Can We Overcome Moral Polarization?

David Shackleton and Janice Fiamengo conclude their conversation about the psychology of advocacy

David S: Janice, your descriptions of the dysfunctions of feminism are apt and powerful. It seems to me that the questions behind your comments are:

1. How can feminism be so powerful in controlling the culture and the narrative when it is entirely unjust and false-to-fact.

2. How can this prejudice be so resistant to penetration and correction? i.e., How does it insulate its followers from reality?

3. And, finally, is there anything effective that we can do in advocacy against it?

These are tough questions and I have spent years studying them, in the spirit of ‘know your enemy’. But there is a great difficulty in truly knowing your enemy, a difficulty which was the subject of Orson Scott Card’s magnificent book Ender’s Game. To understand your enemy you must see her not only objectively but also subjectively, as she sees herself, i.e., with empathy and compassion. That is why I advise grieving in order to come to peace with reality. Only when we have dissolved our moral judgment can we see the other with compassion.

For many advocates, this is a hard message to hear. Why should they have compassion for those who have hurt them so badly, for those who are doing so much harm in the world? I don’t say that they should – that, too, is a moral judgment. I say that if they do, it will make them more powerful in their advocacy, in achieving what they want. I say that it will have the added benefit of bringing them peace in their personal lives. And I offer this question – what would feminism have looked like if feminists had extended themselves to find compassion for men, instead of only for women? Do we want to repeat the great mistake that feminists made, or do we want to do better?

What does one see if one has compassion for feminists, for wokists, for the pushers of identity politics? I am currently writing a book to answer this question. But in brief, what I see is that they are operating under the influence of a powerful psychological archetype which I call the Matrisensus. The Matrisensus is the shadow side of the family archetype, the way that the Patriarchy is the shadow side of the society archetype. How to be in a family, how to make it work well, has been built into our brains over millions of years of evolution, because those whose families were functional survived better than those whose families were dysfunctional. And this was primarily the domain of women because their biology, mainly reproductive biology, tied them to the home and childraising. Men, on the other hand, were shaped by evolution to excel in the business of protecting and providing, which gradually developed into the whole of external (non-domestic) society, which is protection and provision institutionalized.

Healthy societies function through competence hierarchies, based on merit and service. Those at the top, on the whole, got there by proving that they could and would use their power to serve others. But every archetype has a shadow side, where the focus is corrupted from service of others to self-service. Patriarchy is the name that feminists gave to the shadow side of the society archetype, but (in their lack of compassion for men) they failed to recognize that most Western societies are largely functional, and Patriarchy is a deviation.

When women and minority advocates stepped into public power roles in the sixties, they brought with them their expectation that society should be a family. That is why they polarized the world into us and them, innocent victims and guilty oppressors by identity, because family is all about identity, who you are, not what you have done. You don’t have to earn your way into a family, you are there by entitlement, because of who you are. But you do have to earn your way in society.

And because society cannot be a family, the shadow form of the family archetype manifested, the Matrisensus – a feminine consensus that operates by what feels right and that is focused on safety and fairness, the two foundational family values. This archetypal feeling of rightness is overwhelmingly powerful for an individual in its grip, and this is how feminism is so powerful in controlling the culture and the narrative. (I am sorry that I don’t have space here to provide more detail, to connect the dots and present the evidence for this analysis.)

The Matrisensus seduces its followers with virtue, it offers the assurance that one is morally superior as a victim or an ally, where the Patriarchy seduces its followers with power and privilege. We saw the power of the Matrisensus during Covid19, when the issue of public safety (family value) entirely trumped the issue of individual rights and medical consent (societal values) because it felt right (under the influence of the shadow archetype).

Feminists are thus trapped by their conviction of righteousness. This is how they are insulated from reality. They would have to give up their virtue and accept guilt for the harm they have done, and most of them are simply unable to contemplate the pain and grief that would ensue for them. Understanding the enemy involves recognizing, feeling the difficulty that repentance holds for them, at the same time as we recognize that it must, eventually, be done.

Our task as advocates, then, is to find ways to help them grow their courage, help them see that the gain is ultimately worth the cost, and support them through the process. If we are full of righteous judgment ourselves, even though we may be objectively right, we are subjectively inhibiting what we want to happen. We know what that feels like from being on the receiving end of that kind of judgment from feminists – why would we choose to copy that behavior ourselves?

