within-group selection and between-group selection (i.e. freeloading vs. altruism) are well handled by religious / quasi-religious processes.  Atran’s “In Gods We Trust” is excellent here.  Religion is fit for a good reason.  Sacrilized politics is similarly fit for the same reasons.  The different degree of embodiment of “moral Big Brothers” and relative levels of supernaturalism, is, in my mind, of secondary importance.  Human dynamics are similar at the first order.

As per Atran, processes which enhance group adaptiveness include:

• Shared rituals
• Moral Big Brothers
• Slightly counter-intuitive (and hence highly memorable) memes
• Costly commitment displays
• Norm enforcement
• Hard to fake beliefs & actions

At extreme levels of morality identify fusion processes come into play.  However, it seems like these are mainly expressed during periods of severe group competition or as “loss leaders” amongst population tails who facilitate group expansion via slightly counter-intuitive costly commitment displays (think of the first Christian’s seemingly maladaptive martyr fixations) or “don’t mess with us” dynamics.

Comparisons

But enough theorizing, what insights does this give us with regard to creedal dynamics?

This might be best seen by looking at quasi-religious secular social movements who have also tended to semi-formal creedal-like confessions.  Here are some obviously non-random examples.

Black lives Matter

We are intentional about amplifying the particular experience of state and gendered violence that Black queer, trans, gender nonconforming, women and intersex people face… we know that patriarchy, exploitative capitalism, militarism, and white supremacy know no borders. We stand in solidarity with our international family against the ravages of global capitalism and anti-Black racism, human-made climate change, war, and exploitation

Antifa

No formal creedal statements are readily available.  Morality is situated around attacking/resisting authoritarianism especially as represented by neo-nazi’s and far right politics.  There are obvious intersections between anti-patriarchy, anti-capitalism, and minority empowerment.  Allowing the normalization of authoritarianism and repression are clearly seen as sins.

Gays for Trump

Donald Trump is building a broad coalition as he makes an historic run for the White House. We were among the first to recognize the LGBT community had a place in his campaign. As Americans from all walks of life listen to Trump's message of economic nationalism, American exceptionalism, and limited government, those of us in the LGBT community should start paying close attention. Now that America has entered a post-Marriage Equality era, it is time for the LGBT community to stop viewing politics through the narrow lens of the culture war and start engaging the whole political spectrum. For too long LGBT folks were told they had to be Democrats to be for equality. Well, those times have changed and it is time for us to unshackle ourselves from the ideology of the past and embrace the ideas of the future.

March for Science

Inclusion, diversity, equity, and accessibility are central to the mission and principles of the March for Science. Scientists and people who care about science are an intersectional group, embodying a diverse range of races, sexual orientations, gender identities, abilities, religions, ages, socioeconomic and immigration statuses. We, the march organizers, represent and stand in solidarity with historically underrepresented scientists and science advocates. We are united by our passion to pursue and share knowledge.

We acknowledge that society and scientific institutions often fail to include and value the contributions of scientists from underrepresented groups. Systems of privilege influence who becomes a part of the science community, what topics we study, and how we apply our work in creating new technologies and crafting policy. We recognize that, historically and today, some scientific endeavors have been used to harm and oppress marginalized communities. Political actions -- such as gag orders for government science agencies, funding freezes, immigration bans, and policy changes blocking action on climate change -- lead to greater damage for vulnerable populations. Science itself can drive our conversations about the importance of diversity, as it provides us with the data to understand how systemic bias and discrimination impact our communities and how best to change it

Boycott Divest Sanction

Given that, since 1948, hundreds of UN resolutions have condemned Israel's colonial and discriminatory policies as illegal and called for immediate, adequate and effective remedies; and

Given that all forms of international intervention and peace-making have until now failed to convince or force Israel to comply with humanitarian law, to respect fundamental human rights and to end its occupation and oppression of the people of Palestine; and

In view of the fact that people of conscience in the international community have historically shouldered the moral responsibility to fight injustice, as exemplified in the struggle to abolish apartheid in South Africa through diverse forms of boycott, divestment and sanctions; and Inspired by the struggle of South Africans against apartheid and in the spirit of international solidarity, moral consistency and resistance to injustice and oppression;

We, representatives of Palestinian civil society, call upon international civil society organizations and people of conscience all over the world to impose broad boycotts and implement divestment initiatives against Israel similar to those applied to South Africa in the apartheid era. We appeal to you to pressure your respective states to impose embargoes and sanctions against Israel. We also invite conscientious Israelis to support this Call, for the sake of justice and genuine peace.

But how is any of this different from the vision statement of business and other institutions?  The evolution of intersectionality provides one interesting data point. From McKibbin et. al (2015)

Carbin and Edenheim argue that intersectionality has shifted from being a metaphor grounded in structuralist ontology to being an overarching feminist theory which makes explicit an ontology of neither the subject nor power. Intersectionality is no longer defined as a metaphor for the way in which intersecting systems of oppression impact on women’s subjectivities, but is referred to in the literature variously as a methodology, a tool for data analysis, a nodal point in feminist theory, a feminist project or platform, and a framework for social policy development.

But is this academic parsing of categories or belief-based tribablization?  I would argue it can be all of these, with the key being the nodal aspect of bifurcations.  This gets back to the value of a random walk approach where various paths are analyzed according to likely gene-culture wells.

I would also argue that for some, perhaps many groups, intersectionality has become a creedal like confession.  For example the distinction between second wave and third wave feminism revolves around intersectionality and the targeting of resources/concern.  A case in point is whether Beyonce’s sexualization can be considered “feminist”. 

White feminism is a set of beliefs that allows for the exclusion of issues that specifically affect women of color. It is ‘one size-fits all’ feminism, where middle class White women are the mold that others must fit. It is a method of practicing feminism, not an indictment of every individual White feminist, everywhere, always.”

It is usually not that overt, and most White feminists would deny that this is what’s being said or done, but you notice it in more subtle comments like “Why do you have to divide us by bringing up race?” or “Are trans women really women? There should be a distinction.”

In the face of calls for a more intersectional feminism, there are even White feminists who claim the whole concept of intersectionality is just academic jargon that doesn’t connect with the real world.

Yet the irony seems lost on some feminists who make these claims while staunchly opposing the language of “humanism” in place of “feminism.”

Simply put, it’s not those who are calling for a feminism that is responsive to the specific issues they face that are being divisive. It’s those of us who refuse to acknowledge the need for an intersectional ethic in feminism.

