{"id":590,"date":"2022-07-07T18:44:52","date_gmt":"2022-07-07T23:44:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thoughtsofstone.com\/?p=590"},"modified":"2022-07-09T16:46:57","modified_gmt":"2022-07-09T21:46:57","slug":"a-spiraling-frenzy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thoughtsofstone.com\/a-spiraling-frenzy\/","title":{"rendered":"A SPIRALING FRENZY"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Great Awokening as a social mania
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In prior essays on this site<\/a> and elsewhere<\/a>, I\u2019ve argued that the spread of wokeness and its recent marked intensification (the “Great Awokening”) is best seen as a social contagion\u2014of feelings and sociocultural ideas that broadly reflect women\u2019s maternal instincts, and are much more transmissible among women than among men.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve also suggested that wokeness is apt to be ultra-transmissible among females whose feminine, maternal energies aren\u2019t absorbed by husbands and children and may seek another outlet. The terms \u201ccat lady\u201d and \u201cwine aunt\u201d refer to a subset of these individuals, but many unmarried girls and young women, as well as successful career women, also fit this description.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve proposed, moreover, that wokeness is driven into institutions not just by the conversion of (especially female) workers already in place but also by the takeover<\/em> <\/a>of those institutions by women and tamed males, via biased hiring.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m more certain now than ever that all these hypotheses are correct, as far as they go. But I think there is one more aspect of wokeness that requires an explanation. I\u2019m referring to what could be called wokeness\u2019s spiraling frenzy<\/em>\u2014its tendency to move away from norms of belief and behavior and towards extremes, wherever it takes hold.<\/p>\n

To put it another way: The woke women and their enablers who in the past decade or two have effectively taken control of virtually all major American institutions and professions have not been content to implement a modest set of reforms and leave it at that. As their power has grown, they have increasingly attacked the core values of Western civilization: everything from due process of law to meritocracy to the shielding of children from sexual deviants and predators. As their policies have become extreme, so have their methods. They have made it clear that they don\u2019t want sober deliberations\u2014they want emotional shock and awe!<\/p>\n

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One could argue that there is a counter-cultural logic to this movement\u2014that it wants to collapse the existing order as completely as those hijacked planes collapsed the Twin Towers on 9\/11.<\/p>\n

But is the Great Awokening replacing the old culture with a new one that can bind society sustainably—a “successor ideology”?<\/p>\n

Wokeness and the Great Awokening are driven chiefly by women, who have their own ways of thinking and persuading—ways that typically seem more emotional and less rational than men’s. So one might suppose that there is<\/em> a genuine ideology being built here, albeit a feminine one that seems alien to the average male, and that the Great Awokening is just the final, dramatic dash in this “pink shift<\/a>” takeover of Western culture.<\/p>\n

However, to me, that’s not the full story. To me, the Great Awokening’s spiraling frenzy, and its attraction for people who are evidently mentally ill, suggest that it is for the most part only a temporary and reactive social phenomenon: a social “mania.”<\/p>\n

Logic and Madness<\/strong><\/p>\n

As many have noted, the Great Awokening bears a strong resemblance to the Chinese Cultural Revolution of 1966-76.<\/p>\n

The CCR\u2019s spearpoints were cadres of \u201cRed Guard\u201d fanatics, young people (even teens) whose instability and restlessness, suggestibility, and high susceptibility to fanaticism were probably comparable to what one finds in today\u2019s millennial Antifa brigades. These howling Maoist minions sought the erasure of whatever competed with Maoism, which in practice meant just about anything predating Maoist China\u2014history books, art, architecture, temples, even genealogical records. Red Guards and their camp followers toppled statues of Confucius, pasted huge banners with their slogans everywhere, and went around attacking intellectuals or anyone even lightly connected to the teaching of pre-Maoist history or philosophy.<\/p>\n

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That was the counter-cultural logic part of it. But there was also the crazypants part\u2014shocking, obscene, savage stuff, ultimately including murder and even cannibalism.<\/p>\n

At some high schools, students killed their principals in the school courtyard and then cooked and ate the bodies to celebrate a triumph over “counterrevolutionaries” …\u00a0 Government-run cafeterias are said to have displayed bodies dangling on meat hooks and to have served human flesh to employees. [NYT<\/a>]<\/p>\n

Not content with attacking living reminders of the old China, Red Guards also broke into cemeteries and dug up the skeletal remains of ancient Chinese emperors and nobles, desecrating them and denouncing the persons these remains had once been.<\/p>\n

Other examples of these social frenzies come to mind. In some of the pre-Christian feasts of Rome and northern Europe, open drunkenness and debauchery, and various other intentionally shocking inversions of everyday social norms, were encouraged, at least in part as cathartic but controlled ventings of accumulated stress. (Modern parties, especially the ones teens and young adults have, seem like echoes of these displays.) As Samuel Johnson famously said, \u201cHe who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man.\u201d<\/p>\n

Or a woman. The infamous convent hysterias<\/a> of 1500s-1700s Europe supply many illustrations of spiraling frenzies among women, especially sexually frustrated younger ones. In the 1632-34 Loudoun case, for example, at a public exorcism of supposedly demon-possessed Ursuline nuns, a Sister Claire \u201cfell on the ground, blaspheming, in convulsions, lifting up her petticoats and chemise, displaying her privy parts without any shame, and uttering filthy words. Her gestures became so indecent that the audience averted its eyes.\u201d [link<\/a>]<\/p>\n

Sexual themes dominated the antics of \u201cpossessed\u201d nuns, although there were maternal\u2014or inverted maternal\u2014themes too, for example claims of mystical pregnancy, and stories of secret witch conclaves (\u201cwitches\u2019 sabbaths\u201d) at which children were eaten.<\/p>\n

Themes of sexual violation and impregnation, theft or killing of unborn babies, and witchcraft, along with the same spiraling of fantastic claims and odd behavior, were also typical in the medicalized versions of possession\u2014”multiple personality disorder\u201d and \u201cUFO abduction\u201d\u2014that were popular among young women in the 1970-90s, and ended up discrediting many therapists and psychiatrists, as well as the whole idea of “hypnotically recovered memories.”<\/p>\n

To me, these are examples of social manias—not just contagions (for even healthy, sustainable behaviors can be contagious) but contagions that spread intense and increasingly bizarre, often counter-cultural activities, and are essentially reactions to excessive stress.<\/p>\n

A holiday from stress and inhibition<\/strong><\/p>\n

As the comment by Dr. Johnson implies, human beings in modern civilizations are inhibited and stressed by the social rules they are supposed to obey and the complex social environments they are supposed to navigate\u2014the \u201cpain of being a man.\u201d<\/p>\n

It makes sense that women nowadays would be relatively hard-hit by such stresses. Women\u2019s basic lifestyle has shifted dramatically\u2014much more than men\u2019s has\u2014over the past few generations. Women during this interval generally have had to face new stresses from:<\/p>\n