So how do we move forward, how can we advocate effectively? My answer is, do the personal grief work to let go of your us-and-them moral judgments, and then do the things that come up in your life. Find what you are good at, develop it and apply it to the problems that you care about. Trust that doing so will make a difference.

To illustrate that it really does make a difference, let me describe what I think has been women’s great contribution to the world. Feminists were mistaken when they focused on women’s exclusion from men’s area of historical contribution, which has been the development of knowledge. Men were just as excluded from women’s area of historical contribution, which has been the development of empathy.

Let me explain. Historically, most men didn’t add much to the scientific or other knowledge in the world. Only a few were scientists, inventors, explorers or philosophers. And of those few, only some succeeded, by means of talent, discipline, resources or luck, in adding to the legacy of human knowledge. But because of those few, almost all of us today benefit immeasurably from the technologies of construction, manufacturing, hygiene, medicine and transport. And these technologies have spread all over the world.

Similarly, most women didn’t add much to the empathy in the world because they raised their children much as they were raised by their own parents. But a few, by means of devotion, discipline or talent, loved their children more than they were loved as a child. Their achievement of greater love and empathy for their children meant that those children became slightly more compassionate, more loving, less abusive to their children than they would have been. These few exceptional mothers moved the world forward in empathy, a general advance that is just as visible in the historical record as is the advance in knowledge driven by men. Because of those few, almost all of us today benefit immeasurably from the general level of compassion in society, codified in the form of human rights, universal suffrage, welfare, social safety nets, etc.

My point is that these often invisible contributions by regular people who were driven to excel in how they lived their lives are what has delivered real human progress and improvement. There is no silver bullet for fixing the damage or the dysfunction of feminism and identity politics in general. But the more of us who seek to heal rather than to punish, and strive to find our personal best way to deliver that energy into the world, the better things will get.

Janice F: I am grateful to have this detailed and provocative analysis. I am not persuaded by all of your arguments, but I am struck by the aptness and humane good sense of your general approach, and especially your conclusions.

I am not convinced by the outline of Matrisensus—society as family—that you find in feminism, though your identification of safety and fairness as key values is astute (and the way these values worked out during Covid-19 certainly supports your observations).

Perhaps I am not understanding exactly what you mean; perhaps I am taking it too literally. One of the strongest strands in feminism is the rejection of family and expressions of revulsion or indifference towards children. Simone De Beauvoir, for example, repeatedly described her disgust at the idea of motherhood. Some feminists have even spoken publicly about making their young sons pass ideological tests in order that they, the mothers, not reject them. A particularly disturbing example (I could provide others) was “My teen boys are blind to rape culture,” published in 2016 in The Washington Post by Jody Allard, who lamented that her teenaged boys “refuse to acknowledge their own culpability” in rape culture.

I agree that feminists have always operated according to an emotional us and them morality, but it often seems quite opposed to any notion of fairness. One thinks of feminist expressions of solidarity and empathy for immigrant men—often from alien parts of the world—even to the extent of hushing up discussion of sexual assaults committed by these men; while at the same time denouncing and exaggerating the alleged sexual harms caused by the men of their own society. Even the desire for safety, which I would generally agree is a predominant feminist value, seems to be abandoned in such cases. The desire to prove one’s own ideological purity seems more important than any other value or emotional need.

Moreover, as feminists’ reflections show, empathy, kindness, and trust have often been in very short supply even amongst the women with whom they shared the most passionate sense of solidarity and common purpose. A few years ago, Phyllis Chesler, while still celebrating feminism as a great movement, wrote a memoir of feminist activism in which she detailed the abundant in-fighting, betrayals, jealousy, punishments, cliques, and undermining that feminist women engaged in (Chesler, A Politically Incorrect Feminist: Creating a Movement with Bitches, Lunatics, Dykes, Prodigies, Warriors, and Wonder Women). I wrote about it here. She blames the bad behavior on women’s victimization under patriarchy, of course, as did other women such as Andrea Dworkin, Robin Morgan, and Mary Daly, who also wrote about how frequently women failed other women or turned on them with accusations and backstabbing.