A certain type of belief is required for membership in certain types of groups. This belief is moral.  In business is making money a morality?  Perhaps for some wall-streeters.  But for most employees it is a transactional good.  Sacred values attachment is minimal. This is what distinguishes a business value statement that may or may not be moral and may or may not be morally interpreted from moralized creedal statements like the Christian faculty’s Statement of Confession and Commitment.   In-group actions are communicated as moral and out-group actions as immoral (implied or overt). 

The Difference of Explicitness

There’s a bit of complication in the fact that many of the cited creed-like statements don’t come right out and call those who don’t ascribe to their central tenets sinners.  For example in the Statement of Confession and Commitment there is little doubt that any Trump supporting or closed border supporter is a sinner someway.  But they don’t come right out and say this.  Other cited movements do (if you don’t support intersectionality and acknowledge your privilege you’re a racist).  I think my brother reference Derrida’s “Force of Law” work for his understanding of this general issue.

What we have is a bifurcation point.  Formalized belief statements don’t cause the viewing of out-groups as sinners.  Such direct causation is farcical.  But the trend to formalized belief statements with explicit morality in zones where few hitherto existed does change the cultural-evolutionary landscape.

The main cultural tools you use in this regard are:

• horizontal transfer
• oblique transfer
• prestige bias
• content bias
• conformity

Each has a different growth curve, which is unfortunately beyond my time to analyze with respect to the evolution of formalized-belief-statement based groups.  

Explicitness enables high fidelity copying.  Memetic fitness is optimized with a sprinkling of slightly counter-intuitive beliefs.  This also resonates with the characteristics associated with adaptive group formation (costly commitment displays, hard-to-fake beliefs/actions, norm detection & policing).  This gives us two things to look for: 1) what cultural transmission resonates with high fidelity copying and 2) what beliefs statements are memetically fit in their formalized state?

According to Mesoudi’s interpretation of Boyd & Richerson,

Guided variation is where people individually modify acquired cultural traits according to their own individual learning biases.  Content biases, like other forms of cultural selection, occur when people preferentially choose among existing traits found in the population without changing those traits.  Guided variation is an individual process, content bias is a population process

So if the interpretational range of formalized belief statements is loose and it is used to move up levels of selection, then guided variation is a possibility and log-like expansion should be expected.  But the fidelity of tightly written belief statements suggests a content bias.  The question then becomes about conformity levels.

Group-to individual feedback mechanisms are examples of conformity biases.  Group-to-individual feedback in morally impregnated landscapes is well studied and is significant.  One you become part of a group and make a commitment as simply as signing a statement, the probability of expressing group-to-individual feedback increases significantly.

Prestige is also a powerful conforming bias.  Prestige bias involves mimicking observed behaviours of successful individuals (i.e. buying the same shoes as Michael Jordan). As per Mesoudi (pp. 74-75)

Boyd and Richerson constructed models to explore this intuition more formally.  They confirmed that a general prestige bias is indeed a good way of acquiring adaptive behavior compared to individual learning and unbiased transmission (random copying).  However, this depends on the extent to which indicator of success correlate with the traits that are copied.

Other experiments support Boyd and Richerson’s specific prediction that prestige bias is broad and not necessarily always adaptive.

Prestige bias can also lead to a runaway “arms race” between the markers of prestige and the copied traits.  To illustrate this, Boyd and Richerson drew an analogy with sexual selection in biological evolution.

Perhaps one of the most informative articles is The Herding Behaviour in Heterogeneous Populations.  Here’s the abstract.

Here we study the emergence of spontaneous leadership in large populations. In standard models of opinion dynamics, herding behavior is only obeyed at the local scale due to the interaction of single agents with their neighbors; while at the global scale, such models are governed by purely diffusive processes. Surprisingly, in this paper we show that the combination of a strong separation of time scales within the population and a hierarchical organization of the influences of some agents on the others induces a phase transition between a purely diffusive phase, as in the standard case, and a herding phase where a fraction of the agents self-organize and lead the global opinion of the whole population

Another relevant work is the Emergence of Echo Chambers in Mobile Agent Scenarios

Multi-agent models often describe populations segregated either in the physical space, i.e. subdivided in metapopulations, or in the ecology of opinions, i.e. partitioned in echo chambers. Here we show how both kinds of segregation can emerge from the interplay between homophily and social influence in a simple model of mobile agents endowed with a continuous opinion variable. In the model, physical proximity determines a progressive convergence of opinions but differing opinions result in agents moving away from each others. This feedback between mobility and social dynamics determines the onset of a stable dynamical metapopulation scenario where physically separated groups of like-minded individuals interact with each other through the exchange of agents. The further introduction of confirmation bias in social interactions, defined as the tendency of an individual to favor opinions that match his own, leads to the emergence of echo chambers where different opinions coexist also within the same group.

So formalization sews the seeds of hierarchy (the original draftees are high status, as are early adopters and high commitment expressers).  It also facilitates content bias plus conformity growth curves (people can pick which creed to sign, but once they do they are biased by in-group dynamics).  These growth curves clearly have the dynamics associated with cultural phase changes.

Summarizing

Formalized belief statements are subject to gene-culture co-evolutionary forces.  Cultural selection resonates with genetic dispositions.  In large populations random walk drifts ensure all cultural pathways are expressed.  Those that are most fit (genetically and culturally) are of the most interest.  Groups which express adaptive group traits are selected for under conditions of weak and strong between-group selection.  It is hard not to see current political and social turmoil as anything other than a case of mounting group selection pressure.

Academic belief statements with strong moral components have a probabilistic chance of resonating with individuals who will leverage them adaptively.  Explicit moral statements facilitate this process.  Such statements enable in-group out group gradients.  Are they simple statement of belief?  Yes, and no.  As soon as it becomes a group enterprise group dynamics ensue.

Between Group Competition

Coming in another part***….

NOTES

* Remember, evolutionary transitions require: 

1  in-group conflict suppression mechanism  - belief formalization enables this by delineating belief lines enabling clear distinctions between in-group and out-groups. (and no, it doesn't just minimize in-group conflict by defining away anyone in conflict as an out-group....)

2  coordination - the morality (implied or overt) of belief statements aids this

3  extreme dependency - belief statement facilitate this only in as much as they facilitate the creation of adaptive groups (other signatories have your back).  But extreme dependency is very unlikely except in momentary times of severe selection pressure (such as violent schisms).

