I won’t nitpick, as I understand this is something of a thought experiment, but I’d like to offer one criticism that I think you (and others) may find useful.
Quoting Sauer positively, “Wokeness is here to stay. For we cannot do without it…,” is a mistake.
Conservatives don’t own conservation, progressives don’t own progress, libertarians don’t own liberty, feminists don’t own equality, and wokeness sure as (insert your favorite expletive here) doesn’t own “freedom, equality, and human dignity.” There’s a peculiar fetish, particularly in academia, for naming things that don’t need to be named.
It seems like one could come up with a list of similarities for any two moral/political views. Eg comparing Islam and wokeness:
1. Both have special moralized vocabulary (halal, microaggression)
2. Both are evangelistic, trying to make everyone Muslim/anti-racist
3. Both care about justice (God’s justice or social justice)
But is there something further that we’re supposed to infer from the fact that there are similarities between these movements? Otherwise, I’m not sure I see the value in the exercise
My impression is that people dislike wokeness for similar reasons as they dislike effective altruism, and looking at their similarities may reveal something about human psychology. Moral progress that requires you to make an effort to change your own existing behaviors is uncomfortable, and we would rather just justify why our actions were always ok rather than entertain the change. I think this is also why we see a disproportionate amount of hate towards vegans, even if people admit they’re more moral (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0950329324002829)
Come to think of it... why AREN'T you vegan yet, Professor Bloom? I recall a compelling exhortation to be rationally compassionate in a prior work of yours.
Thank you for sharing this, even if (or especially because) it "attacks" people on your "side."
I see these tribes (and Vegans) as the modern-day monks and nuns. People turn to religion because the dogma gives them rules to follow, a purpose in life, and a community that validates them as superior. EA, Veganism, and Wokeness are, for many if not most, a religion; e.g., https://www.mattball.org/2023/11/biases-are-inherent-religion-seems.html
I feel like these kinds of conflicts and discussions are actually pretty timeless. People have been forming groups and arguing against opposite sectors for a few hundred years now, and each group has been presenting some good sides that we now believe are still useful today, as well as some "extreme" sides that we now discard as the limitations of the past.
Think of utilitarianism but to the point where one would even push the fat man off the bridge without a second of hesitation, versus deontology, but to the point where one would not touch the switch and kill off the five people just to be stay "clean" from the dilemma. I think as (hopefully) rational beings, all of us should be able to find things to learn from both philosophies without necessarily murdering the fat man with a smile or simply looking away as the trolley runs over the five people.
Even outside of game theory, historical clashes have always shown us their own takeaways and extremes (like nihilism versus existentialism, rationalism versus empiricism, deism versus humanism -- we can have a preference of one over another but there is always something we can take away from the other side of the argument). So I believe that clashes in the current world will be the same to our descendants, meaning that we should remember to understand why we sway towards a certain side, how far it would be the most helpful to ourselves and the world outside of ourselves, and what we can still learn from the other side.
Thank you for this nice overview of 2 world-views that I have tried to make sense of. As a WEIRD technologist, artist, and grandmother, the use of words to express complex perspectives is challenging....and in a sense these distinctions seem to be about experiences at different levels of abstractions. From a perspective of how to improve the chances of Humanity for universal wellbeing and sustainable futures, it seems that the human organizational structures of the past...which are top-down, control-flow...need to be transitioning towards holistic structures that integrate top-down with bottom-up information flows..as in a holarchy...which has been used for as an information flow model for smart-grids and agile software methodology. These recognize that we're living in the midst of legacy-trauma due to colonialism, where a dominance hierarchal model eliminated world views and knowledge of indigenous cultures. With information technologies operating with extractive algorithms based on capitalism as an economic model, we can understand these patterns resonate across cultures that reflect differences between EA and woke perspectives. The use of tech to inform field of neuroscience, physics, with models of consciousness and human cognition,....can provide a path forward....Active inference models, when combined with frontier models of consciousness show that we're all vibrations....and that hidden trauma distorts our limited world models making us reactive and defensive. Research in psychedelics can show potential for healing from trauma where individuals nervous systems...that aligns with contemplative arts practices...so that we develop habits that align with compassion and expansive states of being. In order for humanity to transition through this paradigm shift from dominance hierarchies towards holarchies for organizing human systems.....complexity science shows that we need to appreciate the value of diverse perspectives recognizing that we all need to expand our world-models and that can be modeled with a metaphor of a thermodynamic shift ..... an avalanche of kindness......So, random acts are insufficient, intensional radical kindness means we recognize the dysfunctional decision-making of leaders who project violence, dominance, and accelerationism. Engineering emergence will require bottom-up collaboration networks that honor the dignity of living systems...using holistic models to insure integration of negative feedback to guide stability in the midst of radical change and uncertainty. Thank you....a thoughtful narrative of these ideas is necessary but not sufficient....so EA and Woke perspectives are both useful.