Do I feel compassion for these women? Not much. I find it difficult to get inside their minds; and what I can observe of their thinking shows a good deal of self-satisfaction, exultation, and the desire to smash. I remember that feeling. It wasn’t based on sympathy. I think of these women as dangerous, unhinged, needing to be brought to heel by those (mostly men, let’s face it) with better self-regulation, a different sense of morality, one based on universal principles and individual needs/ responsibilities, not group rights/wrongs.

When it comes right down to it, I don’t see these women as having a personal morality; none of the personal virtues such as humility, sincerity, self-discipline, moderation, fortitude, self-reliance, or prudence are a part of their code. Rather, as William Collins has pointed out in his most recent book, The Destructivists, they have a social morality based on group identity and on ideological rectitude. It is vicious and lacking in compassion. It will sacrifice anyone for the cause. That’s because the tendency to believe oneself an immaculate victim, which is at the core of feminism and which seems to be particularly attractive, even irresistible, to some women, means that eventually everyone, including one’s chosen family, can be seen an enemy posing a threat to the victimized self.

Your analysis of how a few women, century by century, increased compassion and empathy in the world through extraordinary mothering is fascinating. But even as an intuitive theory, it does not fully satisfy. How could it be known that it was mothers rather than fathers who caused the gradual increase in compassion? I’ve begun to doubt whether women—and mothers in particular—are the inculcators of empathy. If they were, would we be seeing such a massive increase in behavioral problems and anti-social behavior amongst the fatherless: so much acting out, so much nastiness? Recent studies emphasize that good fathers teach self-regulation, respect for personal boundaries, awareness of others’ separate selfhood. That is surely at the core of empathy. If one can’t control one’s own emotional responses, it is very difficult to be aware of the other or to act appropriately on that awareness.

Mothers are attuned to the needs of infants and very young children; I’m not sure that translates into their raising children and young adults who know how to be fair-minded, how to talk themselves out of a selfish rage.

For those who cannot talk themselves out of their rage, I don’t see any way to help them grow their courage. Appealing to virtues that they don’t actually possess will not do it. Were the Nazis defeated by helping to grow their courage; the Soviet Communists, the adherents of the Khmer Rouge, and so on? No, they were defeated. Their ideas were made unpalatable (well, communism is still alive and well, but you know what I’m getting at). Did the bearers of the ideology come to repent of their former beliefs? Perhaps some did; most simply accepted that they were operating in a new environment and must make the adjustment. That is what I hope will eventually happen: that feminists will be forced to recognize that their revolution has run aground because it is not generally supported. Many men and women will have to stand up and say no to it, “Not in my name!” Those people can increase their courage by seeing others do it.

That’s why, despite disagreeing with aspects of your argument, particularly about the psychological orientation of feminists themselves, I agree with your assessment of the way forward, and particularly with your assessment of the potential impact of individual people doing their best. “Find what you are good at, develop it and apply it to the problems that you care about. Trust that doing so will make a difference.”

Many men in the anti-feminist movement have compassion for women harmed by feminism and for the women in the grip of feminist thinking. They will embrace what you advocate. Some others, such as I, have little to no compassion for them, and focus instead on other elements, such as equipping and strengthening anti-feminists and non-feminists by showing them that their hunches and analyses are correct and that there is no good in feminism that they need cater to.

Ultimately, I don’t think our disagreement is crucial because even if you are wrong, your attitude of compassion and of seeing the best in feminist advocates will not limit you; and if I am wrong, and feminists mainly lack courage to embrace real virtue, they will be eased in doing so by our society’s general compassion for women. 

I agree with you that expressions of personal hatred and rage are not helpful to our movement and that they disable personal peace and stability.

Over to you. I have a feeling I have not done justice to your insights. Tell me where I have misjudged.

David S: Janice, I appreciate your graciousness in dialogue, as in your last comment to me. If you have misjudged my insights, I think it is because I am not communicating them well. Your reservations are entirely reasonable.  Let me come at them from a different direction.