** Note: a directional arrow does not imply a Fukuyama “end to history” nor any kind of directed process.  It especially does not imply a stage-based theory to societal evolution.  The default hypothesis for any evolutionary process is drift.  In some environments smaller groups are more fit.  In other environments they are not.  What you see is expression of both phenotypical tails.  Migration (tied to within-group competition) and between-group competition play important roles in selecting whether or not the tails are or are not cut off.  Tribal sized groups who are unable to coordinate with others as needed are certainly much less dominant than the were 10,000 years ago.  So the default hypothesis is drift with selection pressure against uncoordinatable small groups.   A number of authors take a stronger stance and suggest that war is in fact an active selector for large groups.  While I personally favour the active selection stance, for this argument the weaker drift hypothesis suffices.

*** This particular instance of group competition has some tangential connection to social media swarm politics I talked about last year (not that it is causative in a one-to-one way, but rather that it facilitates a landscape which produces such dynamics under the right conditions)

Public or Private: The Dynamics of Equity

Alberta is seeing a concerted PR push to legitimize de-funding private schools (i.e. pulling public funding from them).  The leading edge of this wedge issue is framed in terms of high-end private schools with large budget surpluses.

However, it appears charter schools of most any strip are also in the net.  A publicized google map overlay shows each charter/private school's public funding allotment.

These values (usually between 1-10 million) are not presented in context.  I doubt average people realize how expensive schools actually are (~8-10k per student meaning 1-2 million even for a relatively small school).  These expenditures are similar to public schools of the same size (private schools are funded at 70%, I'm not sure about charter school funding...).

A second nefarious link is Edmonton public's comments about exploring the creation of Catholic magnet schools.  Conspiracy theorists (or those who know the animosity between some of the parties) have no trouble seeing this as an exploratory step in the possible revocation of Alberta's constitutional provision for separate Catholic schools.

I have little opinion on the merits or demerits of any of these moves.  I'm comfortably ambivalent with respect to this class of politics.

However, the group dynamics raised by such moves are pretty clear.

• Public education is about one of the largest adaptive social groups we have.  Its contribution to a nation's assabiyah (social cohesion capital) can't be underestimated.  Everyone is required to get an education.  In Alberta right now every student is equally funded for this basic requirement.  So while the loss of ~$6,679+ may not impact a rich private school student's education much, it is likely to have a major impact on group dynamics.

Education as Outcome vs. Input
The first match this lights next to the proverbial hay-pile is an assurance that societal coherers, like education, are equitable (in the classic equality sense of the word); they make no distinction about the individual.  Religious-like shifts to progressive equity counter simplistic classical equality: Progressivism posits that there should be equity and everyone should get what they need (ensuring of course that there is a nice high minimum).

Education is obviously shifting this way.  This is demonstrated by the

1. religious-like morals of inclusion (everyone achieving to high minimum standards), 
2. a shift to outcome rather than input standards, 
3. a focus on low achievers instead of equal focus on all,
4. etc...

Obviously as the Western implosion of identity politics has shown, equity, while good in theory can have some major consequences on a society's cohesiveness.  Equity can enable some rather nasty blow back.  One classic theoretical paper here is Sigmund & Nowak's Tides of Tolerance: ever-increasing levels of tolerance are followed by short intolerance phase changes which reset tolerance levels.  Basically, too much tolerance sews the seeds of internal collapse. The pattern is cyclical.  Cliodynamics supports such general trends, albeit with different causal assumptions.

Alberta's desired shift to an equity (outcome) rather than an equality (input) approach to education may certainly reflect progressive mores.  Alberta's potential equity move is designed to shift funds around in order to help areas of need: "Imagine what XX million dollars for those rich kids could do for these poor underperforming kids".  There is no question that the intention is noble.  But the implications, as with many religiously influenced moral decisions, aren't necessarily as well thought out as one imagines.  Ex post facto judgment rationalization is strongly significant in moral landscapes.  Ideological homogeneity can also be a factor.  I have no idea to which this may or may not be present in Alberta's Education system, nor whether it has any effect, but ideological diversity may mirror a typical humanity department, making confrontation with counter-points less likely.

But what are the logical consequences of moving to an outcome rather than input funding model?  Perhaps eventually low performing schools will get additional funding.  Good right?  Probably.  But it is inevitable that some principals may choose to game the system for lower results.  After all, access to common pool goods are at stake. Should I as a principal game results to look better for my own advancement, or game results to get more funds, surfacing appearances for real betterment of the kids (say a music program).  The depth and breadth to which this might occur of course depends upon the tension between central office's push for better achievement vs the localized benefits of additional funds.  But, perhaps such tensions can be moderated and structurally controlled.  I don't see this as much of a factor until the new system becomes mature.


Assabiyah

What does matter is social coherence.  An output rather than input model conveys the sense that "identity" matters.  While theoretically reasonable, in practice this is extremely corrosive to societies. The social psychology literature here is very well documented.  Creation of identifiable sub-groups decreases social cohesion. Groups solidify on even the most asininely-pointless demarkers.  They then potentially resonate higher and higher levels of within-group cohesion (depending upon the environmental landscape and feedback effects).  In many cases this is followed by out-group animosity.  Steep in-group-out-group gradients re-enforce triableness and create lines which have increasingly high migration costs.

An equity based approach to educational resourcing can have significant deciphering effects if over-extended or changed too rapidly.



Shadow Systems & Between Group Competition
Because education is such an adaptive group, it is very sensitive to fitness-changing signals.  This includes norm compliance, usurpation, freeloading, changes in freeloader percentages, and costly commitment displays.

Pulling public funding from identifiable groups raises adaptive-group alarm bells.  People can't help but think, "why are we/they targeted"?  "What norms were broken"?  "What are the new norms"?  Responses like, "its nothing personal, you just don't need the money", don't fly.  Everyone knows wealthy elite may not need public funds, but our evolved tendencies are based on practical not factual reality.

In the evolutionary landscape, the costs of false negatives are generally very high. The cost of false positives are generally low. With respect to fitness, it pays for the group to be conservative, sending out occasional liberal probes to explore, maintain connection with, and influence its dynamic environment. Without group oriented conservativeness, actors group-oriented self-sacrifice has a good chance of being anti-fit.  Sticking in group which is not sensitive to false positives is like sinking money into a pit you can never see until it is too late. Because humans exist in the tension between fitness enhancing groups and fitness decreasing groups, we tend to be fairly sensitive and fairly mobile in this regard.  If walking away has little cost, people do it.  If another option is available, people will take it.

What signals might they use for this decision?