Tangentially related: One solution I found to the effective/utilitarian dilemma (not that I have anything of note to donate charitably but it still works in mental arithmetic) is that I see supporting local causes as essentially self-interested, so not part of the "moral charitable obligation". This allows me to volunteer for a local community group or bake for an event without feeling that I would be better trying to earn a little more money and donate that to the malaria foundation. The former becomes more like a social activity (with positive side effects) than a "giving".
I find woke a very useful reminder that many, many people care incredibly highly about fairness, sense of justice and emotional/social recognition. It's probably a human universal, and my caring substantially less than average is a defect more than an achievement I tend to think it is. The specific dimensions of fairness, justice and recognition are ... Annoying from my pov of middle aged, very poor, highly educated woman in a nearly fully white area of a rapidly fading post-imperial state, but at high level of abstraction, it's a useful call.
Perhaps along the line of Matt Ball's comment, I was going to suggest that at least the first three similarities between EA and wokeism are also shared by plenty of "trad" religious movements, in a way that perhaps undermines the idea that sharing them amounts to deep similarity.
1. Extreme form of Western values: what's more Western than the Roman Catholic Church? If you ask Joseph Henrich, it was Catholic values--in particular, the ban on cousin marriage--that made the West.
2. Extreme demands: if we're sticking with Catholics, we could focus on the demand to not to use contraception. Or we could talk about groups like the Amish, and their demand not to use modern technology.
3. Unpopular: ok I'm not sure if the Amish are exactly unpopular, though I don't see many non-Amish clamoring to become Amish. Catholicism is on the rise globally, but not in the US. Certainly I think it's fair to say that there are no "hyper-trad" religious movements that are broadly popular in the US right now in the sense of having a lot of adherents, but maybe they're also not disliked the way EAs and Wokes are?
Edited to add: whoops, I wrote "Joseph Heath" when I meant "Joseph Henrich." Both Joseph H's whose work I deeply admire!
Thanks, Dan (and Matt, and others who have made this point).
I agree on the first point--a lot of trad movements are very Western.
The second point applies to some of these movements, but not all. It's very demanding to be Amish, less so to be Catholic, but, yeah, it's still A LOT.
But I'd argue that what distinguishes wokeness and EA from normal religious movements is that there's no notion of enough. You are always inadequate. Certainly, a woke white person can never do enough, because their very whiteness is a stain of privilege that can never be washed off, and any mere mortal who is not starving to death always falls short for the EAs. (A couple of my students in a seminar I just taught related EA to the mental disorder of "moral scrupulosity"-a form of OCD.) Yes, the Catholics have original sin, but, still, I think many Catholics can look at themselves and say "Hey, I'm a good Catholic" in a way that the woke and EA-ers cannot.
As for the third point, I don't think these religions are unpopular in the same sense. There are 1.5 billion Catholics, after all. The Amish are relatively tiny--about half as many Amish as full-time university profs—but who hates the Amish? Not me! I think there are different reasons for the special dislike that people have for the woke/the EA-ers. Some of it is in their counter-intuitive claims, some of it in the extreme demands, but maybe a lot of it in the fact that it's a recent movement associated with privileged and highly educated young people, who are not a particularly likeable lot.