I think I have led you astray with the word compassion, which sounds like an emotion, like sympathy. I have concluded that this is not the best word to describe what I mean.  Perhaps empathy is better. I, like you, have little sympathy for feminists. I, too, believe in “equipping and strengthening anti-feminists and non-feminists by showing them that their hunches and analyses are correct and there is no good in feminism that they need cater to.” I totally want feminism and feminists to be held accountable for the massive harm they have done.

I don’t think we differ in goals.  The issue on the table here is how those goals should be pursued.  I suspect that we don’t actually differ there either.  We will see.

The popular whodunit series of today is the Jack Reacher series of novels by Lee Child, currently being made into a TV series by Amazon.  Reacher is a vigilante, smart and tough and determined to find and punish the bad guys.  He often executes them himself, and never delivers them to the legal system for trial.  He has learned from personal experience that the system is corrupt and he now lives entirely outside the system, homeless and unattached.  He is committed to “doing the right thing,” and he feels entitled to interpret that according to his own sense of personal justice.  “The right thing” is whatever feels right to Reacher.   In the books, (I have read them all), Child is careful to ensure that Reacher never makes a serious mistake, never executes the wrong people.

This is the zeitgeist of our time. Child has captured the essence of the matrisensus – total moral polarization of the world into innocent victims and guilty perpetrators, deep distrust of the establishment, a conviction that one is seeing things clearly, a complete lack of empathy for the rights of the guilty, and a sense of entitlement to take action on one’s convictions, up to destroying the lives of those one sees as guilty.

Contrast this with the most popular TV detective of the 1970s – Columbo.  Columbo is embedded in the system; he is a police lieutenant.  He is unfailingly respectful to all, including those he believes are guilty.  He is aware that there can be corruption in the establishment (in season 3 episode 8, “A Friend In Deed,” Columbo exposes a crooked police commissioner, and in season 3 episode 3, “Candidate for Crime,” a corrupt politician), but he recognizes that the system works well enough to be trusted in most situations and is worth preserving.  He is nuanced and judicious in his approach to crime (in two episodes he chooses not to charge murderers, on compassionate grounds).  In short, he is motivated by a vision of a good and caring society that he is a part of and seeks to support rather than by black and white moral judgments.  He has empathy and respect for criminals as human beings, but that doesn’t limit him at all in his efforts to identify them and bring them to justice.

This is the world that was, that we have been progressively losing since the 1960s.  And this is how I want us to advocate in the world, with respect for those who oppose us rather than a conviction of moral superiority.  Not because this is likely to convert our enemies into seeing things our way – you are right that it isn’t (although it is the best that can be done in that direction).  I misled you earlier by suggesting this was the motive.  No, the reason is that because without this we lose ourselves into moral polarization, which is a form of psychological regression, an addictive immaturity in which we can do great harm without realizing it.

Janice, you wrote, “Rather, … [feminists] have a social morality based on group identity and on ideological rectitude. It is vicious and lacking in compassion. It will sacrifice anyone for the cause.”  Exactly.  But where does this group morality come from, why does it take the exact same form in so many different people, why is it so compulsive and so psychologically powerful?  Why are millions of people marching in lockstep?  Those are the questions I am seeking to answer with my hypothesis of the Matrisensus.

The problem is that few of us understand the nature of psychological archetypes.  Carl Jung, who pioneered the concept, wrote, “Just as the human body represents a whole museum of organs, each with a long evolutionary history behind it, so we should expect to find that the mind is organized in a similar way. It can no more be a product without history than is the body in which it exists. By “history” I do not mean the fact that the mind builds itself up by conscious reference to the past through language and other cultural traditions. I am referring to the biological, prehistoric, and unconscious development of the mind in archaic man, whose psyche was still close to that of the animal.” [Man and His Symbols]

A good example of the working of an archetype is the way that a human infant learns language.  Other animals exposed to the same environment (pets, for example) never try to speak words to us.  But our children do.  Clearly, there is a part of the human brain, put there by evolution, which contains not only structures able to parse and organize words, but also the motivation for the infant to struggle to learn.  And yet the child is as unaware that it is being ‘operated’ by this archetypal subroutine as is a dog that compulsively barks at strangers.  Archetypes feel authentically like our own choices – as indeed they are; just not free choices.  (I happen to think that coming to terms with the extent to which we are robots driven by these archetypal patterns (when we eventually do) will be as difficult as it was for us to accept that the Earth wasn’t the centre of the Universe (the Copernican revolution) and that we evolved from apes (the Darwinian revolution) and for the same reason – it reduces the specialness of our self-conception.)