• Do Alberta Ed and the ATA worry about our interests?  In adaptive group speak, is my self-sacrifice probabilistically reciprocated with compensatory benefits?  Arbitrary changes of major social significance away from well-established mores (equality vs. equity) signal a future of weak reciprocity.  Expression of weak reciprocity becomes more likely during times of scarcity. Bandora's social exchange theory makes similar-enough claims, albeit using ex post facto logic poorly suited for forward prediction.
• What are the "freeloading" percentages.  Simulations are quite clear that groups have a critical "freeloading" mass.  Too much "freeloading" and groups are all-but guaranteed to implode.  Norm enforcement keeps this in check.  But adequate "freeloading" is required to enable large group size.  So, in practice, it is the rate of change of freeloading that is the signal.  Major changes to moving public school funds (needed or not) from one group to another is a major signal of "freeloading" percentage changes.  If the large-group is desperate enough to pull major changes to hitherto stable social-contracts this signals a major change in the group's potential adaptiveness.  In this case, that public education may be heading down a path where it is unable to fulfill a universal role.
• Costly commitment displays are another signal of adaptive group operation.  These displays may have little rational purpose (think religious food or clothing injunctions which have long since become moot), but have great practical purpose.  They test group-oriented commitment and establish a minimal "buy-in" cost.  If you can't pay the "buy-in" there's little chance many of the other necessary group-directed sacrifices can be "paid for".  Thus school funds are a secondary issue.  They represent a costly commitment cost used to detect the robustness of the group itself and any incoming actors.

Rather than private (and potentially charter) schools sucking up the funding slap to the face, another option is for them to screw Alberta curriculum and control and develop their own shadow system.  For instance, if I was a superintendent in such a situation, I might look for some partner schools, assess what Universities are really after for entrance standards and choose to meet those any way I can - say ACT tests, self-generated tests, and perhaps select Alberta diploma exams.  That might let me ignore courses which might not have much utility for my demographic (CALM, 100credit requirements, etc.)  University admission departments are surprisingly aware of how students from one school perform in post-secondary programs in relation to those from another school.  For instance, my father's admissions team was acutely aware of how physics scores from scores of provincial high schools normalized against each other.

So a shadow system is very possible.  Home Schooling attest to this.  But is it likely?


The Accreditation Hammer
Education's most adaptive benefit is accreditation.  This is what gets people jobs.  Eschewing this is no simple matter.  Home Schooling has had to fight lots of battles in this regard.  Its success waxes and wanes generationally.  Despite what futurists might hope, outcome based skill assessment is not a path many HR departments are eager to pursue in relation to new hires.  It is risky (structurally and individually).

Can private school shadow systems get around accreditation?  Perhaps.  They could pursue high school diplomas from other provinces, states or countries.  Perhaps an international baccalaureate diploma has the right cache and acceptance levels? This just leaves provincial requirements for teacher accreditation as the final straw.

Unions have a powerful hammer here.  But, the vagaries of politics are fickle.  Could anti-union ministers from a non-friendly political party use this as a wedge against Union control?  What is good for the goose is good for the gander.  Changes to social contracts (within group norms) makes all sorts of things possible.  Are private school teachers not instructing Alberta curriculum really required to be accredited by an Alberta professional body?  Why couldn't they be accredited by the international baccalaureate body?  What a blow to a Teacher's Union.  What a self-destructive "race-to-the-bottom".

The introduction of between group competition is never friendly and rarely goes as planned.  This is exceptionally true when moral norms are broken.  It is doubly true when large social landscapes are in the midst of a Great Moral Awakening (destabilization) such as that which the West is currently experiencing.


Falsification & Anticipated Counter-Arguments
The biggest problem with any of this reasoning is falsification.  The weakness of Bandura's social-exchange theory with respect to forward prediction comes to mind.  Sociology is good at exploring possibilities, but quite horrible at falsification and unbiased thinking.

The adaptive group approach I've taken depends upon the degree to which education functions an adaptive group.  Just because adaptive groups are sensitive to faith-breaches and freeloading changes doesn't mean education is.  For instance, transactional business are rather insensitive to such things.  Capitalism, is in fact, optimized for such an environment.

Things which suggest education functions as an adaptive group include:

• Expectations of moral behaviour - If teachers treat students transactionally, only worrying about the presentation of information instead of the whole child, why is this wrong?  There is a large amount of unstated moral expectations which form a de-facto social contract.  Some places, like Alberta, are further ahead  than others in spelling this out.  Education is a highly moral enterprise.
• The way teachers frame contract issues - is usually in terms of highly moralistic language 
• Group supplied fitness benefits - accreditation, job opportunities, social networks,  jobs within the system itself.
• Costly commitment displays - actors tend to "suck up" a lot of niche potential optimizations for the sake of larger social justice issues.  How many gifted students really need 12 years of k-12?  Why do they put up with it?
• Sacred values - How do people within the group react to actors who say things like all children can not learn?  Is the debate rational? Or is it more about intentions.  The latter is almost certainly the case.  Students have many more degrees of freedom here than teachers or administrators. Are criminal acts done within the group considered to be a greater social breach than those done outside the group?  How would a teacher embezzling funds compare to a banker doing the same?
• There are lots of ways to test sacred values:  Would a person with the same skills as a teacher but without the degree or any formal education be allowed to teach?  If clean hands are required, chances are you have a sacred value.
• How much is your identity tied to your values?  Are you a teacher first or a person first?  Is the teacher identity tied up to moral aspects of teaching?
• What degree of nuance is allowed within your group's morals? Can teachers be nuanced about classroom discipline, inclusion, streamlining, and other controversial ideas?
• Offers of compromise tend to solidify your position.  If you exclude 3 students from extra support, we'll give your school the equivalent extra funding to spend on other students...
• Harm by omission is seen as less sinful than harm by commission.  Breaking a taboo is worse than inaction.
• Rituals -  Do people who complete all school outcomes without a formal school experience judged to have a similar experience to those that do?  If not, the chances are pretty good that there is a large hidden curriculum or that the experience itself is more ritualistic than we would otherwise suspect.

Education achievement has been shown to have a number possible genetic loci.  Orientation toward education is likely to have a genetic (as well as cultural) component.  This supports arguments for education as an adaptive group and counters arguments against this position.  Additionally, education is, over the long term, fitness enhancing both at the individual and group level (studies do suggest higher levels of education are correlated with fewer kids.  However, these studies don't account for what occurs during major societal upheavals like war and famine.  They also don't account for the very significant effects of rare individuals with exceptionally high fitness - the celebrity procreative effect.  The fitness case is not settled science.) 