A more banal point? EA and “woke” are secular and make no appeal to divine authority? Likewise, they are both offshoots of liberalism, insofar as they defend the self-realization of every individual life, that nevertheless easily become illiberal in practice?
I think the inadequacy is key here, and it's no coincidence (as Sean mentions here, and as I think was part of John McWhorter's thesis in his book on the Awokening) that both EA and wokeness lack a divine authority that can grant sufficiency (cf God's grace). And this may be what makes them uniquely unpopular -- because while most religions make extreme demands of their adherents, it doesn't feel like some Sisyphean spiral where no matter what you do, there is no salvation and you're just falling short regardless. Most people don't want any part in such a thing, unless the sense of community w/fellow adherents or brownie points for performances of piety make it worth the trouble.
My impression is that wholeness is on its way out. Kamala’s separation from wokeness last year, was a first step, but the millions of people who voted against they/them anyway suggest that there are more steps to be taken. I no longer get emails with pronoun sigs, and the Supreme Court in the UK declared that there are only two sexes, and people have to use the bathrooms allocated to them.
My prediction is that, just as everyone now accepts gay marriage, and most people barely remember why we discriminated against gays anyway, we’ll get to the point where no one will care how transfolk live their lives — as long as we all agree that transwomen are not allowed in the women’s boxing at the Olympics, and they are not allowed in women’s prisons. But I think the need to make up new phrases like ‘chestfeeding’ and ‘birthing parents’ so we don't offend the occasional transman who wants to have a baby… that's over.
Acknowledging the indigenous land owners, and stopping white people from having dreadlocks… they’re over too.
I think one important difference between the EA and the woke movement is their different meta-ethical views of the good. Specifically, the EA movement is consequentialist, whereas the woke are virtue ethicists. This is evident not only in the criticisms you provided that each movement poses to the other (which, while superficial, remind some of the criticisms one might find in moral philosophy), but also in their overarching worldview. EA believes that small change is better than no change, whereas the woke sees change as meaningless unless it is radical, and since the small changes that a person is capable of doing in the world are meaningless, the only way to live a moral life is by adhering to virtue regardless of consequences.
In this sense, criticising the woke movement for "virtue signaling" is as ridiculous as criticising EA for "consequence signaling" - it is not a front for something else, it's the whole point. The reason this is somewhat hidden is that while EA actively uses consequntialist language, the woke movement is much less coherent - it has less of a leadership, canon or philosophical backing. Moreover, since both movements are indeed a product of western secular liberal culture, the values they endorse are indeed quite similar - welfare, fairness, liberty etc. this makes you thing they have the same conception of the good, but on the meta-ethical level, they don't.
this is also the reason, I think they are often seen as extreme - most people don't even have a strong meta-ethical view one way or another. each movement demands a subscription to a rather robust form of meta-ethics, that most people feel uncomfortable with. it is easier to go through life without pesky meta-ethical questions that might be dowright unsolvable.
Always found EA's explicit universalism to be opposed to a more self-interested LW rationalism, as it clashes with game theoretic considerations and imo more coherent ethical frames. And such universalism to be quite woke. But I enjoy most EA's companionship, anyway (as they do mine). Also they've got a local meetup and do cool social events.
Woke to me also is just most German mainstream politics, which I despise but that's not a coherent social scene, anyways.
I think people are analyzing or thinking about these issues too much. I read this today and it makes more sense than any of the above but we are, after all, just highly evolved primates so understandable
I won’t nitpick, as I understand this is something of a thought experiment, but I’d like to offer one criticism that I think you (and others) may find useful.
Quoting Sauer positively, “Wokeness is here to stay. For we cannot do without it…,” is a mistake.
Conservatives don’t own conservation, progressives don’t own progress, libertarians don’t own liberty, feminists don’t own equality, and wokeness sure as (insert your favorite expletive here) doesn’t own “freedom, equality, and human dignity.” There’s a peculiar fetish, particularly in academia, for naming things that don’t need to be named.