This analysis exposes the irony that progressives, who see themselves as being on the cutting edge of innovative social change and are contemptuous of conservatives’  attachment to “outdated” traditions, are actually operating, unconsciously,  out of archaic structures of the human psyche, structures that date back hundreds of thousands of years rather than the hundreds of years that characterize most traditions!

You ask why, if the Matrisensus is a shadow form of the family archetype (which is, after all, about how to be in families), feminists disdain family life for women.  The actual family archetype does indeed make people value family life, but the Matrisensus is a shadow form, an image of that archetype where the motivation is changed from love and service to selfishness, specifically the claiming and display of personal virtue.  Since the moral polarization (a dysfunctional form of us-and-them deriving from family or not-family) of this archetype classes traditional society as oppressive, as them, as not-family, then traditional family structures are perceived as sharing in this oppressive nature.  The designated victims (us, family) in this shadow archetype receive the ‘rights-without-responsibilities’ attribution that is correctly applied only to infants.  All of this is driven by strong motivations and compulsive feelings of righteousness that have all of the power of the psyche behind them.  The Matrisensus is thus powerful to take over society because it is grounded in a huge and primal psychological archetype.

Janice, I haven’t answered all of your questions, and I don’t know if the answers I have offered are any better than my first attempt, but I think I should finish here and hand it back to you. 

Janice F: Thank you for that clarification of Matrisensus; that makes sense now. I really like the analysis of Reacher versus Columbo. It makes your point very well, and I accept it. The shift in ethos from the 1970s to now is strikingly illustrated by it. Columbo embodies a gentler and more humane approach.

(Interestingly enough, though Reacher seems to embody very masculine traits and a masculine ethos, the Reacher movies are thoroughly (and incoherently) feminist. In one scene from the first Reacher series, Reacher protects a female police officer when they are battling with a bad guy by drawing the bad guy’s fire away from her; later, he is at first a bit shocked and taken aback, but ultimately shame-faced and submissive, when she berates him for doing so, since doing so suggested that he thought he was more capable/stronger than she and owed her chivalric protection.

He also, in the same series (in one of the first scenes, if I’m remembering correctly), physically attacks a man who is shown to be abusing his helpless girlfriend/wife, thus demonstrating that men are, indeed, more capable/stronger than women and owe them chivalric protection! But that’s all another matter.)

The shift in worldview that you outline is striking.

The main difference between Reacher’s morality and intersectional feminist morality is that the intersectional feminists don’t live outside the system. They are the system, essentially, or at least they have significantly influenced the system so that it works for them against their perceived enemies. They don’t execute people themselves; they get law enforcement and family court judges to execute their will; and some men kill themselves in response.

I accept your explanation of why empathy is important as the thing that distinguishes between a sane vision of the world—one that treats each person as an individual and refuses a dehumanizing us/them dichotomy—and the deliberately polarizing vision that we see enacted by the holier-than-thou crusaders for social justice.

I guess my question, though, is how far we are to take the determination not to “lose ourselves into moral polarization” “in which we can do great harm without realizing it.” I admit that your framing of the imperative is attractive to me as well as reasonable. I do not want to become just as bad as the people I criticize. I can see the harm they do; I do not want to do similar harm. I do not want to be part of a movement (if we have a movement, I’m not sure) that imposes a vindictive world little different from the one we protest.

But do we adopt the empathy no matter what, in a Christ-like manner? “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

I’m not sure the Columbo approach works in a different world in which “the system”—law enforcement, the courts (especially family courts) but also the domains of social work, media, politics, and education—*is* almost thoroughly corrupt. Colombo had some faith in the system because the system, though flawed, worked better than vigilantism. Things seem much worse now as a result of the takeover by the shadow-side Matrisensus.