Conclusion

If education does indeed function as an adaptive group, then actions which challenge existing norms /social contracts and signal potential in-group out-group changes are very likely to induce the expression of non-rational group dynamics.  This includes pushback against potential usurpers and freeloaders.  It also includes the possibility of spinning off competing shadow systems. As per basic group-evolution theory, spinoffs will likely freeload as much as possible until called out, while still functioning as a distinct group following distinct norms.  

The formation of a competing shadow system will challenge power structures, resulting in each side doubling down.  Provincially I'd expect teacher accreditation to be the first issue (following student accreditation).  The second issue I'd expect is back-door pressure on Universities to blacklist specific non-approved educational paths.  The third issue I'd expect is heavy handed legal requirements that all Alberta students have a "particular" type of educational experience or face the risk of attendance boards and embarrassing Social Services audits (for not providing a governmentally acceptable education).


Additional Reading

What's the Point of Moral Outrage

Moral Aspects of Teacher - Teacher Union Interactions

The Psychology of Moral Conviction

More from me on Sacred Values in Education

If Science Becomes Quasi-Religious

There is a huge furor over Trump's ban on EPA and other government agencies' public communication.  A similar thing happened in Canada under Prime Minister Harper.  Governments controlling the public communication of its employees via communication officers and chain of commands is pretty common.  Banning all communication is not.  Extreme filtering of science oriented departments is not common.  It reeks of 1984 right-think.

But is the reaction to this from the scientific community rational?  Here's the first clue some sacralization may be happening.

Today's media is in a direct battle with Trump.  Over the last year it has sensationalized every piece of information pertaining to him.  Some of this has been valid.  Some has been pure clickbait.  Some has been purposeful obfuscating polemization.  There certainly are no clean hands here.  The press has sown the seeds of its own destruction here; and, perhaps facilitated, or amplified the seeds of societal factionalization and decoherence.

Hypersensitivity around sacred values, like climate change, or possibly mundane actions done by unclean actors, is a clue that quasi-religious dynamics are at play.  Is "science" at risk of quasi-religiosity?  Let's look at an outlier - climate change.

Science or Religious Dynamics
The dynamics here do not look pretty in this regard.  Those who question any tenet of climate change are labelled deniers and are ostracized from academia.  This may or may not be reasonable.  Certainly a physicist who favours a luminous ether over gravitational space-time may not be functional.  Indeed this is the way most people view climate change.

But sharp critique is what advances science.  Science works because even the most cherished idea is always subject to factual counters.  Climate change really isn't subject to question.  It is happening.  But are all attacks about it "happening", or are some attacks based on questions about structural bias? (see this David Friedman lecture for example). Are some based upon resource prioritization?  What if resource prioritization is erroneously phrased in terms of climate change factuality? Does the position suddenly become "wrong" because of imprecise language? What if the terms of the argument are purposefully off to facilitate persuasion?  Is it now "wrong"? Are the decisions of a populace subject to persuasion (from both sides) illegitimate if they pick the "wrong" answer?  Are populace decisions only "right" when there is equal balance?  Is it only "right" if the balance occurs in proportion to the factual validity upon which external arbiters judge things to lay?

We can tell where on the quasi-religious spectrum we're at based upon answers to these questions.  This is similar to the basic technique Jonathan Haidt uses to investigate the ex post facto rationalization aspects of disgust.  Is an answer "wrong" based upon its conclusion or its premises?

Scientists tend to say both conclusions and premises have to be right.  For the field, this makes sense. But does it make sense in a representational democracy?

Non-Overlapping Magisteria
First off, there is no way to know what individuals think when they vote.  You can certainly study a sample of voters to try and ascertain their thinking, but often voters aren't fully aware of all their reasons.  As Haidt would say, complex decision making events are more emotional than rational.  So should irrationality defer to expertise in areas of public policy?

If the March for Science was framed in these terms, I would be really happy.  Instead it seems framed in terms of Scientists are right and Trump supporters are idiots.  But to be more charitable, it seems framed in terms of limiting the role popularism can have on scientific agencies.  This seems reasonable.  Reasonable until you think that scientific agencies are also responsible for policy...  Application of action from fact is not as clean cut as some Marchers make out.  This is especially true in ideological monocultures.

Over the last few decades an increasingly untenable elected representational system has offloaded many of its decision making duties to the bureaucratic/technocratic level.   This may be wise: this is where technical expertise lay.  It may be unwise: technocracy tends to become increasingly detached from "reality".

Technocratic detachment from reality fosters revolution.  Parental-governments that always know what is best for people (based upon aggregate averages) eventually run into independence backlash.  "Yes I know having a gun is statistically unsafe, but in my particular circumstance, with my particular abilities, with a psychotic stalker, I don't agree."  This is where the policy application of science runs into popularism.

Scientists are likely to say they have the right premises.  Popularists are likely to say they have the conclusion they like.  The problem is, the language both sides use to communicate has a very minimal cross sectional area.  Thus, at least to me, the fight is really over power.

I see the March for Science fighting for minimal interference from popularism.  Enter in through this institution.  Get filtered according to our advancement (& publishing) criteria, and then you can have a say.  This sets up a potential appeal-to-authority structure.  Classic religious stuff.  Appeal-to-authority structures become non-religious when values are not sacralized.  Unfortunately climate change is sacred.

This is not because of the facts (which are pretty black and white), but because of the morality ascribed to those facts.  For instance, is CO2 of 400ppm "bad"?  Was it "bad" in the Jurassic?  Is it "bad" because how it will effect population diversity?  The latter is a moral question.  It is clearly based upon decision of what outcome is wanted.  How is that different than popularist reasoning?

Where the Conflict Comes From
And that, I think is where the conflict comes from.

Because this is a fight, the chances of it running its course without an arms race is unlikely.  It is structurally likely that each side will begin to employ tools designed to win.  Thus groups of scientists and scientific agencies grow more and more likely to leave out key contextualizing details (Jurassic CO2, dogmatic outcome preferences, positive black-swans, etc.).  Popularists grow more and more likely to rely on persuasion rather than fact  (or pure appeal to dogmatic preference).  At some point the dogma comes out and groups rally around their poles.  Inter-group competition ensues, boundaries solidify and mediating cross-overs become sellouts.  Memetically fit cogents become sacralized (like climate change).  Religious dynamics take over because they tend to be very fit and resonance with adaptive group formation.

The End
The end isn't pretty.

There seems to be an unspoken assumption that progressivism should and will win;  that science tied to a factually correct reality is more adaptive than popularism.  To me, this is where the danger lies.  This assumes a religious like blessing to factual reality.  This type of determinism facilitates inter-group competition: the other side is wrong so let's just jump to the end-game.