It seems like one could come up with a list of similarities for any two moral/political views. Eg comparing Islam and wokeness:
1. Both have special moralized vocabulary (halal, microaggression)
2. Both are evangelistic, trying to make everyone Muslim/anti-racist
3. Both care about justice (God’s justice or social justice)
But is there something further that we’re supposed to infer from the fact that there are similarities between these movements? Otherwise, I’m not sure I see the value in the exercise
My impression is that people dislike wokeness for similar reasons as they dislike effective altruism, and looking at their similarities may reveal something about human psychology. Moral progress that requires you to make an effort to change your own existing behaviors is uncomfortable, and we would rather just justify why our actions were always ok rather than entertain the change. I think this is also why we see a disproportionate amount of hate towards vegans, even if people admit they’re more moral (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0950329324002829)
Come to think of it... why AREN'T you vegan yet, Professor Bloom? I recall a compelling exhortation to be rationally compassionate in a prior work of yours.
This is fantastically insightful, Dr. Bloom, and pretty even handed. (You are kinder to EAs than I am; e.g. https://www.mattball.org/2025/10/this-is-neither-rational-nor-objective.html)
Thank you for sharing this, even if (or especially because) it "attacks" people on your "side."
I see these tribes (and Vegans) as the modern-day monks and nuns. People turn to religion because the dogma gives them rules to follow, a purpose in life, and a community that validates them as superior. EA, Veganism, and Wokeness are, for many if not most, a religion; e.g., https://www.mattball.org/2023/11/biases-are-inherent-religion-seems.html
Yep this is mostly a proto religion and the need to feel superior via morality.
They choose that route because they are generally pretty bad at most useful things.
Like religious people I find them insufferable, shallow and stupid.
If they could keep to themselves in monasteries it would be great.
I feel like these kinds of conflicts and discussions are actually pretty timeless. People have been forming groups and arguing against opposite sectors for a few hundred years now, and each group has been presenting some good sides that we now believe are still useful today, as well as some "extreme" sides that we now discard as the limitations of the past.
Think of utilitarianism but to the point where one would even push the fat man off the bridge without a second of hesitation, versus deontology, but to the point where one would not touch the switch and kill off the five people just to be stay "clean" from the dilemma. I think as (hopefully) rational beings, all of us should be able to find things to learn from both philosophies without necessarily murdering the fat man with a smile or simply looking away as the trolley runs over the five people.
Even outside of game theory, historical clashes have always shown us their own takeaways and extremes (like nihilism versus existentialism, rationalism versus empiricism, deism versus humanism -- we can have a preference of one over another but there is always something we can take away from the other side of the argument). So I believe that clashes in the current world will be the same to our descendants, meaning that we should remember to understand why we sway towards a certain side, how far it would be the most helpful to ourselves and the world outside of ourselves, and what we can still learn from the other side.
This was a really valuable comparison and analysis, thank you.
Thank you for this nice overview of 2 world-views that I have tried to make sense of. As a WEIRD technologist, artist, and grandmother, the use of words to express complex perspectives is challenging....and in a sense these distinctions seem to be about experiences at different levels of abstractions. From a perspective of how to improve the chances of Humanity for universal wellbeing and sustainable futures, it seems that the human organizational structures of the past...which are top-down, control-flow...need to be transitioning towards holistic structures that integrate top-down with bottom-up information flows..as in a holarchy...which has been used for as an information flow model for smart-grids and agile software methodology. These recognize that we're living in the midst of legacy-trauma due to colonialism, where a dominance hierarchal model eliminated world views and knowledge of indigenous cultures. With information technologies operating with extractive algorithms based on capitalism as an economic model, we can understand these patterns resonate across cultures that reflect differences between EA and woke perspectives. The use of tech to inform field of neuroscience, physics, with models of consciousness and human cognition,....can provide a path forward....Active inference models, when combined with frontier models of consciousness show that we're all vibrations....and that hidden trauma distorts our limited world models making us reactive and defensive. Research in psychedelics can show potential for healing from trauma where individuals nervous systems...that aligns with contemplative arts practices...so that we develop habits that align with compassion and expansive states of being. In order for humanity to transition through this paradigm shift from dominance hierarchies towards holarchies for organizing human systems.....complexity science shows that we need to appreciate the value of diverse perspectives recognizing that we all need to expand our world-models and that can be modeled with a metaphor of a thermodynamic shift ..... an avalanche of kindness......So, random acts are insufficient, intensional radical kindness means we recognize the dysfunctional decision-making of leaders who project violence, dominance, and accelerationism. Engineering emergence will require bottom-up collaboration networks that honor the dignity of living systems...using holistic models to insure integration of negative feedback to guide stability in the midst of radical change and uncertainty. Thank you....a thoughtful narrative of these ideas is necessary but not sufficient....so EA and Woke perspectives are both useful.