I remember someone—it might have been Stefan Molyneux—talking about how the traditions of altruism and non-discrimination can undermine those who practice them if they are dealing with people who never do. If you play for a team that passes the ball to the other side as often as it passes to team members, while the other team never passes to your team, then even with greater skill and merit on your own team, you’re going to lose game after game. That’s what I fear: that in aiming at decency when the other side is not decent, we are in the process of losing everything. The harm is then, of course, not only to us but to generations unborn in that we allow the takeover of the culture by people who hate them and will harm them.

The American justice system credo is (or was until recently), “Better that one hundred guilty persons should escape justice than one innocent person should suffer.” That essentially says that it is better to accept evil people getting away with bad things than becoming evil oneself. But that is for a time of peace, when the society is relatively stable; at a time of war, we know that many innocents will suffer. We may try to diminish it; we may not set out to cause suffering, but we know that the suffering becomes highly likely, even necessary, in order to save our society from destruction and enemy control.

I know that is an extreme way of framing it. The difficulty is in knowing when war is truly here, when the society is directly imperiled. The Reacher movies are about individual cases of evil and malfeasance, not an overpowering cultural and social rot. Even using a term like rot may partake of the dehumanizing polarization that you wish to avoid. Once I start worrying about the issue, I get all tied up in knots. I don’t want to see our side suffering nobly under persecution.

We do not know the future, but it seems at least likely that if we do not do more to resist the corruption of our society, then we will truly have given it over to those whose vision of moral polarization will result in even more suffering than we are currently witnessing.

That’s where I get to when I try to think along the lines you outline. Is there ever a point at which one must take more drastic action, some of which will inevitably involve us/them polarization?

David S: Janice, you ask good questions.  I agree with you about how dire the situation facing us is, and how high the stakes.  I, too, think that war is an appropriate label for the scale of what is in play here, but it cannot serve as a guide for how to proceed, for there is no external enemy to mobilize against.  I agree that there comes a point where one takes more drastic action, but not that it inevitably involves us/them moral polarization.  Let me walk you through my own process in developing this thinking.

At first, I thought that Gandhi’s ideas about personal sacrifice were the answer.  One inflicted suffering only on oneself, and converted the enemy through his own empathy.  That certainly worked for Gandhi against the British, first in South Africa and later in India.  But then I realized that the British were basically decent, not caught up in ideological evil.  Once Gandhi convinced them that they were oppressing and exploiting India as much as civilizing it, their own shame defeated them. 

Gandhi thought that his approach would ultimately work against any enemy, and for a time I thought he was right, but I no longer think so.  I think that once an enemy becomes so polarized that they desire and approve of your suffering, they think that it is actually justice, then it no longer has any purchase on their souls.  They have lost all empathy for you, which is the major effect of moral polarization.  So what is left, what is right action in opposing an evil ideology where you are hated?

I carefully considered examples of drastic action motivated by love.  Literature provided examples.  The killing of Lennie by George in Steinbeck’s magnificent novel Of Mice and Men.  The similar killings of McMurphy by “Chief” in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and of László Almásy by the French Canadian nurse Hana in The English Patient.  All of these had a profound effect on me as I considered their implications.  The last was especially powerful with the nurse bursting into tears as she prepares the fatal dose of morphine. Grief is so central and appropriate to the healthy acceptance of loss.

But none of these were the killing of enemies.  What would it look like, I wondered, to kill an enemy from a space of love, without moral polarization?  I invented a thought experiment which I called the weeping assassin.

The weeping assassin is someone who deplores violence, but who is deeply grounded in reality and understands that it is sometimes necessary. Now, many good people are of this mind, peaceful but willing to use violence in self-defense or the defense of others.  Lots of soldiers in wartime feel this way.  The weeping assassin goes further; he is able to empathize with the enemy and to personally grieve the necessity of his death.  He allows himself to feel the horror of killing – the waste of potential, the loss of human flourishing, the tragedy of a life so distorted that it is best for it to die.  And so he kills with distress and without moral judgment, with dignity and respect, only when necessary.  And he is sure that it is necessary, because he has personally examined the situation in depth and in detail, seeking alternatives.  Such an individual never just follows orders; he decides for himself, with huge reluctance based on a loving respect for all life.

