'A mania for thinking of yourself and those in your tribe as belonging to the good people.' Ira L. Black / Corbis via Getty Images
“Goodness is the only investment that never fails,” said Thoreau. This week seemed to prove him wrong, though, with the news that the self-described Good Literary Agency has run out of funds. This “social enterprise literary agency” had been aimed at increasing the presence of underrepresented groups in the publishing industry. But despite receiving £1.3 million over seven years, it seems co-founders Nikesh Shukla and Julia Kingsford could not make it profitable and are now shutting up shop.
“We couldn’t represent everyone we wanted to,” Shukla admitted, citing “a culture war or two” and “an industry that assumed itself to be doing the work” as relevant explanations for the company’s failure. But even leaving aside the growing backlash against DEI practices, his analysis seemed incomplete. For there was also the folly of calling a business “The Good Literary Agency” (TGLA), a strategy surely so hubristic that they were bound to come a cropper eventually.
But then again in 2017, the year the TGLA launched, we were also blessed with the pompously named The Good Law Project — a company also now ailing — so perhaps there was something in the air. After all, it was the early days of the first Trump presidency: many histrionic Guardian op-eds were being written and pussy hats knitted. It was easy to feel good about yourself in contrast to the evil orange one: to sail into work, your lunchbox stuffed with Innocent smoothies, Kind protein bars, and JUST water cartons, feeling you had moved one step closer to canonisation simply by turning up. And every day offered opportunities for new acts of righteousness: writing bits and pieces of moral cant for the company website; putting pronouns at the bottom of emails; signing various petitions to get your colleagues sacked, and so on.
But still, in retrospect, announcing your company as “Good” in its title does seem particularly daft when you work in the literary world; a place that tends to demand that writers “show, don’t tell”, traditionally holding lazy topline descriptions in some contempt. Equally, novelists have wrestled for centuries over what makes a man good, kind, innocent, or just, but rarely have they concluded that his self-identifying as these things is a reliable sign. That original ‘umblebragger Uriah Heep keeps telling us about his defining virtue, but Dickens knows it is all fake news. “I am not fond of professions of humility,” says wise David Copperfield, “or professions of anything else.”
To be fair to Shukla and Kingsford, in naming their agency they presumably were inspired by the success of Shukla’s 2016 edited collection The Good Immigrant. But whereas that title wore its sardonic irony on its sleeve, the later business name came across as painfully straight-faced. Perhaps they told themselves that the branding would hover playfully between “we are good at our job” and “we are good people”, but the accompanying piety seems to have eliminated useful ambiguity from the start.
Clearly, they were not just saying they were good, in the way a baker, estate agent, or an arms dealer might be — namely, by performing their stated commercial function well. Rather, they were Good with a luminous capital “G”, putting the gospel of diversity and inclusion into practice. In her own Bookseller exit interview, Kingsford made this explicit, describing people like them as “hopeful change-makers” and saying: “So much good has been done across the industry since 2016, but for those of us at the coalface it feels like we are at a high risk moment where the danger of complacency, of a feeling that enough has been done, that we don’t need to keep pushing for more change, is beginning to creep back in.”
This fluently sanctimonious style has become emblematic of progressive ventures over the last decade, barely even noticeable in a field so crowded with proselytising. How anyone ever got taken in by the posturing is still a headscratcher, but it seems many did. Ascertaining someone’s morals is traditionally supposed to be a complicated business, requiring close and prolonged attention to the interaction of character traits, intentions, behaviour, and outcomes. Yet somehow, about a decade ago, we got to a point where explicit boasts about personal ethical achievements acted more like subliminal messages in adverts, inserting a conviction in the hearer that he must be in the presence of spiritual purity, though he wasn’t exactly sure how the thought had got in there.
The flipside of being so mesmerised with superficial markers of virtue is that you are also shallow and credulous about what counts as vice. And so we find adults who genuinely think it plausible that a tech billionaire, well known for his enthusiastically awkward gestures, would deliberately perform a Nazi salute at a post-inauguration Presidential rally, as the latest stunt of those subtle intellects at Led By Donkeys suggests they do. Or we get the sort of people who interpret “Jewish” as identical to “Zionist”, and “Zionist” as identical to “genocidal maniac” without noticing any moral variations under those first two headings — as a former Save The Children staffer did in a TikTok video this week, to her cost. And on the other side, we also get those who automatically equate “Pro-Palestinian protestors” with “hate marchers”. Obviously, there can be deliberate political strategy behind a particular decision to lump certain categories rather than split them, but equally, it sometimes seems that the art of fine moral discernment is just generally dying out.