Tangentially related: One solution I found to the effective/utilitarian dilemma (not that I have anything of note to donate charitably but it still works in mental arithmetic) is that I see supporting local causes as essentially self-interested, so not part of the "moral charitable obligation". This allows me to volunteer for a local community group or bake for an event without feeling that I would be better trying to earn a little more money and donate that to the malaria foundation. The former becomes more like a social activity (with positive side effects) than a "giving".
I find woke a very useful reminder that many, many people care incredibly highly about fairness, sense of justice and emotional/social recognition. It's probably a human universal, and my caring substantially less than average is a defect more than an achievement I tend to think it is. The specific dimensions of fairness, justice and recognition are ... Annoying from my pov of middle aged, very poor, highly educated woman in a nearly fully white area of a rapidly fading post-imperial state, but at high level of abstraction, it's a useful call.
Perhaps along the line of Matt Ball's comment, I was going to suggest that at least the first three similarities between EA and wokeism are also shared by plenty of "trad" religious movements, in a way that perhaps undermines the idea that sharing them amounts to deep similarity.
1. Extreme form of Western values: what's more Western than the Roman Catholic Church? If you ask Joseph Henrich, it was Catholic values--in particular, the ban on cousin marriage--that made the West.
2. Extreme demands: if we're sticking with Catholics, we could focus on the demand to not to use contraception. Or we could talk about groups like the Amish, and their demand not to use modern technology.
3. Unpopular: ok I'm not sure if the Amish are exactly unpopular, though I don't see many non-Amish clamoring to become Amish. Catholicism is on the rise globally, but not in the US. Certainly I think it's fair to say that there are no "hyper-trad" religious movements that are broadly popular in the US right now in the sense of having a lot of adherents, but maybe they're also not disliked the way EAs and Wokes are?
Edited to add: whoops, I wrote "Joseph Heath" when I meant "Joseph Henrich." Both Joseph H's whose work I deeply admire!
Thanks, Dan (and Matt, and others who have made this point).
I agree on the first point--a lot of trad movements are very Western.
The second point applies to some of these movements, but not all. It's very demanding to be Amish, less so to be Catholic, but, yeah, it's still A LOT.
But I'd argue that what distinguishes wokeness and EA from normal religious movements is that there's no notion of enough. You are always inadequate. Certainly, a woke white person can never do enough, because their very whiteness is a stain of privilege that can never be washed off, and any mere mortal who is not starving to death always falls short for the EAs. (A couple of my students in a seminar I just taught related EA to the mental disorder of "moral scrupulosity"-a form of OCD.) Yes, the Catholics have original sin, but, still, I think many Catholics can look at themselves and say "Hey, I'm a good Catholic" in a way that the woke and EA-ers cannot.
As for the third point, I don't think these religions are unpopular in the same sense. There are 1.5 billion Catholics, after all. The Amish are relatively tiny--about half as many Amish as full-time university profs—but who hates the Amish? Not me! I think there are different reasons for the special dislike that people have for the woke/the EA-ers. Some of it is in their counter-intuitive claims, some of it in the extreme demands, but maybe a lot of it in the fact that it's a recent movement associated with privileged and highly educated young people, who are not a particularly likeable lot.
