From Kant to Kendi

How Classical Liberalism Became Wokeness

History is complicated. There can be more than one cause of any historical event—in philosophy and in literary theory, this is called overdetermination. Rome fell because its religious basis was abandoned. Yes, but it also fell because its founding stock was captured by unmanly pursuits like philosophy and theatre—the ‘moral decline’ thesis. True, but it also collapsed because its resource base was depleted due to overextension and sudden environmental change. All of these can be right at the same time; Rome’s fall was overdetermined.

Liberalism¹ becoming wokeness was also overdetermined. One reason why it became wokeness is because it had to analytically—that is, wokeness is just the same principle as classical liberalism but rendered more consistent. As time goes on, ideas often tend toward purity and fundamentalism as they work through historical contingencies, and because we are generally not comfortable with holding contradictory ideas in our heads. It happened for liberalism too, and this was briefly dealt with in the article Liberalism, Then and Now.

Another reason why liberalism became wokeness is because it had to strategically—liberalism’s basic evolutionary strategy demanded it. We will flesh this out in this article.

Natural selection—that what persists does so in virtue of its ability to survive—is a fact so obvious that to reject it is virtually to affirm a contradiction. Everyone knows about natural selection as applied to the biological world, but it applies to everything; natural selection is a metaphysical thesis—what has been called Universal Darwinism. Ideas, practices, institutions, economics, even quantum states—all undergo natural selection. Liberalism is no different.

The process of natural selection operates in any system by three mechanisms:

1.       Memetics – The mechanism whereby objects reproduce themselves.

2.       Variation – The ability of objects to differ in their traits from one generation to the next.

3.       Selection – The favouring of one trait over another by the environment.

These Darwinian systems also involve a medium or carrier—the thing that bears the meme² that is undergoing selection. In biology, the most commonly recognized carrier of the meme (the gene or allele) is the organism, although groups can be carriers too. In the history of ideas, the particular man is the carrier of the meme (the idea). Just as in biology, variation happens in the act of transmission from one carrier to the next—ideas are learned and modified according to the carrier’s slightly different worldview. Selection happens just as in biology too—the mark of an idea’s validity is its usefulness,³ and the environment determines what’s useful, the mark of success. But the crucial relationship here is the memetic relationship, specifically, the relationship between how the meme reproduces itself and how the carrier reproduces itself.

Generally, there are two such relationships: either a meme spreads organically, or virally (see the article Viral vs. Organic Propagation for a more detailed explanation). A meme spreads organically when the reproductive interests of the meme are tied to the reproductive interests of the carrier. A meme like ethnocentrism is organic because it spreads only as far as the carrier itself, usually by conquest—the reproductive interests of ethnocentrism itself and those of the group who is ethnocentric, are aligned. A meme spreads virally when the reproductive interests of the meme are indifferent to the reproductive interests of the carrier. Something like the ‘childfree movement’ is viral because the reproductive interests of the movement are in no way tied to those of the carrier. It can only spread by preaching, which is why those viral phenomena like itself tend to become doctrinaire and hysterical over time—their evolutionary strategy demands it. If you have ever known any childfree couple, you know they can’t shut up even for one second about how great having no children is. This is not them talking, it’s the meme.