Maybe part of the underlying problem is a mania for thinking of yourself and those in your tribe as belonging to the good people, a childish mental construction which both requires a contrast class (the bad people, over there) and some vaguely plausible-looking fellow travellers. There is a hint of this in Shukla’s plaintive “we did the best we could”: and it’s there every time someone falls back on the excuse of having had good intentions, ignoring well-known observations about pavement arrangements on the road to hell. It’s also there when you extend similar excuses to those with whom you feel some kinship, as if you know that whatever bad-looking things they do could only be the result of well-intentioned misreadings of the situation; as if there were no really bad people on your side of the fence at all, but only unfortunately foolish ones. Needless to say, such a concession is rarely made to opponents.
But in fact, just as there is no particular reason to trust myself on how good a person I am, there is equally little reason to trust me about the goodness of my intentions, or about those of people I like and presume to understand. It is true that there is a limited sense in which most or all intentions are “good” — meaning only that whatever action you chose, that action seemed to you to have some attractive aspect at the time. Philosophers sometimes describe this as acting sub specie boni; alternatively, acting “under the guise of the good”. In the same fairly trivial sense, Milton’s Satan in Paradise Lost said “Evil, be thou my Good” but it didn’t make him any less satanic.
For my intentions to be “good” in a more full-blooded sense, relevant to moral assessment, depends on whether they stem from attitudes like benevolence, love, courage, or kindness; or alternatively from self-interest, hate, cowardice, or cruelty. It’s hard to admit that it might be the latter, even to yourself. And such things are even harder to discern in others, based only on a superficial glance. In the case of the now defunct Good Literary Agency, the still active Good Law Project, and other Good enterprises, it should go without saying — but apparently doesn’t — that uninformed onlookers have no actual idea what sorts of intention motivate their founders, whatever the holier-than-thou branding. They might actually be good people, or they might not. Still, I’m with Davey Copperfield: the fact they keep saying so should make us highly suspicious.
Join the discussion
Join like minded readers that support our journalism by becoming a paid subscriber
To join the discussion in the comments, become a paid subscriber.
Join like minded readers that support our journalism, read unlimited articles and enjoy other subscriber-only benefits.
SubscribeIn the woke worldview, everything has an ordinary, quotidian primary function, which is whatever it’s supposed to be doing, and a transcendent, numinous function, which is furthering the Revolution. Only a churl gives any thought to the former, while the enlightened man sees and thinks only of the latter, for he has been woke to the truth.
My thinking is that if organisations just concentrated on doing their primary functions to the best of their abilities, whether that be selling cars, helping the homeless or as per the example, publishing books, then they would benefit ALL sections of society better including the minority groups they profess to care so much about.
Very well put!
The writer has, of course, very cogent reasons for taking aim at the kind of wokery expressed in Good this… and Good that. The subtlety of her analysis is revealed in this:
One wonders whether KS is now grateful for having her career trajectory changed by defenestration from Sussex by the woke mob. I suspect she is, and that’s why, despite the subtle hints, she refrains from declaiming outright to the failing Good crowd: Good Riddance!
A lot of it is just moral entrepreneurialism – people arrogating a moral authority and superiority to themselves, based purely on superficial social signalling and group conformity with a handful of Teen Vogue-level social fashions
Spot on. There is no easier way for the “low-information” and “low-effort” individual to show their virtue to their “liberal” tribe than buying a Ben and Jerrys ice cream. Gullible muppets all.
I know, from having kids in their late teens, that it has been impossible for a long time for young people to dissent from the “we’re good, they’re bad” narratives without suffering social ostracism, which is why I don’t (usually) argue with the nonsense they spout.
Encouragingly there are now some signs that dissent from the self-serving pieties of the middle class ‘left’ is beginning to be seen as a little bit ‘cool’ and ‘edgy’. So there’s some hope.
Labour think that letting 16 year olds vote guarantees them the “yoof” just like to they think migrants too,but from my observation (maybe it’s just my locality) yoof now seem to be going to the right/conservative/reform side,it’s seems to be COOLER than being a wet drop leftie. Just what I see. And migrants of whatever sort come here to get a “better” life by which they mean a job and hopefully a business then if they can crack it,comfort,affluence,prosperity at some level. They don’t care about Social Justice any more than I do. So they vote Tory for now. Mostly. The ones who are not controlled by their relative on the Council.
Interesting. Unfortunately in my experience it is just far too easy for too many people, whether they’re white indigenous people or newcomers, to claim benefits. This does however go along with quite a measure of hapless state incompetence. Some of the people who need them struggle to get them, while others are cynically involved in huge scams.
Boys seem to be a lot more resistant to enforced “wokism” than girls. I suppose boys have always tended to be more rebellious. You could also add that the self-styled ideology and cultural norms of modern western society are very feminised, with typically feminine virtues much more praised than typically masculine ones.
I guess it makes sense for evolutionary reasons if women value group conformity more — group protections and networking over child rearing, provisions, etc, and more incentives to ‘play it safe’ for women.
And men tend to be incentivized to be more experimental and find new pathways, new group allegiances and opportunities.
So at a society wide scale you might expect an over-feminized society to value group conformity & creedal unifying beliefs more than debate, individual transgression and free enquiry.