Unfortunately practical reality (popularism), is very evolutionary fit.  The ability to rally groups for action isn't always guaranteed to win out over technical ability.

So if you want to avoid needless escalation is the current social wars, think about what role you really want popularism to play?

Example
So, at this point most people would say - science should win.  As discussion often does, group identity and righteousness has been re-enforced.

So let's imagine a department of justice which is ideologically/politically pure.  Say it is as homogenous as the EPA or National Parks Service.  Say 99.9% pure.  This department is very concerned that racial disparity in crime will lead to societal collapse.  They've got very good models on this.  They conduct and release lots of scientific studies (at a grant ratio of 1000:1 for the positive position).  Some of their facts seem robust, like IQ by race or quasi-racial grouping.  Obviously some people don't like them, but their critique is often about conclusions not the science.  Although, they often frame their attacks as a rejection of the science.  Aspects of these "facts" can certainly be questioned, but if you do you'll never get a job, advance in your career, and you will socially ostracized as a regressive.

Now imagine that a new government was elected and that it decided elimination of racial disparity was not a priority.  Perhaps they felt locking up lots of people of one race to reduce crime rates was not worthwhile.  Perhaps this is what the people voted for.  Perhaps not.  Perhaps the voters were just racists.  But the department of justice and its scientists feel their expertise on the actions on crime should be minimally subject to dogmatically determined popularism.

Back to Quasi-Religion
While all analogies are necessarily poor and subject to lots of issues, the main point of this one is that ideologically homogeneous institutions create their own dynamics that eventually careen into the wall of populist dogma.  The limitation is that race is easier to delegitimize than "the jurassic wasn't so bad for life".  Science is agnostic about application.  Application may be informed by fact, but it is always a-moral.  The degree of morality varies, but group dynamics act to accentuate morality.  Thus application is rarely dis-entangeable from group dynamics and quasi-religious behavioural wells.

So, to me the best thing one can do is if you see a scientific meme becoming sacralized, don't employ quasi-religious tools to defend or sell it.  De-sacrilize it by publicizing critiques.  Make them as open as possible, and let the weakness of such arguments be their own downfall.

If nefarious persuasion techniques are used against your position in order to rally the masses, be aware that you may become a doppleganger to the dynamics you're criticizing.  Realize the public policy decisions in representational democracies are almost always based on outcome rather than expert thinking.

If you can't fathom why that may not be as catastrophic as you think, read some judgement aggregation literature, eat a dose of humble pie, and get used to the sacrifices required for pluralism.  Large groups are not stable with a total absence of corruption.  Large plural societies are only stable when they give "enough" space to corruptors with erroneous ideas.  Don't assume a 49% Trump vote means 49% of people deny the facts of climate change.  Some may deny the prioritization of actions. Some may have voted for other policies. Appearing like you're enforcing homogeneity of thought weaponizes inter-group competition which is as likely to make you operate religiously as it is to re-enforce adaptive group dynamics on the other side.

SJW offense hyper-trauma as a gift-of-the-spirit

Over the last few years I've been saying that social justice zealotry appears to conform to functional religious dynamics.  This means that while it might not be as supernatural as religion, the dynamics it produces are, nonetheless, similar.  I tend to use Atran as my base for these discussions.

Increasing social justice demonstrations of hyper-offence trauma show another similarity with (quasi) religion.

Gifts of the spirit are normally interpreted as things useful for fulfilling the mission of the Christian church.  Many of these things are related to organizational processes.  Others are related to social dynamics.  It's the latter that I want to focus on.

Here we have to delve a bit into some of the idiosyncrasies of Christian theology.  Some theologians distinguish fruits of the sprit with signs of the spirit.  To me that distinction is rather arbitrary.  The former tends to focus on long term demonstrables (e.g. kindness) while the latter tends to focus on episodic phenomenological-like signals (e.g. speaking in tongues).  The latter is most applicable to what I do, the scientific study of group-dynamics in moralized environments.

For instance Quakers often signalled being overcome by the spirit by physical quaking.  Shakers amplified the physical demonstrations of their Quaker roots.  Mormonism often signals spiritual envelopment and sincerity by crying.  Crying fits seem to be more frequent in group settings than in individual settings.  Shaking seems to fit a similar pattern.

One interesting possibility (not backed up by any rigorous research) is that gifts of the spirit tend to emerge during Great Religious Awakening moments.  For instance, Quakerism emerged during a Great Religious Awakening.  Mormonism did too.  Social justice emerged during our current Awakening (which we recognize due to moral unfreezing & strong within-society between-group competition).

So, I propose that the hyper-sensitive cycles physically expressed by social justice warriors reflect adaptive group dynamics.  Their functional purpose is to express hard-to-fake commitment and create a sense of synergy with a group and a group-agent moral Big Brother.  They are adaptive because of their role in group norm enforcement, in-group out-group detection and actor-group resonance.

Re-emergence of Secular Shamans

Media and Hollywood celebrities are certainly up-in-arms over the election of Donald Trump.  Post-trauma lethargy is coalescing into actionable intent.  This was certainly evidenced by Meryl Streep's polarizing moralizations.  Free speech is definitely meant to protect this type of commentary.  People are free to muster whomever they can to support whatever position they desire.  Hence my disdain for  people who attempt to use safe-space rhetoric as a way of expanding exclusion and preventing free-association.

The way anti-trump sentiment's form of expression is coalescing amongst various elite factions is very interesting.  Critiques, like those by Meryl Streep, media, and "grassroots" activists who propagate planned memes, centre on the morality of inaugurating an unfit, morally repugnant president.

Whether or not any of that is or is not true is beside the point (at least for socio-quasi-religious dynamics).  What seems clear is that the media and many celebrities are exploring roles as a secular-moral voices to an extent not hitherto done.  For example, cosmopolitan dogma on immigration, like almost another reactionary political position, is framed in moral terms rather than rational (homo-economicus) terms.

Preaching recreates the methodist exhortation well.  The intent isn't to explain a systemic philosophy, it is to exhort people toward certain classes of thought or action.Now, can't all moral speech be classified as exhortation?  Perhaps.  What's interesting though is the role the speech taker is occupying.

Tribal religious leaders have a functional evolutionary role as societal coherers.  This is most easily accomplished through supernaturally enhanced Big Brothers.  A Psychosocial definition of Shamans highlight some interesting parallels (you just have to remove the supernatural elements and replace them with mildly-counter-intuitive secularism).