But such an individual would have utility only for the assassination, after careful due process, of utterly destructive leaders such as Osama Bin Laden, Idi Amin or Hitler.  The weeping assassin is a concept whose application I cannot expand beyond those few extreme examples.  I cannot imagine an army of such people; they just don’t exist.  Few people undertake the life journey that leads to such love and empathy.  And what is the appropriate intervention where assassination is too extreme, which, it must be admitted, is almost always?  I don’t know. 

And so I must confess that I don’t have a generalizable solution for how to combat the woke, the feminists.  I don’t have a full answer to your very practical question.  I retain a conviction, a faith I guess, that it is possible, and preferable, to oppose evil from a place of love, of empathy and respect.  But I acknowledge that we don’t have many people in this space, and if we are to oppose it at all we must work with what we have.  What should we do as a collective when the system has become evil and threatens disaster for future generations, as you say?  The central problem is that we have no collective will on the matter.  War is declared by a central government, but in this case the central government is implicated in maintaining the evil.  The problem seems intractable.

I imagine that it must proceed in its own way until the harms flowing from the Matrisensus, the dark side of the feminine, become so great that they can no longer be denied and we wake up to the evil that women can do the way that we are already aware of the evil that men can do.  Then, with women no longer seen as morally superior to men, real sexual equality will finally be possible. 

With that dark vision as the prognosis for society, I sought to maximize my own contribution. Discovering in my thirties that I had a gift, an innate talent for perceiving the simple mechanisms beneath complex social patterns, I set myself to deducing the sociopsychology of identity politics, in the hope that an accurate diagnosis would lead toward the discovery of a cure, or at least an effective treatment.  I believe I have succeeded in that task – the description of the Matrisensus that I have outlined here, and that is the subject of the book I am working on, is, I think, the first accurate understanding of what is driving the millions who are caught up in its evil.  But, to my dismay, the diagnosis does not appear to lead to any clear picture of how to fight the disease at a collective level.  At least, I am so far unable to perceive one.  Perhaps others will be able to deduce such a method.

What I do have is a program for individuals to become more authentic, more balanced, more loving, more powerful, more effective advocates, and that is what I have outlined in this dialogue.  The heart of it is grieving and thus letting go of one’s attachment to all forms of imagined reality, including the notion that reality “should” be any particular way.  Reality is as we find it, end of story, and it is never “wrong.” Making moral judgments about reality is a dangerous dysfunction.  What we can do, and should do, is craft a vision that inspires us and set ourselves toward achieving it.  Make it inspiring and collaborative rather than judgmental and divisive (like feminism), so that it involves no moral polarization of people.  Address it in a way that engages talents and interests that you find in yourself.  If, for you, that involves advocacy for social change, excellent.  I wish you well.

Janice F: Well, my friend, you bring us to a productive place to close off our discussion (at least for now): it feels unresolved, but in a good way, and we have covered a lot of ground to get here. I am intrigued by your idea of the weeping assassin even as I am with you in recognizing the difficulty of mobilizing that figure in reality. I also agree that we find ourselves in an urgent conflict, one with high stakes—and yet we are stymied in taking collective action. I admire your recommendation to “craft a vision that inspires.”

As always when we discourse at length, I find myself thinking that however we may differ, I appreciate your acuity and humanity. It has been a pleasure to match wits and assessments with you. The only downside to reading your answers was the niggling reminder that I am a more rage-filled person than you!

Many thanks for your time and thoughtfulness.

David S: My friend, the pleasure has been mutual. You are an excellent partner in dialogue: thoughtful and attentive, with carefully considered arguments and yet open to being persuaded. You never play the one-upmanship games that one so frequently encounters in internet discussions: straw man distortions of the other’s positions, logical fallacies and red herrings. You remind me that dialogue is actually the only consensual way that we have, as a society, to approach any matter of contention – when dialogue fails, then we are left with only non-consensual processes.

As for the substantive aspects of our conversation, it is clear that we find ourselves in agreement on the major parameters of what is happening in society around identity politics. Perhaps a future dialogue might focus on how these factors are playing out in major stories of our time, like our responses to COVID, the USA presidential election, or the war between Israel and Hamas.

Janice, your consistent message to the world, over a good number of years now, is important. The effect of your work is substantial. I personally know several people whose minds have been permanently changed by your articulate arguments. Thank you for the invitation to dialogue: it is an honor to join you on your platform.