Surely the exemplar of this is Hope Not Hate- a more hateful organisation offering only opposition to those you demonise is difficult to imagine
Hope Not Hate is a grift – a third of its income goes on staff costs
I think you mean Hate Not Hope
Stock’s plunge to the weird depths of the alt-right continues! Now she is defending the “salute” from Musk, an enthusiastic racist and fascist wannabe who clearly gave that kind of a salute and we all know it.
Looks like the University of Sussex isn’t missing too much! I hope whatever pittance Unherd is paying her is enough to warrant the self-debasement she is going through. But I doubt it…
Wow, what a burn
What are you going to do when the real ‘racists’ and ‘fascists’ arrive on the scene, Mr Alinsky?
You mean Trump and Musk are not real?
You’re already here.
Yes, we all remember seeing those spirited gestures from smiling German soldiers that began with an open hand on the heart while proclaiming the words “Thank you… thank you. My heart goes out to you.” Not!
“an industry that assumed itself to be doing the work”
What does that even mean? Activists engage themselves with many things – speaking the ‘correct’ words, supporting the current thing, changing avatars – but genuine work is seldom among them.
From the ‘Good Men Project’:
“Doing the work is taking intentional steps towards self-improvement through self-healing, and self-love — whatever that means to you.
Doing the work is emotional; it can be heavy and it can get worse before it gets better — reopening old wounds, standing up to those you’ve feared, and pushing yourself to live outside your norm i.e. comfort zone. It is actually emotional labor to work through and come to peace with your “shadow self” over and over again when it keeps rearing its resilient head.
That is the “work”. ”
etc….
I can imagine they were heavily engaged in ‘the work’, if not actually ‘work’.
If anyone says the woke/wellness phrase ‘putting in the work’ you can be pretty sure no actual work is happening. Bit like ‘educating yourself’ (accepting dogma) or ‘having the difficult conversations’ (issuing or listening to lectures), at least in woke-academic contexts.
Anyone who feels a need to advertise their own ‘goodness’ is clearly a neurotic, needy and narcissistic ar*ehole.
Patiently one awaits the return to fashion of humility, self-effacement and, above all, else…public silence. Shut up. Shut up, everyone. Shut the f*** up about your moral superiority. (And, ideally, your sexual activities.)
My favourite is actor/model/podcaster-type celebs who suffix their wikipedia profiles with “. . . and activist”, often when their activism involves nothing more than turning up at a protest for the latest fashionable social justice cause.
I read an ad in the San Francisco Chronicle in the mid 1980’s advertising for “activists”. No mention of the cause so the word activist has always meant, to me, I will do anything for money. Still true 40 years later.
The Rent-A-Mob from Socialist Worker are still at it. I’m sure half of them waving their placards around on these marches have no idea who or what they are protesting about.
As a Met police officer I was on duty at MANY, many marches and demonstrations and saw the same people with different banners shouting similar slogans. ‘Rent a mob’ seemed an accurate description to me.
The Luxury Peasants of Protest Chic do not take your words kindly, sir.
In the US, there is a certain right of privacy inherent in the Constitution. I’ve always thought that part of that should include the right to NOT have to listen to the self-centered, exhibitionist drivel that is so common in our ‘sharing’ era. Enough already!?!!$%#
I’m pretty sure there isn’t! The word “inherent” is a bit of a given away in your comment. How could that possibly square with the undoubtedly strong support for freedom of speech in the US Constitution?
If you follow the idea of Cliodynamics one of the main reasons for the collapse of the old elite is that they produce more elite children than there are elite jobs for.
So the growth of activism, narcissism, and self proclaimed ‘Good’ organisations pushing the edge of the available jobs envelope, are just indicators that the old elite is on the way out, dragged down by its own pretentions and those of their children.
Thank you for saying this out loud. It’s now ok to do so and it needed to be said.
You can add to the list the silly he/him/them/she/her/ in a signature. I honestly don’t care about your sexual proclivities, nor should anyone else. Or perhaps we should start adding “straight” to ours now in retaliation?
Warren Trees, Heterosexual/Straight
The pronouns are about “identity”, which you naturally define yourself, not sexuality!
So many people want to equate sex with gender when this is not what the people (feminists?) who popularized the word gender had in mind. Andrew Fisher is correct, and also, there’s no need for the word gender (outside of grammar) if they are used to mean the same thing.
Right? Why do I have to care about your sensuality? Let’s return to decency and a bit of privacy please.
Well said Jack Robertson. Furthermore, punish the self professing godly good by having to listen to an unfinished verse of a Leonard Cohen dirge on repeat ad infinitum.
Just one quibble. It wasn’t £1.3 million of public funds wasted. It was more than £2 million. The reason for this error is the Arts Council press release (that Stock is quoting) refers to £1.3 million but is misleading to the point of being a lie.