A more banal point? EA and “woke” are secular and make no appeal to divine authority? Likewise, they are both offshoots of liberalism, insofar as they defend the self-realization of every individual life, that nevertheless easily become illiberal in practice?
I think the inadequacy is key here, and it's no coincidence (as Sean mentions here, and as I think was part of John McWhorter's thesis in his book on the Awokening) that both EA and wokeness lack a divine authority that can grant sufficiency (cf God's grace). And this may be what makes them uniquely unpopular -- because while most religions make extreme demands of their adherents, it doesn't feel like some Sisyphean spiral where no matter what you do, there is no salvation and you're just falling short regardless. Most people don't want any part in such a thing, unless the sense of community w/fellow adherents or brownie points for performances of piety make it worth the trouble.
> Wokeness is here to stay.
My impression is that wholeness is on its way out. Kamala’s separation from wokeness last year, was a first step, but the millions of people who voted against they/them anyway suggest that there are more steps to be taken. I no longer get emails with pronoun sigs, and the Supreme Court in the UK declared that there are only two sexes, and people have to use the bathrooms allocated to them.
My prediction is that, just as everyone now accepts gay marriage, and most people barely remember why we discriminated against gays anyway, we’ll get to the point where no one will care how transfolk live their lives — as long as we all agree that transwomen are not allowed in the women’s boxing at the Olympics, and they are not allowed in women’s prisons. But I think the need to make up new phrases like ‘chestfeeding’ and ‘birthing parents’ so we don't offend the occasional transman who wants to have a baby… that's over.
Acknowledging the indigenous land owners, and stopping white people from having dreadlocks… they’re over too.
I hope you’re right!
Meh. The woke are largely fraudulent. They don’t actually do anything other than virtue signal.
Pretty much. If they would act as much as they complain and try to scorn everyone, they could actually get shit done.
But of course the point is to gain power through image while not actually doing anything of value.
Those people are despicable actually, way more than religious who actually do some useful things sometimes.
I think one important difference between the EA and the woke movement is their different meta-ethical views of the good. Specifically, the EA movement is consequentialist, whereas the woke are virtue ethicists. This is evident not only in the criticisms you provided that each movement poses to the other (which, while superficial, remind some of the criticisms one might find in moral philosophy), but also in their overarching worldview. EA believes that small change is better than no change, whereas the woke sees change as meaningless unless it is radical, and since the small changes that a person is capable of doing in the world are meaningless, the only way to live a moral life is by adhering to virtue regardless of consequences.
In this sense, criticising the woke movement for "virtue signaling" is as ridiculous as criticising EA for "consequence signaling" - it is not a front for something else, it's the whole point. The reason this is somewhat hidden is that while EA actively uses consequntialist language, the woke movement is much less coherent - it has less of a leadership, canon or philosophical backing. Moreover, since both movements are indeed a product of western secular liberal culture, the values they endorse are indeed quite similar - welfare, fairness, liberty etc. this makes you thing they have the same conception of the good, but on the meta-ethical level, they don't.
this is also the reason, I think they are often seen as extreme - most people don't even have a strong meta-ethical view one way or another. each movement demands a subscription to a rather robust form of meta-ethics, that most people feel uncomfortable with. it is easier to go through life without pesky meta-ethical questions that might be dowright unsolvable.
Always found EA's explicit universalism to be opposed to a more self-interested LW rationalism, as it clashes with game theoretic considerations and imo more coherent ethical frames. And such universalism to be quite woke. But I enjoy most EA's companionship, anyway (as they do mine). Also they've got a local meetup and do cool social events.
Woke to me also is just most German mainstream politics, which I despise but that's not a coherent social scene, anyways.
I think people are analyzing or thinking about these issues too much. I read this today and it makes more sense than any of the above but we are, after all, just highly evolved primates so understandable
https://open.substack.com/pub/bigthinkmedia/p/the-spiritual-chase-that-keeps-you?r=24tpv4&utm_medium=ios
My "critique" https://scottcave.substack.com/p/an-artificial-critique-of-blooms