The basic idea is that Shamans represent a interface between people and the supernatural.  One view is that Shamans represents the distress experienced by  the shaman's patrons.  Shamans use dramatizations to direct the feelings of their patrons and resolve social tension.  The shaman helps patrons appreciate symbols that address, interpret and contribute to the resolution of their most pressing problems and conflicts.

One way this happens is by helping people organize their feelings and find representational outlets.  They also personify the social tensions and patterns people are under.  Performance is a key aspect of the technical definition of Shamanism.  Perhaps this is a necessary part of this cognitive group-psychology well, perhaps it isn't.  The key distinguishing feature between Shamanism and standard prophetic roles lies in the physicality of action and depth of  spiritual trance.

"In America, for example, revivalists and evangelical preachers have held great appeal for many people from the seventeenth century to the present day.  The compelling power of these preachers is in large part the result of their ability to dramatically embody the emotional problems and social tensions besetting their patrons," (Porterfield, 1987, p. 729).

So my best guess on what we're seeing with the mainstream media and celebrities like Streep is an unwitting progression into the socio-cognitive well of Shamanistic exhortation.  Clearly this role is strongly mediated by the removal of supernatural elements.  But the key is that these elites are trying to represent the socio-cognitive tension many people are now experiencing under a Trump presidency and electoral rejection of social progressivist tenets.  Expression comes out in physical acts: content and fact don't matter as much as "getting the point across".  This is clearly a post-truth landscape.  This is clearly scary.

From a multi-level selection lens, we're seeing competition amongst elites fall into the traditional bifurcation of formal and informal power expression.  This nouveau priest/shaman class is evolving into informal power expression.

This makes sense.  Celebrities, especially actors, have a ready vehicle on hand to shape people's thinking.  People listen to celebrities due to prestige bias and perceptual landscape transformation.  See enough movies portraying gun ownership as bad, and you'll be tempted to think of it as a de-facto social norm.  Once speech clearly resonates around said morality and the resonances become hard to ignore.  They polarize.

I suspect one of the keys for people to remember is that religion generally does not look like the systemic theology people often take for granted.  Religion and religious actors have a functional well which resolves around social coherence.  Highly rational systemic approaches are merely one of many solutions for social coherence (which, like Christianity and Islam, happens to be optimized for expansion to out-groups).  Tribal religion is fine with population binormalization.  In fact, it is optimized to separate in-groups from out-groups via focus on over-arching highly implicit moral dogmas and memes.

Radical Progressivism as Intra-Elite Competition

I'm going through the third of Peter Turchin's excellent series of the Structural Demographic theory of societal integration & disintegration.  His main thesis is that three variables complexly interact to produce the disintegrative phase of a secular cycle.

1. overpopulation
2. elite overproduction
3. state fiscal crises.

Elite overproduction is a first order term.  The others are secondary (with a fiscal crises being the straw that breaks the camel's back rather than the deep cause of disintegration).  These lead to three fairly related predictions:

1. Labour oversupply
2. Elite overproduction
3. Instability

In Ages of Discord, his analysis of the United States current foray into societal disintegration, he again stresses the role of elite overproduction as a critical factor.  Competition within this group has lots of negative repercussions.  In this post, I'm simply going to focus on one aspect of this competition; creating a steep fitness gradient to immiserate threshold actors.

IMMISERATION

Living in Vancouver I was always amazed at the social status marginal elites thought a $5 organic q-tip signalled.  It was quite amazing.  "Well, I only buy cotton from this farm in Nairobi, because they're the only ones I trust to really value their workers".  While this obviously has some very real moral implications, its role as both a virtue signaller and a gauntlet for others is clear.  

Similarly, I wonder if many aspects of social justice dynamics don't reflect the set up of a structural system designed to bifurcate marginal-elite population, heightening the costs of residency.  I'll assume billionaires find such organic sourcing discussions rather boorish - after all if you need to worry about the cost of such things you really aren't near the top.  Its more a behavioural test for aspirants or a quaint "religious-like" pet project for members who are otherwise bored and inclined to moral displays.  Conveniently enough though, minimal expression through a small number of moral agents serves the top class well.  It biases structures to impose high entry & residency costs.  There are lots of necessary but not sufficient markers.  This disproportionately affects marginal aspirants.  It also enables the immiseration of others.

Turchin says it like this

"Low labor costs lead not only to declining living standards for a large segment of the population (especially unskilled ones), but also to a favourable economic conjuncture for the elites.  There are several important consequences of this development.  First, the elites become accustomed to ever greater levels of consumption.  Furthermore, competition for social status fuels "conspicuous consumption".  Thus the minimum level of consumption necessary for maintaining the elite status exhibits runaway growth...Eventually, increasing numbers of elites and elite aspirants will have to translate into declining consumption levels for some, leading to the condition that has been termed elite overproduction.  Intraelite competition for limited elite positions in the economy and government will become more fierce...These "surplus" elites must challenge the established elites for access to elite positions, or acquiesce in downward mobility."

The key is competition.  If you can game others into setting up a competition structure that doesn't really affect you, all the better.  Many aspects of social justice signalling seem to fit this niche.  

• Immigration - high immigration is closely tied with historic levels of inequality
• Affirmative action - definitely a plus for minorities (& for societies if not over-extended), but it has a disproportional effect on aspiring elites and near-elites (e.g. a director level position, but not an entry level nor CEO position)
• Privilege (I just can't justify the societally destructive racist sexist moniker that normally goes with this..) - this sets up structural impediments to marginal elites.  How many billionaires have opportunities limited because of their privilege?  Aspirants, however do.
• Protesting - Getting arrested tends to disproportionately affect middle class opportunities.  At a high level of elitedom it becomes a badge of honour.

While I certainly might be overextending this analysis, it is interesting to think about the degree to which social justice signalling sets up structures useful for near-elite bifurcation.  While such social justice undoubtably has many good ends, in terms of Turchin's social demographic theory, elite over production is key.  Competition within this group therefore has a more significant role on societal cohesion than what social justice may be attempting.

 

 

Why It's Imperative to Treat Social Justice as a Religion

I've talked before about why it is reasonable to consider zealous forms of social justice as a (quasi) religion.  After reading Peter Turchin's excellent book UltraSociety, I think I need to restate the case from a slightly different, more pressing direction.

United States (and perhaps many other Western) societies are fragmenting.  The current US political election attests to this.  Both sides are vehement about the moral value of their candidate: Democrats for cosmopolitanism & rule of order and Trump for nationalism & elite destabilization.  Negative sum attitudes and the "bothering" of fellow citizens (legal & illegal) is certain to continue. No matter who wins the election, the blowback will exasperate rather than dampen the growing dichotomy.