Total “investment” from from the Arts Council: £1.3m start-up grant, £380k grant in 2021, annual £150k per year grant from 2023, and a highly dubious final grant of £40k which looks more like a bailout to make sure the wages got paid and nothing to do with the arts.
When the £1.3 million ran out with next to nothing to show for it, it was obvious the Good Literary Agency was a grift. Yet the Arts Council kept writing the cheques. How odd.
That’s small beer compared to the £53 million squandered of that great Eco project the London Garden Bridge.*
*Never even started,
And that is a mere can of beans compared to $200 BILLION for Ukraine.*
*With a million casualties and counting
The West is much wealthier than Russia. The US economy alone is 10 times the size of the Russian. If we had spent more money, ramped up shell and ammunition production etc, but nonetheless spent only a small fraction of what was spent for the covid response, the Russians would have been defeated and actually far fewer people would have died, both Ukrainian and Russian. This would not require an Napoleon or Hitler style invasion of Moscow! Then Ukraine could have negotiated you from a position of strength and not weakness.
That’s the Niall Ferguson argument and I think he’s right. Sadly every bit of support we have given the Ukrainians has been grudging and, worse, debated widely in public. By the way since I know that Britain, France, Germany and Poland – and indeed the US are not going to invade Russia – I presume the Russian intelligence services know exactly the same thing. So maybe the fact is that various right wingers, disliking their own liberal governments, are all too easily duped by the proclaimed justifications of the Putin regime.
But who could have said No to the divine Joanna Lumley when the idea was first being touted about. I adore Joanna. I think she is a GODDESS. The idea was beautiful. But who when face to face with such a wondrous person would have the temerity to say No. At the time.
I gather are some former Gurkha Officers who are NOT that enamoured with her.
It’s not really the same phenomenon. That was a project, which the UK is now terrible at delivering. (Agree It wasn’t necessary). But the funds wasted on the Garden Bridge are a drip in the ocean compared to the enormous sums spent on the planning and environmental appraisal etc on the Silver town road crossing, more than double what the Norwegians spent actually building the longest road tunnel in Europe!
I’ve had dealings with organisations funded by the Arts Council. About 90% of their information output concerned DEI. That’s where the money goes: yours and my.money.
We’ll know we’ve once again got a government of the people on the day that the Arts Council is abolished.
I bet Mr Milei would get rid of it…
For Arts Council read the British tax payer, without permission or reference.
*writing bits and pieces of moral cant for the company website; putting pronouns at the bottom of emails; signing various petitions to get your colleagues sacked”
Another excellent ‘Stockism’!
Completely priceless!
Yes, that’s a superb example of the ‘rule of three’ where the third item is a gut-punch.
I do also rather like: “ignoring well-known observations about pavement arrangements on the road to hell.”..
Discrimination used to be the marker of a gentleman.
In woke times, I have rather reflexively rejected these ideas, often not quite understanding why.
When presented by white people telling me of the injustices endured by black people, I didn’t have much to say except that, I didn’t believe them. So, I had doubts about my own views. Could I justify them? Often, not so well but the more I think about it, the more reasonable that is.
For example, could I justify, say, reducing state welfare benefits? Up to a point but I know that even if this might be the right thing to do, some people would be harmed.
The certainly of the good bothers me. Can’t those who want to squeeze the rich see that if the do so the rich will leave and we’ll have less, for example?
Being good is really difficult but what we can do is not be cymts.
Cymts? Those are small primates from Borneo, right?
Google reckons it’s a misspelling of “symptom”, but I notice “u” and “n” are next to “y” and “m” on a standard keyboard! 🙂
Rubbish, Malaysia
I had a leftie colleague whom I rather liked but was, while from a work class background, an utter hypocrite. However, he did say one wise thing about morality “just don’t be a cymt”
Let us get a bit of clarity here: This was, in objective fact, a Nazi salute. The key question is: If he had wanted to do a Nazi salute, would it have looked any different? And the answer is no, it would not. To mop up we could ask whether it is the kind of gesture that people do for lots of other, unrelated reasons, or by chance, and again the answer is that no, it is not. End of inquiry.
What he meant by it is another question, of course. One would be tempted to say that it is really between himself and his psychiatrist, but unless we think that he is legally insane – in the sense of not being capable of knowing what he is doing – he remains responsible for his actions. If he wants to be excused on the grounds that social interactions like talking to people are just very hard for him, he would have to admit to the obvious facts – he has just performed a Nazi salute – explain he did not mean it, and apologise. Which he most definitely did not.
It is understandable that a man with Musks personality would pretend that anything he does is of course right and any criticism is beyond the pale. It is also no surprise that his fanboys agree. It is rather more surprising that Kathleen Stock would back him to the extent of denying the evidence of her own eyes. Have you drunk the Kool-Aid too, Katherine?
I did notice today on a photo of the Statue of Liberty that she is definitely doing a Nazi salute, no doubt whatsoever. What penalty should we give her?
