I think I'm having one of the biggest aha moments I've had all year, which is that in many ways folks who belong to the "woke" left & those who belong to the "reactionary" right want the same things; & in this context, I mean it not as a critique, but an opportunity for hope.

Ladies and gents I sense a thread coming along. ;)
If you ignore the toxic impulse some folks on the left have to label certain things as "whiteness," what they claim to want is to actually create the conditions that fight against alienation and isolation.
If you look at some of the documents floating around in DEI circles, they define "equitable cultures" as those that value "interdependence & collaboration," "seeing discomfort as growth," & "seventh generation thinking" which is a philosophy that comes from the Iroquois tribe.
If you boil down much of it (& again, view the weird "whiteness" piece as a bug & not a feature), what is actually being requested is a deviation from the factory-oriented/central planning styles of work and a more communal oriented way of work life.
What's also ironic is that while they label "whiteness" as "individualism" *some* of their proposals would result in more individualism, not less -- which is ultimately a good thing.

They're essentially just mischaracterizing things because they're caught up in racecraft.
Now here's the bridge:

It turns out that the defining feature of those white, rural, poor communities that voted for Donald Trump suffered tremendously from one basic societal ill:

ALIENATION.
These were communities where the civic life & civic institutions in the community evaporated. Churches were shuttered; communal life dithered. Precisely some of the things being demanded in some DEI spaces that were scarce & that had a *causal* relationship w/ voting patterns.
(For citations, see the book 'Alienated America' by Timothy P. Carney.)

It was precisely the absence of a shared sense of belonging and communal life that led to an increase in deaths of despair, opioid addictions, aimlessness, and the like in these communities.
Guys, this is crazy. This means that these two political groups, as it were, are, to a certain extent, living the exact same reality but experiencing it through two different dimensions.
What some DEI trainings are demanding are precisely what civic institutions provide and which, because they have disappeared in many counties, have have led to societal insecurities that were directly a cause for the election of Donald Trump.
This also means that these two groups are actually *not* speaking at cross-purposes. The woke left is so lacking in self-awareness that it's demanding an end to alienation while trafficking in racecraft language that alienates white people.
And the reactionary right is so myopic that it's suffering from short term thinking and voting for a strongman who will only satisfy their insecurities in the short term but will increase alienation in the long term.
Alienation is a massive culprit re our societal woes at the moment. Groups who are fighting against it can only see how it affects *their in group* but not their adversary. (Because their adversaries are caricatured monsters, cough cough, first principle of @enchanttheory )
The people can't see the forest for the trees. It's time for a lens change.
"A fatal attraction is common and what we have common is pain." - Kendrick Lamar. Preach.

More from Society

The UN just voted to condemn Israel 9 times, and the rest of the world 0.

View the resolutions and voting results here:

The resolution titled "The occupied Syrian Golan," which condemns Israel for "repressive measures" against Syrian citizens in the Golan Heights, was adopted by a vote of 151 - 2 - 14.

Israel and the U.S. voted 'No'
https://t.co/HoO7oz0dwr


The resolution titled "Israeli practices affecting the human rights of the Palestinian people..." was adopted by a vote of 153 - 6 - 9.

Australia, Canada, Israel, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, and the U.S. voted 'No' https://t.co/1Ntpi7Vqab


The resolution titled "Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and the occupied Syrian Golan" was adopted by a vote of 153 – 5 – 10.

Canada, Israel, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, and the U.S. voted 'No'
https://t.co/REumYgyRuF


The resolution titled "Applicability of the Geneva Convention... to the
Occupied Palestinian Territory..." was adopted by a vote of 154 - 5 - 8.

Canada, Israel, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, and the U.S. voted 'No'
https://t.co/xDAeS9K1kW
This is a piece I've been thinking about for a long time. One of the most dominant policy ideas in Washington is that policy should, always and everywhere, move parents into paid labor. But what if that's wrong?

My reporting here convinced me that there's no large effect in either direction on labor force participation from child allowances. Canada has a bigger one than either Romney or Biden are considering, and more labor force participation among women.

But what if that wasn't true?

Forcing parents into low-wage, often exploitative, jobs by threatening them and their children with poverty may be counted as a success by some policymakers, but it’s a sign of a society that doesn’t value the most essential forms of labor.

The problem is in the very language we use. If I left my job as a New York Times columnist to care for my 2-year-old son, I’d be described as leaving the labor force. But as much as I adore him, there is no doubt I’d be working harder. I wouldn't have stopped working!

I tried to render conservative objections here fairly. I appreciate that @swinshi talked with me, and I'm sorry I couldn't include everything he said. I'll say I believe I used his strongest arguments, not more speculative ones, in the piece.

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THREAD: 12 Things Everyone Should Know About IQ

1. IQ is one of the most heritable psychological traits – that is, individual differences in IQ are strongly associated with individual differences in genes (at least in fairly typical modern environments). https://t.co/3XxzW9bxLE


2. The heritability of IQ *increases* from childhood to adulthood. Meanwhile, the effect of the shared environment largely fades away. In other words, when it comes to IQ, nature becomes more important as we get older, nurture less.
https://t.co/UqtS1lpw3n


3. IQ scores have been increasing for the last century or so, a phenomenon known as the Flynn effect. https://t.co/sCZvCst3hw (N ≈ 4 million)

(Note that the Flynn effect shows that IQ isn't 100% genetic; it doesn't show that it's 100% environmental.)


4. IQ predicts many important real world outcomes.

For example, though far from perfect, IQ is the single-best predictor of job performance we have – much better than Emotional Intelligence, the Big Five, Grit, etc. https://t.co/rKUgKDAAVx https://t.co/DWbVI8QSU3


5. Higher IQ is associated with a lower risk of death from most causes, including cardiovascular disease, respiratory disease, most forms of cancer, homicide, suicide, and accident. https://t.co/PJjGNyeQRA (N = 728,160)