Moral values adhere societies.  Western society has certainly lost a lot of its asabiya. How to get it back?

The big lesson is that pluralism is essential.  Beneke shows, that in America, punctuated periods of pluralism correlate with increased levels of toleration, social progress, and perhaps societal progress.  Certainly pluralism provided an escape valve for balkanizing tensions.  The one time it didn't civil war ensued: federalism with a flat social structures and extreme forms of liberty with retrograde heirachical structures were immiscible.

We're back at that point.

Failing to consider Social Justice as a religion makes the probability of achieving a pluralistic solution less likely.

Cultural selection encountered a stable point for large group cohesion in the expression of Big Gods (moralizing agents who can see people's intentions, care about your intentions and meet out punishment & reward).  Effective rule of law can certainly supplant semi-embodied dieties.  But we still need an ability to see each other as governed by moral principles.  This is the rub.

Social Justice's moral principles are very amorphous.  They don't have the systemic theological quality that universalizing religions do (at least yet).  Things are still congealing.  This is part of the problem.  Rapidly evolving moral values present an existential trust threat.  While this may seem silly, what humanist is going to kill a right-wing survivalist.  Nonetheless, its a (irrational) factor that must be weighted.

Additionally, Social Justice does not consider itself a religion.  Indeed the intersections associated with its roots are very intertwined with the marginalization of formal, empowered, religions.  While this marginalization is very naive (aren't safe spaces very similar to religious spaces, and social justice university very similar to old religious universities), society needs a structure that is going to facilitate social justice's pluralization.  We need a way to allow social justice's to talk about, share, and value their own specific world view, while allowing others to politely disagree without resorting to hate-fact wars, rhetoric and uni-directional dialogue.

The best way to do this is via structures everyone understands.  This is religion.  Religions are allowed to have very vehement beliefs that outsiders might consider loony and dangerous if universalized. For instance, mormons and muslims consider alcohol (and recreational drugs) bad. If forced on all society you'd have all the social problems of the prohibition era.  Yet this within-group belief doesn't threaten others (at least very much).  We need to be able to do the same with Social Justice: see parts of the movement for the good that it does, and see the hyper-sacred aspects for the religious spandrels they are.  But, more than this, we need to have a way to politely say, I support your right to believe and proselytize your values without forcing me to acquiesce my own values and without forcing me into an embittering defence (or offence).

Give people space for their beliefs, and have an easy structural solution for letting them be who they are and letting you be who you are.

Pepe as Quasi-Religion

If you've read other posts on this blog you probably are aware that I interpret quasi-religion in a functional way: a social structure characterized by adaptive group dynamics coalesced by morality and sacralizing acts.  I use List & Pettit's judgement aggregation work for morality and Atran's In God We Trust for sacralizing acts.

In practice this means I tend to interpret religion rather liberally: it's mainly constrained by the role of Big Brothers, Big Brother feedback, and resonating rituals and hypersensitive sacred value norms.

So with this in mind, I've been finding the emergence of Pepe fascinating.  What are the main things to watch for?

• Does its satirizing provide group-level protections for individual agents?
• Around what things will group level morality emerge?
• What are its sacramental acts (if any)?

The most interesting thing about the Pepe meme is its ironical essence.  While many Pepe memes are downright disgusting, my academic interest isn't determining moral values or costs. Rather, it's seeing what dynamics a given social phenomenon captures or portends.

One thing Pepe introduces is a bifurcating phase change between social justice norms and individual independence norms.  This is representative of a classic-levels-of-selection tension.  In this particular case, one side pushes to eliminate discrimination (certainly a noble goal - although means definitely matter), the other side pushes against this (or perhaps for some sort of individual liberty).  The sacred values of both sides clash.

Social justice's sacred values seems to center on removing all quarter for discrimination.  Rituals associated with this revolve around social change acts, protests, & virtue signalling (individually and via mob action).  The sacred value on the Pepe side have yet to settle.  My suspicion is that it will settle down around acts of irony and satire: a very unusual, Volterian position.

It's unusual because pure acts of protest are parasitically dependent upon their host: conditions change and the core unifying act dissolves.

In terms of quasi-religion, mocking and ridicule will be the equivalent of social protest and action. The interesting thing here is that such satire is really easy to do.  Fighting against something is always easier than fighting for something.

Because low brow satire against things doesn't have as much unifying power as protests & rallies for something, alt-right satire is at a population-limit disadvantage.  In this dimension it can't unify as large a grouping as social justice.  However, satirical meme production has minimal costs.  On this dimension it has a slight population-limit advantage over social justice virtue signalling: finding someone or something to signal against isn't quite as easy as whipping up a piece of low-brow satire/offense.

Pepe also gets a slight population advantage limit because rebellion in the West is socially favoured over hegemony (within-group competition at the nation level currently seems to be favoured over between-group competition). So Pepe has room to grow as long as:

1. Pepe meme costs are low (anonymity can be maintained so norm enforcement punishment is minimized)
2. Existential nation-level threats stay minimized (between group selection pressure stays below within group pressure)

Point 2 is an interesting one.  Existential threats from tolitalitarian Islamic extremists are minimized by social justice values.  Existential threats from internal right wing extremist are maximized.  Pepe is set to receive high levels of norm compliance enforcement.  This should drive the group into protective adaptive group dynamics (which certainly can be facilitated by quasi-religious dynamics).

However, the most interesting thing here is the moral mission likely to emerge with Pepe: A duty to mock and ridicule.  This is a very odd religious value to have.  It very much reminds me of pre-revolutionary 18th century France during the time of Voltaire and the popularization of satire.  

It also reminds me of  D.S. Wilson's analysis of self-interest vs. group-interest in religions

	effect	on	self
effect		-	+
on	+		brotherliness community faithfulness love mutual help obedience sacrifice
others	-	arrogance ego greed individuality pride selfishness self-interest

Table 1: classically religious "altruistic" groups

	effect	on	self
effect		-	+
on	+		egoism honesty independence logic pride rational self-interest self-esteem selfishness
others	-	altruism collective faith self-denial unselfishness blind desires irrational values

Table 2: Randian "self-interested" groups

From this analysis, Pepe, is likely to turn into a self-interest weapon.  Ridicule is directed at those things an individual wants to take down, rather than those thing the group necessarily wants to take down.

Extreme individuality sews the seeds of its own group destruction.