The salutes I have seen from real Nazis were either performed whilst marching with the famous goose step, head erect looking straight ahead or turned at 45 degrees to salute the furher. Or they were stood to attention, legs straight, back straight, neck rigid, other hand straight down by the side accompanied by shouts of sieg hiels. Musk on the other hand was jumping around, waving both arms about with a stupid grin on his face muttering something about his heart going out to everybody. Apart from the angle of the arm the two had little in common. Even then he could only manage about a 30 degree angle with the arm compared to the required 45 degrees. The Nazis would have stripped his uniform and locked him up for such an insulting parody if they actually required him to perform a salute.
Did any of you see the actual clip, or are you reacting to the very deliberately spread still photo of a man with his arm up as he addressed a crowd. And if it was a ‘salute’, who or what, specifically, was being saluted?
This “Musk salute” event is very useful. If you quickly want to judge whether someone you don’t know is a complete muppet, you just have to ask them what they think Musk was doing.
Also Thoreau: If I knew for a certainty that a man was coming to my house with the conscious design of doing me good, I should run for my life.
To this I would add: ‘with the conscious design of keeping me safe’.
I’ll believe that sanctimoniousness has had its day when the Observer is closed down – or, at the very least, gets rid of Will Hutton and Stewart Lee.
agree with most of what KS writes here, but not sure about this bit. The problem is that if these concepts ever were politically neutral, they aren’t any more.
We’ve experienced what I think of as the “weaponisation of kindness” (I may have seen this phrase used by someone else, I can’t remember) whereby simply claiming an act as “kind” legitimises it, so long as it falls broadly within the parameters of Progressive sensibilities.
And the problem with that is two-fold.
The first is that it is simply not clear that some of these so-called acts of kindness are in fact anything of the sort. For example, affirming the delusions of confused children that they were “born in the wrong body” is not kind in any way at all. Its an absolutely horrible thing to do to them.
The second, and wider problem, is that while kindness and compassion are clearly fine as general expressions of aspiration for a society, they are too vague and contingent to provide any kind of foundational organising principle. At some point government inevitably involves managing competing interpretations of which course of action is the kindest, at least in the perception of its advocates. And left unchecked adopting kindness as if it is capable of being an organising principle inevitably risks leading us into what has been called elsewhere “suicidal empathy”. We become so obsessed with being kind to others that we abandon our own best interests.
A good example is the kindness of assisted suicide.
It’s all basically a grift. Creating well-paid jobs for people with limited contributions, to ensure they are not required to do work they consider beneath them.
Many (but not all) charities and quangos do so little for the common good that if they disappeared tomorrow no-one would notice other than their staff.
And when the purpose for which they were set up has been achieved, they morph into a different role or purpose to ensure their continued existence – Stonewall being the classic case in point.
Green Peace was the first organization to go from saving the whales to population control.
This seems a particularly weird obsession of some people on the right. What do you mean “population control”? Greenpeace is wrong on many issues in my view, especially climate change, but they also have almost no influence at all in the wider world. Of course every political actor and special interest group tries to influence the population.
It’s interesting how so many people both on Left and Right appear to consider that saying stuff (they either love or hate) and doing things amount to the same thing! That’s a hallmark of “wokism”.
‘Virtue is more to be feared than vice, because it’s excesses are not subject to the regulation of conscience’ – Adam Smith
‘Virtue is it’s own greatest reward’ – Sigmund Freud
These observations seem, to me, to identify the root cause of the lunacy afflicting Western Civilisation over the past 10-15 years.
A big part of the pull of the Social Justice religion is the salvation it promises. No you don’t get to go to Heaven but you do get to feel very virtuous. And so much more so than your ‘uncaring’ redneck peers. Thus has it become (for everyone other than intellectual contrarians) a 21st c. article of faith; existing on a rarefied plane beyond the scope of political/philosophical interrogation. Disrespecting it is blasphemy…as in “So you don’t care about injustice then?!” But it is in truth a flimsy kind of religion. A moral and philosophical flimsiness spread out on a global canvas…. and a heavenly kingdom with bureaucracy hard-wired into it. https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/love-of-the-people
When I was growing up in the ’50s there were still some remnants of the old Christian moral sense that everyone (including oneself) has a Good Side and a Bad Side. That while we are all capable of good deeds, we are all of us also prone to sin and error and must be schooled into making ourselves worthy. A Yeatsian ‘centre’ comprising Liberalism’s twin-conceptions-of-liberty was still holding….just about. In the following decades, I and my Boomer generation have lived through a radical unravelling – a ‘falling apart’ – of that moral/philosophical centre. Seen it spin off centrifugally into the head-scratching absurdities of 21st century Woke hyper-liberalism.
Since the USA paid for the reconstruction of Europe, British people have fallen more and more under the spell of the American culture. In the ‘50s Brits were reserved and quite shy with strangers but to follow the Americans we have tried to be more ‘in yer face’ or extreme. Almost everything we now do is copying the Americans, who control the internet and TV. We now live in trepidation when the shadow of a billionaire passes through our life.
I am a boomer and we have changed but not as you say. The main thing is that everything we do is controlled in the American way – by litigation – and the very act of suing somebody demands extreme statements and dramatic reactions to simple things.
Perhaps Britain should enact a tariff on such imports?
Works for me, and I am American
Only if you don’t have a case.
The worst of people are well known for supporting the best of causes and these days they even get a tax break for doing so!
And in some cases it’s the best of people (foolishly) supporting the worst of causes …
Prof Stock is like the tough at the village fete who swaggers up to the let’s see if you can ring the bell stall, hefts the sledgehammer and dings it loud first time. A blend of cool Joan Didion and perhaps J S Mill, we are ridiculously lucky to have her as our living guide to the circles of the contemporary inferno. Fighting talk, every time. Ding!
“aimed at increasing the presence of underrepresented groups in the publishing industry”
Seems like men are a minority in publishing these days, and among authors published.
I reckon safe to say they aren’t what they mean by “underrepresented groups”, though.
There is a shop in Brighton owned by a black lady who only sells books by black authors. I do hope she goes broke. Imagine if I opened a shop selling books only by white authors!
The liberals have two weaknesses that made them prey to wokeist attack.
The first is status, many liberals have obtained status in sectors such as education, law etc. Status tends to cause cowardice.
The second is generosity of spirit (tolerance, making extraordinary efforts to accommodate the others viewpoint). A good trait to have but not in a war.
These two weaknesses were ruthlessly exploited by the wokeist attack leading to leading to rapid undermining of many institutions.
Thanks to these weaknesses the liberal constitutionally cannot counter wokeism, relying on other more ferocious groups to undertake the work.
So, many liberals are probably secretly relieved at the election of Trump.
A fly in the ointment is Trump’s Jan 6th adventures and the ‘Stop the Steal’ campaign, these being unacceptable and suggesting the price might be too high.
“So, many liberals are probably secretly relieved at the election of Trump“. Name six.
Musk, Zuckerberg, Bezos, millions of black men, to name a few.
Musk? Yeah, “liberals” are well known for making fascist salutes on public occasions.
Wonderfully perceptive. Thank you !
The side note about Save the Children reminds me why I no longer support secular charities. I used to support Amnesty International. I didn’t often like the politics of the individuals, but I supported the principle. Then they became an identikit lefty charity. Pro abortion, action on climate change, climate justice, etc. I just wanted to support non violent prisoners of conscience. Looks like STC has gone down the same progressive anti imperialist rabbit hole. I’ll stick to Christian charities where they stick to their knitting, so as to speak. Christian Aid, Caritas, Tearfund, Leprosy Mission for overseas. Given up on Red Cross. Never had time for Oxfam. Don’t these charities realise they are destroying their donor base with their posturing?
End of rant. As usual, a good article from Kathleen Stock. Don’t trust people who tell you how virtuous they are.
So you’ve abandoned Save the Children, a secular charity? Do you now support the Catholic equivalent, Sexually Abuse the Children?
As I understand it, most former sexual misdeeds of catholic priests and the like stemmed from and were self-perpetuated by the Catholic Church’s habit of enrolling young boys in all-male adult seminaries at a tender age (12, or even 7 – I forget the exact age). But this practice has been abolished, and the minimum age is now something like 18. So in years to come, we’ll probably find sexual abuse among the catholic priesthood is a thing of the past and they’re as good as gold.
The Catholic Church is riddled with paedos from top to bottom. Why do you think the senior members of the clergy consistently cover up the activities of the paedos, and protect them from punishment? It is a case of “There but for the grace of god go I”.
I went to Catholic primary school. I played in a rugby team managed by a Franciscan friar. I went to a Catholic secondary school.I served as an altar boy for about five years. I have never had a hand laid on me with carnal intent by a member of the Catholic clergy and know of only one boy who did. And that was all before the scandals broke, when child sexual abuse was certainly happening covertly in some parts of the church. If that’s ‘riddled with paedos from top to bottom’ I have to think you don’t quite understand the word ‘riddled’.
LOL…And there it is…..the sanctimonious inference that the “others” just don’t care about other people. I was waiting for it. It’s what the Woke do, lacking as they do much of a sense of self awareness.
Hey, if you are in favour of the sexual abuse of minors by the clergy of Christian churches, just come right out and say so.
The first company motto I recall hearin of along these lines was Google’s “Don’t be evil”. Now many people think they have become so.
If I was evil, I’d adopt that as my motto too (in much the same way as I would adopt the moniker “Big Brother” if I was an Orwellian tyrant).
Another superb article by Kathleen Stock. I can’t help but wonder about Musk, though; he having got away with calling a man who risked his life to save children stuck in a cave a ‘pedo’.
Is it possible he was not informed of all the facts of the case? How else would he have formed such a view?
You’re conflating two things. Just because a man/woman can be a very bad thing (eg pedo, mass murderer) doesn’t mean he can’t possess honourable qualities (say courage, fortitude). People, esp the media do this all the time (eg a terrorist must be ‘cowardly’, a mudererer ‘a bully’ etc.). I’m not commenting on that particular case, but it’s quite feasible to be a ‘pedo’ and save stuck children.
‘…it sometimes seems that the art of fine moral discernment is just generally dying out’. No shit.
Thank you for this succinct description and analysis of a phenomenon that is increasing and which I have personally experienced over the past 30 years in working with homeless, prisoners, etc. I have seen this pervasive and growing trend of self-canonization and corrosive sanctimony that is near universal in ‘professionals’ who work with the ‘downtrodden’. It’s as if working with stray dogs is superior to grooming poodles. And in medicine, mediocrity trumps competence if one has the ‘correct’ beliefs and attitudes. Your clear identification of the problem is a start that may help extinguish this charade.
“The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons”
The four idiots of the led by donkeys bunch should be put out to pasture in a donkey sanctuary
I was going to single out a paragraph or a few phrases herein as especially smart, funny and illuminating, but I couldn’t choose. Another excellent essay by DocStock, whose sanity, humor and courage in speaking truth to foolishness are a reliable tonic for trying times.
She is very good. Very smart woman.
THE ULTIMATE VIRUE SIGNAL!
Our daughter works in Australia where she belongs to an athletics club. One of her fellow club members is a young USA citizen, also working in Australia. At a meet last weekend, this twenty-something female said that she hoped Chine would ‘nuke’ USA following Trump’s second arrival.
It just makes you want to vomit! This is the mentality that has been ruling the western ‘democracies’ for the past couple of decades!
Good riddance!!!
Who could do anything but admire the stoical Emma Thompson bravely flying in from LA (First Class) to join the Climate Change protests a few years back.
If that doesn’t want you to be or, at least, feel virtuous then nothing will.
Calling yourself “Good” is on par with referring to yourself as an “intellectual” at Davos. Hopefully, virtue signaling will become a thing of the past, but the topper for me was when “The Women’s March” had to change their name to “The People’s March” because they did not want to define what a woman was. My cheeks are sore just from smiling so much lately.
Brighton’s loss is UnHerd readers’ gain.
Oh, the debt we owe to the Sussex University psychopaths who drove out Professor Stock. Their blind and vicious persecution of K S unwittingly released her to slay those dragons and their kind in an international field….
… and to delight the rest of us with her insight and wit.
Kathleen, you give us a chance to reflect on our moral compass. You included benevolence, love, courage, and kindness. We might include compassion and forgiveness. Unfortunately, the neocons in their mission, often overlook their moral compass. To them ‘the end justifies the means’.
Is the Good Law Project still run by the notorious kimono-wearing fox beater, Jolyon Maugham? On order.order.com readers are regularly regaled and amused by details of his latest defeat in the courts, and people marvel at how he manages to find gullible mugs willing to bankroll his many lawsuits. Maybe it’s how those mugs learn the hard way the truth of the saying “Go woke, go broke”!
brilliant, excoriating and funny; what more do you need? Even if the subject weren’t so deeply worrisome it’s a real pleasure to read your article, thanks!
I think that philosophers and anthropologists need to study why the members of our educated class so often feel the need to virtue signal.
There have to be a couple of PhDs in this. And very likely more.
I’m possibly guilty of this, so maybe I should offer a defence. I do realise that most people on both sides are tragically underinformed about the conflict in Gaza, and that many people who support the Palestinian cause do so from noble or charitable or humanitarian reasons. OTOH, the *marches* have achieved nothing in fifteen months, and who really expected them to? Nobody going to a march now can expect it to achieve what the 60-odd before it failed to. They’re not marching for a ceasefire; that became obvious when a ceasefire started.
What, then, are they marching for? It seems to be intimidation. When they’re not crying because they can’t march past synagogues, they seem to be set on disrupting students studying.
Unherd today.
When the object of a march seems to be spreading hate and fear, I think I’ll continue calling it a “hate march.”
“For my intentions to be “good” in a more full-blooded sense, relevant to moral assessment, depends on whether they stem from attitudes like benevolence, love, courage, or kindness; or alternatively from self-interest, hate, cowardice, or cruelty”.
Maybe an objective measure of the “good” within this more intellectual context is the extent to which a person or organisation can embrace the free exchange of ideas both internally/subjectively and externally/objectively.
An intellectual ‘generosity of spirit’ perhaps!
….
The more I objectively think about it, the level of sophistication regarding Progressive sophistry is quite fascinating (on a evolutionary biology level) whereby morality has been emotively and intellectually hijacked to reproduce a particular set of political ideas which in itself impedes the free exchange of ideas and is therefore not objectively moral.
Abit like trying to bring about the end of (philosophical) history!
Lovely paradox: as soon as you profess to be humble you cease to be so. Keep schtum, self-critical and quietly try your best.
The writer belongs to the herd of woke writers and columnists whose response to Trump’s victory seems to be to attack the very ideas and policies they supported earlier as if these ideas are now the cause of their humiliation. They cannot countenance the truth that sometimes bad people will win, that sometimes a charlatan will appear who will fool all the people (or 52%) at least once. Their response to defeat, to chew off their own leg, is irrational and idiotic, highlighting the disagreeable trait of left-wing oriented people, to turn on each other when things go wrong. Yes, some of us can be sanctimonious and preachy but that is small potatoes compared to what the other side, the extreme right wingers have in mind for minorities of all kinds.
Sometimes, the only thing one can do is hunker down and wait for the storm to pass. Sometimes resignation, an attitude of ‘this too shall pass’ is the better response, not a relentless drive to improve oneself even at the risk of burning bridges with one’s compatriots.
What was it in the article that made you think the author “belongs to the herd of woke writers” ? I can’t see the remotest evidence for that conclusion.
“that is small potatoes compared to what the other side, the extreme right wingers have in mind for minorities of all kinds.”
A mind reader!
So 52 percent of Americans were fooled? I will be sure to let my friends know what idiots we Americans are. We love being told that by Europeans.
Not only fooled but fooled by the most obvious con man in history.
What the hell were you thinking, you mugs?!?!?
She was never Woke. Attacking Wokeness is not the same as supporting Trump. Her obvious intention here is to uncover truth, not position herself in a political group.
Knew it somehow but now it’s in perfect words and order.
Isn’t it said,and true,that if you have to tell,even proclaim to people that you are happy and successful,you’re not. If you are,they just KNOW. But on the downside,the snarkier among them can PRETEND not to notice and do their best (often successfully) to downplay and dismiss what makes you a success. This happens to famous and non-famous people ie : money means nothing,it’s more valid to be poor but have loads of friends (churchy people love that one),or gardening is SO not cool,or line dancing or flower arranging or whatever. Only if it MAKES MONEY do they reluctantly rate it. Or if it’s not the financial angle they go for,and guess what,if you give away all your money and be poor like they advocate,they still won’t like you or let you into their “cool” friend group and your bills to pay will still come in.,they will diss your form of activity instead be that cooking,writing,even acting,thank goodness Roger Moore never read reviews. And he got rich.
“Isn’t it said,and true,that if you have to tell,even proclaim to people that you are happy and successful,you’re not.”
And yet, Trump.
Maybe his braggadocio is so transparent we take it as irony – we take him seriously but not literally.
His political enemies and others too do the reverse eg if Obama said ‘fulfill every child’s potential’ he was generally taken seriously not literally. If Trump said ‘make the economy the bigliest ever’ many applied the reverse. Point with Trump, at least from my UK perspective, people didn’t vote for him based on revealed or assumed character, but on hoped-for outcomes and disrupting the status quo.
Actually he comes over to me as needy – buy my wares, show me love. Also a bit of a toddler.
True. Approving of others’ poverty is in fact often driven by envy and resentment. Though material poverty of a certain (independent, not dependent) type does encourage admirable traits like stoicism, humility etc. I’m a small-scale builder/property developer/landowner who lives in a small place and knows everyone locally. You are courting far fewer problems with complaints, getting reported to the council etc. if you struggle around in dirty clothes and a battered vehicle. Part of that might be correlative ie if in order for me to improve things/keep up land/be a proactive neighbour etc. I’m going to look rough and dirty, but I’m pretty sure if I swanned around in a flash car it would p a lot of people off.
I put up a critical answer to this a day or two ago, basically to the effect that “If it swims like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it is a duck.“. Since then my post has briefly reappeared for ten minutes a couple of times, only to disappear again immediately each time. Together with the people who disagreed with me and had answered it.
Sorry, but this is ridiculous. We are used to a bad, AI-driven interface, and to posts with a lot of downvotes disappearing and then reappearing. ‘Never ascribe to malice what can be explained by incompetence’. But enough is enough. There is no sensible explanation this time, except for deliberate suppression of ideas someone does not like. Is it ‘Unherd’, or ‘Unheard’?
relevant to moral assessment, depends on whether they stem from attitudes like benevolence, love, courage, or kindness; or alternatively from self-interest, hate, cowardice, or cruelty
Self-interest is a good attitude, provided it is not at others’ expense
Sadly, too many of the hierarchy of the Church of England fell into the VS trap and completely lost their sense of proportion and perspective. Equally sadly, given those involved with their various agendas, it came as no surprise. Virtue signalling is not the same as humility and Leftish politics is not the same as holiness. We long for the day the C of E will regain some common sense and wisdom but I fear, on current form, that will not be until the Second Coming.
Abolish the popular vote! Deplorables don’t comprehend why Jews need to be eradicated. It’s right to rape Jew women to death! Come to Harvard and Princeton and we’ll educate you!